Helen Dunmore - The Complete Ingo Chronicles - Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept

I hate the pain and confusion in my brother’s voice. I hate the idea that Elvira wanted to keep him away from me.

“Conor, listen. You won’t go up to Jack’s again today, will you? You won’t leave me alone here?”

“No,” says Conor. His face lightens. “Hey, Saph. Listen.”

“What?”

“Maybe you should cut off your hair.”

“ Cut off my hair ?”

“Because when it’s so long and you’re in the water, your hair spreads out all around you. It makes you look like a – you know, like one of them.”

“You mean, like a mermaid ,” I say icily. How can Conor possibly suggest that I cut off my hair? He knows I’ve been growing it since I was six. I’ve got the longest hair in our whole school. I wouldn’t be me without it.

“Yes,” says Conor, quite seriously. “They might see your hair floating in the water when you go swimming, and get the idea that you’re one of them. That you ought to stay with them.”

“So let me know when I start to grow a tail.”

But Conor shrugs my comment away, as if I’m just the little sis trying to be smart. I’m about to snap back, when a strange feeling seizes me and I forget him.

How dark it is inside the cottage, with the doors and windows closed. You know that feeling when you come home after a holiday, and everything feels so familiar and comfortable, because it belongs to you and you belong to it? That’s the feeling I usually have when I come home to our cottage.

But not now. The walls seem to be pressing in around me. I’ve never realised before that the cottage is so small. There’s so little space that I can hardly move. I want to stretch. I want to get out. I want to leap and plunge and dive and be free, and I want the cool of the water rushing past my skin instead of this dry, scratchy air. Our cottage isn’t a home at all. It’s a prison.

Conor is watching me. “Saph, no!” he says warningly, as if he can read my thoughts.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“I won’t let you, Saph. You’re not swimming off down any streams without me. I told Granny Carne I’d look after you.”

I hold on to the strength of Conor’s voice.

“Conor, listen. What else did Elvira say to you?”

“Everything I wanted to hear,” says Conor. “But I can’t describe it. You have to hear her voice.”

I think of Faro, and all the power of Ingo.

“I know,” I say.

“But I’m not going to Ingo again. If Elvira calls to me, I’ll put my headphones on and turn my music up loud so I can’t hear her. It’s the only way.”

Suddenly a thought cuts through me like a knife. “Conor! What about Mum?”

“What about her?”

“Mum might hear it too. You know. The singing. It might start to pull her. And then what’ll we do?”

“She won’t,” says Conor confidently. “Mum hates the sea. Can you imagine her in Ingo?”

“No – maybe not—”

“Mum wouldn’t even believe Ingo exists. And that’ll make her safe.”

In the cottage, with Conor there and Conor’s music playing loud, doors and windows shut, curtains drawn, lights on and a bolognese sauce bubbling on the stove, Ingo seems far away.

But even the loudest music has pauses in it, and into those pauses the noise of the sea can break through, drop by drop, then faster, a trickle, a stream, and now a flood-tide—

No. I won’t let it happen this time.

I make a huge effort. I close my eyes, my ears, my mind. Our cottage is warm and safe and friendly. It’s our home, where we belong. In a minute it’ll be time to drop the spaghetti into boiling water.

Ingo does not exist. Ingo is just a story, far away.

Yes , says a small, mocking voice inside my head. Ingo doesn’t exist. How true is a lie, how dry is the ocean, how cold is the sun ? And I think the voice sounds like Faro’s.

Mum straightens up and turns from the oven to the kitchen table where we’re all sitting. She places a pan of roast potatoes carefully on the heat-proof mat, next to the roast chicken which has been resting for ten minutes.

“The chicken’s having a good rest before we eat it,” Dad used to explain to us when we were little. “It’s hard work to be eaten.”

“Don’t fill the children’s heads with rubbish, Mathew. It rests so as to make the meat easier to carve, Sapphire,” Mum would say.

Dad’s not here, but we’re still eating roast chicken. Isn’t it strange that a meal can last longer in your life than a person? Sunday dinner, the same as ever. I stare at the golden skin of the chicken and the crunchy golden-brown roast potatoes. Mum always sprinkles salt on the potatoes before she puts them in hot oil to roast.

“I’ll just have potatoes and broccoli, Mum,” I say, when it comes to my turn. Mum has already heaped Roger’s plate with chicken breast and a leg as well, and he’s staring at it carnivorously.

“You’re not turning vegetarian again, are you, Sapphire?” asks Mum warily.

“I’m not turning vegetarian , it’s just that I don’t want any chicken.”

“Great-looking chicken,” Roger observes.

“It was better looking when it was running around, in my opinion,” I answer. I’m on safe ground here, because I know this is one of the Nances’ chickens, so I have definitely seen it running around many times. In fact I’ve probably even thrown grain for it, which makes the sight of it on the plate a little difficult.

“Is it better for a chicken to run around and have a good life and then die and be eaten, or for a chicken to be shut up in a box and never run around, and then die of natural causes?” asks Conor. Mum pours gravy on to Roger’s plate in a long stream. Her lips are pressed tightly together with annoyance. Her face is flushed from the heat of the oven on a hot day, and suddenly I wish I hadn’t said anything about the chicken running around.

“Lord, bless this food and all of us who gather here to eat it,” says Roger. We all stare at him. His face is calm and bland. He nods at me, picks up his knife and fork, and starts to eat.

“No disrespect to your workplace, Jennie, but this roast beats anything I’ve eaten in a restaurant,” he says, after swallowing the first few mouthfuls. I listen to his voice instead of the words and I hear something unexpected there. Mum never told us Roger was Australian. But his accent is not that strong. Maybe he went to Australia for a while, that was all. Diving on the Great Barrier Reef.

“I got gravy on my chin?” Roger asks, smiling. I must have been staring at him.

“No,” I blurt out. “I was wondering if you were Australian.”

Roger looks pleased. “Yeah, that’s right. I was born out there, in a little place in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. My parents emigrated there after they were married. But things didn’t work out for the family, so my mum came back here when I was ten years old. You can still hear the accent if you know what to listen for, I reckon.”

“I never knew that,” says Mum.

“Your daughter has a quick ear,” says Roger, and I can’t help feeling a bit flattered. I look down quickly to hide my smile. I don’t want Mum thinking I’m starting to like Roger.

“Eat your broccoli, Sapphire,” says Mum automatically, although I’ve already eaten it.

“She’s looking better, isn’t she?” Mum goes on. It’s not really a question to anyone, and no one answers.

“You’re feeling better, aren’t you, Sapphy?”

“Um, yes—” I begin, when I realise that I’m not feeling better at all. In fact I’m feeling very strange indeed, as if the Sunday table is rushing away from me. Conor’s looking at me worriedly. The room feels as if all the air has been sucked out of it, even though the kitchen door is open. The smell of food chokes my nostrils. Why are we all sitting inside when the sun is bright on the grass outside and the tide’s moving, tugging…