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

“Hi, Roger,” I say cheerfully. Mum gives me a pleased look, because I’m being friendly at last, and forgetting all that nonsense about not liking Roger.

“Let’s all have some tea,” she says. “I’ve made a coffee and walnut cake.”

“Wow, coffee and walnut, my favourite,” says Roger enthusiastically. But he is still staring at me, and a frown knits on his forehead. Maybe he isn’t going to enjoy the coffee and walnut cake quite as much as Mum hopes.

Roger’s not the only one who is watching me. Conor sends me a meaning look. “ Upstairs ,” he mouths silently. Aloud, he says, “Be down in just a minute, Mum. Got to change my jeans – there was water in the bottom of the boat.”

But Conor’s jeans are dry. Another lie for Conor. I follow him upstairs. If he keeps on lying like this, how long will it be before people stop always believing him?

“ What are you playing at? !” whispers Conor angrily as soon as we get to the top of stairs. He grabs my arms so I have to turn and face him.

“What d’you mean? Shut up, Conor, they’ll hear! You’re hurting my arms.”

“No, I’m not,” says Conor. “I never hurt you. Saph, you must be crazy. First of all you go to Ingo again, and on your own. How many times do I have to warn you?”

“It was all right, Con. Their time was nearly the same as ours today.”

“Today, maybe,” says Conor grimly. “You were lucky. I had a feeling it would be OK though, I don’t know why. I wasn’t as frightened as I was the time before. So I made up some stuff for Mum about Jack calling to ask if you’d walk Sadie because he was going surfing.”

“Conor, you’re such a bad liar. The sea’s flat.”

“Yes, but Mum didn’t think of that. You got away with it this time. Or at least you nearly did. Roger saw you . Now he’s trying to convince himself it was some weird refraction of your image. You know, like a mirror image of you got beamed up into the air and reflected underwater, because of freak weather conditions.”

“He can’t believe that. It’s impossible.”

“Not as impossible as looking over the side of the boat and seeing you relaxing underwater with a big smile on your face. And seeing that you didn’t need to breathe. And you were miles out as well.”

“Did you see me too?”

“No. He didn’t say anything straight away. I guessed something was wrong because of the way he went all still and tense, but I don’t know him well enough to ask. Then after a while he turned round and said he’d seen something that couldn’t possibly be there. A girl underwater. Not a drowned girl, but a real girl looking up at him. And then he said: You’re not going to believe this, Conor, but she looked exactly like your sister. She could have been her twin . And then he started saying all that stuff about light rays bending and images refracting. But I knew he didn’t really believe it, he was just trying to convince himself. So I said that there have always been mermaids around here, and maybe you had a mermaid double. That made him laugh.”

“He laughed at the Mer?”

“Sapphire, please . I was trying to make him laugh. I wanted him to think it was all crazy and impossible and so he couldn’t have seen anything. He said, Well, one thing I know for sure is that your sister isn’t a mermaid. I’ve seen her walking and she definitely has two feet .

I can’t stop myself. I glance down at my legs to make sure, and yes, there are my feet, safely inside my trainers. Relax, Sapphire, relax. Conor is on your side. He’s only trying to cover up for you, and make Roger believe that he can’t have seen you down there in the sunwater.

“I’m sorry, Con,” I say. “I know you still do.”

“Still do what?” asks Conor blankly.

“Still care about Dad. Still want him to come back.”

“Of course I do,” says Conor impatiently, as if he’s forgotten all about our argument. “But Saph, listen—”

“What?”

“You don’t need to be so against Roger. He’s all right.”

“He is not all right! He’s a diver. He’s the enemy of the Mer.”

Conor doesn’t answer for a little while. He watches my face very carefully, and then he says, in a cautious voice, “But Sapphire, you’re not Mer, are you? You belong to the Air. You’re human. Like me and Mum and Roger.”

“I’m not like Roger!” I spit out, before I know what I’m going to say.

“But you are like me, aren’t you?” Conor goes on, still in that careful voice, as if he’s not quite sure what I might do or say next. “We’re brother and sister. Same genes. Human genes, Saph.”

“Yes,” I say uncertainly. Of course I belong with Conor, my brother. But I’m remembering what I said to the dolphins. I belong in Ingo too . Even though Faro is right, and what I know about Ingo is as small as a grain of sand, I don’t feel like a stranger there. I feel different when I’m in Ingo. More alive. More… more myself .

“Conor. Tell me truthfully. Do you truly believe that we’re all Air, and not Mer at all? You and me, I mean?”

“But Saph, what else could we be but human? We’ve got a human mother and a human father. That makes us a hundred per cent human. Why do you want to believe anything different?”

“I don’t know.” Suddenly I feel tired all over. Conor is standing right next to me, but he’s far away. “I don’t know why I believe it, but I can’t help it. I feel it, Conor. When I’m in Ingo I’m free. I can go anywhere, wherever I want.”

“Only if you’re holding on to Faro’s wrist,” says Conor sarcastically. “I don’t see what’s so free about that.”

“But I don’t need to do that any more.”

“What? You don’t need to do that any more ?” repeats Conor slowly. “No. Of course, you’re right. It’s true. You can’t have been with Faro when Roger saw you, otherwise Roger would have seen him too. You mean you can breathe and move and do everything on your own, all the time you’re down there?”

“Yes. If I want to go really fast though, I hold on to Faro or we get the dolphins—”

“You should never have gone back there, Saph. It’s dangerous. It’s changing you. Each time you go, it draws you deeper in. I keep trying to make you understand. Why won’t you listen?”

“No, Conor, why won’t you listen for once? You should have been with us today. You don’t understand what it’s like. We rode on the dolphins and I nearly understood what they were saying. It doesn’t hurt at all to go into Ingo now, not like it did the first time. And Faro and I—” I stop. I’d been about to blurt out that Faro could hear my thoughts.

“Faro and you what?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“ Faro and you what ?”

“Conor, it’s nothing. Don’t look at me like that. It’s just that he can – I mean, we can – we can see into each other’s minds. Just a bit. I can see his thoughts and he can see mine, the way fish do in shoals. They share their memories, did you know that?”

“I do not believe I’m hearing this. Sapphire. You – are – not – a – fish. You are not even partly a fish. Get over it. You are my sister and you live in Senara Churchtown, West Penwith, Cornwall, the Earth, the Universe. Not in ***!!!!*** Ingo!”

“I wish Mum could hear you swearing like that.”

“Why don’t you swim off and tell her? Assuming you can still remember enough human words? Mum can’t share your thoughts like Faro , remember. She’s only human.”

“Conor, we mustn’t!”

“Mustn’t what?”