Helen Dunmore - The Deep

by

Helen Dunmore

HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in hardback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2007 First published in paperback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2008

Copyright © Helen Dunmore 2007

Helen Dunmore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007464128

Ebook Edition © October 2012 ISBN: 9780007369287

Version: 2017-03-28

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Deep: More than a Story

Sapphy and Conor’s Cornwall

∴ St Piran

∴ Mining in Cornwall

∴ Cornish Language

∴ Cornish Myth and Legend

The Deep

∴ The Mariana Trench

∴ Creatures of the Deep

∴ The Kraken

Sea life Spotting

Marine Conservation How can I help?

Investigate Your Local Beach

∴ What can you find washed ashore?

∴ Beach-time Fun!

∴ Save Your Beach

About the Author

In this Series

About the Publisher

It’s April, and the sun is warm. I’m sitting on a rock with Faro, way out at the mouth of the cove. The water below the rock is deep enough for Faro to swim, even now when it’s low tide. I scrambled out over the jumble of black, slippery rocks to get here.

The sun glitters on the water. Everything’s so bright and alive and beautiful. I’m back in Senara, back at our cove, back where I belong. Faro and I have been talking for ages. Not about anything special, just talking. That’s one of the best things about Faro. We start a conversation and it flows so easily, as if we’re picking up each other’s thoughts. Sometimes we are.

Faro’s tail is curled over the edge of the rock, and every so often he pushes himself off with his hands, and plunges into the transparent water to refresh himself. The muscles in his arms and shoulders are very powerful, and he can pull himself up again out of the water and on to the rock again without much effort.

Faro can’t stay out of the sea for too long. The skin of his tail, which is usually as glistening and supple as sealskin, grows dry and dull. Faro says that if the Mer get too much sun on their skin it cracks, and then they get sun-sores which are hard to heal.

But I’m sure that Faro’s able to stay out of the sea longer these days. Maybe it’s something to do with Faro growing older, and more resilient…

My thoughts drift away. Luckily, Faro’s one of those people you can be silent with, too. He hauls himself up on to our rock again, dripping and glistening.

A new summer is about to begin. For my brother Conor and me, there’ll be days and days of swimming and sunbathing and long evening walks with Sadie. Sadie loves swimming, too, and with only her nose above the water she looks more like a seal than a Golden Labrador. In the evenings we’ll build driftwood bonfires on the sand, and have barbecues where we cook mackerel which we’ve just caught off the rocks.

I don’t want to think about the past. I want to live now . But no matter how hard I try, the memory of the flood in St Pirans keeps coming back. Floods change people, even after the water’s gone down. You don’t feel safe in the same way, once you’ve seen fish swimming in and out of the car-park gates, and houses like caves full of salt water.

Conor and I have never talked to anyone about what happened to us the night of the flood, when the Tide Knot broke. Nobody would believe us, anyway.

The Tide Knot is sealed again. The sea can’t come raging in over the land.

But I shiver. I know Ingo’s power.

We moved back to our cottage here in Senara in January. That was one good thing that came out of the flood: our rented house was an uninhabitable wreck. And Mum didn’t want to live in St Pirans any more. She thought we’d be safer back in Senara, high up on the cliff.

If you’ve never been in a flood, you can’t imagine what St Pirans looked like afterwards. The streets were full of mud, sand, rocks and every kind of rubbish. Wheelie bins, smashed cars, street signs, hundreds of plastic bags, soggy sofas, wrecked computers, TVs with shattered screens, filthy clothes and books turned to mush. There were waterlogged oranges everywhere. You wouldn’t believe there could be so many oranges in one town. There were lots of dead fish too, stranded when the water fell.

The smell was the worst part. The whole town stank of rotting food, rotting seaweed, dead fish and sewage from broken pipes.

There were muddy tide marks on the houses higher up the hill, but ours was completely underwater during the flood so it was dirty all over. There was even a branch of seaweed sticking out of the chimney. Our front door hung off its hinges. All our possessions had swilled around in the flood water. Some had disappeared, and most of the rest were ruined.

Mum was really upset about losing our photo albums. Conor and I searched through piles of stuff, trying to find them, but in the end we had to give up. We did find just one framed picture of all the family, face-down in the fireplace under a tangle of seaweed. In the photo Mum and Dad were standing close together, with Dad’s arm around me, and Mum’s arm around Conor. It was taken a few years ago, and it was always Mum’s favourite.

But after Dad disappeared, nearly two years ago now, she put the photo into a drawer.

The photo frame was smashed, but the photo wasn’t damaged. Conor and I dried it carefully, then we gave it to Mum.

That was the only time Mum cried. But she said she was being stupid, because she had us safe and who cares about photo albums if you’ve got the real thing?

She hasn’t got Dad, though. She still believes Dad drowned nearly two years ago. When she talks about him, it sounds as if that part of her life is closed. I’m scared that her boyfriend Roger is slowly and surely taking Dad’s place.

I sit bolt upright at the thought, clenching my fists. Faro gives me a quizzical smile.