Chapter 2 #2
He lifts the lid and pulls open the two drawers with wooden starfish handles at the bottom, checking it over for flaws before he checks the price tag. ‘It’s heavy and well-made, and you can store things in it. And not too extortionate. Okay, we’ll take it.’
‘I love it! And it will always remind me of Mickey with the shells!’
‘Good choice,’ I say, blushing that she wants to be reminded of me as I put the price into the till. ‘I loved it so much when I saw it, I nearly kept it for myself, but I knew it would find someone who’d love it even more than I did.’
Ava catches sight of my mermaid tattoo and reaches over to touch my arm. ‘You didn’t wash it off.’
I glance down at the colours on my arm. ‘Full disclosure, I kept my arm out of the shower last night because I liked it so much.’
‘Awww! I can always come and colour it again for you! Can’t I, Dad?’ She pointedly cuts off the ‘no’ that was about to come out of Ren’s mouth before he has a chance to form a single letter.
‘You’re welcome here anytime.’ I grin at her and then at Ren. ‘Him, on the other hand…’
‘Let me guess, only if I bring tea and cake and pay for my daughter’s purchases?’ He gives me a sarcastic smile and holds a twenty-pound note out, and when I go to take it, the tips of my fingers brush against his. I hadn’t realised my hands were cold, but his are warm and the heat makes me jump like static electricity has sparked between us. I look up into his blue eyes and blink for a few moments in silence as a flushy, blushy, feeling of bubbling warmth floods my body.
Suddenly the money is dangling limply in my fingers as he yanks his hand back and shakes it, like the touch has burnt him, and it takes me far too long to pull myself together.
‘Works for me,’ I say shakily, in response to the question he asked… hours ago? In reality, it was only moments, but it feels like an era has passed.
What am I doing, feeling sparks? There should be no sparks, no sparkles, no fluttery feelings with anyone . Especially someone who doesn’t get me at all, and is clearly off-limits. Very, very off-limits.
All relationships begin with sparks and then fade into nine years of building a life together that ultimately goes nowhere and leaves you feeling like a needy, clingy basket case. Been there, done that, got the uncomfortable T-shirt.
I wait for the till to print his receipt, because he’s definitely the kind of man who always keeps the receipt, and slap it down on the counter and push it towards him, because I’m not risking a repeat of handing anything else to him again, ever.
‘Yes, right. Thank you for the interesting showcase of the world’s strangest items. We’ll, er…’
‘I want to come back tomorrow!’
‘Let’s see if we’ve got time in our busy schedules, eh?’ He gives Ava a tight grin, and looks like he’s hurriedly trying to come up with a vast itinerary of other summer holiday activities to fill their time rather than coming back here.
‘This is ridiculously heavy. Way heavier than it should be.’ He grunts as he picks the wooden crate up and shakes it around in his arms. ‘And there’s something banging around inside it. I’m not paying full price for something that’s defective.’
‘I’ve checked it over, Ren. It’s in perfect condition. Maybe you’re defective!’
‘Maybe I am.’ He pulls both the drawers out from the bottom, and when he lifts it again to give it another shake, there’s still something clonking around inside.
He puts it down again and reaches in, and there’s a hollow clunk as his knuckles knock against the base, and Ava bends down so she can look through the spaces where the drawers were. ‘There’s something in there.’
‘This is a false bottom.’ Ren tries to prise open the inner base of the chest as Ava reaches a hand in through the drawer hole and pushes upwards, and there’s a creaking noise of swollen wood being moved for the first time in a very long time, and the base separates from what I thought was a solidly wooden chest.
We all peer in, and hidden inside the bottom of the chest is a book. A very, very, very old book. The scent of aged paper and the ever-present smell of the sea that accompanies this chest fills the shop, stronger than ever after being shut away for so long.
‘What have we here?’ Ren lifts the huge book from its hiding place.
A tingle goes down my spine. This is the stuff I live for. A hidden compartment! An ancient book! That smell! I knew there was something special about this chest, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I should’ve known it was hiding a secret of epic proportions. ‘Be careful with that! Place it gently on the counter and back away slowly.’
Everyone who deals with old things dreams of finding a secret like this. This is the holy grail of things I’ve always wanted to happen in my shop, and now it actually has, and my heart is thrumming with the possibility of what we’re going to find inside, the endless secrets it could hold, and?—
‘Why would I do that? I’ve just paid for it. It’s mine.’
‘It is not!’ I gasp in indignation. ‘It wasn’t included in the price. I didn’t know it was there.’
‘That isn’t my fault. It’s up to you to correctly appraise your items. I’ve purchased the chest and all contents. It belongs to us.’
I wish I had some tea left to throw all over him because he deserves a hot drink straight to the face at the moment, and I’m positively livid at his nerve. So livid that, without thinking, I reach over and grab the book from his hands. ‘I’ll refund your money right now.’
Now it’s his turn to gasp in indignation. ‘I don’t want a refund. I want what I’ve paid for.’
I can’t believe I didn’t even know it was there. I remember the feeling of something clonking when I marked it up, but when I didn’t see anything, I put it down to a quirk of the old wood. I never noticed that the base of the chest was higher than it should have been. And now this… I curse myself again. Was I too busy making up fantasy stories about the chest to accurately assess it? I imagined a little girl, painting shells she’d gathered from the beach to decorate it with, excited to keep her most special things inside. How could I have got so caught up in fantasy that I missed something so important?
‘Well, you’re getting one.’ I turn to the till and the momentary lapse of concentration gives him an opportunity to snatch it back. ‘Be careful! You’ll rip it, it’s old !’
He holds it with one hand and runs the other one over the aged leather cover. ‘We don’t even know what it is yet. It could be some old bat’s recipe book for all we know. Why are we fighting over it?’
‘It’s special! We both know that. And it’s not bloody yours!’ I hold my hand out for it, like I’m honestly expecting this ornery, cantankerous man to return it so easily. He knows it might be valuable and is hell-bent on securing it for himself.
He looks down at the book like he’s considering it for a moment, but before he has a chance, Ava takes it firmly from his hands.
‘Finders keepers! I was the first to spot it, and I want…’ She glances between us and then hands the book back to me. ‘I want Mickey to have it. She knows about fairytale stuff and old things.’
‘I have two history degrees! I know a fair bit about “old things” too. She thinks some bloke made half a dragon fruit into a table for his wife!’
I ignore him and clutch the book to my chest, turning around so he can’t grab it again, but instead, he steps away. It seems like Ava’s words have taken the wind out of his sails. I place it on the counter and brush my top down like I’ve been in a physical fight. ‘Thank you,’ I say to her. ‘Do you want to see what’s inside?’
She squeals and nods enthusiastically and I beckon her to come in behind the counter with me and then glance at Ren, who at least has the decency to look marginally guilty.
I feel like I should have white cotton gloves on as I open the cover a millimetre at a time, terrified that the spine is going to crack or the pages are going to fall out and scatter across the shop. It’s seriously old . The pages are brittle, the edges frayed, almost like they could’ve got wet and dried out again many moons ago. There’s a bookmark made of plaited wool, with shells hand-tied onto the ends of it, and the cover is so soft and well-worn that it feels like the leather might rub away under my fingertips.
‘Whatever this is, someone loved it very much.’ My voice is a whisper because it feels like speaking at a normal volume would be somehow disrespectful to the book.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Ren creeping closer again, trying to feign disinterest but peering over anyway.
The writing on the first page is exquisite. The kind of handwriting you just don’t see in this day and age. Ink blotches from a dip pen and inkwell, and calligraphy-like looped letters of faded wording. ‘Sixteenth of January 1899,’ I murmur aloud and glance at Ava. ‘It’s a diary!’
‘Should we read it?’ she asks. ‘Diaries are private and whoever wrote it didn’t want it found.’
She’s got a point, but if this is a hidden diary from 1899, there’s no way we’re not reading it, and my eyes have already picked out the first line and to say I’m intrigued is an understatement. ‘Well, whoever it belonged to will be long gone by now, and maybe they’d like to think of their legacy living on and their words being read by strangers over a century later…’
‘It could have historical value,’ Ren says, and despite his earlier attempt at stealing it, I give him a grateful smile for justifying my nosiness, and he takes that as a cue to come closer until he’s standing on the other side of the counter again, reading the book upside down, and some parts of his stiff dark hair break free from their product and fall forwards.
‘And maybe we were meant to find it?’ I suggest. ‘I mean, it made itself known just at that moment. Maybe it wanted to be found and it thought we were the right people…’
‘I did feel like this chest was meant for me as soon as I saw it. So you think it’s okay? We’re not going to get in any trouble?’
‘I think it’s fine,’ I say, feeling a swell of pride that she turned to me for reassurance like I’m an authority on old things. ‘I think we’d be doing the author a disservice if we didn’t.’
She nods like that’s all she needed to hear, and I’m touched by how thoughtful she is. I deal with old things for a living, and it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind to question the morals behind reading someone else’s diary, at least, not when it belongs to a stranger from so long ago.
I start reading the first entry aloud.
16 January 1899
There’s an unconscious man on my beach. Both of these things are my fault – the fact he’s unconscious and the fact he’s on my beach.
I thought he was dead at first, but he’s not. He struggled as I pulled him from the water, and now, I see his chest moving. The ship he was on is lost to the waves, there is no trace that it ever existed, and the other shipmate is also missing. I couldn’t save him. The current was too strong as it pulled the ship beneath it. The other man was still on board, but this one was thrown clear. He was slipping under the water. I probably should have let the evidence of my crime die with him, but I could not watch a human life ending when I was able to stop it.
If anyone asks, they will know it’s my fault. They will hunt me down, like they do with all of my kind.
‘My kind…’ I echo, glancing between Ren and Ava. ‘What odd wording.’
His leg is broken. It lies at the wrong angle on the sand. I have seen doctors treating broken legs before. I know it must be set, but I have no equipment here and no knowledge of how to use it. There is wood from the shipwreck and there is rope. I will do it now, while he is still unconscious. His arm is bleeding too. There is so much blood. But I don’t know if I can make it up the beach. My fins don’t manage well on land.
‘Fins?’
‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me,’ Ren mutters. ‘Come on, seriously?’
‘This sounds like it’s being written by a…’ I glance around the shop like it’s too ludicrous a notion to speak aloud. ‘It couldn’t be, could it?’
‘A mermaid?’ Ava says, looking like she’s expecting us to laugh at the suggestion.
‘Or some other kind of sea creature? A selkie, maybe? Or a?—’
‘Great white shark, perhaps?’ Ren mutters sarcastically. ‘Well-renowned for their ability to hold pens and jot down intimate thoughts.’
‘Read more.’ Ava nudges me excitedly, ignoring his cynicism.
The wind is still howling and the rain is lashing down. I crawled up the beach. I caressed the broken leg, wishing I had legs just like his. Maybe I would be normal if I could walk like a human can? I pushed a plank of wood from the ship against it and tied it with rope, but it wasn’t tight enough, so I used my teeth to tear strips from his wet shirt and fastened the wood against his leg.
He doesn’t wake up, but he cries out in his sleep. His teeth grind together. He thrashes against the sand. Does he dream like sea creatures do? Is he dreaming to take himself away from the pain, as I do?
I stroke his hair away from his face. I murmur words but, as usual, no sound comes out. I cannot speak, I don’t know why I thought this night would be any different.
I’ve never been alone with a human like this before. Not one so handsome, anyway. He is… delightful. The way his hair falls across his forehead, covering some of the marks and cuts that I caused. There is blood dripping onto the sand. I make a compress out of seaweed and hold it to the worst wound. There are the black marks of bruises rising on his arms. They are my fault too.
I want to stay, but I know he will be in pain. He will be angry and scared. And I cannot soothe him. I will do nothing but make him angrier, or scare him further. He will not be accustomed to seeing a creature such as I.
I had no warning about his ship coming. It came from nowhere, as did the storm that came across the Atlantic, and now it moves onwards to the east, battering the mainland as it hits the edge of the British Isles, passing across my island like it was never there.
The sun will be up soon. Will he awaken with the sunrise? But then… he will see me. He will know what I am. He will know I am the creature who lured him to his doom. I must go. I must not come back.
‘You’re not seriously suggesting…’ Ren says as the diary entry ends.
‘I don’t know what else to make of it,’ I say slowly. ‘I mean, obviously she couldn’t be… could she?’
‘What if she is?’ Ava looks at me hopefully.
I feel a little flutter in my chest as my heart fights against my head. Obviously this isn’t the diary of a real mermaid. Mermaids don’t exist, that we know of. But maybe… What if we don’t know? What if this is somehow proof that they really do exist or at least, they did in 1899?
Ren recognises the war playing out behind my eyes. ‘Mermaids aren’t real.’
‘You don’t know that. There’s a big ocean out there, with vast depths that have never been explored. Maybe they did exist in 1899 and people didn’t have the technology to find them back then. No one knows what could be out there.’
‘I’d venture it’s not bloody mermaids. And this is way too much of a coincidence. A mermaid-themed shop, run by someone who loves mermaids, and we find this in a seashell-covered mermaid’s chest…’
‘Maybe it was meant to end up here?’ Ava suggests.
‘Yes! Exactly that! That’s the whole point of my shop – people find things they were meant to find. Who better to find this than us?’ I glance at Ava. Me and her, maybe, but probably not him. He doesn’t seem like the type for believing in mermaids – he doesn’t seem like the type for believing in anything .
He rolls his eyes, but still keeps reading upside down across the counter as we read the next entry.
17 January 1899
The sea is calm this morning. I hide on my sandbank. I lie in the water and only peer up occasionally. This sandbank caused his ship to run aground last night. They say all sandbanks were raised from the seabed by mermaids, and what am I, if not a mermaid?
I give Ren a ‘so there’ look, and barely refrain from poking my tongue out at him.
I should not be here. I was going to leave my island until he is not here, but I do not know how he will not be here. He cannot leave my beach. There is no way off without a ship, and there is no trace of his, only some broken wood drifting on the water.
He still hasn’t woken up, but he is restless now, reaching for the surface of consciousness. His body is shaking. Shivering. The sea is my protector – I do not feel the cold from it, but I am not like him. I know where there are blankets. I must get them for him, but I cannot risk being seen. I will go now, before he wakes.
There’s a break in the entry, and then she continues.
He is unlike any human I’ve seen before. He is young, like me. Most of the ones I’ve seen are old. They want to study me. They push me and prod me and sting me with needles. Others, they want to put me in a cage and charge an admission fee so other humans can come and look at me, for I am something not seen in the human world before.
I go nearer than I should. I sit beside him on the beach. I cover him with a thick blanket. I check his wounds under the seaweed compresses. They are worse this morning, the bruising is darkening, but the blood has dried. I think this is a good sign.
I have signalled for help, but help has not come. I will try again later, but my signals are unlikely to be seen. Help will not arrive until summer. I am alone until then. I try to speak to him again, but my voice does not come. I sing a song my mother tried to teach me, a song to bring peace to sailors, but no words come out. My voice is missing, a flawed and worthless part of me, something that sets me aside from both humans and other merkind. All I wish, just once, is for someone to understand me.
Ava puts her hand on her heart like it’s tugging on her heartstrings. ‘Why can’t she speak?’
‘Maybe she’s made a deal with a Sea Witch?’ Ren’s sarcastic suggestion earns him a scathing look from both of us.
‘We need to read more.’ Ava nudges me. ‘I can’t wait to find out what happens when he wakes up!’
‘Before we get any further swept away in this fantasy, why don’t we fact check this?’ Ren puts his hand on the book, preventing me from turning the page, while also looking pleased with himself for the pun. ‘If you’re sure this isn’t some kind of ploy? Something you’ve planted for publicity?’
‘No! I’ve never seen it before! But publicity… This would be amazing to take to the antiques fair at the end of August. If we could find out more about it… find out if she really was a mermaid… This is the kind of thing that could be the difference between making my business or breaking it. Can you imagine being able to go on the local news with real, true-life evidence of a mermaid’s existence?’ My mind is flooded with possibilities. This is what I’ve always dreamed of finding. This is why I love old, unwanted things so much, and why I was always so fascinated by the treasures my dad rescued. Every item has a story behind it, and I’ve always thought that, one day, one of those stories would be truly magnificent. And this is it. This is the most special thing I’ve ever found.
I need to do something spectacular for the antiques fair. I need to get people talking about The Mermaid’s Treasure Trove like my dad would’ve done. What better way than being the only person in the universe with genuine evidence found in my shop? People the world over would hear about it. Customers would travel for miles for a chance of uncovering a rare treasure right here. Maybe some of these items would sell and give me half a chance of paying the bills next year…
I feel like I’ve fallen out of love with my shop lately, and this has instantly reminded me of exactly how much I love this shop and the things I sell. I used to think this place was magical, but all that has faded since my dad died. This is a perfect way to recapture the magic and remind myself of what was always so special about my dad’s magical curiosity shop. ‘We have to find out who she was – what she really was.’
‘Yes!’ Ava agrees.
‘This is bonkers. You do know that, right? Utterly bonkers.’ Ren glances between us and clearly sees that we’re both standing firm on this. ‘Well, we have two very clear facts that can easily be verified – a shipwreck and a date. There are logs of these things. At least that would be a starting point of figuring out what this is. The other man on board has died – drowned, or been lost at sea. If it’s real, there would be a record of that. Whoever she is, she has a beach of her own, and help isn’t coming until summer, so she’s somewhere alone for over six months, which is very strange. And she’s been around medical care, so it sounds like she’s met humans before, so presumably, they’ve also met her. You’re trying to tell me that these doctors, and whoever else wanted to charge a fee… that they’ve encountered a mermaid and this isn’t documented anywhere? No one thought to make a record of meeting such a magical creature?’
All right, that is rather a good point, admittedly. Surely we would know if mermaids were keeping diaries in the previous century. There would certainly be some documentation about it if humans had ever had contact with an actual mermaid, but I don’t see the harm in considering the magic of possibilities that this book could unlock.
‘This is clearly old, genuinely old,’ he continues. ‘But being old doesn’t mean it was written by a mermaid. It hasn’t been under the sea. Ink from an inkwell is not watertight. If this had ever had so much as a sniff of water, the ink would’ve dispersed beyond recognition. I know it doesn’t fit your whimsical fairytale narrative, but this is someone’s flight of fantasy. It’s the beginning of a novel. That’s why it’s hidden – not because it’s a diary but because the writer didn’t want anyone to know she was writing a novel. Times were different then, women weren’t always allowed to have ambitions like they are now.’
‘But that would make it special too. Even if it’s not a mermaid, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the first draft of a forbidden novel from so long ago?’
‘Is there anything you don’t put a positive spin on?’ He looks from me to Ava. ‘And I don’t want you getting excited and getting your hopes up that this is something fantastical, because it will only lead to disappointment, so let’s do some digging before we carry on reading it as a work of fiction and nothing more. I’m in if you both are.’
‘I’m definitely in,’ I say happily. ‘Where do we find records of shipwrecks?’
‘The library will have access to archives. If not, a librarian should be able to direct us to the right place. I’ll look into it tomorr?—’
He yelps when Ava stamps on his foot and he looks down at her, seeming to understand what she means without a word being spoken and then looks back to me. ‘If it makes you happy, maybe we could all go… We should all go, seeing as we seem to be in this together.’
‘I’m up for it,’ I say, because despite only meeting them twice, I’m not sure how much I trust Ren to be completely upfront when he so blatantly doesn’t want this to be anything special, no matter whether it is or not. ‘I can close up for a bit anytime and come meet you. It’ll be fun. I’m positive that we’ll find a log of a shipwreck on that exact date.’
‘Positivity only leads to disappointment.’ He sounds downbeat as he goes to slide the book off the counter and take it, but Ava stops him.
‘No! Let Mickey keep it, she’ll look after it. She understands the importance of it.’
‘ I understand the importance of it, as a work of fiction, not as the diary of something that doesn’t exist.’
‘Well, with that cynical attitude…’ I mutter, although I’m intrigued too. He might be harsh and abrupt and standoffish, but his words speak of someone who’s been hurt and disappointed and is trying to make sure it never happens again, and the memory of that tingle earlier hasn’t gone away. The thought of getting to see them again, even just for a library visit, sends butterflies swirling through me, and I’m not sure if it’s the idea of proving him wrong or simply the idea of spending more time with him.
I shake my head at myself. It’s nothing to do with him . We have evidence of a real mermaid writing a diary here, and it should be pretty easy to prove whether the things mentioned in it really happened, and that’s what I’m excited about, obviously.
‘Do you promise not to read any more without me?’
‘I promise.’ I smile at how much Ava sounds like a little girl again, and at the sparkle in her eyes that I used to get when I watched Disney films about princesses and handsome princes, and believed that was what life would be like when I was older, and for a moment, that’s taken over the part of her that’s desperate to appear grown up and be treated like an adult. ‘I won’t touch it again until we can all read it. If we want to.’ I direct the last part of the sentence at Ren, who gives me a sarcastic smile in response.
We arrange to meet on Saturday outside the library in town, and he picks up the now-empty wooden chest and hovers in the doorway for a moment as they leave, and looks back at me with a lingering smile that makes me feel even more excited than the possibility of uncovering evidence that mermaids are real.