Chapter 4
4
I’ve always loved libraries. The smell of all those books, pages that have been turned and read and loved by so many pairs of hands, and offered so many hours of escape to voracious readers, like me when I was little and looking for a way to lose myself after my mum died.
It’s Saturday morning and I’m early because I figure Ren is the kind of man who is always punctual and I don’t need to add ‘perpetually late’ to his list of reasons for disliking me, and sure enough, he and Ava are waiting in the library car park and he’s looking at his watch, even though we weren’t due to meet for ten minutes yet.
Ava squeals and runs over to give me a hug. ‘Have you brought it with you?’
‘Of course.’ I wasn’t expecting the hug and I pat her back awkwardly, and then tap the bag over my shoulder, which holds the book, wrapped in a blanket to ensure it doesn’t get damaged.
‘I can’t wait! We’re going to prove that his ship went down and a mermaid saved his life!’
‘We don’t know that,’ Ren says cautiously. ‘We have no idea how this ends. The mystery man could die from his injuries in the next entry, and it’s very unlikely that there really was a shipwreck at all. Don’t get your hopes up, okay?’
I can’t help noticing that’s the second time he’s said something similar to her, and I’m torn between appreciating his overly-cautious-parent approach and wanting to tell her to throw caution to the wind and believe in the impossible.
He turns to me. ‘Hello.’
‘Hi.’ Why am I blushing after just one word? The simplest word, at that. Why has my pace quickened as I follow Ava back to the sensible-looking car he’s standing next to?
He gives me a nod. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you without your costume.’
I touch my hair self-consciously. It’s tied up in a messy knot at the back of my head, and there’s no flower hair clip or shell necklace. I’m wearing jeans and a batwing top, and didn’t bother to plaster on the blue and green glittery eye make-up that I usually wear as a mask. ‘It’s not a costume. It’s a…’ I struggle for the right word. It’s not a costume, is it? It’s just a way of embracing the shop’s theme.
‘Shield.’ He finishes the sentence for me. ‘I know. I get it.’
Is it a shield? I’ve never thought of it in that way before, but now he says it, I realise that I do put things on like armour when I go to work. When my dad was ill, it was hard running the shop, telling myself that I was temporarily looking after it for him while he recovered when I knew, deep down, that he never would. I plastered on sparkly make-up, used a brighter shade of hair dye, and amassed a collection of hair flowers, like becoming someone bright and mermaidy created a gap between the woman running the shop and the woman falling apart inside while her father was dying.
I tilt my head to the side and study Ren for a moment because it makes me think of the hurt behind his eyes and wonder about the apologies behind his ruthless words. Are they a shield of sorts too? Maybe he really does get it.
He looks exactly the same as he has on the other days. Black single-pleat trousers, a tightly buttoned shirt, and a navy jacket over the top, despite the fact it’s a warm summer’s day and a jacket really isn’t necessary. Black hair stuck fast with product and a look on his face that wordlessly says, ‘What am I doing here?’
‘Shall we?’ He eschews the need for small talk and gestures towards the library, and when we all walk over, he holds the door open and lets me and Ava go through first.
I stop to inhale the bookish smell, but the library is quiet and the librarian comes straight over. Ren asks her what information they hold about shipwrecks, and we wait while she looks it up.
‘There are national archives of wreck reports from 1876 to 1988. I can give you access through one of our computers and you’re welcome to browse for as long as you like.’ She leads us over to row of computers along the end wall of the library, leans over to put a password into one and navigate to the correct archives, and then briefly explains the search function and the information we’ll need to enter, and leaves us to it.
Ren takes the main seat in front of the monitor, and Ava and I pull up a chair on either side of him, leaning close to see the screen over his shoulder, and I catch the scent of his aromatic aftershave, spicy and close to his skin, and it makes me glad I’m already sitting down.
‘Right, shipwrecks on the sixteenth of January 1899.’ He rubs his hands together and puts the date into the search engine.
No results.
I feel my stomach sink.
He puts in 17 January as well, but there’s still nothing. Search parameters for the whole month of January also bring up nothing.
I can feel disappointment biting at my toes. I really thought this was going to be real. ‘Try February. Maybe the shipwreck would’ve been logged on the day it was found rather than the day it actually sank. Rescuers would have no way of knowing what day it went down, would they? They’d log it for the day it was discovered.’
He enters search dates for the month of February and it still brings up no results.
I sigh. ‘It might not have been found for months . It sounds like they’re somewhere remote and she said help wasn’t coming until the summer. Maybe they weren’t found until then. Add March. Actually, let’s go through the results until summer and see if that brings anything up.’
He glances at me and then changes the search end date to August. ‘I will happily sit here and browse every shipwreck in the nineteenth century if you want. We are not going to find something that never happened.’
‘Well, if that’s your attitude…’
‘My attitude has no bearing on whether this ship ever existed.’ He holds a hand out towards the screen and gives me a ‘see?’ look when the results still turn up empty.
I lean over him and change the end date until the January of the following year. Still nothing. As it turns out, 1899 was a remarkably shipwreckless year for the British seas.
‘What if it never was found?’ I can feel hope deserting me and clutch at a straw. ‘What if she really did cause this wreck and covered it up somehow? If the ship disappeared beneath the waves and there was no trace of it, maybe when they were rescued, they never told anyone, or?—’
‘Or the sailor died of his injuries so there was no reason to tell…’
‘No!’ I glare at him. ‘Maybe he had amnesia and didn’t remember the accident or where he’d come from…’
‘Because that’s realistic.’ He rolls his extraordinarily blue eyes with a bemused half-smile on his face, but he’s clearly having none of my optimistic possibilities.
I go over and ask the librarian. ‘Would there be reports about ships that were lost at sea? If a wreck was never discovered, it wouldn’t be logged as a shipwreck, would it?’
She gives me a curious look because we haven’t explained anything about why we’re after all this info on shipwrecks, but I don’t elaborate, because this seems like something we need more info about before we openly tell strangers what we’ve found.
‘There are Missing Vessels books that cover a substantial period between 1874 and 1954, they’ve recently been made available online.’ She leans over her computer at the front desk and then writes down a website address for me, and I go back over, victoriously waving around the bit of paper.
Ren reads what she’s written down. ‘This won’t help us. We have no idea what the ship was called, where it came from, where it was going to, or where it went missing. At this point, reading these won’t help. It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack that’s bursting with needles.’
Oh. Damn him and his sensible attitude. Why did he have to have a point? I’m doggedly determined not to give up though. He shifts aside and I pull my chair across to the computer and find a Missing Vessels book that covers most of 1899. There are a load of entries. Ships that were reported missing during that year. I print some pages off, in case it might help later, but Ren is right. There’s entry after entry of ships that never made it back to port, but our missing ship could be any one of them, or it could not be on here at all.
‘Let’s read more of the diary!’ Ava suggests. ‘Maybe that will give us more clues?’
The library is thankfully quiet, and there’s a table behind us and we all scoot our chairs over to it. I heft the book out of my bag and Ava turns excitedly to the bookmarked page.
19 January 1899
He’s sitting up on the beach. The blanket I covered him with is around his shoulders now, but it’s wet with the rain. He hasn’t tried to move yet.
He keeps shouting out a name – a man’s name. John. I wonder if it is the name of the other man aboard the ship. Does he think that he survived too? Does he think that the other man is responsible for his rescue?
I stay hidden, but I am unable to stop watching him. I should swim back beneath the waves, but it’s like I am held here by an unseen force. Try as I might, I cannot leave him.
He’s looking for me. At least, he’s looking for the person he must realise has helped him, because he assumes I am a person.
‘Hello?’ he shouts to the sea. ‘Is there someone out there?’
Shouting takes his strength from him, and when he recovers, he shouts again. ‘Where am I? Where are you? I know there’s someone out there!’
At first, I go to reply. I do that, sometimes. I forget that my voice is missing. For just a moment, I feel normal, like someone will speak to me and I’ll be able to speak in return. A normal conversation. Something that so many people take for granted without ever knowing how fortunate they are.
‘Maybe they’ve gone for help.’ He says it to himself, not realising that I am hiding in the waves, listening. ‘That’s good. I need help.’
Something thrums in my chest. Help. He does need help. He keeps holding his head, like the wounds are paining him, and every time he looks down at his leg, his face turns a pale colour and he looks unbearably ill.
Water. Food. He will die without them. There are supplies here, but only enough for myself, and they must last until summer. I will have to share them with him, or he will die and my efforts in saving him will be for nothing.
I cannot let him see me. I will wait until he is asleep again, and then take him water.
‘John,’ Ren says. ‘That’s one of the most common names from that era. If only we had a surname, we could cross-reference it with databases of people lost at sea, but it would be hopeless without.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in this.’
‘I don’t. But you two do, and I always enjoy an opportunity to prove myself right.’ He sounds jokey rather than serious, but the best way to prove him wrong is to read more of the diary.
20 January 1899
He knows I am here.
It was night and he was asleep so I took him some water, I was going to put the cup on the sand beside him, but I couldn’t stop looking at him. I stayed too long. I touched his hair, brushed it away from the wounds on his forehead. My hair was wet and the seawater dripped onto his face and woke him.
He reached out and grabbed me. I tried to scream. I dived back to the safety of the ocean, but it was too late. He has seen me.
He sat up instantly. Now, he peers into the darkness in front of him, but I have swum away. I am hiding on the sandbank again, around the shoreline from where he saw me.
‘Come back!’ he cries out. ‘Who are you? Where are you?’
He tries to stand, presumably to chase me, to catch me, but he is unable to because of his injuries. He slumps back onto the sand with a howl of pain. ‘Please come back!’
I feel his pain inside of me. I wish I could make it better, but I cannot. People think mermaids have magical powers, but they are mistaken. I am more powerless than any human. I cannot speak for myself, and therefore, I have no value to anyone. I am a creature of no worth and life is better for everyone when I am exiled here, and not on the mainland with them. He will only be disappointed if he sees who I really am.
I put my hand on my heart and glance at Ava. ‘This is heart-wrenching. How could anyone feel like that?’
‘And she was a mermaid.’ Ava looks like she’s feeling the same emotions as I am. ‘The most special creature of all. How could anyone not value her? How could anyone’s life be better without her?’
I assume Ren is going to say something disparaging, but he nods to the book, wordlessly telling me to read on, because he’s trying and failing not to get invested in this.
21 January 1899
He knows that I am hiding on the sandbank. Since daylight, he has been watching the water’s surface, studying it, searching for the creature he saw last night.
I should have gone, but I stayed. When his eyes moved my way, I went to slip under the water, but my reactions were too slow, like they were on the night of the shipwreck, and he saw me. He has not tried to walk, but he has dragged himself closer to me. He is on the edge of the sand now, the water is lapping at his broken leg.
He speaks to me, even though I am underwater and his words are dulled through the waves. He has a voice unlike any I’ve ever heard before.
An accent is what they call it. The men who brought me here, they had accents too. They told me they were Welsh accents as they laughed and joked and invented callous names for me, but his is unlike theirs.
‘Welsh!’ I bang my hand down on the table excitedly. ‘The men who took her there were Welsh! This helps! They’re somewhere in Wales.’
‘Yes, it should be easy to narrow down the 1,680 miles of Welsh coastline. Good work, we’ve almost found them. And being Welsh is just an assumption, Welsh people can exist outside of Wales, you know.’
I narrow my eyes at Ren’s sarcasm, but again, he isn’t wrong. But it’s our only clue so far, even if it is a bit on the vague side.
His accent is soft, lilting and melodious. I feel like falling asleep every time he speaks because his voice is so soothing. Sometimes I drift off and imagine that I can speak too, that we can engage in a conversation, that I could be normal for just a moment.
He tells me he is from across the sea. Ireland. He tries to point towards the borders of his land, but it is too foggy to see so far. I have never been to Ireland. I have never been anywhere but here.
He asks if I was the one who rescued him. He asks if I know the fate of his friend aboard the ship. He doesn’t realise that I cannot answer his questions, even though I know the answers.
He starts to cry. I have never seen a man cry before and my arms ache with the desire to slip them around him, like I have so often wished someone would do for me when I am upset. Like my mother used to do when I was little.
Afterwards, he is shaking, and his voice is unsteady when he speaks. He apologises to the water, even though I have not surfaced. Maybe he can sense that I am still here, still listening.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I am in agony. I am lost. I am alone. I don’t know if John is alive or dead. Please do not think me weak. If I am going to die here, please do not let me die alone.’
It tears apart something inside my heart. I can feel my resolve breaking. I want to reassure him that he will be well, that help will come, but I do not know that. Help may not come. He may not be well. The thought takes my breath away with the force of how desperately I want him to be well. I must do everything in my power to save him.
‘Awwww!’ Ava and I say the same thing at the same moment, and I continue onto the next entry without waiting to ask.
27 January 1899
‘I just want to talk to you. I mean you no harm. You must be the one who has helped me – so you know what a state I’m in, and you know that I’d be unable to harm a crab, should one happen along. Show yourself, please. I only want to know what you know. I want to thank you for what you have done for me.’
For days now, he has been talking to me. I have taken him food and water at night, and I am almost positive that he is just pretending to sleep, but he has not tried again to catch me. Maybe he is trying to show me he can be trusted, and I feel the tendrils of goodness in me reaching out towards him. He asks for nothing except my company.
I want to sit beside him on the sand, but when he sees me fully, when he sees me for the monster I am, he will know that there is only one creature responsible for his predicament, and for the death of his friend. He will blame me for luring him to his doom, like mermaids are rumoured to have done to sailors for so long.
I have always been scared. I have lived a small life, afraid of what I am and what people will think of me, but now, I can feel the pull to be bold stirring inside of me. To show myself fully, as I am. To give him the company he asks for.
To be brave…
Ava has got hearts in her eyes and the look of someone with a major crush on a new book boyfriend. ‘This is amaaaaazing. It’s soooo romantic!’
We’re about to read another entry when we’re interrupted by the librarian coming over to politely let us know that they close at lunchtime on Saturdays, and my desperation to find out what happens next is cut short as we have to leave.
‘Of course, we might know more if Mickey knew where this came from…’ Ren says as I slip the bookmark into the old book and close it gently.
‘I know where it came from.’ I slide it back into my bag and pad the blanket around it. ‘It was a house clearance, I’m almost positive.’
‘Yes, but which house? Where was this house? If we knew that, we might have a hope in hell of tracing someone who knows something about it. What other items came with it? Was there anything else of oceanic origin? Any papers? Any photos? Any thing that might give any clue as to the legitimacy of this?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit, annoyed with him for being right again, and with myself for not keeping on top of things like this. Because he is right. The one thing that would help more than anything would be knowing where this came from and if there were any other related items that might be connected to it in the same lot, and I should know that, but I don’t. Because when new stock arrives, I push aside sensible things like paperwork and organisation and get lost in imagining the stories behind it, and now it seems like we’ve found a truth that might just be stranger than fiction, and I’ve failed in the one thing I could have done to help uncover the reality behind it. I’ve always known I should be more business-minded and stay on top of things like paperwork and record-keeping, and I always feared it would come back to bite me in the backside, and now it has, big time.