Chapter 5
‘We should come back to your shop and go through every single thing to see if there’s anything else from the same house clearance,’ Ava says as the three of us walk along the road after being kicked out of the library. It’s a warm summer’s day and she’s suggested we walk through town to the park, get ice cream, and read more diary entries.
‘Or you’re just nosy and want to know what’s lurking in Mickey’s shop so you can persuade me to buy it all for you.’ Ren goes to ruffle her hair but she ducks out of his reach with a scolding, ‘Daaa-aad!’ like he’s the most embarrassing human on the planet.
I can’t help smiling. I didn’t intend to go anywhere else with them, but none of us knew the library would be closing before midday, and the lure of reading more of the mystery mermaid’s diary is impossible to refuse. Given the lack of customers lately, this seems more important than opening the shop today. If we can prove that evidence of a mermaid existing has been found in my shop, it would lead to a huge increase in customers. And honestly, this unplanned diversion is not the worst way I’ve ever spent a Saturday morning. I glance at Ren. Not the worst way at all.
Suddenly Ava gasps and lets out a wail under her breath, and her eyes shoot to a group of girls on the other side of the street, carrying paper bags with various shop names on them. ‘My friends from school! Oh my God, I can’t be seen dead with you! You’re a teacher outside of school!’
‘I’m also your father,’ Ren protests as Ava grabs both our arms and hauls us down a side street in a flurry of panic.
‘No one cares about that! Do you know how uncool it is to hang out with your history teacher in the summer holidays?’ She shoves her dad until he crashes into me and we both get bundled into the recessed doorway of the nearest shop. ‘Go away! Just go away! Not you, Mickey, you’re awesome! I’m so sorry!’ She glances back across the street to where the girls are gathered outside Claire’s Accessories and then looks back at us, and I can see the dread on her face. ‘Stay there! Don’t come out!’
With one last panicked look, she backs away from us slowly, takes a deep breath and smooths her hair down, and then turns to run over the street and greet her friends. There’s a lot of squealing and more air-kissing than you’d expect to see with fashionistas in Paris, never mind schoolgirls in Herefordshire.
I hadn’t noticed Ren’s height before, but at this proximity, I realise he’s around six foot tall and I have to crane my neck to look up at him. I go to take a step away, but the small doorway doesn’t allow for it.
He’s got his arms up against his chest in a protective stance, and we’ve been shoved so closely together that they’re also against my chest, and his aftershave is in my nose, but his eyes are still on the group of girls gathered across the street. ‘Why do I feel like a naughty dog who’s just been given a “sit and stay” command?’
‘Oh, come on, you must remember being that age,’ I say without taking my eyes off the gathering either. ‘The worst thing you can do is anything that makes you stand out, and the worst thing you can be is different in any way. All you want when you’re a young girl is to be exactly like every other young girl, so no one has any excuse to pick on you or single you out. A group of schoolfriends going Saturday-morning shopping on their own – she’s not going to easily live down being spotted out with her history teacher.’
‘Also her father.’ He holds up a finger as if trying to make a point, and I jerk my head backwards when it nearly pokes me up the nose. ‘She’s way too young to be shopping on her own. They’re way too young too, but their parents must be more laidback than I am.’
‘I was shopping on my own at thirteen. My dad would park the car, go his own way and I’d go mine, and we’d meet back at the car park at the agreed time. And that was before the days of mobile phones, so at least she can get hold of you if she needs to.’
‘Well, your dad was clearly more laidback than I am too. It seems like everyone is more laidback than I am.’ It doesn’t sound like he means it in a favourable way to himself.
‘So you teach Ava’s class?’ I ask because I’d been wondering about that.
‘I teach history to every year group from year seven to eleven, including hers.’
‘Is that as awkward as it sounds?’
He looks down and blinks like he can’t focus on me at such close proximity. ‘Excruciating. She blanks me in every lesson, and I know the other kids tease her about being “teacher’s pet” and say she’s going to get a 100 per cent pass grade on every exam and an A-plus on every assignment, but I have to be objective. She hates me for not giving her an easy ride, but it doesn’t help her in the long run to give her good marks on something she clearly hasn’t understood. I just hope she’ll see that one day.’
‘She will.’ Without thinking, I reach out and rub his arm because he sounds really unsure of himself, and I get the sense that Ava’s aversion to being seen with him has upset him more than he’s letting on.
I want to say something reassuring, but I don’t know this man or Ava, and I’m only imagining the feelings playing out behind his blue, blue eyes.
The one thing I’m not imagining is the look of horror on his face as he peers down at my hand on his arm with a look fiery enough to scald me and I yank my hand back with such force that I clonk my elbow on the doorframe behind me. What the heck was I thinking in touching someone so standoffish?
The girls across the street are about to go into the shop and clearly assume Ava’s going with them, and she throws a worried glance in our direction and then follows them inside.
Ren breathes a little sigh of relief and steps out of the doorway, and I think it’s quite sweet that he stayed hidden for so long just to avoid embarrassing her.
‘Do you want to go?’ He’s scuffing one sensible black loafer against the other and trying to avoid eye contact. ‘If you need to get back to your shop, I can stay here and wait. I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed a group of thirteen-year-olds in Claire’s Accessories before, but it’s like the Tardis in there. They could be missing for hours.’
I think about it. I’ve been in Claire’s Accessories while there are teen girls on the loose and there is a good chance they’ll get lost in the space-time continuum and we won’t see them again until late afternoon, but I’m also not ready for today to end yet. ‘No, it’s okay. It’s nice to be out of work for a change. All I do is man the shop and go to auctions or car boot sales. I can’t remember the last time I had a Saturday morning off.’
‘I know that feeling.’
‘You go to a lot of auctions and car boot sales?’
I meant it as a joke, but it goes straight over his head. ‘No, I mean with work. Marking books, planning lessons, preparing materials… It feels like all I ever do is work – and embarrass everyone who knows me.’
I follow his gaze to the doors of Claire’s Accessories again. ‘Don’t take it personally. Ava’s thirteen. If you’re not in a boyband, you’re not cool. Are you now, or have you ever been, in a boyband?’
‘I have not.’ He laughs and gives me an appreciative look, like he knows I was trying to cheer him up. Awkwardness hangs in the air, only broken when a customer goes to come out of the doorway we’re standing in and we both jump aside to let her pass, and then look up at the building itself.
It’s a café, and inside there’s floral bunting and fairy lights and quaint chairs and tables covered by dainty tablecloths, and glass display cases of delicious-looking cakes.
‘Do you want a tea or something?’ Ren sounds surprised, like he didn’t intend the words to pop out but they did anyway. ‘Or are you duty-bound to never buy a hot drink from anywhere other than the Wonderland-themed place?’
I can’t help smiling on Cleo’s behalf. She’ll love knowing she’s made an impression. ‘Morally bound, not duty bound, but my morals are weak when it comes to tea, and have you seen that chocolate cake in the display case? Morals don’t apply when it comes to chocolate cake.’
He looks at the cake I point out and then smiles a wide, unguarded smile that makes my stomach do a little flip. ‘I could be tempted by that. Shall we?’
I go to walk in, but he stops me by reaching out and touching a tendril of my red hair that’s escaped from my bun. ‘You look really nice today.’
‘Thanks, I think…’ I feel like a statue, frozen to the spot, wondering if the doorway of this café is some sort of parallel universe or if we’ve suddenly stepped onto a different plane of existence where he says things like that.
He drops his hand quickly. ‘Just in case you thought I didn’t know how to say nice things. I’ve been practising. Ava made me practise.’
It makes me giggle as he pulls the door open and holds it for me to go through first and I get a little flutter at that chivalry, even though I’m quite capable of opening doors for myself.
Inside, the café is cosy and smells of brewing coffee, and the sound of other diners chattering fills the air. Ren and I both go up to the counter and order a cup of tea and a slice of chocolate cake each, but when I go to get my purse out, he stops me. ‘Don’t even think about it. This is on me.’
I thank him and take my cup and plate and make my way to a table near the window so Ava will see us when she comes back, but I can’t help liking that gentlemanly vibe again. He seems older than he is, with values that come from a time before our own, but in a nice, respectful way.
I’ve already sat down when he comes over and takes the seat opposite me, and I find it nigh-on impossible to take my eyes off him. He’s beautiful in an introverted and bookishly intelligent sort of way, but it’s not just because he’s nice looking, there’s something more about him than that.
Thick dark hair that’s neatly parted, but would probably be unkempt and tousled if it wasn’t for the product holding it flat against his head, and I’d love to know what kind of clothes he wears when he’s not wearing the officewear-style blue button-up shirt, the sensible black trousers, and the jacket that he really doesn’t need on a sunny day like today.
Before I can overthink it, I blurt out something that’s been haunting me since Wednesday. ‘I’m sorry I called you defective the other day.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I am defective, and…’
I meet his eyes as his sentence grinds to a halt, and in that moment, I can see a much softer man underneath, someone with sad eyes who’s clearly built a wall around himself and is working frantically to keep adding bricks to it.
‘…and it’s always enjoyable to have that pointed out by complete strangers, especially ones who are like quirky, energetic children’s TV presenters.’
I don’t think it was meant as a compliment but it makes me smile. ‘Thanks.’
He smiles too, like it wasn’t meant as a compliment but he doesn’t mind me taking it as one, and then he takes a mouthful of his tea without checking the temperature first and lets out a yelp because it’s clearly still at tongue-burning temperature.
He sinks down in his seat when other customers look in our direction at the sound, his cheeks blazing adorably red with embarrassment as he tries to hide behind his hand.
I take a forkful of gooey, glazed chocolate cake and let out such a moan of pleasure that I’m probably moments away from re-enacting the famous scene from When Harry Met Sally , which gives the other diners another reason to look over at us, and Ren dips his head further behind his hand in embarrassment. I’m used to people looking at my red hair and bright clothes and if they’d all tried the chocolate cake, they’d know where that moan of pleasure came from. I nod towards his cake. ‘That’s not as good as it looks, it’s way better.’
He takes a forkful too and lets out a moan not unlike mine. ‘Oh, that is unfairly good. So good that I don’t even care if people are looking. I don’t know about you, but I’m not leaving here without having another slice of that.’
He blows on his tea before taking another sip and lets out a long, overdue-sounding sigh. ‘I have no idea when I last…’ He looks at me, blinks a few times, and seemingly decides to be honest. ‘…let myself enjoy something. A simple pleasure with no pressure to do something else or be somewhere or just…’ He sighs again and shakes his head, like he doesn’t know what else to add to that, and I fight the urge to slide my hand over his where it’s resting on the table and give his fingers a squeeze. Judging by the arm touch earlier, that would not be met with approval.
Another sip of tea makes his shoulders slump, like the pin-straight rod that seems to go through them has started to bend, and after another mouthful of cake, it feels like he’s loosened up just a tad.
‘Hey, speaking of seconds – can I ask you something? Do you think a crew of two is quite small for a ship?’
‘I guess so…’ he says slowly, like he’s wondering where this is going.
‘It’s just I’ve been thinking…’ I put down my fork and get out one of the pages from the Missing Vessels books that I printed in the library and run my finger down it. ‘Look at these logs. Crew of sixteen. Crew of thirty. Crew of thirty-two. Crew of fourteen. But there were only two men on our mystery sailor’s ship. What if we’ve got this wrong? What if she’s describing it wrongly or if all vessels would seem like a ship to a mermaid? What if it wasn’t a ship, but a small boat? It wouldn’t be logged as a shipwreck, and the vessels logged as missing are generally much larger…’
‘It’s feasible, I suppose, although “feasible” is the wrong word for anything to do with mermaids or this diary being anything other than complete fiction. And it doesn’t narrow down our chances of tracing the boat.’ Ren gives me the same look I gave him earlier – annoyance because he knows I have a point – and then sighs, shoves another forkful of chocolate cake into his mouth, and gets out his phone. ‘There’s something in this cake that’s making me take leave of my senses. Every time I look at you, I find myself believing that we’re actually looking for a real ship that really existed.’
Lately I’ve been feeling so small and insignificant, like I just keep plugging away in the shop but no one ever notices and it never makes any difference, and the thought that I could make someone believe in anything – especially someone as cynical as him – makes something flicker inside me.
‘Maybe we are.’ I watch as he types a question on how to find historical small boat sinkings into Google, his eyes flick over the results page, and then he hands the phone to me.
‘Consult regional newspaper archives from the area. Local authorities will have an archive of historical articles from their locality at the time of the sinking,’ I read aloud and then look up at him again. ‘So we just need to know where they are, and then we can go to the local council and ask for copies of newspaper reports from 1899 and that might give us some proof.’ I hand his phone back and take another forkful of cake, trying not to think about the way he’s watching me thoughtfully. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. Just… how can you be so positive? How can you really believe in this? With Ava, I get it, she’s a child, she wants to believe in the fairytales she loved when she was little, that Prince Eric was on that boat and Ariel has just saved him from drowning, but you…’
‘How can you think people ever grow out of that? The older I get, the more I wish fairytales were real and that magic and fairy dust solved real-life problems, and underdogs really would get happy endings. Something like this is a hint of possibility. It might be nothing, but it might be something really special too. It would be naive of us all to believe that what we know about the universe is all there is to know.’
He looks like he wants to protest, but another forkful of cake mellows him out enough to reluctantly mutter, ‘Can’t really argue with that point.’
‘Hurrah. So far we’ve agreed on two things today – chocolate cake and that. Progress, right?’