“Jenna’s not courting anyone,” I say firmly, but I know they’ll take no notice of me. The shelter is pretty much the rumour factory for the whole Island.
“I seen her with that Bran Helyer,” says Charlie. “She could do a lot better’n a Helyer, lovely-looking girl like your sister.”
“Jenna hasn’t got a boyfriend. We’re only thirteen.”
“Near enough fourteen. I remember the day you were born.”
As does everybody on the Island. Why not tell the full story of our birth and how Mum was meant to be having us in Truro because we were twins, but there was a storm and although Johnnie Tremough put his boat out, finest boat in the Island, he couldn’t get past the harbour wall. And even the helicopter from Culdrose couldn’t land. I’ve heard the whole dramatic tale of our birth a dozen times. In fact Mum is the only person who doesn’t make a big deal out of it. She just says, “Oh, I knew it would be all right. Anyway, I wanted you to be born on the Island.”
“Proper Island girls,” says Billy ruminatively, as if he’s been following my thoughts.
“At Lammas tide shall she be fourteen,” says Charlie suddenly.
“What?”
“Don’t they teach you nothing at that school? Romeo and Juliet, that is. At Lammas tide shall she be fourteen. I always remember it cos of the name, Lammas, same as mine. You think on that, Morveren. Juliet was your Jenna’s age when she found her Romeo.”
And when she died, I think. Why are you telling me this stuff? I’m scared enough anyway. I feel as if I’m trapped, like a fly in a spider web, listening to stories I don’t want to hear. The tide’s nearly low enough for me to cross the causeway. I can’t waste another minute.
Billy takes his pipe out of his mouth, and points it at me. He’s not smiling any more. His face is stern. “You find your sister, Morveren, and you bring her back home. Those Helyers are no good and never have been.”
Those Helyers are no good and never have been. Those Helyers are no good and never have been. Billy’s voice echoes in my head as I hurry away round the harbour wall to the slipway. Below me the cobbled causeway that leads to the mainland glistens with water, but it’s shallow enough for me to cross now. I start to run.
Marazance is quiet out of season. Even at half-term there’s only a handful of visitors, wandering up and down. I see a few people I know from school, but I don’t stop. Where would Jenna have gone? I’ve never been to Bran Helyer’s house and I don’t even know where it is. I go up and down the High Street, searching shops and cafés, and then I think maybe she’s gone to the market. It’s an early market and they are packing up the stalls already, but there’s no sign of Jenna.
This is stupid. I could wander up and down the streets for hours and keep missing her. I’ll wait for her back down by the causeway. She’ll have to come home that way. Even Jago Faraday’s not crazy enough to hang around in Marazance until Jenna’s ready to go back across to the Island. I could get some chips. At the thought my mouth starts to water, and I dig into my pocket for my purse. I’ve got enough. I cross to the chip shop but just as I’m about to go in, I stop. Something’s pulling me away. Something inside me won’t let me stop searching for Jenna. She needs me, and I have to find her.
Jenna won’t let me into her thoughts any more but she can’t push me right away. I can sense that she’s scared, or unhappy, or maybe both. Suddenly I know what I’ve got to do. It’s not only Jenna who has been raising a wall between us: I have done it too. I’ve started treating my own sister almost as an enemy. How could I have done that? All our lives Jenna has been closer to me than I’ve been to myself. I’ve often liked her more than I’ve liked myself. I’ve trusted her with everything. But I didn’t trust her over Malin and that has changed everything.
It was so much easier when we were little. We played with everybody on the Island, but Jenna and I always had our own world where no one else came, not even Mum or Dad. Digory was too young even to try to enter it. Things between us have been changing for a long time, but I only realised how much when I found Malin hidden in the dunes. Now I realise that Jenna changed long before I did.
I can’t let the wall keep growing, higher and higher, until we can’t see each other over the top of it. I don’t even know who is building the wall any longer. Is it me, or Jenna, or Bran, or Malin? Maybe none of us, or maybe all of us. Maybe we all wanted it. But it has grown too high.
“Jenna,” I say, not aloud, but in my mind. “Jenna, it’s me, Morveren. I’m here. I want to help you.”
A sheet of newspaper flaps down the street and a passing man glances at me curiously. I walk on slowly, head down, reaching out for Jenna with every fibre of my being.
“Mor?”
It’s Nancy from our class, with her mum.
“Oh – hi, Nancy.”
“Is Jenna OK?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve just seen her in the churchyard.”
“She didn’t look very well, Morveren,” says Nancy’s mum in a parent way. “Why don’t you call her?”
“We haven’t got mobiles. There’s no reception on the Island so it’s not worth it,” I gabble automatically. I am so sick of having to make this explanation, which makes us sound as if we live in the Stone Age. “Where in the churchyard?”
“She was – um – she was sitting on a grave by the yew tree,” says Nancy, looking embarrassed.
Sitting on a grave? “She’s probably tired. We were up really early,” I say quickly.
“If she’s in any trouble—” begins Nancy’s mum.
“Oh no, she’s fine. I said I’d meet her there. See you, Nancy,” and I hurry off before they can ask any more questions. Jenna must have been looking awful, for Nancy’s mum to have that look of concern on her face. I glance back when I reach the steps up to the church and they are still watching me.
Jenna, I’m coming. Stay where you are.
There’s the yew tree. We used to pick up its pink and purple berries when we were little, until Mum told us they were poisonous. The shade is so dark that I don’t see Jenna at first, but there she is, hunched over with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head down. She looks like a widow sitting on her husband’s grave. Or like Juliet… I always find it hard to remember who dies first in Romeo and Juliet, because I get the real and fake deaths muddled up.
Of course she doesn’t look like a widow. And stop thinking about Romeo and Juliet, just because of what Charlie Lammas said. I silence the jabbering questions in my head and tread softly towards her, across the turf.
“Jen?”
She doesn’t look up. Maybe she hasn’t heard me.
“Jenna?”
Very slowly, Jenna lifts her head. She doesn’t seem at all surprised to see me.
“Morveren,” she says in a small, flat voice. Her face is pale and her eyes are red.
“What’s wrong, Jenna? Why are you here?”
“I needed to be somewhere quiet,” she answers.
“Move up and let me sit down.” She shifts a bit and I sit down on the cold stone. “It’s freezing, Jen.” Her hands are in her lap and they are purple with cold. I put my arm round her, very gently as if she might run away. It’s like putting your arm round a statue, she is so stiff.
“Let’s go home.”
“I don’t want to go home,” she mutters.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“You can’t do anything, Mor.” But she sounds a little bit less desperate.
“Even if I can’t, I still want to know. You’re my sister.”
The faint ghost of a smile touches her face for a second before it vanishes.
“Did you come over to see Bran?”
She nods.
“Have you seen him?”
“Sort of,” she says, looking down at her hands.
Surely Jenna can’t be this upset, just because of Bran.
“Jen, please tell me.”
Tears spill out of her eyes. “I went to his house,” she blurts
out. “I was scared there was something really wrong. He was so weird when I saw him this morning. You know, before the funeral. He wouldn’t talk to me. He was like a different person.”
“I didn’t know you’d seen him.”
“I went out while you were asleep. I thought he was waiting for me but he wasn’t. He didn’t want to talk to me. He said he was leaving the Island and coming back over here, to his dad’s.”
“So that’s why you were crying at the funeral.”
“I’d forgotten that—“ Jenna looks at me with such a lost expression that I wish I hadn’t said anything.
“You were scared something was wrong,” I prompt her.
“I thought maybe his dad— You know what I told you about his dad beating him up.”
“Yes.”
“Well.” Jenna heaves a deep breath. “I thought maybe it was getting worse. Bran was so strange. He wouldn’t talk to me and he always talks to me. I was scared his dad had got worse with him, and he was putting pressure on him – forcing him to come back home, somehow. I wanted to say—” she breaks off and looks at me as if she doesn’t quite trust my reaction.
“You wanted to say what?”
“Swear you won’t get angry, Mor.”
I sit back, shocked. First Digory and then Jenna. Why do they think I’m going to get angry all the time? A horrible feeling sweeps over me, as if I don’t belong, not even in my own family.
“Tell me, Jen,” I say as calmly as I can.
“I tried to talk to Mum a bit. Not about Malin or Bran or anything. Just asking what she’d do if she knew someone who was being hurt in their family.”
“What did Mum say?”
“Was I just asking or was there someone I was worried about? I said I was a bit worried about someone at school. Mum thought you should always tell, and so I asked her, what if the person doesn’t want you to? She said, that’s even more reason to make sure that somebody else knows and can give advice. She started talking about Childline or maybe a teacher at school or the school nurse. So I was going to say to Bran that even if he couldn’t tell anyone what his dad was doing to him, I could.”
“But you didn’t say anything else to Mum? You didn’t tell her it was Bran?”
“No. She wanted me to. I think she might have suspected who it was, because she said, ‘Be careful, Jenna.’ So I thought, I’ve got to do it now, but I’ll speak to Bran first so he’s got time to get away. If his dad knew Bran had said anything to anyone about what goes on in their family, he’d…” Jenna shivers. “I know where Bran lives, even though he never wants me to go there. The van wasn’t outside, so I thought his dad wasn’t there. But he was. I rang the bell but it didn’t work so I knocked, and then Bran looked out of the upstairs window and I heard someone come to the door. It wasn’t Bran though, it was his dad. Bran came down the stairs behind him but his dad wouldn’t let him pass. Then I heard this noise and the dogs came. The floor was bare and their claws were scrabbling on it. Bran’s dad grabbed their collars but they were trying to push past and get to me. It was horrible, Mor. I was so scared. I could see Bran’s face behind him and he was mouthing words at me but I couldn’t understand. His dad said, ‘What do you want?’ And I said I was a friend of Bran’s from school. He said, ‘Don’t give me that. I know who you are. I’m not having any of you Islanders here. You’re freaks, the lot of you, cold as fish except when you find another freak like yourselves. Get out of it before I turn the dogs loose.’”
I can’t believe anyone could talk like that to Jenna.
“Dad will kill him when he hears.”
“You’re not to tell Dad, Mor! You’re not to! Bran’s dad’s really scary. He doesn’t care about anyone.”
“Didn’t Bran try to stop his dad?”
“He couldn’t. You don’t know what it was like. I only went there because I wanted to help him, and now I’ve made things worse.”
“You haven’t made things worse. It’s him. It’s those Helyers. They cause all the trouble.”
“Bran doesn’t. You don’t know him, Mor.”
I sigh. “I wish I’d been there.”
“What could you have done?”
“I don’t know. Something. Got angry, since I’m so good at that,” I say, and Jenna gives me a faint, watery smile. I feel so sorry for her that it’s like a heavy stone inside me. I don’t want to see her sad pale face any more, so I gaze out over the graveyard. It’s on a steep hill and you can see the bay shining beyond it. There’s the sea, and there’s our island. It looks so beautiful, as if it’s floating half in the sea and half in the sky. Island freaks. Everyone knows Aidan Helyer’s hated the Island since Bran’s mother went. But why would he call us “freaks”? His own son is an Islander really, because he was born on the Island to an Island mother. “You’re freaks, the lot of you, cold as fish except when you find another freak like yourselves.”
There is a flash inside my mind, like the flash Malin saw when Bran took the photograph. I thought Bran’s dad was talking about his ex-wife, but maybe I was wrong. Cold as fish… another freak like yourselves… Bran’s dad would consider that the Mer are freaks. It’s exactly the word he would use. Maybe he has already seen the photo, and that’s why the word was in his mind. Maybe he was thinking of a person with the head and body of a human, and a seal’s tail. People who haven’t met the Mer think they are half-human and half-fish: cold as fish.
He knows. I’m sure he knows. That’s why he chased Jenna off his doorstep. He doesn’t want her anywhere near Bran, in case she guesses that Bran has already given away the secret of Malin’s existence and revealed his hiding-place. Maybe Bran also told his father that Jenna and I are the ones who are trying to protect Malin.
I make up my mind. We’re running out of time. I’ve got to trust Jenna now and that means not holding anything back from her. She’s the only one who can help me get Malin into the sea before Bran’s dad tries to capture him.
I take a deep breath.
“Jenna, I think Bran knows about Malin. He heard Digory playing to Malin down by the rocks, and he must have climbed up there later on. Malin told me he saw a flash of light. He didn’t know what it was, but I think it was Bran taking a photo of Malin, to prove he’s real. Maybe that’s why Bran was so strange with you. I’m not sure, but I think Bran has already shown the photograph to his dad.”
I’m expecting a storm of protest from Jenna. Bran wouldn’t do anything like that! Why are you always so suspicious of him? You’re only saying that because you hate him.
But the protest doesn’t come.
“Why would Bran take a photo?” she asks.
“To prove Malin exists. He would need proof that the Mer are real.”
“I still don’t see why, though,” says Jenna.
I can’t believe this is my sister, top of the class, best marks in every subject. How can she be so slow? “He’d need proof, to show to someone else. Like his father. Think how much money Aidan Helyer could make, with a real, live Mer person. You could charge a fortune.”
“Bran wouldn’t do that.”
“His dad would. You know it’s true, Jen.”
“He wouldn’t be allowed. Malin’s not an animal.”
“Maybe not here, but in other countries I bet you could. Bran’s dad could sell him. He’d make so much money, it’d be unbelievable.”
“But… But he’d be selling him like a slave!” says Jenna is disbelief.
“You know it could happen. There are loads of places in the world where there’s still slavery. Don’t you remember, we had that assembly about it?”
But I know deep inside myself that Malin would never let it happen. He would fight to the death, and even if by some horrible fluke he was captured alive, he wouldn’t live. He would make himself die. A man like Bran’s dad wouldn’t understand that. Capturing Malin is the same as murdering him.
Jenna picks lichen off the gravestone with nervous fingers. “It’s not Bran’s fault, Mor. You don’t kn
ow what you’d be like, if you had a dad like Bran’s.”
“It’s not Bran who’s in danger,” I tell her sharply, “it’s Malin.” I am so sick of all this “Let’s be sorry for Bran no matter what he does” stuff.
“They might both be in danger,” argues Jenna.
“Yes, but only one of them might be caught and put in a cage and exhibited as a – as a—”
“A freak,” says Jenna, and her voice turns cold with horror, as if she really does believe me at last. “So that’s what he meant.”
I watch her remembering Bran’s dad’s words, just as I’ve remembered them. “Yes,” I say, “that’s exactly what he meant.”
Malin is waiting. He thinks he’s safe, but if Bran’s dad knows about him, then King Ragworm Pool isn’t a refuge any more. It’s a trap.
“You’ve got to help me, Jenna. You can’t think about Bran, not now. We’ve got to save Malin.”
ran’s dad has “friends”. That’s how he threatens people when they won’t do what he wants. Everyone says it’s why Bran’s mum went away upcountry, because she didn’t feel safe on the Island any more. It’s too close to Marazance here.
The tide is coming in. The sea’s a broad shining sweep over the bay, and we won’t be able to cross by the causeway for hours. That would be no problem in summer, because tourist boats go to and fro all the time then, but in late autumn, out of season, we’ll be lucky to get a boat.
“Is Jago Faraday still over here?” I ask Jenna as we run down the hill from the graveyard.
“He went to check his crab pots. I said I’d be fine to get home by myself.”
“Maybe we’ll find someone else to take us,” I say, but I’m not hopeful.
We look round the harbour. There are a couple of men mending fishing gear, but they’re not interested in taking their boats out. If only it was school time, there’d be a boat going over soon. But because it’s half-term, the man who runs the school boat is having a week in Lanzarote with his family.
“Call Dad,” suggests Jenna.
We find a phone box, and dial the home number. A familiar surge of frustration rises in me. It’s completely crazy, the way we can’t have mobiles on the Island. Why don’t they get a phone mast or a booster or something? The phone rings and rings. I picture it sitting on the kitchen work-top, ringing to itself. Maybe Mum’s upstairs and she’ll be down in a minute. But the phone keeps on ringing.