9

Next morning, Nana rolls her eyes when she sees how Harper has dressed to go on a fishing boat.

She’s wearing a red leather jacket and sunglasses, even though the sun is still just a distant thought in a hazy sky, turning the sea a peachy-pink on the horizon. Pilot is wearing a blue neckerchief today and he comes over to lick my hands and jump up my legs to tell me it’s okay that I’m just wearing my normal old joggers and T-shirt with holes in.

‘Is it okay if he comes?’ Harper asks Nana.

‘As long as he doesn’t build me a poop deck,’ Nana says, handing Harper a lidded bucket, which looks like it weighs a ton from the way Harper’s eyebrows shoot up.

Harper struggles forward with it and Nana leans into me, winding rope around her arms. ‘You reckon she’s got the sea legs for this?’

I laugh and shake my head, because I remember Nana testing Sukhi like this when she married Mum. She tested her until she threw up and swore never to step foot on a boat again. But she pulled her weight, despite going green, and now she’s family. And even though Harper doesn’t have salt blood like we do, I sort of want her to feel like that too.

I catch up to Harper and take Pilot’s lead from her. ‘Need some help with that?’

‘No, no, I’m okay,’ she says, her face already flushed red.

I laugh and help her carry the bucket anyway.

Even though Nana isn’t carrying anything, we easily keep up with her on the way to the marina, Harper chattering away like the gulls. I try to focus on the stories Harper is telling us about all her travels, rather than the slightly hunched way that Nana is walking.

Nana swipes her key card on the door of the marina gate, holding it open for us to pile in. Together, we walk across the wooden boards of the jetties between the boats all tied up. I remember when they all used to be fishing boats of all different sorts, from tiny potters to big scallopers. Now though, we walk past RIBs and sailboats and even floating hotels, some of them with people wearing smart shirts on the deck, drinking mugs of tea.

‘How were the pots yesterday?’ I ask Nana, panting as Pilot pulls on the lead, desperate to say hello to the people on the boats.

‘A few lobsters, one or two notched, and one berried. Landed two of a good size though and more spider crabs.’

‘What do “notched” and “berried” mean?’ Harper asks, looking around so much, I’m worried she’ll unscrew her head from her neck.

‘A “berried” lobster means it’s pregnant,’ I say. ‘Fishers notch bits out of some lobster’s tails to show they are to be kept for breeding. We have to throw those ones back into the sea, else there wouldn’t be any lobster left for me to catch when the boat is mine one day.’

Nana winks at me, finally taking the bucket from us and hauling it into the boat.

I rub my hands down my trousers, trying to make the dent the handle made in my skin go away. Harper is looking at our boat with her mouth wide open, and I hop aboard it with Nana like my feet are made of springs.

I try imagining what Nana’s boat would look like if I’d never seen it before. I notice the red wheelhouse at the bow and the open deck, filled with every-colour buoys, ropes and nets. I see the secret ladder at the stern Nana built especially for me when I go out swimming, and a special bench next to the wheelhouse door for me to sit on.

‘Have your family fished from this boat, going back all those generations?’ Harper asks, touching her hand to the peeling letters of the name on the side.

Storm Seal.

Nana grunts. ‘They didn’t have boats like these back then. No motors or fancy-fangled technology telling you where every rock and fish is. Back then, it was all proper fishing, just one woman and the sea.’

‘Nana bought this boat when she was my mum’s age. One day, it’ll be mine…’

I trail off. I’ve wanted this boat to be mine forever, but I never thought about that meaning that it wouldn’t be Nana’s any more. Suddenly, it feels wrong to want it.

Nana opens the door of the wheelhouse. ‘There won’t be any boat if you don’t sort that bait.’

I lift my chin up, helping Harper get Pilot on board, who immediately goes sniffing around, enjoying all the smells. I make sure Harper’s nose is close to both the bucket and the bait box on the back of the boat before I take off the lids.

‘Ta-da!’ I say, revealing a slop of fish heads and bones in both, holding my breath against the tide of fishy stench that comes roaring out of them.

Harper gags, falling backwards so her hands slip and slide over the dew-damp deck, starting Pilot barking. Her pale skin goes sea-green and I catch Nana’s smile as we stand back, waiting for the inevitable hurl.

Harper coughs, standing shakily, but her breakfast somehow stays down.

I laugh, helping her take off her jacket that’s now covered in water.

‘The stinkier the bait, the more the lobsters love it,’ Nana says, chuckling.

‘Come help,’ I say, picking up the head of a mackerel and waving it in Harper’s face.

I expect her to run all the way back home, but to my surprise, she laughs, plunging her colourful nails into the bucket and grabbing some bones, throwing them with me into the bait bucket on the back. Nana raises her eyebrows, clearly wondering at what rare treasure I’ve found in an out-of-towner who’s not afraid to get her hands dirty. And I feel sort of proud for bringing her with us.

I pick up the bucket and slosh it all in, closing up the stink, before washing my hands in the bucket of seawater Nana has hauled up.

‘Later, the bait will go on here,’ I tell Harper, showing her the skivvers of willow sticking out between the bricks on the spiral bottom of the broken withy pot close to the wheelhouse that needs fixing. ‘The lobsters smell it in the water and then they climb in through the top to eat it.’ I stick my hand through the hole in the top of the pot to show her. ‘My Aunt Ava makes the pots – they’re the same type the Grey family have used for generations, aren’t they, Nana?’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Harper whispers, running her finger along the plaits and twirls the willow makes.

Nana flings us both some life vests to wear. ‘It’s functional. And better than this plastic nonsense they use now. Gives the lobsters a fair chance, and you young ones a hope of catching your own someday. As my old nana used to say – it’s all about balance. Now sit down, the both of you – we’ve got to get going if we want to catch the tide.’

I pull Pilot with us to the wooden bench fixed on the side of the wheelhouse, so we’re overlooking the back of the boat as Nana reverses out of the marina, leaving a trail of white froth in the water and sending the other boats bobbing into the jetties they’re tied to. I laugh as a man drinking tea in his hotel boat sloshes it over his white shirt.

The engine is loud in my ears and in my hands, and Pilot’s tail wags so hard, I think he’s going to fall over. Harper hugs him close, her smile as wide as mine as Nana steers us around the breakwater and past the lighthouse. To our left, the town curves around the water like a horseshoe, houses painted all colours dotted up the cliffs ringing a harbour filled with boats. To our right though is the open sea, the water a blue-grey today and boiling steadily in the new-day sun.

‘It really is beautiful, isn’t it?’ Harper shouts above the noise.

The cliffs are rugged and raw like broken teeth. The sea gets wilder as we pass through the breakwater and into open waters, throwing us left and right like a bucking horse. We feel cold spray and warm summer sun as it finally breaks the horizon. It feels impossibly wide and wild, and I imagine that I’m a brave explorer – off on a mission to tame the waves and sail the seven seas.

Out here, even the grandest of stories feel possible.

I laugh above the sound of the motor, spinning around to Nana, whose land-frown has been replaced with a huge smile, just like mine.

We watch Nana work, trying to keep out of her way, but also making ourselves useful by putting black bands around the claws of the crabs and lobsters she hauls up. Harper cheers every time we see creatures waiting inside the pots, and Pilot jumps and barks, making even Nana laugh.

‘It’s like treasure-hunting, isn’t it?’ Harper says to Nana.

‘That it is,’ she replies, her eyes twinkling. ‘Legend has it, smugglers used to hide their stolen coins and jewels down in the rocks around these parts. Many people have tried to find them since, but I think they’ve been looking for the wrong kind of thing.’ She hauls up a berried lobster and turns it, so Harper can see the thousands of tiny eggs hiding under it – each one a future catch for me and the other wildlife we share our home with. ‘Now that’s better than any ruby, isn’t it?’

Harper laughs, loud. ‘I want to be a treasure-hunter one day.’ She looks at me, nudging my side. ‘A fisher.’

Nana catches my eye and we both grin. ‘And you’d be welcome, young lady. We fishers need all the young blood we can get.’

‘What’s that over there, in the distance?’ Harper asks, pointing towards the jagged arrowhead out to sea.

‘That’s Seal Rock,’ I say, dropping my voice. ‘Nana thinks it’s where Selkies might be hiding, don’t you, Nana? The ones that still have their sealskins.’

Nana hauls up the final pot, stopping to rest it on the side of the boat, wheezing. ‘It’s certainly where a lot of the local seals are – those rocks are too treacherous for boats.’ She catches me looking at her and smiles, dropping her voice to a whisper too. ‘But young Martha is right – if there ever was a place to find a Selkie, that would be it.’

She smiles at me. But it’s a strange smile that twists in my stomach and reminds me of my dream the other night – when she disappeared into the dark depths without me.

I turn away, pretending to be moving buckets. Nana stares at Seal Rock for a moment longer, before coughing and rebaiting the pot.

When we’re all done, Nana pulls the boat around into the place we call Grey Cove – a small gap in the cliffs where the water is shallow and calm. Only the fishers know it’s here. She shuts off the engine as I leap up from my seat.

‘Is there something wrong?’ Harper asks me as Nana takes Pilot’s lead and sits down in my empty seat to start fixing the broken pot with the willow she keeps on board.

I don’t reply. Instead, I slide off my life vest and take off my hat, so my dark hair whips up in a mop. Harper watches me confused as I take off my clothes to reveal a swimming costume that I’ve been wearing underneath, just for this moment. She looks down at the sea lapping the side of the boat, deep and blue.

‘Is it safe?’ she asks.

I know it is. I know because I’ve jumped from our boat hundreds of times over my whole life in this very spot.

‘The sea is never safe,’ I say.

And then I bend my knees and jump.