16

That night, it rains. I hear it smattering on the window and howling through the cracks in the wooden frames. It helps my bedroom feel less empty without Nana. And it helps keep away the worst of my thoughts, replaying everything that happened at the hospital and how tight Mum’s lips were reflected in the rearview mirror on the way home.

‘I don’t understand – why doesn’t Nana want any treatment?’ Finn asked quietly in the car.

Uncle Darweshi cleared his throat. ‘It’s complicated. The medicine they give you when you have cancer can sometimes make you feel unwell for a long time. It would probably mean your nana would need to take some time off the boat, and – well – you know how she feels about time off…’

‘But it might make her better?’ Finn replied.

‘It would,’ Mum huffed. ‘The doctors think she stands a good chance of going into remission. If only she wasn’t such a stubborn old mule.’

‘It’s her decision,’ Uncle Darweshi muttered to my mum, taking a hand off the steering wheel to squeeze her shoulder.

‘It’s the wrong decision,’ she replied.

In bed the next morning, I close my eyes. Tourists don’t like rain. They stay inside and look out the window and complain like their skin isn’t waterproof. Nana always talks about the rain like it’s part of the sea – droplets that have been on an adventure to the clouds to tell the waves the secrets of the stars.

The gulls are still squawking loud as I take the coat down to the beach once it gets light enough, fluffing their feathers and enjoying how warm it still feels – not like the cold needles blowing off the open sea we get in the winter. But it does make the rocks extra slippery as I hop across them and I need to watch my feet rather than look out at the stretching sea.

When I get to the rocks closest to the edge of the white waves, I slip my arms into Nana’s coat. My fingers snag on all the holes in the lining and it feels heavy on my shoulders today. I close my eyes, tight – letting the roar of the sea and the gulls and the salt-slap rain sink into my thoughts.

It used to be so easy to slip into a story – just like putting on a coat. But now, it feels like the coat doesn’t really fit any more, and that thought chews at my chest.

‘Hello,’ Harper says suddenly from behind me, the hood of her orange coat up over her head and her arms hidden up her sleeves. ‘Any magic this morning?’

I shake my head, but I keep the coat on anyway, because at least it’s warm. I bend to stroke Pilot, who tries to climb up my legs and lick my face, and I take his lead from Harper so I can be closer to him.

We hear a noise next to us as a group of people drive up to the beach and start unloading heavy equipment. One of them looks a bit like the lady with the big hair we saw on TV the other day, but either way, it feels strange to share the beach this early.

‘Let’s go somewhere different,’ I say.

I can tell Harper wants to ask about what happened when I disappeared with Mum and my cousins yesterday, but she doesn’t. The bubble in my chest is always there at the moment, shrinking and expanding in time with my breaths and making everything seem heavy.

‘You’d probably feel a lot better if you let all that out, you know,’ Harper says, pointing at my hand rubbing my chest as we walk.

I drop it, looking at my shoes. ‘What are you on about?’

‘You – bottling up all your feelings all the time. If you let them out, you might feel a bit lighter.’

My eyes prickle and I keep them locked on Pilot, his tongue out and his nose sniffing at seaweed and rocks like nothing could ever be wrong in any world. But Harper keeps talking.

‘I was thinking about what we said yesterday, about organizing a big litter-picking drive for this weekend. We could make some signs for the fishmonger’s, and I bet if we asked some of the tourists—’

‘Can we walk in silence?’ I interrupt. ‘I want to listen to the birds.’

Harper nods, pinching her lips together.

The birds are squabbling as we tiptoe across the rocks to the place where they grow into boulders as tall as us next to the cliff, blocking the hidden path to the next cove that’s only uncovered at low tide, like a secret. It’s difficult to get to on my own, and the boys hardly ever make it here before the tide comes back in – even before they moved so far away. Harper and I help each other and Pilot over the rocks and onto the other side, where the pebbles are slick-black and the tiny beach is just old seabed sand and salt-licked rocks.

I go to start climbing down the other side, already feeling a hint of magic back under my fingers, when Harper grabs hold of Pilot and my arm, crouching low.

‘Look!’

I turn slowly, being careful not to slip. And there in the shallows is the shape of a familiar dark seal head – Liquorice – swimming quickly up to the beach.

I almost shout for joy, because seeing my maybe-Selkie on a day like today is almost like seeing Nana – back on the sea where she belongs. Harper pulls my arm excitedly, but as we watch Liquorice swimming to the shallows, something doesn’t feel right. She hauls out, flip-flopping across the beach in the clumsy way seals do. I squint at her because, strangely, she looks like she’s wearing a pearl necklace – like she really is a Selkie after all and we’re going to watch her unzip her skin and dance in the light of the new, grey day.

But Harper gasps. And then I realize that it isn’t a necklace around her body.

‘She’s got one of those flying-ring Frisbees caught around her neck,’ she whispers, her face pale.

She holds Pilot back, but he doesn’t try to do anything. None of us do. We just watch her flop further and further away from the sea, Harper holding on to me like I’m the buoy that will stop us both from floating far, far away.

Seeing Liquorice in trouble fills my bones with the same heaviness I feel when I think about Nana in a hospital bed. I wrap my arms around myself, feeling the long sleeves of Nana’s coat like she’s really here, giving me a hug. And I want to close my eyes and turn away and do anything I can to take me away from these huge, big things I can’t do anything about. Hurt seals, and too much litter, and Nana in hospital, when she should be out fishing.

…But if Nana was really here, she wouldn’t be turning away, would she? She’d be doing something to help – she’d keep going to the end, like a real Grey.

‘We need to call Uncle Darweshi,’ I whisper to Harper, who takes out her phone and gives it to me to dial in his number. I know it by heart because I’m always calling him for lifts.

I pass it back to her as it begins to ring and I squeeze my hands into fists inside the coat. ‘I need to try to stop Liquorice from going into the water. You heard what Uncle Darweshi said at the old fish market – they can’t help a seal once it’s in the sea…’

Harper squeezes my arm and I give her a grim nod, tiptoeing down towards the beach as Harper stays behind with Pilot, whispering into the phone urgently.

I tread slowly across the beach, so I’m between Liquorice and the sea. Liquorice is focused on making her way towards the cliffs at the back of the beach, pausing to scratch at the Frisbee around her neck in the same way Pilot scratches at his collar. She doesn’t see me standing in the shallows – the waves licking my ankles and burying me deeper and deeper in the sand. Standing here feels a little like when I play stuck-in-the-mud with the boys, all of us seeing who can last the longest before we fall over.

But I’m not playing now. This is real life.

Liquorice is far out of the water now, resting beside some rocks so her dark fur would be perfect camouflage if it wasn’t for the white plastic circling her neck. I dart a look at Harper, who’s off the phone now. She gives me a determined thumbs-up, before flashing her hands to count thirty – which must mean that Uncle Darweshi is on his way.

Thirty minutes feels like years and years, especially as the tide has turned now and is slowly starting to come back in, making the beach smaller and smaller. I focus on counting the waves coming in and out, each one a wish I hope will sweep out to sea.

I wish for Liquorice to be okay.

I wish for Nana to be okay.

I wish for everything to go back to normal again.

But then a pack of jet skis speeds past the cove, the riders shouting to each other as they make giant waves. My heart skips and I whip around to look at Liquorice, whose head has spun around to see me, standing between her and the waves.

‘It’s okay,’ I whisper.

But either she doesn’t hear, or she doesn’t understand me. She startles, looking left and right and flip-flopping faster than she was before, back towards the sea.

‘No, no, please, Liquorice,’ I say, my arms out and waving. ‘You need to wait. Just five more minutes, please.’

Liquorice stops, looking at me. But her usually dark eyes are filled with white fear, her nostrils flaring. She looks up to the cliff behind her, searching for escape, but thankfully she can’t climb up there – not with flippers.

Instead, she makes a dash for the sea again, cutting across the beach towards Harper. I unstick myself from the sand to run between her and the sea.

‘Please don’t!’ I cry, desperately. But then the jet-skiers zoom off and things get quiet, so once again, it feels like only Liquorice and I exist in the world together.

She looks at me, quiet and still now. I put my arms down, not wanting to scare her.

‘I know,’ I say, my voice cracking. ‘I know it hurts. But running away isn’t going to help anything.’

Liquorice blows a disgruntled sniff of air, and I understand, because I feel it too.

But then, silently, Uncle Darweshi, Charlotte and a team of other volunteers climb over the rocks, their fingers on their lips.

I point wordlessly to Liquorice, and Charlotte adjusts her purple headscarf, nodding solemnly.

Liquorice keeps looking at me as Uncle Darweshi and his team unfold a special net, muttering a strategy. My palms feel sweaty in the coat sleeves and I close my fists tight, blinking the rain out of my eyes so I can keep looking at Liquorice.

I summon all the salt in my blood to try to tell Liquorice that it’s going to be okay. That we’re not here to steal her skin – like the man in Nana’s story. We’re here to make her better. And I hope she sees Nana’s coat and the Selkie stories woven into it and remembers that we’re family.

Then the volunteers pounce. Suddenly, and from nowhere, so even I’m surprised. Liquorice squeals out, and the sound makes me want to run into the sea, because I know that’s how she’s feeling too. She wants to escape back under the waves, but she can’t. Not with that ring around her neck.

I hear footsteps behind me as Charlotte reappears. ‘We’re taking your seal back to the sanctuary as we don’t have the tools on us to cut that ring off safely. But she’ll be okay, Martha – it looks like she got entangled recently, so just a couple of cuts. But they’ll heal.’ She puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘You did a great job, you know.’

I sniff, but I don’t nod, because I don’t really believe it.

Charlotte goes to rejoin the group of volunteers, but just before she does, I call over to her. ‘Liquorice,’ I say. ‘Her name is Liquorice.’

Charlotte nods to me, taking out her phone to take a picture of Liquorice for the database as the volunteers load her into a carry cage.

I trudge back towards Harper, who holds my hand tight as I tell her that Liquorice is going to be okay and that I finally got to give her a name. But I can’t join in her celebration, because I feel cold and shaky. Like I’m caught in a cage too.

When we climb back over the rocks to the beach on the other side, I look around at the wide sea for a rock to cling on to. Instead, I see the group of people we saw unloading heavy equipment earlier standing with a big TV camera pointed at the lady with big hair.

‘It’s the show that was on TV the other day,’ Harper whispers. ‘The one talking about what a beautiful day it was.’

Suddenly, a feeling rises up in me like a stampede of horses. And I finally feel something I can hold in both hands.

Anger.

Anger at Nana’s illness. Anger at her for not wanting to do everything she can to stay here with me. Anger at humans for polluting our home, and anger at myself for burying myself in stories all this time – hiding away from the big, scary things, instead of trying everything I can to help change it.

I understand what Noah was feeling on the beach yesterday now, when all the adults were arguing.

I clench my hands into fists and march towards the TV crew, turning into a run when Harper calls me back. The lady with the big hair is talking about how beautiful everything is in the rain, and—

‘It isn’t beautiful!’ I shout, so loud that it stuns the gulls into silence. ‘Nothing is!’

The lady flinches, but tries to carry on, the man standing behind the camera hissing about them being live and making the cameraman turn away.

But I’m sick of turning away. Living in stories doesn’t help change anything, does it? And it’s not just me – everyone does it. If the fishers just asked tourists and out-of-towners to join in and help protect our seas, rather than just complaining about them, maybe together we could actually make a difference.

Nana’s coat seems to hum with life again. I march up to the lady and snatch the microphone out of her hands.

‘Hey!’ she says, before remembering herself and smiling at the camera like this is all a joke.

It isn’t a joke. I’ve never been more serious in my whole life. It feels like the sea in my blood has turned wild, thrashing and spitting froth.

‘Everyone thinks they can come here and leave their rubbish behind and that it will all just magically disappear. Well, it won’t! Our fishing community has been trying to look after our home for years and years, but we can’t do it alone. And now a beautiful Selk—’ I stop myself. ‘Seal – is caught in a Frisbee, and—’

The man behind the camera stops trying to gesture wildly for me to shut up. Instead, he pans the camera towards the rocks, probably expecting to see an injured seal, but instead only finding Harper, who gives a shy wave as Pilot barks twice.

I follow the camera, diving around the lady. ‘Seals and other wildlife are just as important as we are, but instead of being left to be wild things, they’re swallowing our plastic and getting caught up in the rubbish we leave behind.’

The lady rolls her eyes and snatches back her microphone. ‘Well, as you can see, the local children are very spirited in Middlesea.’

The man behind the camera tries to pull me away as he starts to pan around again.

‘Join us this weekend!’ I say as he drags me off. ‘Join us on Saturday for a litter-picking drive and help us make things right. Or—’

The cameraman gasps suddenly, dropping me, as up over the rocks comes Uncle Darweshi and his team of volunteers, holding Liquorice’s cage.

The camera stops panning away. In its lens, it captures Uncle Darweshi looking confused for a moment. And it shows a close-up of Liquorice, her eyes wide and scared.

They see now. They see, and there’s no other story left to hide behind.

‘Um,’ the lady with the big hair tries, looking between the seal and the camera. ‘So there you have it…’ She frowns thoughtfully before clearing her throat. ‘And it might actually not be a lovely day today for this seal, but – well – maybe it will be this weekend, if you can join this young person on her mission to bring about change in this special coastal town.’