22

Even though I knock on the blue front door looking for Harper, it’s still a bit weird when she answers it and not Uncle Darweshi. And even stranger when I see her ice-blue eyes are red-rimmed and she’s wearing a faded, baggy jumper and not the colourful stuff she usually has on.

‘Hi,’ I say, biting my lip.

She looks at me a moment and then sighs, opening the door so I can come in. ‘Hi, Martha.’

The kitchen still looks pretty much the same as it did when I was here last. There are long brass lamps hanging down over the kitchen table now, and there’s fresh lavender hanging from one of the sanded beams. But the flagstones are still full of the same lumps and bumps they always were and the walls are covered in even more paint splotches.

Harper drags a chair out from the table and tries to tip some nuts into a bowl, but they go scattering across the table. I sit down across from her, eating a few that fall my way.

‘Where’s Pilot?’ I ask, peering behind her.

‘Dad’s taken him out,’ she says, shoving some nuts in her mouth. She looks strange without her bright clothing. Like a bouncy castle that’s lost some air.

Air that I took with my words.

‘You do belong here,’ I say, quietly. ‘I didn’t want my cousins to leave this house, but I’m pleased you live here now.’

She looks at me, but doesn’t say anything.

‘I’m trying to say that I’m sorry I shouted,’ I whisper.

She nods. ‘I know. It’s okay.’

I swing my legs under the table. I thought if I just said sorry, she’d look like Harper again. ‘You still look sad,’ I say. ‘Is it about your dad wanting to leave again? I can talk to him, if you want.’

She chews on her cheek. ‘No, it’s not about that. It’s my mum’s birthday today – or, maybe it would be if she was alive.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s a bit of a confusing day.’

My heart drops and I put my hand across the table to hers, wondering if there’s anything I can say to make something like that better. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I ask instead.

She shakes her head, but smiles a little, and that looks better. ‘Thanks. No, I think I just want distracting today, you know.’

I nod, because I do know all about that.

I go to ask if she maybe wants to watch TV, when I start hearing my mum talking from somewhere far away.

Harper watches me. ‘The walls are thin – you can hear everything. Especially if you put a glass to it.’

I raise my eyebrow at her and she laughs properly this time, looking like my friend again. ‘Look, I’ll show you.’

She gets two glasses out of the cupboard and hands one to me, putting the rim of hers on the wall and her ear on the bottom. I laugh, because she looks silly, but she motions for me to try it. And when I do, it’s a bit like the roar of waves inside a seashell.

Suddenly, I can hear every word Mum is saying to Nana in our kitchen.

‘She’s ten years old, Mother. And she follows you like a lost seal pup – it’s not fair of you to ignore her. She’s hurt and confused, just like you.’

‘She’s just fine. And so am I. We Greys—’

Mum groans. ‘Those stories! You make it sound like our family have some special powers. But there’s no magical Selkie to help you out of this one. There’s no story powerful enough to cure cancer.’ I hear her voice break. ‘Chemotherapy, however – now that’s an option.’

‘No,’ Nana snaps. ‘If I’m leaving this land, I’m leaving as me. At sea. A Grey keeps going until… until…’

There’s another screech of a chair and hurried footsteps as Mum suddenly shouts. ‘Mother? Oh, Sukhi! Sukhi, come quick!’

I jump back from the wall. Harper’s eyes are wide, all that sadness wrapped up in panic. And we just stand frozen until we suddenly remember we can move again at the same time and we clatter towards the door, racing out of it and into my house, where Mum is bent over Nana as she coughs and coughs and coughs, and Sukhi is shouting over the noise into the phone.

‘Mum?’ I say from the door, my voice small.

Nana is coughing into a tissue like she can’t breathe, her body wracking like it did on the boat that time. She’s sunk to her knees – like it’s too much to even stand up, and I know the feeling.

‘Martha – go back to Harper’s, please, love.’

I look at Harper, who’s already pulling me away. But I don’t want to stand back and let it happen any more.

‘I can do something,’ I say. ‘I can help.’

Mum is talking to Nana, stroking her hair in the same way she did to mine in bed just a couple of hours ago. And as I watch, I see a flash of red in the tissue in Nana’s hand again.

I feel the panic in my chest get bigger and bigger, until Sukhi looks over, putting the phone on her shoulder.

‘Martha, listen to your mum. Go next door.’

Harper pulls me again, and this time, I let her. I walk in a daze back to the kitchen that isn’t mine and doesn’t have a nana collapsed in it, but I don’t want to sit down.

‘We have to help Nana,’ I say, my hands shaking strangely. ‘We have to – we have to do something. Fix it – like we did with Liquorice’s neck Frisbee, or the litter-picking drive.’

‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Harper says, her eyes shining with tears I can’t look at. ‘Your mum knows what to do better than we do. And your nana was okay last time, wasn’t she? Maybe it’ll be all right again this time.’

I’m torn between going back and staying here and I don’t know what to do. Nana won’t be okay. She’ll keep coughing and falling until, one day, she won’t get back up, and that’s an impossible, terrible thought.

Outside, things keeps going on like nothing is happening. I see a family making their way down to the beach despite the rain, and Matty chatting to Charlotte down the path.

But I can’t breathe. The ground starts shaking and it feels like the lava is back, rumbling under the flagstones and making the nuts that are still scattered across the table dance. It’s like the world is ending, but no one else seems to have noticed – not Harper, not the people outside the window – no one but me.

Last time, the only way I made the world stop breaking apart was to rescue Nana’s coat from the throwaway pile and hold its magic in my hands.

I stumble back to the door and throw it open, Harper calling after me. I run around the outside of our houses and fetch the dry bag from under the withy pots. The coat is still there from where I stuffed it earlier this morning.

Nana says that we Greys have enough magic inside us to do anything. And maybe that means a Grey like me can do anything – like save a Selkie seal, or even maybe my nana.

It has to mean that. It has to.

I lift my head just as Harper comes running up to me, her eyes scrunched in the rain.

‘Mum said there’s no magical Selkie to help Nana this time. But what if there is, Harper?’ I say, standing. ‘What if they really do exist, and they can lead her out of trouble again – just like that time she was caught in the storm?’

Harper bites her lip. ‘Martha, come back inside. I’ll make some tea, and maybe when Dad’s back—’

‘No!’ I say, stomping my feet into the ground because finally – finally – it feels like it’s stopped shaking. ‘You don’t understand – Nana and I have always seen magic. Even when everyone else thought her stories were made up and silly, I believed her. They can make impossible things happen, I know it.’

Harper looks around. ‘But, Martha – even if that were true, where are you even going to find a Selkie? The seal from your nana’s story hasn’t been seen for years and years…’

She looks at me. Rain is dripping off her nose and it makes me realize that it’s falling on me too – making my hat soggy and my fingers cold. It would be easy to go back inside with her. I could drink tea and lie on the kitchen floor until the world decides whether I get to keep Nana with me for always, or watch her sink away.

‘I can’t just do nothing any more,’ I say in a small voice, clutching Nana’s coat. ‘It’s just like you said, Harper – when the world feels impossible, focus on something you can change. And I can change this – I know it.’

Harper chews on her cheek. Behind her, flashing lights burst up the walls of the harbour, a siren whirring its way closer and closer. And as the lights flash, they turn the choppy sea behind it blue – where Seal Rock is jutting out into the distance.

And that’s when I remember. Nana said that if there ever was a place for a Selkie to dance unnoticed, it would be Seal Rock. If I want to find a Selkie to help Nana, then that would be the place.

Harper looks out with me, her eyes widening.

‘Harper,’ I say, as she shakes her head. ‘I think I have an idea.’