It was obvious we’d interrupted something. Ma Blackwell was uncharacteristically nervous, her eyes darting over us and back into the house again. Equally uncharacteristically, Lena was suddenly unsure what to say.
‘Telegram for the captain,’ I announced. ‘Mrs Lee asked us to deliver it.’
Ma Blackwell wiped her hands on her pinny. As she reached for the telegram, Lena took a step back.
‘Weren’t you just leaving, Mrs Blackwell?’ she said, finding her voice again and smiling sweetly. ‘Because we wouldn’t want to hold you up.’
‘I am, thank you, pert miss,’ Ma Blackwell snapped, trying once more to take the message.
Lena passed it to me, and I held it behind my back. Fate had handed us a brilliant opportunity, and I wasn’t 134about to surrender it. All we had to do was persuade the captain to let me go on the pilot boat and write it in his reply.
‘We’re to deliver it in person. Captain Farley has to reply straight away,’ I explained, being a little generous with the truth.
Ma Blackwell folded her arms, brow darkening. She was beginning to look more like her usual self, which was actually quite a relief.
‘Why’s it fallen to you two? Where’s the delivery boy?’ she demanded.
I explained about the chickenpox and tried to keep calm, though my heart was thundering away.
‘So if you’ll let us in …’ I said, mounting the step.
‘Very well.’ Though Ma Blackwell didn’t move straight away. ‘He’s in the library, so in and out quickly, and no nosing at anything that doesn’t concern you.’
‘We won’t,’ I assured her.
She stepped aside and we rushed in before she could change her mind.
The downstairs passage was full of boxes and tea chests. Upstairs, in the main entrance hall, it hit me properly: the house, as I remembered it, was almost unrecognisable. Everything was packed away or shrouded in dust sheets. There were patches on the 135walls where the pictures had been, water stains around the leaking windows, cobwebs on the beautiful vaulted ceiling. The smell was different too, not of furniture polish and dogs, as it had on my visits here with Mam, but of old, musty damp.
‘Blimey, it’s like an ancient castle!’ Lena whispered.
‘Smells like one too.’ I wondered if anyone had cleaned since Mam died, because it certainly didn’t look like it.
At the library door, I hesitated.
‘I’m just going to ask him outright,’ I whispered. ‘I want to go on the pilot boat because—’
‘Nate’s specially requested you – his training buddy – to be there to support him,’ Lena finished for me.
‘I’m his lucky mascot.’
Lena gave me a nudge. ‘Hey, I’m the lucky mascot round here.’
It suddenly struck me: if I was the one doing the swim, I needed her on the pilot boat to support me.
‘Will you come too? Oh, say you will!’ I pressed.
‘Let’s see if he agrees to you going first,’ Lena replied. Yet I knew from the gleam in her eye that she’d jump at the chance.
Entering the library, my heart sped up all over again. It wasn’t just nerves: it was being in this room, its huge 136windows so dull with dirt that what daylight was coming in made it already seem underwater. Last time I’d been in here was just a week before Mam died. It was a cold January day, I remembered, and as Mam was dusting the books I’d been charged with filling the coal scuttle and building up the fires. Soon these bookshelves, these fireplaces, would be lost for ever at the bottom of a lake.
Captain Farley was in the far corner, taking books from their shelves and packing them into boxes. He too was surprised to see us, though quickly recovered when we gave him the telegram.
‘Only one slot left to swim in June, eh?’ he said, on reading it.
Now was the moment to ask about the pilot boat, except I couldn’t quite get the words out and dithered awkwardly.
The captain frowned at me. ‘Is there something else you wanted?’
‘Ummm … sir …’ I swallowed. ‘Is there a chance I could go on the—’
‘Pilot boat, as Nate’s support?’ Captain Farley interrupted. ‘Why, that makes perfect sense. I was going to suggest it, as it happens.’
‘What? Oh!’ I’d not expected this at all. It took a moment to sink in. ‘Gosh, I mean, thank you, sir!’ 137
‘Told you it was a good plan,’ Lena whispered. She was grinning her head off. All we needed now was for the Channel Swimming people to agree to the request, and the swap really would stand a chance of happening.
‘Yes, well.’ The captain looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Is that all? Only I’ve plenty to be getting on with here.’
Putting the telegram down, he scooped up a pile of books.
‘Telegram!’ Lena hissed, nudging me.
I stepped forward. ‘We’ll deliver your reply to the post office, sir, so it goes off today, if you like?’
He glanced helplessly at the books piled up in his arms.
I seized the moment.
‘We can write it for you too,’ I offered.
I caught Lena’s eye. This was our chance to add her name to the request: asking outright might’ve been pushing our luck.
‘Ah, yes, good thinking. It does seem as if they’d like our reply urgently. You’ll find a pen somewhere.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of his desk, before returning to his bookshelves.
I rushed to the desk, finding a pen underneath some official-looking papers. I didn’t mean to read them, but Ma Blackwell’s name was on the top sheet of paper. And so was mine. And a signature, the ink still glossy, 138as if not quite dry. It looked like a receipt for a payment – swimming club fees, probably. Which I supposed explained why Ma Blackwell had been here, getting a refund now I no longer swam at the lido every week.
‘Hurry up!’ Lena whispered.
I moved away from the desk.
‘Thank you, again, sir!’ I called over my shoulder.
We both practically ran for the door.
*
At a safe distance from the house, and on a grassy bank where the horses could graze, we stopped to compose our reply. Lena, who had clearer handwriting than me, said she’d write everything so long as I told her what to say. My face ached from smiling so hard.
‘I can’t believe it!’ I gushed.
‘Well, it’s truly happening,’ Lena replied, the captain’s pen poised, tip of her tongue pressed against her teeth in concentration. ‘Okay, what shall I put?’
I took a steadying breath.
‘Right, how about: “Nate … no … NC requests training partners Nellie Foster and Lena Gill on pilot boat. *stop*—”’
Lena smiled. ‘Yup. What else?’ 139
‘No parents on board, no Mrs Lamb. “NC requests Captain Farley as only adult. *stop*.” The fewer people who’ll recognise us when we swap, the better,’ I explained.
‘How should we end it?’
‘“Please confirm the above and inform us of exact swim date and time ASAP. *stop*.”’
Lena wrote everything down, telegram pressed against her leg, then read it through again.
‘Hmm …’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Are you sure you want the captain there?’
‘They’ll expect us to have a grown-up, won’t they? He’s the best of the bunch.’
‘True. You know, I bet he still thinks it should be you doing the swim.’
I shrugged: all that business of who was the best swimmer or who should’ve been picked mattered less now we’d taken matters into our own hands.
Lena checked the message before handing it to me. I checked it too, hardly believing what we were doing.
It was probably wrong to forge a telegram. Probably wrong to lie to Mrs Lamb and the Channel Swimming people. And even now, being included on the crew of the pilot boat was only the first step of our daring, difficult plan. Yet everything else about this 140felt utterly right. When I swam I became a different person. I was no longer an orphan without a true family or home. I wasn’t ordinary. I had a talent – a real, special talent of the kind most people could only dream of.
What was wrong was not using that talent to help Nate escape the school bullies. And if the swim was done in June, the money I might earn from it would set Lena and me up for good. No one would say they couldn’t afford us then.
I slipped the telegram in my pocket, picked up the reins and urged Perry on. Lena rode alongside me. Now, at last, we tucked into the sugar mice.
‘You’d better still be my friend when you’re world famous,’ Lena said, biting the nose off a pink mouse.
I laughed, eating the rump of my white one. ‘Course I will, don’t be daft.’
‘It’s true, though, everyone’ll know who you are: Nellie Foster, first kid swimmer of the Channel. It’ll be your picture on people’s walls, not Gertrude Ederle’s.’
To be honest, this part worried me almost as much as the plan itself. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to see my face all over the papers.
‘You’ll just have to plait my hair super-duper nicely, won’t you?’ I said to Lena. 141
‘Only if I can have another pink sugar mouse,’ she replied.
There was only one left in the bag, but I wasn’t about to argue.