IN A PALM TREE, on an island, in the middle of the wide blue sea, was a girl.
Nim’s hair was wild, her eyes were bright, and around her neck she wore three cords. One was for a spyglass, one for a whirly, whistling shell and the other a fat red pocketknife in a sheath.
With the spyglass at her eye, Nim watched the little red seaplane depart. It sailed out through the reef to the deeper dark ocean, bumping across the waves till it was tossed into the bright blue sky. Then it rose so high and so far it was nothing but a speck, and floated out of sight.
‘Alex is gone,’ Nim told Fred.
Fred stared at the coconuts clustered on the trunk.
Fred was an iguana, spiky as a dragon, with a cheerful snub nose. He was sitting on Nim’s shoulder, but he cared more about coconuts than he did about saying goodbye. (Marine iguanas don’t eat coconut, but no one had ever told Fred.)
As Nim threw three ripe coconuts thump into the sand, she remembered Alex saying, ‘I never knew anything could taste better than coffee!’ the first time Nim opened a coconut for her.
Nim looked down at her father, sitting like a stone on Selkie’s Rock. Jack’s head was bowed and his shoulders slumped. Nim had never seen him look so alone.
And she knew she’d made a terrible, terrible mistake, worse than anything she’d ever done before.
THE FIRST MISTAKE was when she answered Alex’s very first email, back when she’d thought that the famous Alex Rover was a man and a Hero like the hero in his books. That had been a good mistake because when Alex ended up on the island, Jack and Nim wanted her never to leave. Sometimes it felt good to be three instead of two.
But other times Nim wanted Jack just for herself, the way it used to be, and sometimes she wanted Alex just for herself, because Alex was her friend before she was Jack’s. Sometimes, when Alex and Jack told Nim to go to sleep while they talked late in the night, Nim felt left out and more lonely than she’d ever been when they were two.
And then, this morning, the little red seaplane had arrived with all the things that Alex had asked her editor in the city to send. It was the first time a plane had ever landed on Nim’s island. Nim could see Jack was worried that the pilot would notice how beautiful the island was and would want to come back again and again.
Whenever Jack was worried, Nim was too. And when Nim was worried, so were Selkie and Fred. (Selkie was a sea lion, and sometimes she forgot that Nim was a girl and not a little sea lion pup to be looked after and whuffled over.) They both stuck close to Nim every time she walked back and forth from the plane to the hut.
‘I’ve never seen animals do that before!’ exclaimed the pilot.
Nim didn’t know what to say, partly because she didn’t know exactly what he hadn’t seen before, and partly because she’d never spoken to anyone except Jack and Alex. She grabbed a crate and opened it up. Inside there were books. Thin books and fat, short books and tall, history books and science, mysteries and fairy tales. Nim didn’t know what to read first.
‘Come on,’ said Alex. ‘There’ll be time to read when everything’s off the plane.’
The pilot pulled out two big solar panels. ‘Great!’ Jack exclaimed, because he wanted them for the new room he planned to add – one especially for Alex to write her books. Jack balanced the panels on his head and walked very slowly and carefully up to the hut.
‘Who’s going to take this one?’ the pilot asked, pointing to a crate. Nim stepped forward. But just as she was about to reach for the crate, the pilot handed it to Alex. First Alex stumbled, then she tripped, then crash! the crate fell to the sand with a tinkle of broken glass.
‘Oh, no!’ Alex wailed. ‘What have I done?’
‘Jack’s test tubes!’ Nim shouted. ‘You should have let me take it!’
‘But I didn’t need help! You just got in the way!’
‘I’m always in the way,’ Alex snapped. ‘Maybe you and Jack would be better off without me.’
‘Maybe we would!’ Nim shouted, and stomped off without waiting for an answer.
She’s right! Alex thought. Nim and Jack lived here perfectly happily all those years without anyone else – they don’t really need me. Nim’s been cross with me a lot lately and I’ve never seen Jack so worried. I think … I think I’m changing their lives too much. What if they’ve secretly been wanting their old lives back – and are too nice to say so?
Alex understood about being afraid to say so. Before she came to the island, she was so afraid of saying anything to anyone that she’d hardly ever left her apartment. She was famous, but only through her books. Her life had changed completely since she flew across the world to find Nim.
‘Last one!’ The pilot handed her a large envelope. ‘And, now, time for me to go.’
Alex opened it and pulled out a letter. ‘Wait! Can I … can I go with you?’
‘Sure!’ he said. ‘But don’t you need to pack anything?’
Alex knew that if she saw Jack or Nim she would never be able to leave, even if it was the right thing to do. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m ready to go.’
She climbed into the little red seaplane. And was gone.
NIM SCRAMBLED DOWN from the coconut palm and buried her face in Selkie’s warm neck, because the sea lion loved her no matter how bad Nim was – and the feeling in Nim’s stomach told her this was the very worst thing she’d ever done.
Jack loved her too, but Nim didn’t know if he still would when he realised it was Nim who had chased Alex away.
‘Meet me at the Emergency Cave,’ she told Selkie, because suddenly the sun and sea were much too bright. Only the deepest, darkest cave could match the way she felt inside.
Selkie gave a disapproving sort of hrumph, and lolloped down to the sea. Nim and Fred headed inland, towards the bottom of Fire Mountain, past the Hissing Stones and across the Black Rocks.
Scrambling up the boulders was good because it was such hard work Nim couldn’t think about anything else. But when she got to the cave, she remembered: Alex telling her stories when they were trying to sleep on the hard cave floor, Alex watching the sun rise on the very first morning, Alex crying when Nim skinned her knee.
Nim crawled into the deepest corner of the cave to be as alone as she could possibly be. She hiccupped and coughed and cried and blew her nose, and dropped her hanky.
When she was feeling around in the dark for her soggy hanky, she found a map.
It was the map Alex had drawn when she told one of her stories: a map of an island that was a city with an even bigger city on the land behind. It was as different from Nim’s island as anywhere could be.
That’s where Alex’s books were published, in a tall, shining building whose top floors were up above the clouds. That’s where Alex’s editor was – the one who’d sent the supply plane that Alex had just left on.
Nim stuffed the map into her deepest pocket and started crying all over again. She cried so hard that Selkie pulled herself all the way up from the sea to the cave to comfort her. But when Nim wouldn’t stop crying, no matter how much Selkie whuffled and snuffled, Selkie went outside to do tricks to make her laugh. She balanced a rock on her nose, threw it up in the air and off the cliff. She sat up high on her tail and flapped her flippers as if she were trying to fly. She did a handstand on her front flippers. She went through all her tricks over and over and barked at Nim in between to make her stop crying.
Finally Selkie produced her best trick ever – a handstand right on the edge of the rocks, then a flip into a perfect dive all the way down to the water.
It was a long way down, and it was a very good trick – but Nim didn’t come out to see.
And so Nim also didn’t see the giant cruise ship that had come around the point and anchored not far from the cliffs.
She didn’t see the inflatable motorboat with people snorkelling around it, or the second motorboat chugging quietly out from the other side of the ship. She didn’t see the man watching Selkie do her tricks through his binoculars, lift his rifle and shoot Selkie with a tranquilliser dart.
She didn’t see him instruct his crew to heave Selkie into his boat and speed away with her to their ship.
BUT FRED DID.
Fred had been watching Selkie and hoping she’d do his favourite flipping-a-coconut-high-off-the-cliffs-smash!onto-the-rocks trick. When she did the handstand-dive he ran to the edge of the cliff to see if she’d smashed a coconut on her way down.
What he saw made Fred forget all about coconuts.
First he scrambled down, then he scrambled back up. Then he rushed into the cave and headbutted Nim’s leg. When she still didn’t pay attention he climbed onto her shoulder and sneezed his cool salt-water spray in her face.
‘Yuck, Fred!’ said Nim, but when Fred scurried to the edge of the cliff, Nim followed.
The boat was heading back to the ship. Through her spyglass Nim could see Selkie at the bottom of the boat.
‘They’ve killed her!’ Nim screamed.
But then Selkie lifted her head, and Nim saw the men tying ropes and nets around her.
She had to save her friend fast.
Fred scrambled to her shoulder and clung on tight. Nim stood on the edge of the cliff. The water was a long way down.
What if I hit the rocks? Nim thought.
She jumped, as high and far as she could, and twisted into a dive.
She hit the water.
Nim’s lungs were bursting and her ears were hurting. Then she saw the light above her head, and kicked and spluttered her way up to the air.
The boat was already a long way out, and the waves were strong on this side of the island, but Nim had no choice. She took another deep breath and began to swim.
