When Finn woke up the next morning in his little bedroom under the eaves in the old cottage, he lay for a while wondering why he felt so happy. A fluttering by the window caught his eye. A butterfly had got trapped and was trying to get out. Finn jumped out of bed and opened the window to let it out.
The early sun shining on the sea almost dazzled him, and with the light came the memory of everything that had happened the day before. He’d saved the dolphins from the balloons! And he’d got the others to help him too. He grinned, remembering the respect and friendliness in Charlie’s voice.
His heart sank a little as he remembered that he’d promised to go to the lantern room again today. Would the children still be friendly? He’d told them about his mum, but they hadn’t seemed to believe him. He couldn’t blame them. He could hardly believe it himself.
He turned back into his room and began to put on his clothes.
Meanwhile, over in the lighthouse and down in the cottages by the harbour, the other children were trying to persuade their parents to let them go to the lighthouse.
‘What do you mean, you “can’t” help me clean out the lobster pots?’ Mr Munro was barking at Charlie as he fetched his jacket off the hook behind the cottage’s front door. ‘There’s no can’t about it. You’re coming, and that’s that.’
‘It’s for school, Dad,’ said Charlie, trying not to let a tell-tale blush creep up his cheeks. He always went red when he told a lie. ‘Like I told you – it’s a project.’
‘What project, darlin’?’ said his mum.
‘It’s about rock pools,’ said Charlie carefully, trying to remember the story the children had cooked up between them the night before. ‘We’re going to get . . .’ He paused, fishing about in his memory for the right word.
‘Specimens?’ his mum said helpfully.
‘That’s it! Specimens!’ Charlie nodded gratefully.
‘No,’ said Mr Munro.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Munro. ‘Education’s important. Away you go, Charlie, but mind you’re back in good time for your dinner. Twelve o’clock. No later.’
His older sister watched him with narrowed eyes as he jumped up from the table.
‘You’re up to something, I know you are,’ she said.
‘Am not,’ said Charlie, and he dived out through the door as fast as he could to avoid further questioning.
‘Well, I don’t know, Kyla,’ Mrs Lamb was saying, as she tied a satin ribbon round her daughter’s ponytail. ‘Look what happened yesterday, when they left you on your own for all that time. I don’t think I trust those children. Are they being mean? Are you sure they’re not bullying Dougie?’
‘It’s not like that at all,’ said Kyla, pulling her head away from her mother’s hands. ‘We’re going to be doing a project. For school. Amir’ll be doing it too. And Jas. You like them. And I’ll keep an eye on Dougie, I promise.’
‘You don’t want to go too, Dougie, do you?’ Mrs Lamb had been spooning food into Buttons’s bowl. She stopped and looked up, the spoon in mid-air. ‘Not out there on the beach again on those nasty rocks? They’re terribly slippery. Your knee’s got a horrible graze from where you slipped on Thursday. Why don’t I come with you? Just let me fix my make-up, and I’ll—’
‘You don’t need to, Mum,’ said Dougie, who had expected this and had prepared a way out. ‘We’re not going to be down at the beach much. We’re going to be working at the lighthouse with Professor Jamieson. He’s going to show us his . . . his . . .’
‘Statistics?’ said Kyla, throwing an admiring look at her little brother.
‘Yes, statsitstics,’ said Dougie, pouncing on the word, although he had no idea what it meant.
Meanwhile, Amir, of course, had to concoct a different story for Mrs Faridah, who would know perfectly well that she hadn’t planned a school project on rock pools for her class.
‘Really? You’ve decided to study rock pools?’ she said suspiciously. ‘All of you? Including Charlie Munro?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ said Amir, trying to look grown-up and important. ‘Charlie was talking about the stuff his dad picks up in his lobster pots, and it started off the idea. It was Jas who suggested it.’
That bit’s true, anyway, he told himself, looking at his mother with big, round, innocent eyes.
‘Now that is very good,’ said Mrs Faridah, looking pleased but mildly astonished. ‘Jas is a very good student. You should get her father to help you. Professor Jamieson is a great expert, you know. He—’
‘Yes, I know, Mum. In fact, that’s where we’re meeting. At the lighthouse.’ Amir was poised at the door like an athlete on the starting line, his long legs itching to run up to the lighthouse. ‘Can I go now? The others will be waiting for me.’
‘All right,’ said Mrs Faridah, ‘but come back in time to clear up your bedroom, you hear? And don’t get your shoes wet. Salt water is very bad for shoes. Maybe I’ll come over to the professor’s later to see how you’re getting on.’
‘No need, Mum!’
Amir was already running fast down the road.
‘Dad,’ Jas was saying, as she and her father munched their way through their toast. ‘Can dolphins get hurt if they eat balloons?’
‘That’s a very good question,’ replied Professor Jamieson enthusiastically. ‘The rate of decomposition of the Mylar balloon is considerably longer than that of the latex. Both pose significant risks to marine life. The ingestion of balloons – and thousands are washed up on the beaches every year—’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Jas, ‘but I just want to know what happens if a dolphin eats a balloon.’
Her father’s eyes focused on her.
‘I’m sorry, my dear. For a moment I thought I was talking to my students. Well, the balloon can block the dolphin’s gut.’
‘Will it die?’
‘It may do.’
‘But not always?’ said Jas, thinking with horror of the dolphins who had already eaten the balloons before Finn had a chance to stop them.
‘Not always. But if they eat a lot of junk – balloons, plastic bags, drinks bottles, plastic rubbish of any kind – their stomachs fill up with it. It’s a very serious problem, Jas. The ocean’s being clogged up with all sorts of plastic rubbish. Somehow or other, when people throw things away, a lot of it seems to end up in the sea. And it’s not only dolphins who suffer, you know. Whales, porpoises, turtles, fulmars . . .’
‘And then? What happens to them if their stomachs are full of plastic?’
‘Well, my dear, I’m afraid to say that they starve. I’ve got a paper on it here somewhere. Let me see – under this pile . . . No, perhaps over there . . . Wasn’t that a knock at the door? . . . Oh, hello, Charlie. You’re early this morning. Amir, too! And there’s a girl with a little boy running up behind you.’
A few minutes later, all five children were in the lantern room, breathlessly waiting for Finn, whose dad had cooked him a big breakfast, with bacon and eggs and toast.
‘You know what, son?’ said Mr McFee, pouring himself a cup of strong brown tea. ‘It’s an amazing relief knowing that I don’t have to keep Sylvie’s secret from you any longer. I’ve been that afraid. I feel like a new man today. We’ll be all right now, won’t we?’
‘Yes, Dad, of course we will,’ said Finn.
‘Have the last piece of toast,’ said Mr McFee, dropping it on to Finn’s plate.
‘I can’t. I’m full,’ groaned Finn. ‘It was a great breakfast, Dad.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked his father anxiously.
‘To see my friends.’
‘What friends? You haven’t got any friends.’
‘I’m not going back to sea today, Dad. It’s OK,’ said Finn. ‘I’m meeting up with the others from my class at the lighthouse.’
‘Where the barmy professor lives? You be careful, son. A scientist gets hold of you, and there’ll be experiments and examinations and nosy parkers and journalists from all over. Let’s keep all this to ourselves, eh? Our secret.’
‘Sure we will, Dad,’ said Finn, thinking guiltily about how he’d already told the other children. ‘I’ll be back before the football starts on the telly. I promise.’
‘Here he is at last!’ said Charlie as Finn’s head popped up through the floor of the lantern room.
‘We’ve told Kyla and Dougie. We had to,’ said Jas. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘It’s OK, but don’t tell anyone else, please,’ said Finn, whose father’s warnings about scientists and nosy journalists had shaken him.
‘We couldn’t if we tried,’ said Amir. ‘Not if we don’t want everyone to think we’re crazy. I mean, all that selkie stuff. You had to be kidding us, weren’t you, Finn?’
Finn felt his stomach drop.
It’s hopeless, he thought. They don’t believe me. They’ll just think I’m weirder than ever.
Jas broke the silence.
‘Sit down, Fin Look, there’s a cushion for you. We want to know everything. I mean, how did you learn to swim like that? And all the leaping you did with that dolphin? You seemed to understand each other.’
‘I didn’t learn,’ said Finn awkwardly. ‘I found I could just do it. And I don’t understand it any more than you do. I felt a kind of . . . well . . . a change, as soon as I fell into the sea. When I got home, I made my dad talk to me. He’d never told me about my mother. She died when I was only two. I don’t remember her at all. But I knew, as soon as he told me she was a dolphin selkie, a dolphin woman, that it made total sense. I understood everything then: why I could swim; why I felt sort of different from the rest of you.’
‘I just can’t get my head round it,’ said Amir. ‘It’s not . . . It’s not scientific.’
‘No, it’s not. I know,’ said Finn unhappily, not knowing what to say next. He looked round at the children’s puzzled faces, and his eyes settled on Charlie, who was sitting a little apart from the others, leaning against the glass wall of the lantern room. The sun was right behind him, and Finn couldn’t easily read the expression on his face. He knew what it would show though. Scorn and rejection.
But to his amazement, Charlie nodded.
‘Not everything’s scientific,’ he said. ‘I know what you mean, Amir. I thought that yesterday. But we were round at my grandda’s last night. He was a fisherman all his life, so I asked him about selkies, and he knew all about them. He made sure my dad wasn’t listening, then he said, “Believe me, Charlie, there’s more in those old stories than you’d think. Lots of fishermen used to believe in selkies. Some still do, maybe. And who’s to say they’re not right, eh?” He’s great, my grandda is. If he says something’s true, I’ll believe it.’
Finn felt almost weak with gratitude. He’d expected Charlie to be the hardest one of all.
‘It sounds like a fairy story,’ said Kyla happily. ‘I love fairy stories. Especially when they have a happy ending.’
‘My mum knows loads of stories like the selkie one from Pakistan,’ said Amir. ‘Magic ones, with jinns and that. My granny believes in them too. But I don’t know. I mean, magic! It’s not . . . not . . .’
‘Scientific,’ repeated Finn, finishing the sentence for him. ‘I know. I’m having trouble believing in it too.’
‘What happened to your mum, Finn?’ said Jas gently.
She knows what it’s like, thought Finn gratefully. Her mum died too.
Aloud he said, ‘She was at sea. As a dolphin. She got caught in a fisherman’s net. She died.’
‘My dad told me about that,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s accidentally killed dolphins a couple of times.’ His eyes rounded with horror. ‘Hey, I hope he didn’t . . . I hope one of them wasn’t . . .’
‘It wasn’t your dad,’ said Finn. ‘I know it wasn’t.’
‘How do you know she got caught in a net?’ asked Kyla. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t know if it was her or just an ordinary one, would you? Your mum might still be out there in the sea.’
‘My dad told me it was her,’ said Finn shortly. ‘He knew. He found her.’
He didn’t say any more.
‘My dad thinks your dad did away with your mum,’ Dougie chipped in with relish.
‘Shut up, Dougie!’ the others chorused, turning shocked faces towards him.
Kyla, who was greedy for more sensational revelations, turned to Jas.
‘Was your mum really an African princess?’ she asked.
‘Sort of. She was Ethiopian. There was royalty out there once. My mum was a cousin or something,’ said Jas, looking solemn. ‘My dad says so, anyway. He always called her his princess.’
Charlie pursed his lips, weighing up the evidence.
‘That doesn’t mean anything. My dad calls my mum a clucky old hen.’
‘Got feathers on her bum then, has she?’ sniggered Dougie.
There was a short silence. Jas broke it.
‘Do you want to be in the Lighthouse Crew, Dougie?’
Dougie nodded anxiously.
‘Then get this. We don’t ever, ever, say anything bad about people’s mums. Ever.’
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Dougie.
Thank you, Jas, thought Finn.
‘What I want to know,’ said Amir, ‘is how you did that leaping.’
Finn squirmed uncomfortably.
‘I can’t explain it. When I’m in the sea, I’m different. I can see and hear things, and there’s this sort of . . . power.’
‘You are lucky,’ said Kyla. ‘I’m scared of the sea. I mean, when you think of all the things that could go wrong—’
‘As well as the leaping,’ Amir interrupted, ignoring Kyla, ‘you seemed to understand what the dolphins were doing. Thinking, almost. Can you speak dolphin language?’
‘I don’t think they have a language. Not really,’ said Finn. ‘Not like us. They whistle and make clicking sounds. There was one – the one I met first – I can recognize his whistle. It’s somehow different from the others.’
‘I saw a programme about that. About animal communication,’ said Amir enthusiastically. ‘Did you know that parrots—’
‘Do you mean the dolphin’s whistle is like a sort of signature tune?’ interrupted Jas.
‘Yes! That’s it exactly.’
Dougie had been sitting in red-faced silence. Now he blurted out, ‘I’m really sorry I didn’t invite you to my party, Finn. And I’m really sorry about the balloons, too. Mum didn’t know it was a bad thing to do.’
‘Nor did any of us,’ Jas said kindly. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Dougie.’
‘She got the idea off the local paper,’ said Dougie. ‘That new supermarket that’s opening on Monday in Rothiemuir . . .’
‘The one that’s trying to put the village shop out of business,’ said Kyla bitterly, ‘and our mum out of work.’
‘Yes, well, the grand opening’s on Monday. On the Bank Holiday. And they’re going to do a mass balloon release to advertise it. Five thousand red balloons! It’s going to look amazing.’
A jolt of pure horror shot through Finn.
‘Amazing? What do you mean, Dougie? It’s horrible! Awful!’ He was trembling with anger. ‘Think how many dolphins five thousand balloons could kill!’
‘And turtles,’ said Jas. ‘And whales, like my dad said.’
‘And sea birds,’ said Charlie. ‘Dad finds dead ones sometimes. Because of the plastic bags and stuff.’
The children sat and stared at each other.
‘We’ve got to stop them!’ said Jas. ‘But how?’