Alice loved it here, she loved it. But the major could have told her that just as fear is a part of courage, so loss is a part of love. If he were feeling philosophical, he would add that we fear loss more than anything, and that all these emotions were all different parts of every human heart, and proved that love itself demanded immense courage – indeed, that love was the bravest challenge of all. Alice only knew that she had set out from school thinking of the old life that lay ahead, but now she was gone all she could think about was the new life she had left behind. And despite the giddiness of finishing the walk and the wild joy of the swim, she felt suddenly and unaccountably afraid.
Once they were dry, with warm fleeces pulled over salt-tight skin, Fergus – feeling guilty of what was to come – insisted that he and Alice would put up the tent, leaving Jesse free to fish off the rocks at the end of the beach.
‘No,’ Jesse said. ‘No, no, no, no, no. I must do the tent.’
‘We are honestly not as useless as you think,’ Fergus said. ‘Go and fish! Enjoy yourself!’
Jesse, feeling reckless, went fishing.
The bendy poles which held up the tent did not bend in quite the way Fergus thought they should, and there was a bad moment when Alice realised she had forgotten to pack the pegs, but with a little prodding and coaxing and improvising with sticks, the tent went up – a little more flappy and not quite as straight as it should have been, but definitely up.
Fergus was delighted. ‘I said we could do it! Oh, and look – Jesse’s caught a fish!’
At the end of the beach, Jesse, quite wild with excitement, was performing a sort of victory dance in his boxer shorts and orange waterproof jacket, waving a large silver fish. Fergus waved energetically back.
‘Wave, Alice! Poor guy, even I feel sorry for him, having to deal with us all day. Alice! Why aren’t you waving?’
Alice, lost in thought, was gazing across the sea at the islands. She started as he prodded her in the ribs. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘Jesse! He caught a fish! Wave! You’re miles away!’
‘I was just … Fergus, are we mad?’
‘To be running off to find your dad?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘We’re more than mad, we’re insane! Plus, it’s really unfair on Jesse.’
‘Be serious!’
They were walking along the beach now, above the high-tide mark. Fergus reached down to pick up a piece of driftwood, and considered his answer.
‘Where do you suppose this came from?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know! America? Fergus!’
‘Or Greenland?’ he said. ‘Or Norway, or Sweden? Or Russia! I think, tonight, we should make the biggest bonfire any of us has ever seen, and burn it.’
‘Fergus, what are you going on about?’
‘I don’t know, to be honest. Nonsense, probably. I suppose I just mean, we’re here now so let’s enjoy it.’
And they did.
They cooked Jesse’s fish over a small fire and agreed that, even with all the sand they ate with it, it was the best meal they’d ever had. Three seals swam into the bay as they were eating, three sleek black heads bobbing in the quiet waves just offshore, with silvery whiskers and bright, curious eyes. They put on a show as the children watched, diving and bobbing back up, turning lazily in the water, then disappeared as suddenly as they came into waves turned indigo and gold by the endlessly setting summer sun. The children ran down to the water to look for them again. The seals did not return, but Jesse swore that he had seen a flipper, waving.
When they were sure the seals were gone, the children gathered armfuls of driftwood, and built the cooking fire into Fergus’s giant bonfire, which burned in a great blaze on the sand, the salt on the wood catching in a shower of blue sparks.
‘Do you know what the French call bonfires?’ Fergus asked.
‘What?’ asked Jesse.
‘Feu de joie,’ said Fergus. ‘It means fire of joy.’
‘Fire of joy,’ said Jesse. ‘I like that.’
Across the sea, the evening mist was rising, shrouding the bruised islands. The air grew cold, even by the fire. Stars came out. Jesse pointed at the brightest one.
‘The North Star,’ he said. ‘The one sailors use to find their way home.’
Home. Alice felt a pang as she thought of the major, his hand on her head like a blessing. This is your home, he had said. What would he say if he found out about their plan? Suddenly, it felt impossible that he would not. She made herself think of Barney instead. She tried to picture herself running towards him across a beach like this one, throwing herself into his arms so that he could swing her high into the air like he always used to do when she was little. He was probably by some quay right now, getting into a boat, sailing surrounded by seals across a star-strewn sea towards the purple islands to wait for her. But for once, her imagination failed her.
The problem was, she wasn’t little any more.
In that moment, she wanted more than anything to abandon her plans. But then she reminded herself of something else the major had said.
You must look your fears in the face.
She was terrified – not of the trip itself, but of what she might find at the other end. And she didn’t know if she was being brave or reckless, but she knew she had to see this through.
*
‘That swim! And those stars! The bonfire! The fish – the seals!’ The ceiling of the flappy, pegless tent lurched dramatically over where Jesse lay on his back, staring straight at it, but he was too drunk with the day’s events to even notice. ‘Guys, this is awesome!’
‘Long day tomorrow, Jesse,’ said Fergus, with a sidelong glance at Alice. ‘Try to get some sleep.’
‘I can’t,’ Jesse confessed. ‘It feels like my head’s exploding. I mean, I knew orienteering was going to be great, but this is amazing.’
‘It’s not the orienteering that’s amazing, it’s the beach.’ Fergus yawned. ‘Orienteering’s just a load of maps.’
‘Just a load of maps?’ Jesse flipped on to his side and stared at Fergus, astounded. ‘Just a load of maps? Maps are like …’ He searched carefully for the right words. ‘Maps are what make the world fit together. You can go anywhere you want if you have a map. Which means …’
He paused, astounded by a sudden realisation.
‘What?’ asked Fergus.
‘Which means that maybe,’ Jesse said carefully, ‘if you can go anywhere you want, you can be anything you want as well.’
Alice, who had been listening in silence, asked, ‘What do you want to be?’
‘Not a violinist,’ said Jesse, firmly.
‘Well, no,’ Fergus agreed.
Alice frowned, then raised her eyebrows, like she was asking, ‘What about you, then?’
‘Oh, I’ll be a genius,’ Fergus said. ‘I just need to decide what sort.’
‘I’ll be a writer.’ Even as she said it, Alice knew that just saying a writer wasn’t enough. It was beginning to dawn on her that there were as many different sorts of writers as there were different sorts of stories. Sooner or later, she was going to have to choose which stories she wanted to tell, and how.
‘Jesse?’ asked Fergus. ‘You haven’t said.’
‘I don’t know! Something outside.’
‘You should be an explorer,’ Alice said. ‘You’ve got a real talent for it.’
Fergus laughed. ‘Spoken like a true Locker.’
An explorer! The more Jesse thought about it, the more he liked it.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I will.’
Lost in thoughts of their brilliant futures, they fell asleep, lulled by the song of the sea while further north, on a shadowy quay, Barney Mistlethwaite looked around for a boat to steal.