broken.
Knee-deep in the water, I wade towards the left side of the cove. I’ll be able to see Conor better from there. I don’t want to attract his attention now. In fact I’m hoping that he won’t see me. From over here, I should be able to get a good view of the rock.
And now I can see them clearly. No, Conor’s not alone. There’s a second head outlined against the edge of the rock. A sleek, dark head. It turns, so I see the profile and the long wet hair. It’s a girl. Her hair is long, right down her back, like mine. And now I realise that what I thought was part of the rock is part of the girl’s body. She must be wearing a wetsuit. She and Conor are close together, talking like old friends who’ve got so much to say that they don’t notice anything or anyone else.
They haven’t seen me. Conor hasn’t even looked up. What are they talking about? They’re much too far away for me to hear their voices.
I’ve never seen her before, I’m sure of it. But I know everyone who lives round here. Who can she be?
Maybe she’s a tourist. Not many tourists come down to the cove, because it’s so hard to find. Maybe this girl asked Conor to help her find the way down, and then they got talking, and went swimming together… without me.
No, I don’t want them to see me. Conor will think I’ve been following him and spying on him. He didn’t want me here, or he’d have told me he was going down to the cove. We always swim together, not just because it’s dangerous to swim alone, but because we like being together.
I wade right out of the water. It pulls at my heels, but feebly now, as if it knows it’s not going to win. My wet shorts and T-shirt stick clammily to my skin. Maybe I should go back to the cottage and change? No, I don’t want to leave Conor, right out there. It isn’t safe.
I wander up and down the tide line, feeling cold even though the air is still warm. I pick up shells and tiny white pieces of driftwood, and let them drop again, and every few minutes I glance out to the rocks at the mouth of the cove. They are still there, Conor and the strange girl who doesn’t live round here, still sitting close together. And they haven’t noticed me at all. They only notice each other.
And then suddenly, the next time I look, the girl has vanished, and Conor is alone. He’s standing right on the edge of the rock, staring down into the deep water. But where has the girl gone? He looks down at the water and his body flexes, as if he’s about to dive in. A wave of panic sweeps over me, from nowhere. Before I know what I’m going to do, I’ve yelled out his name.
“Conor! CONOR!”
He looks up, stares around. I run along the water’s edge, waving and calling.
“Conor, it’s me! Conor!”
He turns and sees me. For a long moment we stare at each other across the water. We are too far away to see each other’s expressions. And then, slowly, he raises his hand and waves to me.
“Conor, come back! Tea’s ready!”
He waves again, and begins to pick his way carefully back across the wet, slippery rocks at the side of the cove. It would be quicker to dive in and swim across to me, but he doesn’t do that. He scrambles all the way back across the rocks that line the edge of the cove, and only jumps into the water when it is shallow. Knee-deep, he splashes towards me. He’s frowning – not in an angry way, but just as he frowns when he’s doing his toughest maths homework.
“What are you doing here, Saph?”
“Looking for you.”
“But it’s not time for tea yet, is it?”
I look down at my wrist, and then I realise something terrible. I must have walked into the water with my watch on. My beautiful watch that Dad got for me in Truro. Now I remember my arms trailing in the water. I forgot all about my watch! I can’t believe it. The hands point to five past seven, but the second hand isn’t moving. I shake my wrist hard. Nothing happens. My watch has stopped.
“Oh, Saph. You went into the water with it on,” says Conor, looking at my wet shorts and T-shirt.
“It’s broken.”
“Maybe it’ll be all right if we dry it out. I’ll take the back off and see,” says Conor. But we both know it won’t be all right.
“It’s broken, Conor.” Thick, painful tears crowd behind my eyes. Dad helped me to choose the watch, but he didn’t choose for me. The shop assistant had laid my three favourites out on the counter. A watch with a blue face and gold hands, a silver watch on a silver wristband, and this watch. My watch. Dad waited and didn’t say anything while I tried them all on again, for the third time. I held my wrist out to see how each one looked, and then I knew. This one was mine. I loved it. But it was the most expensive of the three. I took it off and put it down.
“I think I like the blue one best,” I said. I’d looked at the price labels, and I knew that was the cheapest one. But guess what Dad did then? He picked up the one I liked best and said, “Don’t look at the prices, Sapphy. You only have one birthday a year. It wasn’t the blue one you liked, it was this one.”
“How did you know, Dad?”
“You can’t fool me. I know you too well, Sapphy.”
He knew me too well, because we were alike. Me and Dad, Mum and Conor. It wasn’t that I loved Dad more than Mum, but—
“Don’t cry, Saph.” Conor puts his arm round my shoulders. “You didn’t mean to break it. But listen. You mustn’t come down here and swim on your own. You know we promised Mum we wouldn’t.”
Mustn’t come down here and swim—Indignation shocks my tears away. “What about you? Look at you, your hair’s all wet. You’ve been swimming with that girl, haven’t you?”
“What girl?”
I stare at him. “What girl? The girl who was sitting on the rock talking to you, of course. The girl with long hair like mine.”
Conor looks at me with the elder-brother look I hate. “How could you see her hair, if we were right over on the rocks?”
“I could. I could see her quite clearly.”
“The trouble with you, Saph, is that you see one thing and then you imagine something else.”
“I don’t. I don’t make up stuff. I used to when I was little, but I don’t now.”
“If you say so.”
“I don’t, Conor. Not much, anyway. You’re only saying that to stop me asking about her.”
“All right then. I went swimming after I cleaned out the shed. Maybe I should have told you I was going, but I didn’t. Just for once I wanted…”
I feel cold inside from fear of what he’s going to say. What did Conor want, that I couldn’t give him?
“…I don’t know,” goes on Conor, as if he’s talking to himself. “I wanted some space, I suppose…”
“Oh.”
“And
