when all the rules can be broken. He picks me up, still wrapped in the rug with my feet poking out. I look back over his shoulder. The fire has flattened down into a heap of red ash. People are still sitting around it drinking, but the dancing’s over.
The path that leads down to our cottage is rough and steep, but Dad won’t let me drop. My dad is strong. He takes his boat out in most weathers and he can swim more than three miles. He has a medal for life-saving.
Mum and Conor are walking ahead of us on the path down. They’re talking, but I can’t hear the words. I put my arms round Dad’s neck and hold on tight, partly because the path is rough and partly because I love him. His strength makes me feel so safe.
Dad begins to sing. He sings O Peggy Gordon and his voice rises up loud and sweet into the summer night.
I wish I was away in Ingo
Far across the briny sea,
Sailing over deepest waters…
I love it when Dad sings. He has a great voice and people used to say that he should be in the church choir, but Dad only laughs at that.
“I’d rather sing in the open air,” he says. It’s true that when he’s working in our garden people lean against our wall to listen to him. Dad likes singing in the pub as well.
Mum, Dad, me and Conor. All of us going home safe on a summer night.
I always think that our family is made up of two halves. There is Conor and Mum, who are calm and sensible and always do what they say they’re going to do. And there’s me and Dad. We flare up like the Midsummer Bonfire, lose our tempers and say things we should never say. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re going to do until we’ve done it. And I sometimes tell lies when I need to, which Conor never does. Conor tells you the truth straight out. You just have to get used to it.
But it doesn’t matter that we’re a family of two halves, as long as we stick together.
We come to the steepest part of the path, and Dad has to put me down. Westward over the sea there is still a bit of light, like the ghost of a sunset or maybe the ghost of the moon rising. The sea stretches out dark in the distance. I’m glad that Dad’s stopped here, because I love to watch the sea.
Dad has stopped singing too. He stands there still and silent, staring way out to sea. He looks as if he’s searching for something. A boat maybe. But there won’t be any boats out tonight. Not on Midsummer Night.
Even though Dad’s standing next to me, I feel as if he’s forgotten me. He’s far away.
“Dad,” I say at last. I feel uneasy. “Dad?” But Dad doesn’t answer. I’m tired and cold now and my legs are shivery. I just want to be at home, all four of us safe inside our cottage, with the door shut. I want to be in bed, falling into sleep.
“Dad, let’s catch up with Mum and Conor. They’re way ahead of us. Da – ad—”
But Dad holds up his hand. “Hush,” he says. “Listen.”
I listen. I hear an owl hunting. I hear the deep noise of the sea, like breathing. On a calm night you have to listen for it, but it’s there all the time. You would only hear silence if the world ended and the sea stopped moving. As soon as this thought comes into my mind the uneasy feeling gets stronger. I don’t like this. I’m afraid.
“Listen,” says Dad again. The way he says it makes my skin prickle all over with fear.
“What, Dad?” I say sharply. “What are you listening to?”
“Can’t you hear it?”
“What?”
But Dad still won’t answer. He stares out to sea a little longer and then he shakes himself as if he needs to wake up.
“Time to go, Sapphy.”
It’s too dark for me to see Dad’s face clearly, but his voice is normal again. He swings me back up into his arms. “Let’s be getting you home.”
By the time we reach our cottage, Mum has already sent Conor upstairs to bed.
“Go on up now, Sapphy,” says Dad. He stretches and yawns, but his eyes are brilliant and wide awake. I notice that he’s left the door ajar, as if he’s planning to go back outside. The front door to our cottage comes straight into our living room, and then you go through the back to the kitchen. Mum’s in the kitchen, clattering plates.
“I’m away down to the shore,” Dad calls to her. “I can’t settle to sleep yet.”
Mum emerges from the kitchen, blinking with tiredness.
“What? At this time of night?”
“It’s a wonderful night,” says Dad. “The longest day and the shortest night. Think of it, Jennie, we won’t get another night like this for a whole year.”
“You’ll break your neck on the rocks one of these nights,” says Mum.
But we all know he won’t. Dad knows his way too well.
This is how you get down to our cove. The track runs by our cottage. You follow it to the end, and then there’s a path where bracken and brambles and foxgloves grow up so high that you wouldn’t find the way unless you knew it. Push them aside, and there’s the path. When I was little I used to pretend it was magic. You go down the path, and suddenly you come out on to a grassy shelf above the cove. You might think you’re nearly there, but you’re not, not at all. You have to scramble over the lip of the cliff and then climb down over a jumble of huge black rocks.
The rocks are slippery with weed. Sometimes you have to stretch yourself down for the next foothold. Sometimes you have to jump. Sometimes you fall. Conor and I have both got scars on our legs from falling on the rocks.
Down and down, and then you can squeeze between the two boulders that guard the way to the cove. It’s damp and dank in the shadow of the boulders, and it smells of fish and weed. Conor and I find long-legged spider crabs there, and lengths of rope, and fish skeletons, and pieces of driftwood.
After you pass through the boulders there are more rocks to climb across. But you can see the beach now. You’re nearly there.
The beach. Our beach, made of flat, white sand. The best beach in the world.
You jump down on to it. You’re there! But the beach only exists at mid to low tide. At high tide it disappears completely, and the whole cove is full of the sea.
But when the beach is there, you can swim, climb on the rocks and dive, picnic and sunbathe, make a fire of driftwood and cook on it, explore the rock pools, watch the gulls screaming round their nests… Conor and I go there nearly every day in summer, when the tide’s right.
Sometimes we explore the caves at the back of our beach. They’re all dark and slimy, and they echo when you call. Hello… lo… lo… Can you hear me… hear me… hear me…
The air’s clammy, and there’s a sound of water dripping. You can’t tell where it’s coming from. You can wriggle your way down narrow passages, but
