Jack’s got three dogs and we haven’t even got one. His mum said we could have Sadie, my favourite puppy, the one with the folding-down ear, but Mum wouldn’t let us. We kept telling Mum we’d look after Sadie and take her for walks and do everything, but Mum said what would happen when she was at work and we were at school?
Sadie is so beautiful. She’s over a year old now, but Jack’s family hasn’t sold her to anyone else. Her coat is pale biscuity gold and she has huge soft brown eyes that look at you as if she knows all about you. And she understands when you tell her things. I take Sadie out for walks whenever I can. It’s a little bit like having a dog of my own, when I’m out with her. She comes to heel immediately when I say, “Heel, Sadie!” People who go past in cars probably do think she’s my dog.
Sadie is so affectionate, but she’s not clingy. In fact she has a perfect character. She always gets so excited when she sees me. Dogs can tell if you really love them. If Jack’s mum and dad ever sold Sadie to someone else, I don’t think she’d be happy. I know she’d miss me as much as I’d miss her—
“Sapphire, listen,” says Mum. “There’s a pepperoni pizza in the freezer, and Mary’s lettuce, and those spring onions.”
I nod. I hate spring onions. Why does anyone bother to grow them?
“You’ll be all right, won’t you?” says Mum, frowning anxiously. She hates leaving me alone, and she’ll worry about it while she’s at work. She’s got to work, because we need the money. Dad didn’t have any life insurance.
I hate Mum worrying.
“Mum, we’ll be fine.”
Mum gives me a quick rushing-out-of-the-door kiss, and she’s gone. I listen to the car starting then Mum toots the horn and I remember I’ve got to open the gate at the end of the track for her. I run outside, untie the orange twine from the gate post and swing the gate wide. Mum accelerates through, waving at me with a bright smile that doesn’t fool me for a second.
Back into the cottage. It’s too warm inside, and so I leave the door open. I wonder where Conor is?
He’ll be up at Jack’s, on Jack’s computer, or playing with the dogs.
But Conor usually tells me where he’s going. He doesn’t just disappear.
No. Don’t think about that word. I’ll make our tea. We’ll have it early and then we can watch loads of TV. I get out the pizza and put it on a baking sheet. I wash Mary’s lettuce, shake it dry, and carefully cut the roots off the spring onions for Conor. We haven’t grown any vegetables ourselves this year. Dad did all the gardening, and usually he grew everything: onions and potatoes and beans and peas and carrots and all our salad stuff. I used to help him. But now our garden is tangled and overgrown and weedy, and I don’t know where to start clearing it. Dad would hate the way it looks.
But then I remember something. Deep in the weeds there are three gooseberry bushes. I wonder if any of the gooseberries are ripe yet?
They are. They are fat and juicy and when I hold them up to the light I can see the dark seeds inside the yellow skin. I run into the kitchen, get the colander, and start picking. We’ll have gooseberries with sugar and cream. There’s half a carton of clotted cream in the fridge, which Mum brought back from work yesterday.
I pick and pick. Brambles scratch my legs and gooseberry thorns jab at my hands, but I don’t mind. I’ve got nearly a whole colander full now. There’ll be plenty for tomorrow as well, so Mum will be pleased. Conor’s going to love them—
Conor. Where is he? Worry stabs through me again. I look at my watch and it’s twenty-five past five. Mum said to call her if he wasn’t back by five, but I can’t do that. She’d be so scared. She might have an accident from driving back here too fast. And she’d lose a whole night’s pay.
I look around. Everything’s still. Way in the distance I can see Alice Trewhidden watering the geraniums by her front door. Even from a distance you can see the crabbed way that Alice moves. She has to peer up close at things before she can see them. No good asking her if she’s seen Conor.
I could ask Mary.
No, I won’t. Conor hasn’t disappeared. He’s late back, that’s all. If I ask Mary, it will make Conor’s absence seem serious, like the night when Dad—
No. Don’t think about it. I never, ever want to visit that awful night again.
I could phone Jack’s house. Maybe a bit later. But what if his mum answers and says, No, Conor’s not been up here today. Is everything all right, Sapphire?
I go back inside and put the colander of gooseberries on the kitchen table. I’ll top and tail them later.
The cottage seems quieter than ever. I can’t settle anywhere. I turn the TV on and then quickly turn it off, in case it stops me hearing Conor’s bike. Suddenly I think that maybe Conor is up in his bedroom, asleep.
“Conor?” I call. “Conor?”
Maybe he can’t hear me because he’s got the duvet over his head. I run up to my room and climb the loft ladder to Conor’s room, almost sure by now that he’ll be curled up under the duvet.
The bed is empty. The duvet is on the floor. I wonder if he’s left me a note on his pillow, the way people do in books, but of course he hasn’t. I end up searching all round the loft, as if Conor might have left a clue somewhere. I even bend down to peer out of the little window that Dad made. I remember him making it, after he’d boarded the loft for Conor. He let me sit on the floor and watch and pass his tools to him—
No. Sapphire, you are not allowed to think about things like that. They only make you—
They only make your eyes hurt. And Dad’s not dead. You know that. He’s just—
Stop making that stupid baby noise this minute.
Conor’s window. It looks straight out to sea. The sea is striped blue and purple and aquamarine in the late afternoon light. It’s very calm, although the swell is rolling in under the surface of the water. There’s a fishing boat near the horizon.
It’s much too hot and stuffy in Conor’s loft. If only I was down at the cove, walking into the water, feeling the delicious coldness of it move up my body. I’d walk in as deep as I could and the buoyancy of the water would lift me off my feet, and I’d be swimming. I would swim right out into the middle of the bay and lie on my back and stare up into the clear sky… Or maybe I’d dive down, deep, deep into the water, and open my eyes and see the ridges of sand that the tide makes on the sea floor, and the tiny shells. I’d see the red and orange weed that clings on to the rocks and sways to and fro as the tide comes in. I could watch the crabs scuttling when they felt my shadow over them, and the fish in little shoals, spurting this way and that. I could cup my hands into a little cave for the fish to swim in and out…
I’m falling into a dream, even though I’m wide awake. The sea feels stronger and more real than Conor’s loft room. The white walls seem to sway like water. The sea’s all around me, whispering to me in a voice that ebbs and flows like the tide. I want to follow its voice. I want to wade out into the water, far from everything on land. The sea is pulling at me, like a strong current that wraps itself around your legs and lifts you off your feet.
If only I was down at the cove. I must
