Ingo

Mum doesn’t sing. She stares straight ahead as the song swells louder. Her lips are pressed so tightly together that there’s no colour in them. If you didn’t know Mum was sad, you’d think she was furiously angry. She often looks like that since Dad went. It’s such a slow, gloomy, droning hymn. Dad would hate it. He likes music to have life in it.

I close my eyes, and shut my ears to the church hymn. I strain to listen to a different music. Yes, I can almost believe that I hear Dad’s voice:

I wish I was away in Ingo

Far across the briny sea,

Sailing over deepest waters…

Maybe that’s where Dad has gone, sailing over deepest waters. He’s away in Ingo, wherever Ingo is. That’s where we’ll find him. If I can just catch one note of his voice, I’ll be able to follow it. I’ll follow a single thread of his voice, to where Dad is.

The hymn ends. People cough and rustle as they sit down, cramming themselves into the tight pews. Fat Bridget Demelza is spilling over the edge of the pew and into the aisle. I turn to Conor and whisper, “We’ll find him, won’t we, Conor?”

“Yes,” whispers back Conor. “Don’t worry, Saph. Let them get on with their memorial service if it makes them happy. It doesn’t mean Dad’s dead. I know we’ll find him.”

We’ll find Dad in Ingo, I tell myself. In Ingo, however long it takes. We’ll find Dad, however hard it is.

No, I am not going to cry. I tip my head back so the tears that are swelling in my eyes will not fall. They run down the back of my throat and into my mouth, tasting of salt. I swallow them. Dad’s still alive. He wouldn’t want me to cry.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d9c6cf0e-2f76-5415-9197-ee6f42a58b36)

It seems like a hundred years since the day of Dad’s disappearance. But really it’s a year and a month and a day. Three hundred and ninety-six days.

Sometimes when I first wake up I don’t remember. I think I can hear Dad downstairs, or in the bathroom. Everything’s normal. And then it sweeps over me like a dark cloud.

In the daytime I make myself forget. It doesn’t always work, even when I’m doing things I love, like swimming or eating chocolate cake, or designing stuff on the school computers. The thought of Dad is always in my mind somewhere, like a bruise. It’s the same for Conor. We don’t talk about Dad in front of Mum, because she gets upset. We hate her getting upset. She’s a lot better than she was. She eats proper meals now, and she doesn’t get up in the night and drink cups of tea and walk about downstairs for hours.

We never, ever tell Mum that we think one day we’ll find Dad again. She wouldn’t believe us anyway.

I used to run to the phone every time it rang.

Yes? Hello? Who is it?

Each time it wasn’t Dad’s voice I felt as if all the lights had been switched off. When the postman came I’d try to get to the door first, and grab the letters with my heart pounding. But it was never Dad’s handwriting on the envelopes. Even when somebody knocked at the door my hopes would spring up again. But why would Dad knock at the door of his own house?

I don’t do those things any more. The phone ringing is just the phone ringing, the postman’s probably bringing another bill, and a knock on the door means a neighbour.

You know how the sea grinds down stones into sand, over years and years and years? Nobody ever sees it, it happens so slowly. And then at last the sand is so fine you can sift it in your fingers. Losing Dad is like being worn away by a force that’s so powerful nothing could resist it. We are like stones, being changed into something completely different.

If you looked casually at me and Mum and Conor now, you might think we were the same people as we were a year ago, except that we’re a year older. But we are not the same people. We’ve changed where no one can see it, inside our minds and our feelings. I didn’t want us to change, but I can’t stop it.

“Where’s Conor? Have you seen him?” Mum’s rushing round, getting ready for work. She’s always rushing these days, but at least that means that she never just sits, staring into space…

Mum’s on the evening shift this week, at the restaurant where she works in St Pirans. She leaves at four, and she’ll be back after midnight.

Mum stops in front of the living-room mirror to pin up her hair and put on her lipstick. She never used to wear lipstick every day…

“Sapphire! Are you listening to me?” Mum snaps. I jump. Mum snaps quite a lot these days. She doesn’t mean it, it’s because she’s always tired. She works in one of the expensive new restaurants down by the harbour. The tips are good, but the hours are long in the summer season. Mum got a twenty pound note from one party last week. Twenty pounds! Imagine having so much money you can give away a twenty pound tip on top of paying for your meal. But then there are also mean people, who spend a hundred pounds on one dinner, and think a pound tip is enough—

“Sapphire! Will you please stop daydreaming!”

“Sorry, Mum.”

“For the third time, where’s Conor?”

“Gone up to Jack’s.” I have no idea where Conor is, but I want Mum to go off to work happy.

“I told him to be back by three,” says Mum. “I don’t like leaving you here on your own, Sapphy. Yes, I know you’ll be all right, but I feel safer if Conor’s here. Oh dear, these school holidays, they go on for ever.”

“But they’ve only just started, Mum!”

“It’s all right for the teachers. They get the whole holiday off work, to be with their own kids. They don’t have to go to work all summer and worry themselves half to death about leaving their children on their own—”

“Mum, we’re not little kids. We’re really sensible, and anyway, Conor’ll be back in a minute. But Mum, I wouldn’t ever be on my own if we had a dog—”

“Sapphire, please don’t start that dog business again. Oh no, now I’ve messed up my lipstick.”

“I think you look nicer without lipstick.”

“The customers don’t,” mumbles Mum as she wipes off the smudged lipstick and puts on more.” Look at the rings under my eyes, Sapphy, I need a bit of colour… Now, if Conor’s not back by five, call me on my mobile.”

It is so unfair. 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?