Lorali Page 10

  HASTINGS REACH

  1 September

  ‘MERMAID’ BODY IDENTIFIED AS HOAX

  Since the live television appearance of mermaid envoy and peacemaker Opal Zeal, offering a reward for missing Mer princess Lorali, police have been inundated with prank calls and false mermaid sightings.

  A strange figure was discovered on Hastings beach by metal detector Samuel Hodgkins yesterday evening. The body was alleged to be mermaid, but upon further investigation was revealed to be an assemblage of leather scraps, human hair and the stuffed carcasses of a monkey, a pig and a house cat.

  Hastings Police have urged time-wasters to rethink their actions and have restated their priority – the safety of the Hastings residents and community.

  MERMAID AND MERMEN APPRECIATION TRIBE – aka ‘MAMAT’

  LottieMermaidWorld: Sooooooo many of you have been asking about my secret steps for mermaid transformation since seeing the WONDERFULLY INSPIRING OPAL ZEAL ON TV! YIKES! I have done loads of research on this cos I want a tail sooooooooo bad but my mum says I have to finish my exams first. Whatta b****. But fair play. Cos obvs once I become a mermaid I will NOT be doin any lame-o exams. So I’ve decided to share it here. The transformation works overnight so you have to be sure to follow the steps exactly rite or else your tail will end up drying out and that will look so shit and you will look like a rite plum standing next to Opal! And plus you mite die.

  1. Run a lukewarm bath.

  2. Pour in 2 KILOS of sea salt, which sounds like a lot I no but remember soon you will be livin in seawater forevs so get used to it.

  3. Get in the bath, naked, obvs or just a bra will do I guess.

  4. Press your thighs, calves and ankles together really close and don’t move, get comfy, you will be like this for a long time.

  5. Repeat this chant over and over until you fall asleep: ‘Into this salt bath I have laid, Wake me once you make me mermaid.’

  Once you wake up you will obvs be well shocked because you will have a tail so it’s best to call somebody you trust and get them to arrange some transport to take you to the nearest sea or whatevs. Good luck.

  MermaidFanGirl_1: OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OH MY GOD @LottieMermaidWorld this is SOOOOOO KEWL! FANKKKKS for sharing! I heard to turn mermaid you had to walk in the sea or that you were meant to wear a really tight pair of jeans in the rain but this one seems much more realistic! BRB! FANKS SO MUCH. LOVE YOU.

  MerBaby3000: Thanx 2 @LottieMermaidWorld 4 stps 2 mermaid trnsfrmtn. If nebdy does try it out and it wrks cn u let us no asap? I no it will be hard as u will b livin in the sea by then bt if u culd gt smbdy 2 leave us a mssage on the MAMAT forum b great 2 c if it wrkd or nt. Thx. MerBaby. X

  CoralCaroline: TBH this sounds like a LOAD of BULLCRAP. AS IF LYING IN A BATH OF SALT WILL TURN YOU INTO A MERMAID! @LottieMermaidWorld you are full of absolute horseshit, where did you get this utter crap from? You r such a fraudster. Don’t you know you HAVE to be BORN a mermaid to BECOME a mermaid you absolute knob-jockey lying b****.

  SexSeaOpal: EEERRRRR … SCUSE me @CoralCaroline WHT MKES U FINK WE TOLE8 URE RUDENESS ON HERE? @LottieMermaidWorld is nly tryn 2 help. We’re all in the sme boat

  LottieMermaidWorld: Thanks for sticking up for me @SexSeaOpal. Nice user name! Good luck to anybody who tries it and yes @MerBaby3000 of course I will let you know if it works cos I am gunna try it. That will prove if it really works or not! Wish me luck.

  SexSeaOpal: OMG! U R SO BRAVE! Lemme no how it goes babe x

  MerBaby3000: AHHHHHH! GD LCK BABE!

  OpalsBFF: SOOOOOOO jealous of @LottieMermaidWorld rite now. DYIN! Good luck! Say hi to Opal Zeal 4 me! URE so lucky you’re gunna get to meet her. Wish I cud!

  MermaidFanGirl_1: GOOD LUCK! X YOU WILL BE AMAZING! X

  CoralCaroline: YOU ARE A DICK.

  HIDEAWAY

  Mermaids. Vampires. Zombies. Fairies. Santa. The Easter Bunny. Too weird. Too much. Now I know why she acts the way she does about everything from cake to pissing on the bathroom floor. I don’t want to make her feel like a freak. I just want to be normal with her. Granted, I’ve never been a mermaid but I know how it is to feel forgotten. I can identify with that. We are in the antique shop now, full of Iris’s bric-a-brac, tat and crap. Dust sits everywhere in piles, thick, like it was all once alive and is now dead, like roadkill. I want her to feel safe. Not like some project of Iris’s.

  I watch her curiosity. The way she wriggles her toes, eyeing her legs as she clangs about the shop, bumping into things, learning her balance, her confidence growing. Her feet might be cold but she doesn’t seem to feel the bitter moisture of the lighthouse like I do.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asks.

  ‘That’s an old iron. To make your clothes straight.’

  ‘Why would you want your clothes straight?’ she asks innocently. Good point. I HATE ironing.

  ‘To look smart, I guess. That’s an old one. They used to heat them up, the heat with the weight of the metal crushes all the creases out of your clothes.’

  ‘I want some clothes,’ she mutters.

  She’s right. She needs some. I’ll have to go shopping at some point. Lucky I’ve got that birthday money. I watch her beauty. I want to know if she has surfaced for someone in particular. Why has she come back? I feel jealous. Jealous of something I know nothing about. I feel ashamed. Like Netta’s husband, the jealous fisherman. But I can’t help myself.

  ‘So, your tail … I mean, your tapestry … Did it show you anything …? You know, about your past … or?’

  ‘No memories came to me. Not as a human. Colours and shapes, yes, but I couldn’t work them out.’ She rummages through the trunks of clothes and material, tying things in her hair and round her neck, each colour bringing out new bits of her. I stay quiet, hoping that she will talk more, and she does. ‘Some Mer get really into the tapestries. They think they are their destiny or fate.’ She swallows, her eyes at the window, not at me. ‘Others show off about them. Others think they are nothing but colours and patterns. They think the resolution is random and has nothing to do with your human life. A tapestry is a tail but it is so much more. Some Mer spend their whole lives trying to make their tapestries perfect and beautiful because a tapestry never lies. You can say you’re happy but your tapestry might speak otherwise.’

  ‘Like those rings with a stone that changes colour to match your mood?’ Flynn offers. He is sorting through a box of material.

  ‘Yes, probably. Like that.’

  ‘And what did you think of your tapestry?’

  My phone rings again. It’s Elvis. I put it back in my pocket. I know I should speak to him but he will be in a funny mood if he knows Flynn and I are hanging out without him. He hates being left out of anything. I want to keep a lid on Lorali and what I have found out. Elvis proper loves drama and I don’t need that right now. Maybe he would know exactly what to do but right now it feels calm and contained. That is what I need.

  ‘OK, don’t laugh,’ she says for the fifth time. She is giggling herself though. And that is making me laugh. My back is against the wall outside the bathroom. Flynn and Iris are pottering around downstairs deciding what to make us for dinner. How has time got so lost? It’s one of those days that seems to fold itself away into a tiny envelope and post itself to nowhere. Guilt begins to ache in the pit of my belly like a bug. Mum. College. How disappointed she will be when she realises I haven’t shown up. Surely this is a better life experience than anything I could learn in a classroom … but it doesn’t numb the fear. I can hear Lorali changing, the sound of material against her hair and skin. I’m not sure how I’ll feel about seeing her in some ancient scraggy white dress from Iris’s trunk of clothes. I bet some crusty old nan died in it and I’ll have to tell her that she looks nice when really she –

  ‘I’m ready …’

  I breathe hard and turn round.

  My face smiles at everything in front of me. The long white dress fits her just right, proper elegant. Graceful. Special
. She looks like … well … weddingy.

  ‘You look all right,’ I say. What an idiot. All right? Mum looks all right, not Lorali. Too late to say anything else now, I follow her downstairs.

  Flynn is frying up this well thick ham to have with mashed potatoes, peas and mustard. This is the kind of food that Iris likes to eat. I think Lorali is confused by her senses but I think everything is confusing her, so it is kind of hard to tell. The rich smoky smell is flooding the lighthouse as the sun drops and the moon begins to shine, giving the lighthouse a UFO igloo glow. Mum and Elvis are calling now. I think I should probably call them back soon, just so they don’t worry. Candles and lamps are lit and the house becomes warm again. A safe haven where we relax.

  ‘Ham?’ Lorali keeps saying it over and over. She is in a good mood and is jittery and giggly. ‘The word sounds funny on my tongue.’ She beams and Iris laughs too. This is the happiest I’ve seen him. His eyes are always watery. Eyes that make you look back on yourself. We eat the ham. It is dry and thick and chewy and fatty but it’s OK. I keep an eye on Lorali to make sure she doesn’t accidently eat the mustard. After the tea thing I don’t dare risk her palate with that.

  ‘I want to hear more of Iris’s instrument, the wooden one that sits on his shoulder.’ Lorali smiles. ‘It just sounded so wonderful.’

  Flynn and I crack up with laughter at this.

  ‘Is she for real?’ Flynn picks at his ham fat, scrounging for extra meat.

  ‘What was that thing? The sawing stick with the hair?’

  Iris smiles proudly. ‘You mean the violin?’

  Lorali shrugs. She is comfortable. ‘Yes. That’s it. Can you do it again?’

  Flynn splatters his mouthful of food out onto the table, choking.

  ‘Of course I can! Everybody usually hates my playing!’

  ‘Hates?’ Lorali sounds shocked. ‘But it was absolutely wonderfully amazing!’ She beams and Flynn doubles over into proper belly laughing and I am trying not to laugh, but it just takes over and I can’t hold it down.

  ‘So you are a music lover, Lorali. What’s your favourite?’ Iris asks and then begins to hum various songs from his imagination.

  ‘I don’t have a favourite,’ she says sweetly. I could die.

  ‘Music – what do you like best?’

  ‘I only know the whales and the dolphins. And we sing. The humfish … they make music. Sometimes my father, Zar, he plays the water bells and … well … there’s lots of things to make music with but I don’t know what you mean by … best?’

  WHAT THE … It is really only hitting me now how alien and surreal everything is. Every sentence is a new finding, something more wild, more extreme, more eccentric. More. And more. And more. We all crack up with laughter, the only way to end the oddity of everything.

  Iris drops his fork with a mighty clang. ‘Flynn!’ he shouts. ‘HURRY! Get the records!’

  MUSIC

  Iris has set up six of his record players all around the kitchen with old crackling vinyl softly spinning its way round and round, the same lost voice playing from each. He reckons this way Lorali will be able to feel the music in a panoramic type of way. Quite clever really. He’s got Flynn on the bicycle-powered gramophone … that’s proper old. The music plays when you cycle. It’s rusty and hard to turn the pedals but once you get going it can be kind of fun, and it makes you feel like a caveman when you make music, like when men made their own fire and stuff. Iris and Lorali are dancing in the middle of the room; her cheeks are red, and her pupils are giant and round and open. Her long hair is wrapped up in a big knot on top of her head, and wearing the dress she looks like a perfume bottle. My heart is slamming against my chest. She is so in love with everything and I have never seen anything like that. So greedy for life. And the records just keep turning and Flynn just keeps pedalling and Lorali just keeps dancing.

  It is two in the morning. Lorali has finally got tired. She half collapses onto the floor, laughing: her chest is rising and falling, her cheeks are shiny and red, her hair is stuck to her head with sweat.

  ‘I haven’t danced like that in years!’ Iris chuckles, stretching his cranky limbs. ‘I feel a heart attack coming on!’ he jokes. ‘There was once a king who danced himself to death. He danced so hard that he killed himself. What a way to go.’

  Lorali laughs as we carry her to the couch. She is like a tiny broken bird. ‘I want to go like that.’

  Iris belly-laughs. ‘I don’t think I’m far off. I heard my knees crack like they were maracas.’

  Even in her deep tiredness she is still interested, managing to mumble, ‘What are maracas?’ We laugh. She really does want to know everything. She wants to be part of this world and know everything inside and around it.

  ‘I LOVE legs,’ she whimpers drowsily. ‘Even though they hurt. I love them.’

  Iris winks at me; we all laugh again.

  Flynn brings her water and a blanket. She is all wrapped up on the couch like a prawn in wool. ‘I’m so jealous of the sleep she’s about to have.’

  ‘Beautiful, sweet, precious music …’ she murmurs. ‘And the … what’s its name? Oh don’t tell me, the violin … the ham … the swimming pool … kind and gentle Flynn and this lighthouse.’

  ‘I’m glad you had fun.’ My eyes are dreaming on her now. Too much. ‘You idiot,’ I add, just to make sure I sound matey and not a pervert.

  She closes her eyes, a huge smile spreading across her face. Every muscle in her face relaxes. Her breathing changes.

  I can’t help but plan an escape route for us if we need one. Just in case. Should anything happen. We are on the ground floor, so we can run if we need to … bread knife under the couch and the door bolted.

  Night falls over us like a fog. The quietness of the lighthouse is now deafening. Ghosts of our laughter haunt the air like the waft of a burnt matchstick. Out of the little window I cannot tell where the sea ends or begins. An endless plane of simple still blackness stares back at me, giving away no secrets. Like a sleeping beast, it doesn’t flinch or even murmur. Only dreams. Almost convinced me for a moment that it wasn’t hiding all that wonder and wilderness. I soak in this moment of promise, where I’m full of hope and anything is possible. Nobody knows we are here, tucked away behind the little shop of forgotten curiosities.

  I get myself ready to sleep on the couch opposite and she reaches out to me, her eyes closed, and says, ‘You are everything I wanted.’

  HASTINGS GAZETTE

  2 September

  LOCAL SCHOOLGIRL IN MERMAID TAGEDY

  Fourteen-year-old Hastings schoolgirl Charlotte Wood was found dead in her family home early this morning. Wood was discovered in an ice-cold saltwater bath and is believed to have died accidently in an attempt to transform herself into a mermaid.

  A post-mortem is to follow and police assure us that no family member is suspected of wrongdoing.

  Charlotte Wood’s mother, Julie, gave a statement: ‘Charlotte was a pretty, clever and outgoing girl. She loved people and was particularly fond of social networking. However, Charlotte’s death was NOT an accident. She was following a procedure she believed would turn her into a species of Mer. She was obsessed with Mer culture; she wanted to be a mermaid desperately. I plead with other parents and families to reinforce that our children cannot and will not ever become Mer. There are websites where agitators lurk and they are cowards and they are liars. Please look after your children. Please teach them about the dangers of the Internet and the sea in this dark and horrific time. If not for us, for Charlotte.’

  The mayor has put a sea ban in place until further notice to prevent any more dangers to the community and so that marine experts can investigate reports of Mer culture. Fishing, bathing and aqua sports have been suspended. Protestors on the beach argue that the ban will have economic consequences for Hastings as a whole, not just those that earn a living from the water.

  HASTINGS REACH

  2 September

  PROTESTORS IN SEA-BAN CH
AOS

  Uproar has hit Hastings full-force as fishermen and fishmongers struggle with the sea ban. Protestors have been campaigning outside the town hall, while local supermarkets have increased the price of frozen and canned fish. Harbour Master Thomas Beck says, ‘We just want things to get back to normal and as quickly as possible. People are losing their livelihoods.’

  There is still a severe weather warning in place. The mayor urges people to take extra care when out and about and to check in on relatives and the elderly.

  Full story on page 8.

  THE DEATH OF CHARLOTTE WOOD

  This tiny town. What madness is spiralling – I can see it all. The parents of young Charlotte Wood want justice. They are angry at the government and at television for broadcasting Opal’s appeal, fuelling Mer mania across the UK. Feelings are running high. An online petition against popularisation of Mer culture is growing by the minute, with comments citing ‘perverse behaviour’ and ‘inappropriate activity’. One angry commenter even said, ‘Couldn’t they find an uglier mermaid to get the message across?’

  I will never understand Walkers.

  Zar is in the garden trimming back the seagrass and kelp, and he seems to be warped in a trance.

  Keppel is with her sea-monkey, Bingo, smoking seaweed. Bubbles are hiccupping around the room, wafting like small sad, lonely thoughts. Her tapestry runs in blues and greys, like the colour of miserable gravestones. A dark crack scores through her scales, splintering as chalky white does through a Walker’s hair when distressed.