Aurabel Read online

  WhereisLorali: @MermaidFanGirl_1 UR RITE. @CoralCaroline moans bout us lot being stalkers bt she’s jst as bad, on here every day jst like us, if u dnt like it go find some dry squad 2 go b a part of bt dnt mug us off.

  SHAUNTHEPRAWN: @CoralCaroline has a point. It’s all slightly sycophantic.

  CoralCaroline: I only come on here to laugh at your ignorance.

  THEREALOFF‌ICIALOPALZEAL_37: @CoralCaroline bully!

  LORALIMYBAE: Wot does sycophantic mean please tho?

  WhereisLorali: It’s no wonder Lorali has mvd to Iceland wen she’s got fans like U!!!!!!! @CoralCaroline

  FLLWMELORALI: She’s not in Iceland. She’s in London.

  L-O-P-A-L-I: Mebbe she’s up in Florida. That’s where I would be.

  Vampfish: @L-O-P-A-L-I nice user name <3 <3

  L-O-P-A-L-I: @Vampfish fanx :D

  WhereisLorali: Whereva she is she obviously don’t wnt 2 no us and it’s breakin my heart I am literally CRYING my actual REAL LIFE eyes out so hard all u lot fink this is a jke bt this is actually like my REAL actual life. I hve waited 4 so long 4 a chance 2 meet her and it hurts me so much to know she’s out there sumwhere in the world and I can’t just tlk 2 her. EVERYBODY knows what a mermaid fan I am, I am like literally obsessed.

  MermaidFanGirl_1: @WhereisLorali awww bbz dnt cry. One day you’ll get the chnce to meet her, stay positive.

  LORALIMYBAE: We are ALL mermaid fans on here actually @WhereisLorali n we ALL love Lorali, not just u, stop making it abt URSELF the WHOLE time.

  WhereisLorali: I am not saying we aren’t. But I am defo the biggest Lorali fan in the whole world.

  Bellaseashella: @WhereisLorali I am too!

  WhereisLorali: No offence @Bellaseashella but her name isn’t even in ur user name so …

  LORALIMYBAE: I am a WAY bigger fan, ask my brother.

  WhereisLorali: I suffa from depression and anorexia and I like literally have no friends and I have that torrets thing that when you speak only mermaid fings come out my mouth and it’s so embarrassing. THAT’S how big of a mermaid fan I am.

  Vampfish: SORRY NOT TRYNA BE RUDE OR NAMING ANY NAMES BUT REMIND ME WHAT ANOREXIA HAS GOT 2DO WITH MERMAIDS? *cough cough* ATTENTION SEEKING!

  HDDNTRSRE: Ha! Innit tho! SO tru! LOLZ! @Vampfish

  Bellaseashella: @WhereisLorali I go swimming 3 times a week.

  WhereisLorali: @Bellaseashella ha! Dnt mke me laugh, like how old r u? Like 12? 3 times a week is nothing! So babyish. Sometimes I look down and my legs are turnin in2 a tail, the skin is actually attaching, I ain’t evn jking.

  Vampfish: @WhereisLorali Sure that ain’t just fat?

  HDDNTRSRE: @Vampfish LOLZ!

  WhereisLorali: NO IT IS NOT FAT! And that’s actually a very insensitive thing to say to somebody with a sickness. Lorali is my actual queen and when SHE’S ready 2 b MY friend then we will have sleepovers and be best friends 4EVA and u lot will really know then who her MAIN fan is.

  CoralCaroline: DEAD.

  Iso_fairy_dust14: Hi guys, what does everybody think about fairies?

  I REMEMBER

  The scrambling yawn of the hoover cricks off and I take a moment to adore the silence. Moments like this catch me – happiness – when I look about Iris’s charming shop of bric-a-brac. The pieces of history and memory all there waiting patiently to be rehomed and loved again, on to make more history, more memory. Many of these belongings outliving their first loves. There is always an excuse to get lost in the crispy spine of a sun-stained atlas, be frozen inside the brassy eye of a telescope, hunt nostalgia hidden in the damp, rotting, musky fabric of an ancient hand-woven rug.

  I catch my reflection in the back of a spent silver spoon. My eyes are a more purple-green now that seem to match the rainbow spoil of a polluted gutter. My hair an ashy blonde. Like dust. Long and up in a loose knot. I am so simple, I think. In my basic cream jumper and light blue jeans. Flynn got me these trainers. Beaten-up rubber pumps. They are white with a star on them. They are so comfortable. I wear them every day. I see girls in town. With painted eyebrows and lashings of mascara. Girls who show off their bodies and mix up the colour of their hair. Wear treasure. But not me. Cheryl says I should go out more but it’s not for me. I wouldn’t know how to begin making any new friends. Still, it doesn’t stop people staring in the foggy town of Hastings. At my eyes. Like I’m an animal they want to touch but are afraid of. And that’s why I stick here, shying away, in the shop.

  We’ve worked so hard on the place. Flynn and I. Many late nights with the old records and the sparky purr of electric heaters to get things ordered and priced properly. I mean, money still sometimes goes over my head but Flynn seems to know what is what and if he doesn’t we just make a price up, and if we really like something, like the rocking horse, for instance, we make the price so outrageous that nobody would ever buy it anyway, and if they did we’d make enough money for the shop that we could buy hundreds of rocking horses.

  We even have customers now. At first they were mostly press and reporters. Horribly intrusive, bargy people with cameras and notebooks asking me questions and pushy agents offering me deals and sometimes it was strange people with staring starry eyes all glued up to my face, but now it’s just people people. Antique people, bargain hunters, browsers, tourists. Real-life people who just think I’m a normal person like them, working in a shop. Walkers. I can’t believe how long I’ve been here. My own dust added to the windowsill, my fingerprints on the glass, my strands of hair in the carpet.

  Old Iris pads down the ladder from the lighthouse, being the huge wardrobe-sized person that he is. Sometimes I capture him, in a certain moment, in the wrong light, and become totally aware of how old he actually is. His wrinkles folded like ripples of sand tracing the tide, sweeping lines of stories. But it’s in the last year that his age has really shown and he’s begun to slow, a painful reminder that we aren’t immortal. That he’s just a human. Just like me.

  It’s been a year since Carmine inexplicably stopped making contact. The side effects of withdrawal are shrinking him.

  ‘He still not back with the cake yet?’

  It’s what Iris and I both have in common. We like to have huge slabs of cake in the afternoon. Carrot, chocolate, Victoria, coffee; we love it all. Rich, smooth, creamy icing and light, forkable sponge. With tea, which I drink now – can’t believe it. I’m a tea drinker. That’s Cheryl though. She drinks so much tea. And we do here too. I’ve learnt it’s something to do when you don’t know what to do.

  ‘No, he has been a while, hasn’t he?’ I peer out of the window. The sea shushing in and out. Summertime in beautiful Hastings. A nearly blue sky. The ‘V’ of winging birds. Sad it’s almost done.

  ‘The tea’ll be all spotty; I don’t like it when it gets that brown stuff on top,’ Iris moans, which is a lie. His tea has brown spots on it all the time. Matches the patches and ageing spots on his head. ‘And I don’t even fancy cake any more – he’s been so long, I’ve gone off the idea!’ More lies from the old man.

  We’ve changed the name of the shop to Iris Spy. Because Iris is known for his magic eyes and these are his findings; all this stuff that he’s collected and found over the years.

  ‘Should have called the shop Iris Lies!’ I laugh and Iris is left trying to unpick my cheap joke. He raises a brow, spluttering into a tea-stained coloured rag. I’ve told him he needs to visit the doctor. But he won’t go. Even though he says he’s living on ‘borrowed years’. The bell tinkles and here he comes. Flynn. Dumping the brown paper packages on the counter before me, he grunts, knocking his bike to the floor as he charges through the shop and up to the house.

  ‘Oh, very pleasant!’ Iris remarks with sarcasm.

  ‘Give it a rest, Granddad,’ Flynn barks back. ‘You’re not even meant to be eating sugar.’

  Iris rolls his eyes, takes off his glasses and gives them a wipe. ‘Strange boy,’ he tuts before reaching inside the crumpled bakery bag. ‘Oooo look, Lorali, it’s Victo
ria!’

  I find Flynn upstairs. Watching TV blankly. His mind in a maze. At eighteen now, his shoulders are wide; he is tall and lanky with long skinny legs that are always covered in bruises. Clear, blue eyes and a long nose. He has a face that always looks like he’s apologising.

  ‘Flynn? Are you all right?’

  ‘There was nothing there.’

  Dead. For. A. Minute. Trying to make my voice not crack. ‘I told you not to go.’ We had both promised each other.

  Doesn’t stop my heart sinking. Hope crashing. I’ve been riding the days out myself and fighting the urge to go.

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s not coming back.’

  It has been two years since Rory drowned, or so we thought. A year since Rory wrote ‘I remember’ on the trunk of a tree in the petrified forest.

  I REMEMBER. I REMEMBER. I …

  We have been back nearly every day since, all of us. Flynn and Iris and Cheryl of course. Writing our own messages, leaving our own gifts and stories, and had nothing back. Even Rory’s dad came once, all the way from Spain, in hope it would jog his memory. But nothing. We both swore that we’d stop going, that we’d not keep looking, torturing ourselves with the promise of hope. Especially not today – it is two years ago today that he left us behind.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ my voice rasps. ‘You don’t remember as a Mer, not unless your tapestry gives something up, shows a certain colour or pattern – there’s no way of knowing anything at all otherwise.’

  ‘Or maybe he’s just chosen to forget us.’

  Flynn wants me to argue that. Or maybe he wants to hurt me, for me to believe that he could have forgotten us. I don’t know. I don’t know what is going on down there any more. I know as much about the Whirl now as I once knew about this place. And that angers Flynn. Why can’t I give him any answers? About the Whirl; about Rory? About where his best friend has gone. And how it is all because of me. That I am here and Rory isn’t. Traded places. In the blink of an eye. Flynn now has to have me as a friend instead of Rory. And some days, he just isn’t OK with that.

  ‘I’m sorry, Flynn.’ I sit next to him on the tired sofa. I link my arm through his. I feel his elbow tense against me, then relax in one move.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking this out on you. I’m just disappointed. I really felt that he’d be there today. All night I just knew it, like he was talking to me.’

  ‘I get the same feelings.’ I grip his hand. ‘Obviously not the same as yours …’ I catch myself – Flynn is sensitive. ‘But I still feel him around.’

  ‘You don’t have to pretend you don’t miss him, Lorali. It’s so shit. It’s like he’s dead but he’s alive … I’m grieving him and missing him but at the same time it’s killing me to not know what he’s up to, who he’s with … if he’s OK.’

  I nod. My eyes make water.

  ‘I shouldn’t have put the pressure on myself that today would be the day … He might not even know when a year even is? He might not know anything.’

  Of course I’d thought about all of this. I had imagined the life Rory would be living underneath in the Whirl. So bittersweet, this notion, of knowing he was salvaged. Salvaged because he is strong. Special. Deserving to be rescued. That he truly is the special person that I’d known him to be. They saw a shine in him. He is one of a kind. The kind who died to save me. A kind I would never get to know again.

  Does Rory think about me enough to feel the same? Does he resent me? Miss me? And how much does he remember … Does that mean that the Mer know about me. That I have surfaced? Here I am living as a Walker. Like some fraud. Wearing shoes and working a job.

  My trail of thought is drowned out by Flynn’s tapping. ‘Look, look, Lorali, look!’

  It’s Opal Zeal. The ‘celebrity mermaid’. On TV. She’s being driven around in some sort of bathtub on wheels at some swimming pool or something, the flipper of her tail curving over the edge of the tub. Her hair is twisted up in horns.

  ‘Where is she?’ I shake my head in disbelief, dreading to think what she’s up to this time.

  ‘Looks like she’s at a leisure centre or something.’

  Dozens of brightly coloured noodle-like tubes loop together in the shot behind her – slides, I guess. During the interview her hairstyle of horns seems to look like slides popping out of her head. If only I could whoosh down one myself and see what was going on in that deranged brain of hers. I can’t even see her tapestry with all the make-up and glitter. We don’t speak any more. The more the interview goes on with the shots of the park it becomes apparent that this isn’t just any water park. This is Opal Zeal’s very own water park. To finish, the TV shows where Opal is currently living. Some hotel in central London. It looks like a palace.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I can’t help but snarl. ‘Why would you let these journalists come to where you live? Why would you want the public to know where you are?’

  ‘Publicity,’ Flynn shrieks. ‘She loves it. Look at all those idiots.’ The presenter shows the hundreds of people standing outside Opal’s hotel with their cameras and autograph books. Most of them are dressed as ‘mermaids’ and sea-monsters. Fake tails. Face paint. Wigs. Some look as though they’ve spent the night there, waiting for her to appear. And when she does, she comes from a car. In sunglasses and a white fur coat. She’s in that stupid saltwater bathtub thing again, being lifted by six giant men dressed like undertakers, the fin of her tail flopped over the side, carried like a coffin.

  ‘This is so weird. I don’t get it.’ Then again there’s loads I don’t get. I still don’t get how we are watching moving images in real time on a screen that’s inside a metal box. That’s why I like the shop. Where things are slow. Or broken. Hidden away. I’m not sure if it’s Opal or the fast-moving images that makes me feel more sick.

  ‘Yuck. Turn it off.’ The room halts to silence.

  ‘So what does she have now then?’ Flynn laughs, counting on his fingers. ‘A cocktail bar, night club, nail bar, hair salon and now this?’

  ‘Errr … don’t forget the posh sushi restaurant she’s opening,’ I add. Which I have to say I find gross, considering she’s meant to be protecting the ocean.

  ‘She must be worth a fortune!’

  ‘And her bikini line, her endorsements … her beauty range.’ I roll my eyes. I learnt that off Iris.

  ‘The woman’s a beast!’ Flynn gawps.

  ‘That’s one word for it,’ I snub.

  ‘Come on, Lozza, let’s get you out there – you must be able to do some of this shit,’ Flynn jokes.

  ‘They don’t want me with these two things though, do they?’ I shove my feet in his face, wiping the soles all over, my big toe in his ear. We laugh and Flynn jumps on me: tumbling, play-fighting, rolling over and laughing. But then Flynn drops his forehead; he isn’t laughing any more. He’s sad. I hold him. He holds me back. Holding on in the absence of the one person who we both want to be holding. But can’t.

  BLOOD PEARL

  I’m just about the first one awake. I know why it is. I’m too excited. Stretching, I creep out of the slam so as not to wake up Murray. Catch us an eel or two for brekkie. Nothing long. I love it when Tippi is like this. Sound asleep, almost beautiful, almost forgiven.

  But I bounce out of bed today because something bloody brilliant has happened …

  I’ve only gone and got myself a job.

  Can you believe it though – me? With a job. And not just any job neither. NAH! One for the KING! Yeah, I suppose he is a bit of a pushover for a king. AND it would’ve been better if it was a real queen I’d been working for, you know? I would’ve loved to have worked under a great like Queen Netta, or even Keppel. That would be a real honour. But still. It means I could get outta Tippi. And who knows? If I do well maybe they’ll move me up the ranks one day. Get myself promoted – become an adviser? Maybe I’m gonna make something of myself. I know I don’t really have the words for it but I know about stuff. I keep up with all t
he politics from over there in the Whirl. And the best thing about the whole thing is this: I am working on the project to reopen the petrified forest. How wicked is that? Because the petrified forest is like everyone’s favourite place – it’s where we go to smoke and hang and just chill, really, and when that king made it out of bounds, everyone lost their shit. So really, it’s two good things in one, a win-win … not only is the forest opening again, I’m only the bloody one helping to do it! And everyone is well jealous.

  I’m not gonna mess this up like that Opal Zeal. She’s a traitor. Rumour is she’s working for the government now. Up with them Walkers. Weird in all, isn’t it? So dodge.

  Shit, I gotta shut up. I gotta get ready for work!

  ‘Morning, star.’

  ‘Eel over there if you’re hungry.’

  ‘Yum. Not right now though – just woken up.’ Murray yawns. ‘You nervous?’ she asks sleepily, turning over on the back seat.

  ‘Nah.’ I do one of those stressed contagious yawns right back at her. Murray wiggles closer, strokes her hand down my back on my spine. ‘I’m fine. I just want to do it right, you know? Don’t want to let myself down, Murray.’

  ‘You could never let yourself down.’ She crinkles up her nose. ‘It’s kind of technically impossible; you’re just one of them ones that always does life well.’ She kisses me on the lips.

  I kiss her back.

  Raise an eyebrow at her.