White Dolphin (13 page)

I can’t concentrate on anything all day. Felix has been moved to the top group in maths and English, so I only get a chance to meet up with him at break.

He’s talking to two girls from our year at the tuck shop, but he breaks away from them when he sees me. I sit down next to him on one of the wooden benches in the playground. ‘How’s the dolphin?’

Felix fumbles with a chocolate wrapper and tears the corner with his teeth. ‘Carl rang to say she’s still alive,’ he says. ‘They need volunteers to support her on a raft until she can balance on her own in the water. Dad’s doing a two hour shift before he picks me up at lunch.’

‘I could meet you there later, when I come out of school,’ I say. ‘Maybe Carl will let us help too.’

‘Yeah, that’d be cool,’ says Felix. He snaps the chocolate and offers me some. ‘At my last school you could get expelled for eating chocolate.’

I stuff two chunks of chocolate in my mouth. ‘No way!’

Felix grins. ‘Chocolate was forbidden. We were only allowed cereal bars and carrot sticks for snacks.’ He shoves the rest of the bar in his mouth, and speaks through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘I think I could get to like it here.’

After lunch I watch the hands on the clock above the teacher’s desk turn slowly round and round and round. I’m jealous that Felix will be at the Blue Pool already. When the end of school bell rings, I’m first out of the gates. I run to Daisy’s school and grab her when I see her. I almost pull her down the road. I can’t wait to see the dolphin.

‘Come on.’ I sling her bag across my shoulder. ‘We’ve got to run.’

The tide is too high to walk along the sand to the Blue Pool, so I run with Daisy along the coast road. The headland car park is now full of cars, but Greg’s pickup has gone. There are lots of people too, strung out along the coast path. A crowd has gathered on the cliff above the tidal pool. I guess news has spread quickly about the dolphin. I push my way through the people to the stone steps down to the pool, but a line of police tape is stretched across the path and a policewoman puts her arm across to stop me from going through.

‘No one’s allowed,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry.’

I glance down to the rocks. Two dome tents stand on the ledge of flat rocks above the pool. I can see rucksacks and sleeping bags piled up inside. A white cover stands on poles, stretched across the pool to shelter the dolphin from the sun. Only her tail sticks out beyond the cover. She lies supported on a flotation raft between two long yellow cushions of air. A woman I’ve not seen before crouches next to a small gas stove and pours steaming water from a kettle into two mugs. Behind her, towels and wetsuits are draped across the rocks to dry.

‘I have to go down there,’ I say.

The policewoman shakes her head and smiles. ‘I can’t let you I’m afraid.’

‘Carl!’ I yell. ‘Carl, it’s me.’

She tries to gently push me back, but I see Carl’s head pop out from under the white cover.

He speaks to someone in the pool and runs up the stone steps towards me. His feet leave dark wet prints on the pale rock. He ducks under the police tape and pulls Daisy and me away from the crowd.

My words tumble out. ‘How is she?’

Carl sits us down on the grassy verge. ‘She’s holding her own for now,’ he says. ‘But she can’t swim. Her muscles have been damaged from all that time she spent pressed against the sand.’

‘Why can’t we see her?’ Daisy says.

Carl glances back at the crowd. ‘The vet said the dolphin could pass some diseases on to people. But it’s for the dolphin’s protection too. We’ve got volunteers camped here for shifts in the water, but we don’t want lots of people trying to touch her. She needs peace and quiet.’

‘But
we
can see her, can’t we?’ I say. ‘It was me who found her. We can help look after her.’

Carl shakes his head and sighs. He runs his hands through his hair. ‘Kara, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s not good news.’

My hands feel clammy and cold. Daisy clutches my arm. ‘What?’ I say.

‘The vet has taken advice from some experts in America. Even if we can make her better, she won’t survive in the wild without other dolphins. She’s far too young.’

I point towards the harbour. ‘But her mother’s waiting for her,’ I say.

Carl frowns. ‘Lots of boats went out to ride alongside her. We haven’t seen her for several hours now. We think she’s been scared away.’

‘She’ll come back though,’ I say. ‘Won’t she?’

Carl shrugs his shoulders. ‘She last saw her calf in the harbour. She doesn’t even know her calf is here.’

‘We can’t give up now, Carl. We’ll look for her.’

Carl peels his wetsuit gloves off and rubs his eyes. His chin is covered in fine stubble. He looks exhausted. I guess he’s been up all night. ‘Felix and his dad are sailing in the bay looking for her right now,’ he says. ‘But she could be miles away. She might have even rejoined her pod.’

I stand up and kick the ground. ‘So how long do we give the mother to come back? A week? Two weeks? A year?’

Carl breathes out softly through his teeth. ‘Tomorrow. The vet says we’ll give her until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ I shout. ‘You can’t do that. She’ll come back, I know she will.’ Heads start to turn our way, but I don’t care.

Carl leans forward and lowers his voice. ‘It’s not fair to put her calf through this if we can’t release her to the wild. It’s not up to me, Kara. Many stranded whales and dolphins die or need to be put down. It’s not easy, but it’s just the way it is.’

I glare at him. ‘At least let me see her.’

‘I can’t, Kara,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t.’

He squeezes my shoulder but I pull away from him. I storm across the car park and sink down behind a stone wall, out of sight.

Daisy slides down and puts her arms around me. ‘What are you going to do?’

I push my palms against my eyes and shake my head. ‘I don’t know, Daisy,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know.’ I feel so helpless sitting here. There’s absolutely nothing I can do.

I watch a jackdaw strut up and down beside us, its beady blue eyes on a crust of bread beside my feet. I pick the bread up and roll it between my finger and thumb into a small ball of dough. ‘I wish Mum was here,’ I say. ‘She’d tell me what to do.’

The jackdaw hops forward. It turns its head from side to side, watching me all the time.

I hold the bread out on the flat of my hand.

I wonder if it will dare. I wonder if it will dare to put its trust in me.

Daisy slips her hand in mine. ‘Maybe there’s a way you
can
ask her.’

I turn to Daisy and nod.

I was thinking exactly the same thing.

I
 run along the seafront with Daisy, clutching the only thing I have of Mum’s in my hand. A small blue memory stick, moulded in the shape of a dolphin. Mum brought it back from a conference about sea life and I always wanted it for my own. I took it from her room the day before she left, just because I liked it. I never told her and I feel guilty about it still. After she disappeared, I threaded it onto a necklace made of shells. It now hangs below the pure white cowrie shell I found. The other shells are top shells, the purple stripes worn away to show the pearliness beneath, and between each of these a periwinkle, sunshine yellow. It’s all I’ve got. She never kept
things
. She didn’t even want a wedding ring from Dad. She had her diving kit and camera, and that was all. The computer wasn’t even hers. It belonged to the research centre. The only
thing
she kept was her old battered green rucksack. The rips were patched with different fabrics from different lands. Each patch of cloth told a different story, she used to say. But that rucksack is now gone. It went with her too.

I know I haven’t got long. Aunt Bev gave me money to get fish and chips for supper and will expect us back in half an hour. I leave Daisy in the queue. It’s a long one that snakes around the corner and along the harbour road. It’ll buy me some time, at least. I turn up past the chandlery and jog up the steep hill out of the other side of town. My legs ache and my lungs hurt to breathe but I don’t stop until I reach the row of whitewashed cottages overlooking the sea.

Miss Penluna’s cottage stands at the end, along a shared gravel pathway. The stones scrunch under my feet as I walk past the other doorways. Buckets and spades and body-boards lie outside in the small front gardens. Window boxes bright with geraniums sit on the slate window ledges. No one
real
lives in these cottages any more. They’re all holiday rentals now.

All except the end house. Miss Penluna’s cottage is a pale off-white grey. Beneath the flaking whitewash, the stones are dry and crumbly. The windows are smeared with wind-blown sea salt from past winter storms and the curtains behind are drawn tight shut. In the tangle of weeds and grasses in front of the cottage stands a lone bird-feeder filled with seed. It’s the only clue that someone lives in here at all.

I stand in front of the door. My heart is banging in my chest. I can feel it pulse through me and against the memory stick I have clutched in my hand.

I knock on the door.

Something scrabbles against the other side. Then all is still. I knock again. Maybe Miss Penluna has gone out to feed the gulls again.

I slowly turn the handle of the door. It creaks and the door pushes inwards. A blade of sunlight cuts through the darkness to a flagstone floor.

‘Hello?’ I call.

The cottage is silent. I take a step inside and almost gag. A sharp stench fills my nose and mouth, and stings my eyes. It smells of the cliffs at Gull Rock when the cliffs are covered with birds at breeding time.

‘Shut the door!’

A flurry of feathers beats against my face and the door slams shut. In the gloom I see the small figure of Miss Penluna standing in front of me.

‘You can’t take him,’ she says. ‘He’s not well.’

‘Take who?’ I say.

She peers at me closely. ‘You from the council?’

‘I’m Kara. We met on the beach.’

I hear the scrape of claws on the flagstones beside me and watch a jackdaw hop away towards another door.

‘You can’t stay,’ Miss Penluna says. She shakes her head and points with her stick to the door. ‘You’ve got to go.’

‘I need your help,’ I say.

‘Off you go.’ She opens the door and tries to prod me out.

‘
Please
,’ I say. ‘I need your help.’

She stops still, the end of her stick against my chest.

‘I’ve got something to show the angels.’

Miss Penluna peers outside, then grasps my arms in her bony hand and shuts the door. ‘You can’t stay long.’

I follow her into the kitchen. The floor is strewn with newspaper and empty china plates. The jackdaw flaps and hops on the table and watches me with its bright blue eyes.

‘So what do you want to know?’ she says.

I twirl the shell necklace round and round my hand. ‘Can you really talk to angels?’

Miss Penluna pushes a chair out from under the table with her stick and sits down. ‘They think I’m mad down in the village.’

I pull out another chair and sit opposite her at the table. The white tablecloth is splattered with patterns of spilt tea and jackdaw droppings.

She reaches out a bony finger and gently strokes the bird across its beak. ‘I’ve always heard them singing in my head. My mother told me they were angels.’ She sits back and shakes her head. ‘I don’t hear them so much any more.’

I slide the necklace and dolphin memory stick across the table. ‘This belongs to my mother,’ I say.

Miss Penluna turns it over in her hand. Her fingers are long and thin. Claw-like, almost. She pulls the memory stick apart and peers at the metal USB drive inside. ‘What’s this?’ she says.

‘A memory stick,’ I say.

She holds it close up to her eyes. ‘Whose memories?’

‘It’s not like that,’ I say. ‘It’s for a computer.’ I wonder if Miss Penluna has even seen a computer before.

She clips it shut and brushes it aside to the edge of the table. Maybe it’s not good enough to show her. She’s not interested in it at all. The jackdaw tries to peck at it, so I put it in my lap and wait.

Miss Penluna leans forward on the table. ‘What is it you
really
want to know?’

My mouth goes dry. My mind is blank. I close my eyes and try to think.

The jackdaw’s feet tip-tap on the table.

‘I want to know what happened,’ I say. ‘I want to know what happened the night Mum disappeared.’

When I open my eyes, Miss Penluna is still watching me. She pushes her wispy hair from her face. ‘The question is, are you ready?’

I grip the memory stick tightly in my hand and nod. I’m about to know what happened. I’m about to know the truth. I feel I am standing on a cliff edge, looking down, and I feel I am about to fall.

‘You must listen to the dolphins,’ says Miss Penluna.

I shake my head and stare at her. I thought I’d hear an answer, a definite answer. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I say.

Miss Penluna shrugs her shoulders. ‘They are angels of the sea.’

I sit back. I feel cheated somehow, as if I’ve used up my magic question and now other questions are flooding in my head too. How can I save the white dolphin? How can I stop the dredgers ripping up the bay? Will I ever see Mum again?