Page 89 of A Secret Cornish Wish
Mandy takes a very long swig of her beer. ‘Sadly, Mack, yes, it did. And I’ll never forgive myself for wishing it.’
We all stare at Mandy, wondering what she could mean.
‘Blimey, what did you wish for, Mand?’ Rob is the first to ask.
‘Don’t you all remember?’ Mandy says. Her face that has just begun to recover some of its colour again is now ghostly white, and her expression is fraught with grief once more.
‘We all wished secretly, didn’t we?’ I tell her gently, sensing something is very wrong. ‘No one knew anyone else’s wishes.’
‘But you all heard mine,’ Mandy says, her voice trembling. ‘If you remember, I said, even before we threw that stupid barrel back in the sea, “Can I wish not to have a sister?” And, as you’ve all witnessed today, my wish certainly came true, in all its stupid gory detail!’
‘Mandy, no!’ I realise a beat quicker than the others what’s happening. ‘Don’t be silly – you can’t blame yourself for this.’
‘Oh, I can,’ Mandy says, drinking again. ‘I have every day since Hetty died, and I probably will every day untilIdie. Which, if there’s any justice in the world, will be very soon.’
I pull myself to my feet and rush over to her at the same time as Claire and Suzy do.
Mandy is shaking as I put my arms around her. ‘It’s my fault,’ she murmurs as tears begin to stream down her face. ‘It’s my fault Hetty is dead.’
‘No, Mandy.’ Claire tightly grips Mandy’s hand. ‘Of course it’s not your fault. It was an accident. A dreadful, but unforeseen accident caused by nothing more than some freak weather.’
‘Claire is absolutely right,’ Suzy says, desperately trying to reassure Mandy. ‘That’s not what you actually wished for, was it – not when we threw the barrel off the rocks?’
Mandy is silent except for her sobs.
‘Is it?’ Suzy asks. ‘That was just a throwaway comment that any teenager might make about their younger sibling. The mermaid would have known that.’
I love how Suzy, probably the least likely one of us to believe in anything magical or spiritual, is talking like the mermaid is real. But thenherwish had kind of come true, I suppose.
‘Yes,’ Claire says keenly. ‘Suzy is spot on. Whatdidyou actually wish for? You don’t have to tell us if it hasn’t come true yet,’ she adds. ‘But it might help us and you to say it out loud.’
Mandy looks up at Claire, then around at us all. Eddie, Rob and even Mack are all now standing around her in a semi-circle of concern.
‘I wished I could live my life as my true self,’ Mandy says quietly. ‘I didn’t even know what that was back then – I was pretty messed up and confused. But that’s what I wished for when we threw the barrel back.’
‘But that’s wonderful,’ Claire says, putting the positive spin she always does on everything – good or bad. ‘Because that’s what’s happening to you now. You are living your true life, Mandy. You’ve not only come out to yourself, but to us as well. Now, you can go on and live your life exactly as you should, not pretending to be someone you’re not, but honestly and truthfully as the wonderful person you really are.’
Mandy looks gratefully up at Claire as more tears roll down her face. I pray they are tears of relief this time, and not sorrow.
‘You really think it wasn’t me that made it happen?’ she asks in a tiny desperate voice, that sounds quite unlike the Mandy we’re all used to.
‘Iknowit wasn’t you,’ Claire says. ‘Weallknow it wasn’t you.’
As we all surround Mandy in an enormous group hug, I’m sure I can actually feel the love bursting from our tight-knit little group as we stand in the moonlight, under the stars, looking after one of our own. And, the wonderful thing is, in the process we now seem to have accrued one more, if unexpected member to our gang, as Mack joins in and therefore becomes one of us – a Misfit Mermaid.
And as we slowly release Mandy one by one, I’m sure I’m not the only mermaid who hears the all too familiar splash from the waves below us . . .
Twenty-Three
July 2014
My journey down to Cornwall today has been relatively easy and without incident.
We took the early morning train from Glasgow Central, changed once before we got to London, and then again a little while ago in Penzance, and now we are on the last – and by far the prettiest – part of the journey as we travel towards St Felix. We could have got a slightly more direct train, but it was a lot more expensive, so we took the cheaper, if a lot longer route.
But Rosie, as she always does, has taken it all in her stride and is now, as she’s been for much of the journey, nose-deep in her latest paperback novel. I smile lovingly at my daughter; she always looks so utterly engrossed in her books and I often have to call her name several times before she hears me when she’s reading at home in her bedroom.
Rosie has only visited St Felix twice before in her young life. Once when she was a baby, and I took her down to visit my parents before they moved to Norfolk. They moved almost eight years ago, are now happily retired and living in a little bungalow by the sea. And the second time, when she was five, and we went to stay with Claire and her children for a short holiday.
