White Dolphin (4 page)

Dad pushes back my hair. He looks right in my eyes but I can’t tell what he’s thinking any more.

‘Mum’s still here for us, Dad,’ I say. ‘I know she is.’

Aunt Bev thumps her mug down, slopping tea across the table. ‘Your mother stopped being here for you the day she left.’

Uncle Tom lays a hand upon her arm. ‘That’s enough, Bev.’

Aunt Bev’s not finished. ‘But it’s true. And we were left to pick up the pieces. It can’t go on like this, Jim. How long are you going to wait for her? Another year? Five years? Ten years?’

‘Leave it, Bev.’ Uncle Tom tries to steer her away. ‘Not now, not tonight.’

Aunt Bev pulls away and glares at Dad. ‘Kay should never have left. Her responsibilities were
here
.’ She raps her finger hard on the table to make her point.

Dad sits down and puts his head in his hands. ‘We’ve been through this before, Bev. She had her reasons.’

‘Going halfway around the world on some hippie dolphin-saving trip?’ she snaps. ‘Was that a good enough reason to leave a husband and child?’

I scowl at Aunt Bev. ‘Mum’s a marine biologist,’ I shout. ‘She’s stopping people catching wild dolphins. You
know
that.’

But Aunt Bev ignores me and sits down next to Dad. ‘You’ve got to face it, Jim. If your own sister can’t tell you, then who can? You’ve just got to accept that Kay isn’t coming back.’

Dad shoots her a look. ‘We don’t know that, Bev. We just don’t know.’

Aunt Bev throws her hands up in the air. ‘Exactly. That’s always been the problem. We don’t know anything. A year on and still the only thing we
do
know is that she landed in the Solomon Islands, checked into her hotel room and vanished.’

Dad shakes his head. ‘I should have gone and looked for her at the time.’

‘You couldn’t afford the bus fare to the airport, let alone the plane ticket,’ Aunt Bev snorts. ‘The authorities there couldn’t find her. Not even the private detective hired by the families of the others that disappeared could find her. The case is closed.’

Dad frowns. ‘People don’t just disappear.’

Aunt Bev sits back and looks at Dad. ‘You can’t bury your head in the sand for ever, for Kara’s sake at least. You’ve got all Kay’s debts to pay. Thousands for that trip and all that fancy diving stuff she bought. But I bet you haven’t told Kara that, have you, Jim?’

Dad stands up. His chair knocks back against the wall. ‘I’m going out.’

Uncle Tom shifts aside to let him pass.

‘That’s right,’ Aunt Bev shouts after Dad. ‘Walk away like you always do.’

I stand up too. ‘Mum wouldn’t leave us. I know she’ll come back. She sent the dolphin.’

Dad stops, his hand on the door.

Aunt Bev glares at Dad’s back. ‘You’ve got no house, Jim Wood; no job to speak of, and soon no boat.’ She takes a deep breath and turns to me. ‘So there’ll be no more talk of dolphins in this house, Kara. Is that understood?’

She folds her arms.

She’s said her piece.

She’s done.

But I don’t care. The white dolphin is a sign that Mum’s out there somewhere, and I’ll wait for her, however long it takes. I want Dad to know this too. Mum will come back. I know she will. We’ll live on
Moana
, the three of us, and sleep under canvas stretched across the boom. We’ll sail away together one day like she always said we would.

Mum, Dad, and me.

The phone rings through the silence.

Uncle Tom answers it and passes it to Dad. ‘It’s for you, Jim.’

Dad takes the phone and I hear him pacing in the hallway. I hear his voice, soft and quiet. He walks back into the kitchen and puts the phone down on the receiver. He opens the back door, leans against the door frame and lets the cool night air rush in.

Aunt Bev’s got her head on one side. ‘Well . . . who was that?’

Dad’s shoulders are slumped. ‘It’s an offer for
Moana
,’ he says. ‘A man wants to view her this weekend.’

I
 cut Daisy’s toast in triangles and push the plate to her side of the table.

She pulls off the crust and looks at me. ‘Aren’t you having any breakfast?’

‘Not hungry,’ I say.

Aunt Bev looks at me across the top of her magazine. ‘You’re not having a day off school. The head teacher wants to see you about what you did to Jake Evans’s nose.’

I frown. I don’t want to go to school at all.

‘I sent a big box of chocolates to Jake with your name on,’ she says. ‘Cost me nearly ten pounds it did. Let’s just hope it keeps his dad happy too.’

I get up from the table and grab my schoolbag. ‘I’ll be waiting outside,’ I tell Daisy.

Outside the sky is clear and blue. A rag of pale grey cloud stretches along the distant horizon above the sea. All I want to do is go out on
Moana
, but Dad left early to cook breakfasts for guests staying at the pub. I lean against the caravan and scuff the dry ground with my feet and wait for Daisy. I wish I was back at the primary school with her too. I felt safe there. It wasn’t just words and numbers like it is now in senior school. Mum was still here last year too.

‘I’m coming,’ calls Daisy.

I watch her walk down the path with her schoolbag across her shoulder and a larger bag dragging along the ground. ‘What’ve you got in there?’ I ask.

‘Fairy dress and wings and wand and a present for Lauren,’ she grins. ‘It’s her party after school.’

I roll my eyes. ‘I forgot,’ I say. ‘Come on, I’ll carry it.’

I walk Daisy through the mothers and pushchairs at the school gates of the primary school and give her a hug. ‘I’ll be back here after school,’ I say.

Daisy reaches into her bag and pulls a scrunched-up piece of paper from the pocket. ‘I did this for you,’ she says, ‘for good luck when you see Mrs Carter.’

I flatten the paper out and smile. A white wax crayon dolphin is swimming in an ink blue sea. ‘Thanks, Daisy,’ I say. ‘It’s just what I need.’

I mean it too. I’m going to need all the luck I can get.

I have to miss double art on Friday mornings to have extra sessions with Mrs Baker, my learning support teacher. I wish I could miss maths or ICT instead. Art is the only lesson I enjoy. It’s not that I mind Mrs Baker. At least I don’t get laughed at in her lessons. She says my dyslexia is just a different way of thinking. I remember her saying it often runs in families and I reckon that’s why Dad can’t read or write. Mum once tried to get him to see someone about it but he wouldn’t go, said it was too late for him to learn.

The only spare classroom is a Portakabin at the far end of the playground, now used as a store. I sit at one of the tables, a tray of sand in front of me. We’re doing Mrs Baker’s new technique today.
Multi sensory development
, she calls it.

I call it a waste of time.

I pull the tray towards me and pick up a handful of sand, letting the grains run through my fingers. It’s the coarse gritty sand from the car park end of the beach, not the fine white powder sand near the rock pools towards the headland.

Mrs Baker pulls up her chair and pats the sand down flat. ‘Let’s try the “
au
” sound, as in “sauce”.’

My fingers hover above the sand and I start to trace the outline of an ‘
a
’. I know this one. It’s the shape of Gull Rock from the shore, one rounded side and one steep, a dark cave circled in the centre. I start the top loop of the ‘
a
’ where the rocks are stained white with centuries of seabird mess. Gannets nest on the seaward side. I’ve watched them twist in the air and dive for fish, like white missiles into the water. Dad and I have seen puffins, too, scoot along above the waves. I curl my finger down to the base where grey seals haul out on the flat rocks and have their pups on the narrow pebble beach that faces the mainland shore. Submerged rocks and underwater caves and arches spread out into the sea. A wrecked warship has become part of the reef. I run my fingers across in wave patterns in the sand. Mum once showed me a photo she’d taken of a cuckoo wrasse, a fish with bright blue and orange markings, swimming through a rusted porthole and another of pink and white feather-stars living along the old gun-barrels. The whole reef spreads out from Gull Rock to the shore, an underwater safari park, a hidden wilderness.

‘Kara!’

I look up. I didn’t hear Mrs Carter come into the room. She smiles briefly at Mrs Baker and pulls up a chair beside me. She slides the Bible and some of the ripped pages on the table.

‘I think Kara and I need a talk,’ she says.

Mrs Baker’s eyes flit between us. She gathers up her papers and shoulders her saggy carpet-bag. ‘There’s no lesson next Friday, Kara, as it’s the last day of term, so if I don’t see you before then, have a lovely summer.’

I watch her walk out towards the car park at the back of the school.

A cloud shadow slides across the playground, darkening the room.

Mrs Carter leans forward in her chair. ‘I hear you’ve been making great improvements with your writing,’ she says. Her smile is a thin hard line.

I stare at the tray of sand and run my fingers through the coarse grains. We both know we’re not here to talk about my dyslexia today.

‘I know this year’s been hard for you, Kara.’

I look up. Mrs Carter is watching me. She takes her glasses off and folds them neatly on the table.

‘It’s all right to be angry.’ Her voice is soft, controlled. ‘I understand.’

I trace a circle in the sand, round and round and round. I want this to be over with.

‘But you can’t take your anger out on other children and school property.’

I let silence sit between us.

Mrs Carter leans closer. ‘You broke Jake Evans’s nose,’ she says. ‘How do you feel about that now?’

I dot two eyes and trace the outline of a smile in my circle. ‘His dad’s going to destroy the reef,’ I say. ‘He’s going to pull his dredging chains across it and rip it up when the ban is lifted.’

‘There is never an excuse for violence, Kara.’

I stare hard at the sand. Mrs Carter sits back in her seat and folds her arms. I think she wants this to be over with as much as me.

‘But why rip up the Bible, Kara? Tell me that.’

I want to say it’s because she told us God will answer all our prayers. Well, I’ve been praying for news of Mum for a whole year now and I haven’t heard a thing. But I don’t tell her that. Instead, I shrug my shoulders and scrunch the sand up in my hands.

The school bell rings marking the end of the second lesson. The next lesson is maths, before the break. I glance up at Mrs Carter.

‘How can we resolve this, Kara?’ she says. ‘You tell me.’

I run my finger along the hard edge of the Bible. Resolve what? Mum not coming back? Dredging the reef? I know she doesn’t mean those things at all. I lift the corner of a tissue-thin ripped page. ‘I could help mend it,’ I say.

Mrs Carter sits back in her chair and nods. ‘It would be a good start,’ she says. ‘You can help me repair it on Monday after school. It’ll give you the weekend to think things through. But you know I’ll have to speak to your father about all this.’

I let the sand trickle through my fingers and watch it pile up in a little mountain in the tray.

‘And you’re to apologize to Jake as well,’ she says.

I stare at my hands, flecked with tiny crystal grains.

Mrs Carter stands up and tucks the Bible under her arm. ‘You can go now.’

I stand up and walk away but I feel her eyes burn in my back. Maybe she can read my mind. I’ll help her stick the pages in her Bible.

But I won’t say sorry to Jake Evans.

I’d rather die.

I
 stand in silence in the corridor outside the maths room. Through the end windows I see the bright sunlit playground and far beyond that, the sea. I could walk out of here; just keep walking on and on. There’s no one here to stop me, no one here to see. But I don’t do that. Instead, I put my hand on the door and push it open. Everyone in my class knows I’ve had to see Mrs Carter about breaking Jake Evans’s nose. I know they’ll all stop and turn and stare when I walk in.