She brings the blankets around her patient. She wonders, briefly, who else has done this for him – for whoever he is, he’ll have had a mother. Does he have a wife? There is no ring. No white mark where a ring has been.
Amnesia. It’s a new one for her. Nearly half a century since she became a nurse, and how many amnesiacs has she met? She will have to research it – books, online.
Tabitha pads through to her kitchen.
It is small, square. It is dark, too, for its single window looks out onto a bank of grass. A sheep has been here this morning – she can see its fresh droppings, berry-bright. Tabitha exhales, picks up the phone. The task she must do is motherly.
Hello? It is answered after two rings.
Em, it’s me.
What do you want?
I have a request …
There is silence from her sister.
Well – it’s this …
* * *
The quayside is empty, and still. Nancy cannot see anyone now – just their black cat and a gull that walks like a man in a waistcoat, his hands behind his back. The gull has eyed the cat; the cat, in turn, is treading in the shadows, keeping her distance. As a kitten, she got pecked at; her ear is split at its tip.
Nancy shuffles forwards, drops down onto the sand. There is a shell here – blue, and chalky inside. She brings it right up to her eye and looks at it. It is joined, with two halves and when she presses those halves together the shell clacks, like a mouth.
She makes the shell say hello to the cat. Hello to the mean-looking gull.
What have you there, little Nancy?
The voice makes her jump. She turns. It is old Mrs Coyle with her walking stick and her butterscotch breath. She has made her way down from the white house, near the sea wall. There is a line of sweat between her nose and mouth. Mrs Coyle dabs at it.
Another lovely morning. All this lovely weather!
She tucks the tissue up her sleeve.
May I join you?
They sit side by side on the harbour’s bench. Nan swings her legs. It’s a shell.
And a fine one, too. A mussel shell. Look at that blue …
I found it down there.
Well, they’re common enough. Have you eaten mussels?
Nan shakes her head. She likes doing this, as she has glass bobbles at the end of her plaits which knock against each other. She shakes her head more than she needs to.
Your brother could find you some, I’m sure. Whilst he’s out walking.
Nan picks at some grit she finds in the shell. She is not sure what to say to Mrs Coyle, or what to say about mussels, so she says Sam found a person on Wednesday night. He was washed up at Sye.
So I heard.
Daddy says he probably fell off a boat.
Does he? Perhaps.
Nan looks up. Do you think he did?
Fell overboard?
She nods.
Well, perhaps. It’s nine miles to the mainland, which would be a very long swim.
She squints at the ferry. Is he a ghost, maybe?
Oh I think he’s real enough. Your brother carried him! So did the Bundy men. If he was a ghost how could they carry him?
A pirate?
No pirates.
Nan studies the shell. I think he’s a pirate.
No, no. I don’t think so.
Who do you think he is, Mrs Coyle?
Abigail smiles. Me? She stays quiet for a moment. She takes the tissue out, dabs her nose and pops it back again. Then she leans towards Nancy and says do you like stories?
Stories?
Yes. I thought most children liked stories.
Only good ones.
Ah! Very wise. Have you heard of the Fishman?
She looks up from her shell. A Fishman?
The Fishman. A man who has the tail of a fish, but he can also grow legs and come ashore?
Nan stares. He’s a fish? A fish who grew legs? She looks down at the shell, wide-eyed. Maybe she has heard the story. Maybe Alfie told her in the playground once. And there is a book on her shelf – a pink spine, with thick cardboard pages – which has a mermaid in it, and so she turns and says like a mermaid?
Abigail considers this. Yes, in a way. But it’s always a man in the stories – a strong, bearded, good-looking man.
The mussel shell goes clack.
My husband saw him, once. At Sye.
Nan’s eyes grow like moons.
Jim was young, but he remembers it. Says he looked up from the beach and saw a man swimming – a man with dark hair, and a very solemn face. Then he went under, and where he had been swimming there rose a huge, silvery tail …
Mr Coyle saw him? Properly?
He did.
And this is him? This man is the Fishman he saw? But he’s got legs now?
Abigail smiles. Why not? Humans think they know everything but there is so much more.
They are watched, as they talk. One of the oldest and the youngest inhabitants of Parla, side by side on the wrought-iron bench.
Dee Lovegrove stands in her bedroom. She has taken a pillowcase off the radiator, and she folds it by the window. Outside, she can see them. Nancy is wearing her denim dungarees with the heart-shaped buttons. She insisted on plaits this morning but one is already escaping its band and there’s mud, Dee notes, on her knees. Never, ever tidy. Nan discards clothing like petals, sticks her fingers into all manner of dirt. It was sheep dung last week, and diesel the week before. Little Nancy Lovegrove. Dee feels a pang of love. It is the sudden punch of it that she always feels with her children – Nan’s reddened knees, or how Sam puts his sunglasses on, patting the sides to make sure they’re in place. Today, Rona had looked so beautiful, standing on the quayside with her arms full of cakes and Dee had watched her step back from the crate, shield her eyes against the sun. Dee had thought, she’s mine. All grown up.
And her other boys, too. After Sam, there came the twins – as alike as shoes are. In the first few years of their life, it was Dee and Dee alone who knew who was who, and it was their ways that told her, not how they looked. Ben would gaze past her, as he lay on the changing mat; he’d watch a bee or a bird’s shadow on the bedroom wall – whilst Austin’s eyes would be on her, and her alone. Austin spoke first by three weeks. Yes, Dee knew who was who.
A pang, too, for