Page 23 - The Mermaid Call

behind us, yeah? She was the same when she was little, rebellious, mischievous, never did anything she was told. Not like you, my good, clever, girl.”
Mimi stared at me extra-long, extra-hard, as if all her hopes for the shop rested on me being clever and good. Then she brightened with an idea. “I know, let’s treat ourselves to a chippie tea later on. A selkie frame and a couple of nixie keyrings should cover a small cod each, what d’you say?”
I checked my watch. Alice was late.
I was as twitchy as the White Rabbit, waiting for a heroine with long fair hair.
On the lake behind, a faint swirling mist was keeping the few tourists off the water, the
rental rowing boats (all named for mermaids) bobbing emptily by the jetty; the ice cream cabin had closed early. I lifted my eyes skywards towards the three bronze heads above me. I’d told Alice to meet me here, at the Mermaid Girls sculpture, because it’s where the official tourist trail starts if you have a pound spare for a map. The village makes a right old fuss of this area, pretty flower baskets and extra-special bunting and a bandstand where music plays on sunny days throughout summer. When the Festival starts at the end of August, it fills with lines of huts, selling chocolate mermaid tails and edible shell necklaces; plastic crowns and tridents and nylon wigs. And the High Street closes for the Mermaid parade and its colourful, crazy floats and there are lines of girls dressed as mermaids and boys as Neptune, finishing with the Crowning in the Shell Grotto. Mind you, I’d not entered the Mermaid Crown myself since two years ago, when Charlie Tate said I had boy’s shoulders. “She’s King Triton not Ariel!” he’d laughed to his friends. It sort of put me off – I pulled on my anorak sleeves – you know, forever.
“Watch it – the wind might change and leave you looking that way.”
Alice DeLacey.
She pulled a face of exasperation. “That’s what the battleaxe – The Dragon – is always
saying.” Her wide-spaced deep-sea blues rolled upwards.
“Grandmothers,” I groaned dramatically for solidarity, even if Mimi wasn’t anything like a
battleaxe, or even officially called Grandmother.