Page 36 - The Mermaid Call

owner, Ursula Undine (self-named), lodged like a frog on a lily pad in her glass change cabin (glaring at every customer like they’d cheated), past the penny drops, heading instinctively for my favourite: The Mermaid Messenger. It’s an ancient arcade game from the Lydia and Violet days that no one else seems to play but me. All gilt metal and giant lever with an eyepiece to a mermaid who sparkles across the screen and deposits a written message every time. When I was little, I used to pretend the messages were from Mum and keep them all in a box like you might save voicemails.
Ten pence in, I yanked angrily on the lever. The mermaid danced then disappeared. Click. Clunk. The machine spat out its message.
Don’t fear flying too fast, be scared of standing still
Sure, right. I pushed it into my anorak pocket. I’d stopped keeping them in a box years ago.
Trudging back outside, I could see a long thin heron emerging through the mist above the lake, grazing the waves at the shore before stretching out its long, delicate wings to ascend again.
It instantly made me think of Mum, my stork, “delivered you; took off”. Because the world of Lake Splendour was too small for her. I gripped my own arm. Cages across caves; secrets trapped in glass bottles; queen conch shells locked in cabinets.
I retrieved my Mermaid message. Don’t fear flying too fast, be scared of standing still
And I started walking. Faster. On past our shop (even though our battered fish wanted putting on plates). Past the sign ‘Welcome to Lake Splendour’ and up the road, rising above the water, alongside evergreens like cathedral spires, keeping the few big houses up here private and secluded and silent. I rarely came up this hill, if I did it was in the car, never on foot. The glimpses of lake between the trees looked magical, a silky canopy of mist hovering above it, like a private paradise.
Breath panting with the fast ascent, I soon reached the DeLacey house, at the top of the road before it circled off from the lake and into the mountains. Its wrought iron gates were closed. I peered through them like a prisoner, at the striped fake-Tudor house at the end of a