The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins (25 page)

When Lucy was younger and they drove to the seaside, she would
expect to see the sea sparkling on the other side of every hill
they went over and she would imagine the smell of salt spray in her
nostrils tens of miles before they got there. She imagined that now
as she sat on the bus. As the bus turned, her sense of expectation
heightened and she craned her neck to see over the hedgerow in the
hope of seeing the sea. She could just about make something out
through the thicket of green and then the hedge dipped and yes, oh
yes, there was the sea, glittering below them. A moment later she
had lost sight of it again, but it filled her heart with excitement
to glimpse the sea down there, full of promise. She felt as though
somehow she were coming home.

The bus began to make its slow descent down towards Merwater.
Fields gave way to houses and then the bus turned down the steep
road into the centre of the small town, past the terraced cottages,
fashionable cafes and tourist shops. The bus pulled up, its brakes
squealing and Lucy stood up, stiff from sitting and joined the five
or so other people disembarking from the bus. She stood by the bus
stop, looking around, trying to acclimatise herself and to get her
bearings. There was the harbour in front of her, the fishing boats
and pleasure boats vying for position and beyond it, the sea! The
sun had just come out and Lucy wished she could run and dive into
the salty waters there and then, although it was still too early in
the year to be warm enough to do so. A gull sat on a bollard and
regarded her disdainfully. Lucy glanced behind her. There was a
small car park and she saw a sign for a tourist information office.
The other people on the bus walked off into the town and she
wondered whether she should follow them. She glanced at her watch.
It was ten past two. She had made good time. She looked around her
again, half expecting Bethany to appear out of nowhere in front of
her.

As Lucy watched, she spotted the figure of a middle aged,
comfortably built lady who appeared to be coming towards her. The
lady took quick steps, as though she were late for something and
clasped her cardigan around her in an effort to keep out the breeze
from the sea. The woman got closer.

‘
Is your name Lucy?’ she called. Lucy was amazed.

‘
Err, yes it is. Who are you?’ she replied
cautiously.

‘
My name’s Thelma Merryweather dear’ replied the lady,
evidently out of breath. ‘A friend of yours asked me to come and
meet you, but I got stuck on the phone and was worried you’d be
gone by the time I got here.’

‘
What, who?’ was all Lucy could say, still confused.

‘
Agnes Trescothick dear.’ Thelma looked at the young girl in
her smart school uniform, rucksack on her back. She hadn’t been
hard to spot. None of the local schools had that kind of uniform.
‘Agnes gave me a call after she put you on the bus. Don’t look so
surprised, everyone knows everyone else round here!’ She smiled at
the young girl reassuringly. ‘She wasn’t just going to let you
gallivant off all on your own now was she? It was either call me or
call the police you know.’ Lucy opened her mouth to speak and then
closed it again. She thought for a moment.

‘
Do you know my Aunt, Bethany Ames?’ Lucy asked.

‘
Oh goodness me yes, I know Bethany!’ replied Thelma. ‘Why she
was in my kitchen just the other day.’

‘
Do you know where she lives then’ asked Lucy
excitedly.

‘
Well, sort of, but not exactly’ replied Thelma. ‘But we can
find out easily enough though’ she added. Thelma turned and pointed
to a shop-front a hundred or so metres away. ‘You see that shop
window over there? That’s one of them fancy galleries run by some
man down from London. They’ve got a couple of your Aunt’s pictures
in the window. They’ll know your Aunt Bethany’s address, I’m sure
of it.’

They walked across to the small gallery.

‘
Just you wait here a minute’ said Thelma, ‘I’ll be back in a
jiffy!’ She disappeared into the shop, the bell on the door tinging
as she went in. Lucy was glad really. She wanted to stay outside,
after having been sat in a stuffy train and then a bus all day and
she lingered by the window, looking at the pictures on display.
Although she knew that Bethany was an artist, she had never
actually seen any of Bethany’s work. Now, staring at the pictures
in the window, she realised that two of them were on prominent
display. A small sign was next to each of them, ‘Bethany Ames.
Award winning local artist.’ She looked with a mixture of pride and
curiosity at the two pictures.

The first was a picture of a storm at sea. There was a great
swirl of blue, black, grey and green, all in different hues. The
wind picked up the sea and had thrown angry waves this way and
that. The clouds were low and the way Bethany had painted the
picture, it was hard to tell where the sea ended and the waves
began. The waves and clouds all seemed to swirl around in the
middle and there was a distant glimmer of light which seemed to
illuminate the windswept scene below. As Lucy looked, she suddenly
realised that there was a tiny figure in the water, almost lost
amidst the drama of the scene; a small figure of a child, clinging
to drift wood, slung this way and that by the violence of the
storm. Lucy peered at the figure and realised that it was a young
girl, of a similar age to herself. The thought gave her a shiver
down her spine. She imagined herself in the eye of the storm and
wondered how she would feel. Would she be scared for her life, or
would her friend Spirit come and save her? She searched intently
for the outline of a dolphin approaching the girl, battling through
the waves to get to her. She half thought that she could see one,
but was not quite sure. Maybe her eyes were deceiving
her.

Then she looked at the other picture by Bethany in the window.
It was much smaller than the first. This too was of a girl, looking
solemnly out of the picture into the distance, as though the girl
were looking far, far away. For a moment Lucy thought that it was a
picture of her, then with a shock she realised it was a painting of
her mother Megan, Bethany’s sister. Lucy felt weak and slumped
against the window of the shop to support herself, she thought she
would faint. The girl, her mother, looked pale, almost like a
ghost. Tears pricked in Lucy’s eyes and a lump caught painfully in
her throat.

Just then Thelma bustled out of the door of the gallery again,
the bell of the door clanging behind her. Lucy stood up again and
quickly wiped the corner of each eye.

‘
Well I’ve got it’ she announced, holding a piece of paper in
her hand. Do you want to give your Bethany a call?’ Thelma produced
an elderly looking mobile phone from her pocket and tapped in the
number before handing it to Lucy. Lucy held it to her ear but all
she heard was a flat tone. She pulled a face.

‘
There’s terrible reception up there behind the town’ she said,
‘and I don’t think Bethany has a landline. It’s the luck of the
draw whether you get through at all sometimes’ she continued.
‘There’s only one thing for it, we’d better take a drive up there
and see if she’s in.’

‘
I’m not supposed to get in cars with strangers’ said Lucy
uncertainly.

‘
Well I can’t very well post you there can I and we’ve got to
do something with you haven’t we?’ replied Thelma with an
understanding smile.

‘
I suppose I could leave a message in the gallery.’ Dad always
told her she should make sure at least someone knew where she was.
She couldn’t imagine someone like Thelma doing anything strange and
she had to get to Bethany’s somehow. She knew her aunt lived out of
town and she didn’t have enough money left to get a taxi. Lucy went
into the gallery and left a message. The gallery owner was very
understanding and Lucy quickly scribbled a note, just in case. She
soon emerged, feeling happier. They walked back over the road to
the small car park by the harbour.

‘
I’ve got my Nate’s old pick-up today’ said Thelma
conversationally, as they crossed the road. ‘He’s a fisherman you
know and the bloomin’ thing stinks of fish!’ She unlocked the
battered car and Thelma cleared papers off the passenger seat so
that Lucy could sit down. Thelma was right; it certainly did smell
of fish. Lucy wrinkled her nose in distaste, but fortunately Thelma
wound down the window and the breeze blew away the worst of the
smell. ‘Right, let’s get going then.’

The car engine growled into life and they set off back up the
hill Lucy had come down forty minutes before on the bus. Before she
knew it, they were in the countryside again, but this time on a
narrow country lane, with banks steeped up on either side of them.
Eventually they turned through a farm gate and into an open farm
yard.

‘
There it is’ said Thelma nodding her head towards an old farm
building tucked away in the corner. ‘That’s where your Bethany
lives.’ They got out of the car. Lucy felt a mixture of anxiety and
anticipation as she stepped out onto the mud of the farm yard,
slinging her bag up on her back. A cow mooed from a corrugated shed
on one side of the yard and the rich smell of well-rotted manure
wafted over in the breeze from the fields down the hill.

‘
Go on then’ said Thelma smiling. ‘Go and knock on the door.’
The weather-worn door was not on the latch and so when Lucy knocked
it, it swung back. She pushed it open and looked inside.

‘
Bethany?’ she called. Lucy heard a noise from the interior and
then Bethany appeared, paintbrush in hand, wearing old torn jeans
and a sweater with splodges of paint on it.

‘
Lucy!’ she cried, amazed to see her niece shyly looking round
the door into her home. ‘What on earth are you doing
here?!’

After Bethany got over the initial shock of Lucy suddenly
turning up unannounced and Thelma had told her how she had come to
collect Lucy from the bus stop, Thelma explained that she had to
get back to cover reception at the surgery and left. Lucy and
Bethany found themselves alone.

‘
Oh, it’s so good to see you Kiddo’ said Bethany
affectionately, giving Lucy a big hug. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot
about you since your text and our chat on the phone a few days ago.
I really felt torn about what to do for the best. But here you are
now anyway!’

Lucy smiled shyly and hugged Bethany in reply. It was a relief
to be there at last, but she still didn’t feel safe, not till she
knew how Dad would react. It was three o’clock now and Dad was
expecting to pick her up from French club at four thirty. She or
Bethany would have to give him a call soon and that was the moment
that Lucy was dreading.

‘
Look at you, in your uniform, coming all this way on your
own!’ Bethany exclaimed. ‘I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw
you, you gave me such a surprise. A good one though!’ she added
hastily. Bethany could tell that Lucy was feeling very vulnerable
just at that moment and wasn’t ready to speak, so she went to the
kitchen area to make a drink whilst Lucy stared out of the
window.

‘
It’s beautiful here’ Lucy said absently. She wandered over to
the easel where Bethany had been working. She recognised the face
of the ornithologist that Bethany was painting as a commission.
She’d seen him on a wildlife programme on the TV. The painting was
almost finished. It looked really good.

Lucy glanced down. Propped up against the wall was another
picture half finished, of a young girl, standing with her back to
the sea, the wind blowing her hair across her face, half obscuring
it. It was another picture of Mum, Bethany’s sister. But it wasn’t
a picture of Mum as an adult, the painting showed her as a child,
of about Bethany’s own age, like the one in the gallery window in
town. Lucy felt her legs go weak again.

Just at that moment Bethany came up behind her with the drink
she had prepared. Lucy turned and looked at her with anguish in her
eyes.

‘
Do you keep painting pictures of Mum because she’s dead?’ she
asked simply. Bethany’s face crumpled up in tears. She slowly put
the two mugs down.

‘
I guess so’ she whispered quietly, trying to hold back the
emotion. ‘I guess I do.’ She hugged Lucy again tightly and Lucy
could feel Bethany’s salty tears dripping down onto her face. Lucy
wished she could cry too, but just at that moment she just felt
numb. They stood there together for a minute or so and then Bethany
stood back, wiping her red eyes with a handkerchief.

‘
I’d have put it away if I’d known you were coming’ she said.
‘I suppose you saw the one in the gallery in Merwater. It’s not for
sale you know. Just for show because the owner Lionel there asked
me specially to show it.’

‘
But why do you paint her the same age as me?’ Lucy asked,
emotion clutching at her throat.

‘
That’s just how I always think of Megan, your Mum I mean. I
always think back to the time when we were girls together, down
here over the summer.’ She smiled and sniffed, wiping her eyes
again. ‘It’s funny how the mind works.’

A few minutes later Lucy glanced at her watch. ‘Oh no’ she
thought, it was already a quarter to four.

‘
We’ve got to phone Dad’ she said to Bethany with a heavy
heart. ‘He’ll be picking me up at four thirty from school.’ Right
now Bethany wasn’t going to ask any difficult questions. She could
find out more later.