I noticed the broken plank on Dad’s shed when I re-opened the chicken coop after the storm. He always kept it locked, and I couldn’t resist the lure of forbidden secrets. I checked that Dad wasn’t in sight and ducked behind the shed to investigate. The gap was just wide enough for me to wriggle through with a little effort. I’d become a woman that year, and my budding body wouldn’t slip through narrow gaps like the child I had been so recently.
My eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom. The rafters were draped with dusty nets; old cork floats hung from walls garlanded with cobwebs. Without knowing why, I found my hand reaching for a small crate on a shelf and lifting it down. A single word had been burnt into the lid – Ronat – my Mother’s name. Was this something of hers? She’d never had many possessions, and I couldn’t understand why she’d have kept a box locked away in Dad’s shed, where she never came. I hadn’t seen Dad down here since she sickened and died, either. I slid the wooden lid off and gasped.
It was the finest suede I’d ever seen; so delicate, so lightly tanned, it felt like water in my hands. I lifted it up and shook it out, revealing the whole skin of some animal, large enough to be a cloak. I carried it to where dim daylight seeped through the broken wall. A little rain blew through the gap and onto the suede, making it quiver like a live thing in my hands. When I squeezed outside again, it felt only natural to wrap the cloak around me.
Avoiding our cottage for the moment, I made for the jetty where Pinniped knocked gently against its fenders. Sitting on the rough planks, my legs dangling, the suede cloak wrapped around my shoulders, I was almost hypnotised by the waves that bobbed gently in the aftermath of the storm. How inviting they looked.
I heard a shout and turned to see Dad running towards me.
“Sylvie, no!” he repeated. “Not like your mother!”
Startled, I stood and started to walk towards him, wrapping the cloak around me, but then I hesitated as if something was drawing me away.
“Don’t do this, Sylvie! You don’t have to be the same as your mother,” he cried. Nearer now, I could see the sweat on his lined face and the panic in his eyes. I clutched the cloak as I wavered, then my feet slipped from under me, and I tumbled into the deep, grey water.
I struggled to orient myself, hampered by the cloak which seemed more alive than ever, wrapping itself around my legs. The current slammed me against something, knocking the breath from my lungs. Momentarily stunned, I hung motionless, not struggling, not even sure which way the surface was. The cloak settled itself softly around me. Then I remembered Dad running, and swam towards the dappled light.
My head broke the surface and I could see him standing on the jetty, looking straight at me; but he didn’t seem to see me. I tried to raise my arm and wave, but it wouldn’t lift out of the water. Instead, I surface-dived to swim to him.
This time the water seemed to welcome me into itself. I dived deeper into the kindly depths, seeing colours I’d never noticed before. I twisted and rolled, afloat and comfortable like a baby deep inside its mother’s skin. I’d been underwater for several minutes, but I didn’t need to breathe yet. Then there were more faces in the water, other seals appearing out of the greyness, swimming round, inspecting me. We surfaced together, a long way from the jetty. I could barely make out the human figure standing there, before we dived back into the grey world and swam out to sea.
