Shine On, Daizy Star

by Cathy Cassidy

  Murphy sighs. ‘Daizy. Tell me the truth!’

  The truth? That’s a scary thought. Then again, if anyone would understand, Murphy would. Maybe.

  ‘Everything’s just… you know…’ I search around for the right word. Terrible? Nightmarish? Catastrophic?

  Murphy is right – ever since I started keeping secrets and hiding the truth, my life has got more and more muddled. Pretending that nothing was going on did not make my troubles go away – it just made everything worse.

  ‘It’s a long story…’ I begin.

  But that’s as far as I get, because right about then a plump guy with a camera and a notebook appears at the poolside. ‘Daizy!’ my mum calls. ‘Daizy! Murphy! Over here a moment!’

  ‘We’ll talk later, right?’ Murphy tells me.

  ‘Promise,’ I nod, dredging up a grin.

  ‘What a shame you were delayed,’ Mum is saying to the camera guy. ‘The sponsored swim is over now, but it was a great success. I believe the children swam as far as Basingstoke…’

  I blink. The photographer from the Evening News – at last!

  ‘My daughter was there, and so was this young man,’ Mum is saying. ‘They can tell you all about it!’

  I remember what Miss Moon said, earlier, about getting publicity. It would be great for the school – and it might encourage people to make donations for the play park. Maybe it’s not too late for that, after all?

  If I talk to the photographer, Miss Moon will be really, really pleased. Maybe pleased enough to make me Star of the Week! Well, me and Murphy, maybe.

  ‘OK, kids,’ the photographer says. ‘I believe your school swam 7.1 kilometres, and everyone took part, is that right?’

  I bite my lip. Even Murphy looks shifty.

  ‘Daizy didn’t,’ he admits. ‘She twisted her ankle yesterday, so she couldn’t swim. It’s such a shame, because this whole idea was hers in the first place. The design for the play park was Daizy’s too…’

  ‘So… you’re the mastermind behind it all?’ the photographer asks. ‘Can you tell me something about your ideas?’

  ‘Well,’ I mumble. ‘It started off with a shipwreck, and pirates, which came from one of my nightmares. Not the one with the octopus, obviously, because that was the one that caused all the trouble with the Baby Dolphins, along with the stripy socks. Or the iceberg one, because that probably came from watching Titanic. Another one. Murphy helped me design it, and then we had to raise money, and Yasmin suggested a sponsored walk, but that wasn’t really watery enough, so I thought of this.’

  The photographer is looking a little stunned, and even Murphy has glazed over slightly.

  ‘Yes, well,’ the photographer says. ‘Good. Now, can we get a picture of you? Pity about your ankle, or we could get one of you in the pool. Let’s see…’

  He scans around and spots Pixie, who is wriggling into her mermaid tail for perhaps the hundred and third time today.

  ‘Perfect!’ the photographer announces. ‘Get that tail over here!’

  I’m not sure about this at all, but the photographer says that a mermaid’s tail will give just the right kind of feel to the picture. ‘I can see the headline now,’ he says as I shimmy into the padded fish-tail. ‘ “Stella Street Primary Makes a Splash!” It could go on the centre spread! Now, where shall we sit you?’

  His eyes light up. He gets me to shuffle over to the shallow end of the pool, which is not easy when you are wearing a tail, and asks Dad to bring a foam raft over. My heart starts to thump.

  ‘Not in the water,’ I protest. ‘My ankle!’

  ‘You won’t be in the water,’ the photographer says. ‘You’ll be sitting on this raft, like a real, live mermaid.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No buts,’ the photographer says. ‘It’ll be a great shot!’

  Dad helps to lift me down on to the raft, which lurches scarily as I shift into position. The tip of my tail is trailing in the water, but I daren’t move in case it unbalances the raft. I hang on for dear life. Pixie’s friends have stopped to stare.

  ‘Come on, Daizy!’ Dad grins. ‘You can do it!’

  I can do it – I can. I just have to stay very still and keep smiling. If I’m not Star of the Week for this, there is no justice in the world.

  ‘Right,’ the photographer is saying. ‘If you could just tow the raft up that way a little…’

  The crowds part as Dad pulls the raft out towards the cordoned-off part of the pool. The photographer points his camera at me and takes a couple of shots. ‘Too many people in the background,’ he grumbles. ‘It looks like a kid’s party!’

  ‘That’s because it is,’ Murphy points out.

  ‘I need you to go under the cordon, up into the deep end, where it’s quiet,’ the photographer says.

  ‘You OK with that, Daizy?’ Dad asks.

  ‘I…’

  ‘You don’t have to, Daizy,’ Murphy calls.

  ‘I…’

  The photographer sighs and lowers his camera. I can see the centre-spread feature going down the drain like yesterday’s bathwater. Without this picture, we will be lucky to get a mention at all, squeezed between the Scout Jumble Sale and the Women’s Institute Tea Dance.

  ‘You can swim, can’t you?’ the photographer asks.

  ‘I…’

  Everyone is watching me. Pixie’s friends, lined up behind me, gawping. Their parents, behind them. Mum, Dad, Becca, Spike, Pixie and Murphy.

  ‘I… of course I can!’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Dad says, lifting up the cordon so that the raft floats gently out into the empty turquoise water. I am adrift.

  ‘Fantastic!’ the photographer is saying. ‘Great shot! Just relax. Smile. Go with the flow.’

  I drift further and further into the middle of the pool, past the deep end marker. The camera keeps clicking.

  ‘Almost done! Just one little wave to finish with…’

  I lift up my hand to wave, and the raft rocks violently, swamping me with water. I shift away from the water-logged side and the raft tilts again, soaking my tail, and then I’m falling, slipping, sliding into the cold blue water, my arms scrabbling for the raft, my legs trapped inside a stupid, sopping wet party costume. I open my mouth to scream, but water floods my mouth, fills my nose, and it’s too late then to do anything else as the weight of the tail pulls me down.

  My hair tangles around my face like seaweed and my lungs burn like fire. I have to get the mermaid’s tail off. I pull at the elastic, wriggle my legs, drag the wet fabric down and kick free. The water’s surface, far above me, seems so far away…

  They say your whole life flashes before you when you are drowning, and I think it’s true. I can see the time Becca told me we could fly, back when she was seven and I was three. We crept out of our bedroom window and along the outside window ledge to try it out, and the neighbours saw us and everyone was screaming, and Mum had to call the fire brigade.

  I remember when Pixie was born, how she smelt of powder and milk, and her hands opened and closed like tiny pink starfish. I remember my first day at school, when Beth was crying in the playground and I said she could be my friend, and then we met Willow and she told us there was a snake in the girls’ toilets, and we were so scared to go in there we almost wet our pants. I remember Murphy moving in down the street the year I was seven, and the time he said I was his favourite thing except for custard doughnuts. Ethan Miller and the worm, Mum singing in the rain the year we went on holiday to Skegness, Dad standing next to the Haddock, puzzling over the plans, Miss Moon, Sue’s black eye, the stripy-sock disaster…

  I am too young to die.

  I kick my legs, frog-style, the way I learnt at Baby Dolphins before it all went horribly wrong. Strong hands grab me and haul me upwards, and the next thing I know I am lying on the hard tiles at the side of the pool, gasping for breath, pool water trickling from the corner of my mouth.

  The world comes back into focus slowly, and a jumble of voices cut throug
h the fuzzy silence.

  ‘I only asked her to wave! How was I to know she’d fall off the bloomin’ raft?’

  ‘My wife’s a nurse… quick, Liv, come through.’

  ‘She’s breathing, don’t worry. She was only underwater for a few seconds.’

  I take breath after breath of warm, dry air, gulping it down, waiting for my heart to stop pounding.

  ‘I thought she could swim?’

  ‘She’s only just learnt. She’s just finished a course with the Baby Dolphins. She got a badge.’

  ‘Actually, she didn’t,’ a familiar voice says. ‘She dropped out after the first lesson – we never saw her again.’

  I open one eye and there is Steve, the instructor from the Baby Dolphins. I should have known. The swimming instructors lurk around in the lifeguards’ office, drinking tea and gossiping, just waiting for an emergency so they can sprint out and practise their lifesaving skills. I close my eyes again, fast.

  ‘Daizy? Daizy, can you hear me?’

  ‘Gnghhh.’

  ‘Daizy? Can you sit up?’

  Dad hauls me into a sitting position while Mum drapes a towel around my shoulders and checks my pulse. I open my eyes again, wondering if they are brimming with tears or just wet from the pool. I think it’s tears.

  Dad and the lifeguard are both dripping wet, so I know that they were the ones who jumped in to rescue me. Mum, Becca, Pixie, Murphy, Spike and the photographer guy are gathered around, wide-eyed, and behind them Pixie’s friends and their parents crowd in.

  Oh, and there’s Steve.

  ‘Hello again,’ he says. ‘Daizy Star, isn’t it? I’d recognize those socks anywhere.’

  I look down at my socks, and the bulge of soggy bandage that’s gone all squint around my left ankle, and a big tear rolls down my cheek.

  The photographer guy is checking through his shots. ‘I got a great one of you falling in,’ he tells me. ‘Action pics always look good in the paper. I don’t suppose…’

  ‘Not a chance,’ Spike growls. ‘Lose the photos. Understand?’

  The guy just shrugs and says he has an urgent appointment back at the office, and I manage a shaky smile at Spike.

  ‘Daizy, love, you’re going to be OK,’ Mum says, helping me to my feet. ‘You’ve had a few mouthfuls of water, nothing serious. You just need to get out of those wet things, rest a little bit.’

  ‘We’ll leave you to it then,’ the lifeguard says. ‘Needless to say, non-swimmers should never go anywhere near the deep end. That cordon was there for a reason.’

  ‘She won’t do it again,’ Mum promises. ‘We’ll see to that.’

  ‘There’s a new Baby Dolphins class starting next week,’ Steve chips in. ‘If you want to come along…’

  Dad puts an arm around my shoulder, and somehow that helps. I don’t feel quite so stupid, quite so alone.

  ‘We’ll let you know,’ he says.

  Or not.

  Dad drives me home, and I curl up on the sofa like I used to when I was little and not feeling well. I try not to think of the swimming pool, where Mum will be slicing into the mermaid cake, putting slices into shell-patterned bags as the party winds up and the kids get changed and ready to go home.

  ‘So,’ Dad says. ‘You dropped out of Baby Dolphins after one lesson?’

  ‘I kicked my instructor by mistake,’ I confess. ‘I thought she was a giant octopus…’

  Dad blinks. ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘I’ve been having a lot of nightmares,’ I explain. ‘Shipwrecks, icebergs, pirates… and octopus attacks. I gave her a black eye.’

  Dad puts his head in his hands. ‘Oops.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ I blurt. ‘I wanted to look grown up, so I stuffed my stripy socks down the front of my swimsuit. By the end of the lesson, one was wrapped around my neck and the other was hanging down like a tail. Everyone was laughing.’

  ‘Oh, Daizy!’ Dad struggles to keep a straight face, but dimples appear in his cheeks and his mouth twitches. I try to keep my face stern, but pretty soon I’m grinning too.

  ‘What about the badge to say you’d passed the course?’ Dad asks.

  ‘I found it,’ I confess. ‘Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to lie, but once I’d started… well, it just got out of hand. I’ve been lying to just about everyone. I had this stupid idea for the sponsored swim, and then I had to lie to Miss Moon as well, and pretend that I’d sprained my ankle to get out of swimming…’

  ‘It’s not really sprained?’ Dad asks, surprised.

  ‘No. It’s just bandages and a fake limp.’

  Dad sighs. ‘That’s what happens when you start telling lies. You have to tell more and more, just to keep up, and the lies get bigger and more complicated until they trip you up and you fall flat on your face. Lies are not good.’

  ‘I know that now,’ I say. ‘Really I do. I guess I’m more ashamed of the lies than anything to do with the stripy socks.’

  Dad shakes his head. ‘Your mum and I would have understood about the swimming class. So would your friends. And if your Miss Moon is as nice as you say she is, then she’d have understood too.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’ve learnt my lesson, I promise.’

  ‘It’s always best to tell the truth, Daizy,’ Dad says. ‘Always.’

  Well, maybe. It’s just that sometimes, telling the truth can hurt people’s feelings, or squash their dreams flat. Is telling the truth still the right thing to do, even then?

  I think of Dad’s dream of jumping off the hamster wheel and sailing around the world. I think of the Haddock, a strange, squat, jigsaw of a boat, looming over our back garden and filling my heart with dread, but still, I’m not sure if I can tell Dad how I really feel about it.

  Before I can decide, there’s a commotion in the hallway. Mum, Pixie and Becca come in, with Spike trailing behind them carrying the soggy mermaid’s tail and the newt in a jar.

  ‘Ah,’ Dad says. ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Sebastian,’ Spike says politely.

  ‘Sebastian is Becca’s new boyfriend,’ Mum announces. Dad opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again as he spots Mum’s warning look. I breathe a sigh of relief, because that’s one more secret I don’t have to keep any more.

  ‘It was just the best party EVER…’ Pixie is saying. ‘Thank you for letting me be a mermaid for the day. Thank you for my tail, Daizy. You are the best sister in the whole, wide world. Anyway, I am glad you didn’t drown, and I love my tail, and I definitely, definitely want to be a mermaid when I’m grown up. Will I have to go to university for that?’

  Becca rolls her eyes. ‘Pixie, you’re seven now,’ she says briskly. ‘It’s time you realized there are actually no such things as…’

  The doorbell peals out loudly, saving Pixie from heartbreak and broken dreams.

  ‘Now what?’ Mum says.

  It turns out to be Murphy, with Beth and Willow in tow, peeping out from behind a huge bunch of flowers.

  My cheeks flare. If my best friends are here, it must mean they care, surely? I’m happy to see them, truly I am. I just wish they weren’t right here, in my living room – or what used to be my living room before it was invaded by planks, ropes, canvas and shipping charts. How long until they notice the Haddock looming outside the back window, blocking out the light?

  Right now, though, they’re not even looking.

  ‘Daizy!’ Beth says, flinging her arms around me. ‘We came as soon as Murphy called us. You poor thing! You could have drowned!’

  ‘We were so mean and nasty to you,’ Willow adds. ‘We’re so, so sorry!’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell them, and they squish down on the sofa, beside me, with Murphy in the middle.

  ‘It’s just that you’ve been acting kind of strangely, lately,’ Beth says. ‘We’ve been worried. And we thought that maybe it was because you liked Ethan too!’

  ‘I don’t!’ I protest. ‘I really, really don’t!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,
anyway,’ Willow says, shamefaced. ‘We got such a shock when we heard you almost drowned – and we realized that friendship comes first. No boy could ever come between us!’

  ‘Except for me,’ Murphy grins.

  ‘You don’t count,’ Beth and Willow say, jabbing him with their elbows, and everyone laughs and I think that maybe, just maybe, it’s going to be all right.

  Or maybe not.

  Beth sees it first. She looks towards the window and I see her jaw drop, just as Willow picks up the navigation chart from the carpet and Murphy notices the blow-up dinghy Dad has tucked away down the side of the sofa.

  ‘What… is… THAT?’ Beth gawps, and all eyes swivel to follow her gaze. There is a silence, and all eyes swivel back to me.

  Dad breaks the silence. ‘Haven’t you told them, Daizy?’ he asks.

  I shake my head, pink-cheeked, my eyes brimming with tears

  ‘Told us what?’ Willow wants to know. ‘Explained what? Just what IS that… that thing out there?’

  ‘Thing?’ Dad repeats huffily. Pixie just giggles, and Mum hides a smile behind her hand.

  ‘THING is a good description,’ Becca says. ‘It’s the Haddock, the so-called boat Dad’s building so we can sail around the world.’

  ‘The… Haddock?’ Willow echoes.

  ‘Sail around the world?’ Beth says.

  Murphy raises an eyebrow. ‘Daizy Star, just what exactly is going on?’ he demands.

  We are in the cabin of the Haddock, Beth, Willow, Murphy and me. We are stretched out on blankets and duvets on the patched-together bunks, sipping orange juice and ice and eating slices of pizza, crisps and butterfly cakes left over from the party.

  Mum and Dad took charge, suggesting a last-minute sleepover so I could tell Beth, Willow and Murphy the whole story.

  ‘Can we sleep in the boat?’ Murphy had asked, and Dad had beamed with pleasure. Mum brought down quilts and blankets and pillows, Becca unpacked the party food and set it out in the cabin, and Dad plugged my fairy lights into the extension lead he used for his electric drill. Everyone said the Haddock looked cool. Well, almost.