Storm

his bloodshot eyes, as if he’d been on the go all night without any sleep.
Now I thought about it, the others looked pretty bad too. The way they moved had a heavy feel. They needed a couple of early nights if you asked me.
Tall Man lifted something off the mantelpiece. ‘Come and have a look,’ he shouted.
The other two ran back, all signs of exhaustion gone, and gazed down at the photo frame in his hands. I smiled when I realised what it was. Our one decent family photo.
It shows the four of us at a wedding. We’re sitting in a row along a hay bale; me and Birdie in the middle, Mum and Dad on either side. We’re flushed, catching our breath between dancing. Mum’s looking straight at the camera and laughing. She’s wearing that emerald-green dress she bought at the flea market in Swanage, red nail polish on her dirty bare feet, eyes all bright and shining.
The exceptional wonkiness of Dad’s smile, always a handy barometer in letting us know how happy he is, is dialled all the way up to ten. He’s gazing over my head and Birdie’s at Mum, and looks quite handsome, his teeth white in a tanned face, his unruly hair sort of combed for once. Birdie and I have our arms around each other. There are cornflowers braided into our hair. They look like blue stars. Birdie’s eyes are closed and she’s got the goofiest grin on as she nestles into me.
The three strangers stared at that photo a bit too long. We’re just regular human beings, guys. Seriously. You should see all our other family albums – I look dreadful in those. This was a total fluke.
And then I realised none of them was smiling. Just like that, the whole house changed. Like a drop of paint falling into water, sadness stained the room.
The woman pressed her lips tightly before releasing them again. ‘We might be looking for a family then. One man, one woman and two young girls.’
‘Er, you don’t need to find two,’ I said. ‘Just one? I’m right here. It’s my little sister
that’s miss—’
And then
my voice
tailed off.
Because I’d finally realised.
Although you guessed a few chapters back, didn’t you?

THE TRUTH DANCED in front of my eyes like it was written by a sparkler on Bonfire Night, teasingly incomplete, almost too bright to look at, fading to nothing at the end.
But could it really be true? I mean, what were the chances?
The three Coastal Rescue people ran upstairs, calling out in quick, clipped voices.
I staggered after them in a daze, as my brain began to sift through things. To test my theory, I sneaked up behind them on the upstairs landing and screamed as loud as I could.
Nothing.
Zip. Zilch. Not so much as a shudder.
The shorter man went into Birdie’s bedroom.
‘This might hurt,’ I said, and tried to kick him on his backside.
He needn’t have worried. My foot stopped just short of his swishy trousers, as if some invisible barrier protected him. He didn’t even turn around.
Gasping, I ran to the upstairs bathroom and stared at the mirror above the sink. Staring back was something stormy, strong and tempestuous – but it wasn’t me. It was one of Dad’s seascapes that hung on the wall opposite.
I waved my battered hand in front of the mirror. Nothing.
One final test.
Taking a deep breath, I hurled myself down the stairs, making sure to bang my head against the banisters on the way. Didn’t feel a thing.
I sat at the bottom of the staircase and dealt with the facts. I hadn’t woken up in wee. I had woken up in seawater.
Now I remembered what that dog had barked at so desperately. What we’d tried to run from. Suddenly, in one dreadful moment, it all came flooding back to me. As it were.
At the beginning, when we saw the wave from our window table, the fear had come in quite slyly, like it was stapled on to the end of a joke. The wave was still quite far away, just by the end of the jetty, and that was surely as close as it would come.
Plus people in Cliffstones moved slowly; nothing was done in a rush. That was the Dorset way.
So at first, we didn’t even think about escaping.
We’d just looked for a while. Gazed, while it gathered itself together, quietly, stealthily. We’d watched it. What we hadn’t realised, of course, was that it was also watching us.
Glossy as a blackberry, the sea had pleated and rippled against itself, and then it had risen, a sea monster made of the actual sea, and as it built itself up into this new, nightmarish height, it seemed to say, ‘Bet you didn’t think I could do this!’ And then it no longer looked anything like the sea I’d known all my life – the paddling, running in and squealing sea, the bright blue crabbing sea, the postcard sea of our summers.
This was a different, alien sea. This was the sea beneath. The one that made you shudder and snatch your hand out when you glimpsed it from a boat.
It was only when the wave went over the jetty, instead of around it, and tipped the people right into itself in a horrible gathering, like a malevolent mother folding children into her skirt, that the stampede inside the restaurant began, even though it had been too late by then, of course.
Mum and Dad reached for us and we ran to the door but there was too much of a crush. Dad picked up a chair and threw it at the window and we’d scrambled out of that, cutting ourselves on the glass in our rush to escape.
I looked at the nicks on my hands. Ah.
But even when we were scrabbling out of the Crab Pot, even then, some disbelief lingered. The sea – our sea, our friend – would surely realise its mistake? Would drop back down to a less