Chapter 1

“You don’t get seals on the Isle of Wight, Briony Brain-dead.”

The sea had taken on the grey of the skies, and the briny air that buffeted my face was chill with the promise of winter. The seafront was deserted; only a dog walker heading towards the cliffs, an elderly couple in the distance, and me. And now, my annoying little brother, Col.

“It was probably a rock,” he went on. “A big, fat, rock.” Col punctuated his words with wide-armed gestures, and when he’d finally shut up, he blew out his cheeks.

I pretended to yawn. Maybe I wasn’t a stick insect with a pair of melons for boobs, like the girls in the porno vids he thought nobody knew he watched on his phone, but so bloody what?

Maybe I’d skip pudding tonight, though. Well, depending on what it was. Mum did some great puddings.

“I know what I saw, all right?” I told him. “Anyway, they had a whale in the Thames. Why shouldn’t we get a seal blown off course around here?”

I didn’t even realize I was standing there with my hands on my hips until he started mimicking me. I shoved my fists in my pockets and stomped along the sea wall away from him. God, I hated this place. Nothing here but sand and sea, and people who remembered every daft thing you did when you were a kid.

All right. I didn’t hate the place. Maybe I even loved it, with the fresh island breezes and the smell of the sea everywhere you went. But I didn’t love the lack of opportunities and the narrow-mindedness. There’s a reason the word “insular” comes from the word “island.” I was stuck here, fresh out of uni with a degree no one wanted and no bloody job. Not likely to find one round here either, but I’d have to be mad to leave home without some money coming in, wouldn’t I?

Col didn’t care. He had it all planned out. He was going to finish at the tech college and get a job stacking shelves somewhere, and live at home so he could spend his pay out drinking with his mates every Friday night, with just enough left over to take his girlfriend out somewhere cheap on Saturday.

I hated her too. Sharp-faced and mean, she was always offering to lend me her clothes and then just rememberingthere were three sizes between us—and that was on one of my good days.

If she’d been here she’d have been laughing at me too. But I knew what I’d seen. I’d seen a seal. Beautiful, it was, with eyes you could dive right into. It’d looked straight at me, head cocked like it was studying me, and then it ducked back under the waves. I’d looked for ages, trying to see it again, until Col came up and asked me why I was staring out to sea like a zombie had come up and eaten my brain. Not that it would have been more than a snack, according to my bloody brother.

I didn’t hate Col. Not really. I just didn’t like him very much, that’s all.

* * * *

I went down to the sea front again after dinner. I’d had two helpings of jam roly-poly just to prove I didn’t care what Col said, so I needed the walk. And I wanted to see if she was there again.

I’d decided the seal must have been a she. Too graceful to be male, she was. Maybe I’d only seen a sleek head and the curve of her back as she dived, but I knew she was grace itself. I wanted to see her again. I wanted to watch the sunset gild her fur while I stood on the beach like a love-starved sailor of old, seeing mermaids in the gloaming.

I’d forgotten it would be high tide by then.

The wind was whipping up the waves to crash against the sea wall, sending up clouds of spray that spattered my face and left me tasting salt on my lips. There was no beach left at all, and the gulls were circling high above me, crying at its loss. I shivered, hoping my seal had found somewhere safe to rest for the night.

I turned to walk back home—and almost bumped right into her. Not my seal, of course. A girl. Well, a woman, really; just about my age, to look at her. She’d pulled down the top half of her wetsuit to show her black swimsuit underneath, swelling with the curve of her full breasts.

“Hello,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m not quite sure where I am.”

“Sandown,” I said. “Well, Yaverland, really, this far down, but you won’t have heard of the village.” And I blushed, because there she was, a beautiful woman come out of nowhere, and there I was, getting pernickety about parish boundaries.