Page 17 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
‘There are national archives of wreck reports from 1876 to 1988. I can give you access through one of our computers and you’re welcome to browse for as long as you like.’ She leads us over to row of computers along the end wall of the library, leans over to put a password into one and navigate to the correct archives, and then briefly explains the search function and the information we’ll need to enter, and leaves us to it.
Ren takes the main seat in front of the monitor, and Ava and I pull up a chair on either side of him, leaning close to see the screen over his shoulder, and I catch the scent of his aromatic aftershave, spicy and close to his skin, and it makes me glad I’m already sitting down.
‘Right, shipwrecks on the sixteenth of January 1899.’ He rubs his hands together and puts the date into the search engine.
No results.
I feel my stomach sink.
He puts in 17 January as well, but there’s still nothing. Search parameters for the whole month of January also bring up nothing.
I can feel disappointment biting at my toes. Ireallythought this was going to be real. ‘Try February. Maybe the shipwreck would’ve been logged on the day it was found rather than the day it actually sank. Rescuers would have no way of knowing what day it went down, would they? They’d log it for the day it was discovered.’
He enters search dates for the month of February and it still brings up no results.
I sigh. ‘It might not have been found formonths. It sounds like they’re somewhere remote and she said help wasn’t coming until the summer. Maybe they weren’t found until then. Add March. Actually, let’s go through the results until summer and see if that brings anything up.’
He glances at me and then changes the search end date to August. ‘I will happily sit here and browse every shipwreck in the nineteenth century if you want. We are not going to find something that never happened.’
‘Well, if that’s your attitude…’
‘My attitude has no bearing on whether this ship ever existed.’ He holds a hand out towards the screen and gives me a ‘see?’ look when the resultsstillturn up empty.
I lean over him and change the end date until the January of the following year. Still nothing. As it turns out, 1899 was a remarkably shipwreckless year for the British seas.
‘What if it neverwasfound?’ I can feel hope deserting me and clutch at a straw. ‘What if she really did cause this wreck and covered it up somehow? If the ship disappeared beneath the waves and there was no trace of it, maybe when they were rescued, they never told anyone, or?—’
‘Or the sailor died of his injuries so there was no reasontotell…’
‘No!’ I glare at him. ‘Maybe he had amnesia and didn’t remember the accident or where he’d come from…’
‘Because that’s realistic.’ He rolls his extraordinarily blue eyes with a bemused half-smile on his face, but he’s clearly having none of my optimistic possibilities.
I go over and ask the librarian. ‘Would there be reports about ships that were lost at sea? If a wreck was never discovered, it wouldn’t be logged as a shipwreck, would it?’
She gives me a curious look because we haven’t explained anything aboutwhywe’re after all this info on shipwrecks, but I don’t elaborate, because this seems like something we need more info about before we openly tell strangers what we’ve found.
‘There are Missing Vessels books that cover a substantial period between 1874 and 1954, they’ve recently been made available online.’ She leans over her computer at the front desk and then writes down a website address for me, and I go back over, victoriously waving around the bit of paper.
Ren reads what she’s written down. ‘This won’t help us. We have no idea what the ship was called, where it came from, where it was going to, or where it went missing. At this point, reading these won’t help. It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack that’s bursting with needles.’
Oh. Damn him and his sensible attitude. Why did he have to have a point? I’m doggedly determined not to give up though. He shifts aside and I pull my chair across to the computer and find a Missing Vessels book that covers most of 1899. There are a load of entries. Ships that were reported missing during that year. I print some pages off, in case it might help later, but Ren is right. There’s entry after entry of ships that never made it back to port, butourmissing ship could be any one of them, or it could not be on here at all.
‘Let’s read more of the diary!’ Ava suggests. ‘Maybe that will give us more clues?’
The library is thankfully quiet, and there’s a table behind us and we all scoot our chairs over to it. I heft the book out of my bag and Ava turns excitedly to the bookmarked page.
19 January 1899
He’s sitting up on the beach. The blanket I covered him with is around his shoulders now, but it’s wet with the rain. He hasn’t tried to move yet.
He keeps shouting out a name – a man’s name. John. I wonder if it is the name of the other man aboard the ship. Does he think that he survived too? Does he think that the other man is responsible for his rescue?
I stay hidden, but I am unable to stop watching him. I should swim back beneath the waves, but it’s like I am held here by an unseen force. Try as I might, I cannot leave him.
He’s looking for me. At least, he’s looking for the person he must realise has helped him, because he assumes I am a person.
‘Hello?’ he shouts to the sea. ‘Is there someone out there?’
