Page 52 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
‘The boat was stolen. Look.’ He pulls an article up on the screen and Ava and I lean over to read it.
It’s dated March 1900, and in the days before photographs were commonplace, it’s accompanied by an artist’s impression sketch of a boat, called theSíolta.
Wreckage of a boat, stolen from Wexford, Ireland, has been recovered off the coast of Wales, more than a year after it went missing. Suspected to have been taken by two smugglers to facilitate the illegal trade of contraband goods between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Two men who were seen acting suspiciously were later identified as Jeremiah O’Maher and John Murphy. Neither man has been seen or heard from since, and there has been no trace of theSíoltasince the night of the theft – the same night a vast storm rolled in unexpectedly.
At first it was believed theSíoltahad sunk in dock, but a timeline placing the two men nearby was later put together. The owners had given up hope of ever discovering the vessel’s fate, until now.
Shadows spotted and later raised from the seabed revealed the wreckage of a boat run aground in bad weather, and the remains of an illicit alcohol cargo destined for illegal trade. It is now believed that the boat never made it to shore and both thieves are expected to have lost their lives in the incident.
‘Well, I guess his intentions that night reallyweredishonourable. He wasn’t kidding when he told her that.’ I stand back upright from where I was leaning over to read the screen and take my hand off Ren’s shoulder.
‘You don’t think he drowned, do you, Mickey?’
‘No, of course not. Weknowhis friend didn’t survive, but he did. Our mermaid saved him.’
‘He doesn’t seem like a thief,’ Ava says. ‘He seems so nice. He’s so kind to our mermaid. He treats her better than anyone else in her life treats her, she says so.’
‘A person can be both. Just because he does one bad thing, it doesn’t mean he was an awful person. We have no idea what his motivation behind it was – he could have been desperately trying to provide for his family or something. Or maybe hewasa bad guy but he changed because of love. Maybe she made him reconsider his life choices and he made amends for it afterwards. He could’ve been a bad boy turned good, like Flynn Rider inTangled,’ I insist, despite the fact we still don’t know how their story ends, and I’ve got a niggling feeling that we never will.
‘Is there anything else?’ I ask Ren.
‘Not that I’ve found. I’ve searched his name too, but there’s nothing. The archives have got a birth certificate, but nothing more. No marriage or death records, and no census information including that name. It’s another dead end.’
‘It’s not a dead end. We’ve proved that the boat was real. The diary isreal. It’s an account of what really happened that night. It isn’t fictional – this is genuinely the boat that sunk. The mermaid wastherethat night – she’s writing the truth, so we have to believe thateverypart of her story is true.’
‘Again, she could have just heard the story. If she was here at the time, there was probably a lot of talk about this boat – gone missing in a storm, suspected to have been stolen by smugglers – it would’ve been quite the scandal. She could have made up something about what she was hearing.’ Ren looks up at me hopefully and then purses his lips into a pout when neither me nor Ava share his cynicism. ‘And I hate to break it to you, but we have his full name now, and there isnorecord of him being alive after that night. It’s reasonable to assume that both sailors – thieves – drowned in January 1899, and what we’re reading in the diary is a fantasy about whatcouldhave happened.’
‘No, no, no.’ Ava folds her arms. ‘What about the rumours of mermaids around these shores?’
‘Where she got the story idea from.’
‘Nope. Mickey and me are going to prove it, together.’
I sit down at the next computer and Ren shows me how to load up the newspaper articles from the turn of the century, and both of us scan through more. He goes forwards looking for mentions of the boat or any other info about the sailors on it, and I move backwards, looking for reports on earlier sightings of mermaids or anything to suggest our diary keeper was really what she says she is. Ava stands between us to see if she can spot anything, but it’s as fruitless as I suspected it would be. Ren has already found the only article that exists about the boat, and despite all the stories we’ve been told about mermaids, there doesn’t seem to be any written evidence of anyone ever encountering one, and surely something like that would have been reported to local newspapers. So what are we missing here? Has Ren got a point – that if she was ever real, someone somewhere would have seen her and it would’ve been headline news?
After an hour, the receptionist comes to tell us they close mid-afternoon, and it doesn’t seem like we’re going to find anything more. At least we have the mystery sailor’s full name and proof the boat was real and really did sink that night. We can continue googling when we get back to Herefordshire.
‘We have to read the last entry,’ Ava says as we leave the building and step back out into the late-afternoon sun.
‘We left the diary in the hotel room.’
‘No, not now. Before we go. Just in case there’s anything else that needs to be investigated and we can stay a bit longer. Caryl said the boat trip around the islands doesn’t leave ’til Monday. We should go on that, just in case.’
‘In case of what? A mermaid pops out of the water and introduces herself?’ Ren snorts.
‘Itmighthappen.’
‘Well, keep your phone at the ready becausethatclip will make us a fortune. Now, is there anything else you want to talk about, for instance, what colour that hair dye is going to stain the bathtub?’
‘Yeh-ess,’ Ava says in a wheedling sort of way. ‘When are you going to let me get my ears pierced?’
‘You see?’ Ren holds his hands up in defeat. ‘You give them an inch… I know exactly how King Triton felt!’
17
When we get back to the hotel, Caryl accosts us and hands Ava a flyer. ‘Ah, there you are! Did you know it’s teen night tomorrow?’
‘What’s teen night?’ Ren reads the flyer over Ava’s shoulder.
