Page 59 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
‘We don’t know if that’s true!’ Ava snaps. ‘We talked to a ton of journalists yesterday, we definitely told some of them that it came from a house clearance, you could’ve just seen their articles and now you’re trying to claim it because you know it’s valuable.’
I wince at the panicked-angry tone in her voice. Shelovesthis diary, and like I am, she’s realising that it isn’t ours, and this woman is most probably the rightful owner.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask, trying to defuse the situation and find out more, because Ava’s got a point, she could just be a chancer, trying to get her hands on something of value, but the chest she’s carrying is almost identical to the one we found the diary in, and there’s no way someone trying to pull a fast one would know about that.
‘I’m Pamela. Mayme was my great-great-great-great-aunt.’
‘Mayme? That was her name?’ Ava steps closer, her interest obviously piqued.
It adds a whole new layer to this. We’ve never known her name. How often do you write your own name in a diary? You write about the people around you, the things that happen to you, but never include your own name.
Mayme. I’m almost afraid to ask my next question. ‘Was she really a…?’
‘Mermaid?’ Pamela laughs. ‘Oh, heavens no, of course not. She was born with deformed vocal cords so she was never able to talk. Mayme means “drop of the sea” and family legend goes that she always loved the ocean and when she read the Hans Christian Andersen story, she felt it was meant for her. She connected with the mermaid who couldn’t make herself heard. We think it gave her comfort to believe she was really a misplaced creature from another world rather than a human so different from all others, and so incapable of this most basic thing thateveryoneelse can do without a second thought. Everyone around her, seemingly everyone in the world can speak, but she couldn’t, and in those days, doctors were at a loss. Apparently no one knew what to make of her – her parents babied her, looked after her, protected her from the world, and when they passed, she was left in the care of her sister, who had no time for her. Her sister had always thought she was playing up for attention, and she trotted her around to various witchdoctors for potions and herbal remedies and eventually a real doctor realised there was something physically wrong, but medical operations in those days didn’t have the advantages of modern technology and there was no treatment.’
‘That’s what she meant about doctors poking and prodding her and humans coming to look at her.’ Ava is listening intently; the prospect of finding out the truth has overtaken all her other doubts.
This suddenly makes so much sense. Ofcourseshe wasn’t a mermaid. Of course she was just a normal person who must have felt anything but normal. She found sanctuary in this ocean-themed idea that she was somehow different from everyone else. The idea that there was something – by choice – that set her apart. It must have made the rejection and the feeling that no one understood her easier to cope with.
‘And the island? The boat sinking? The sailor? We’ve been to Arfordir-Môr-Forwyn so we know that actually happened…’
‘She was a lighthouse keeper.’
I gasp and grab Ava’s hand. ‘We saw it! On the boat trip, we saw the ruins of a lighthouse in the distance, didn’t we?’
Ava nods excitedly, and I carry on, because now we know, it all seems so obvious. ‘Of course she was a lighthouse keeper.That’swhy she felt responsible for his boat running aground – not because she was a mermaid luring him to a watery doom, but because she’d…?’
‘Got caught up in the book she was reading and forgotten to light the oil lamps until it was too late.’
‘I always knew she was my kind of person,’ Ava says. ‘How could we ever havereallythought she was a mermaid?’
‘It’s an easy mistake to make,’ Pamela says kindly, and I can’t help thinking about how strange this must be for her – to see her family heirloom displayed for all to see, photocopied pages from it enlarged and flapping around in the summer breeze. It’s quite possible that no one outside of their family has ever read it before, and here we are, broadcasting it on the local news and talking to every reporter under the sun, about the possibility of it really being written by a mermaid.
Lissa returns from her break at that moment and comes over curiously, and I explain what’s going on.
‘What about Jeremiah?’ Ava’s hand squeezes mine, sounding like she’s not sure if she wants to know the answer or not. ‘Please tell us he survived!’
‘He survived.’ Pamela looks bemused by how invested we are in this. ‘Months later, he came to find her in England, they were married and had four children.’
‘Oh my God, I can’t wait to tell Dad!’ Ava throws her arms around me. ‘Iknewit couldn’t end like that! So did you! It’s proof that love can overcome everything! Did they stay together forever?’
‘They were happy together until she died in the 1940s, and him not much longer after. It was said that he died of a broken heart.’
Ava pulls away and puts a hand on her chest and lets out a wistful sigh. ‘That’s the most romantic thing ever!’
Pamela is watching like she can’t quite believe she’s having this conversation about something so personal with a couple of strangers. ‘I love how much this mattered to you. We often thought about sharing the story outside of the family, but we didn’t know how to or if our relatives from times gone by would want us to. Can you imagine what a Victorian lady would make of things like the internet and the idea of so many people from all around the world reading her intimate thoughts?’
‘We did think of that.’ Ava sounds immediately defensive again. ‘But we thought she was an actual mermaid and it was important to share that.’
‘Oh, I know. I didn’t mean you’d done anything wrong. I think what you’ve done is lovely. All of this information you’ve found out. You even went all the way to Arfordir-Môr-Forwyn? You saw her lighthouse? Evenwehave never done that.’
‘I wish we’d known about the lighthouse. We’d have found someone with a boat to take us closer to it. It was miles offshore, past the other islands around the coast. I can’t believe none of us put two and two together and realised what she was doing out there. Even when wesawthe lighthouse remains, it didn’t occur to me…’
‘It’s nice that people still believe in magic in this day and age,’ Pamela says. ‘I never knew her obviously, but I think Mayme would like knowing that her musings could have such an impact, even so many years later.’
It makes me look around for Ren. He should be here too, hearing this, counting out the ways he can say ‘I told you so’ because he was annoyingly right on the mermaid front.
‘Our mum used to read me and my sister those diary excerpts as bedtime stories. She had grown up withhermum doing the same, and her grandmother telling her tall tales of the mum before her, passing the story down for generations. My sister and I used to talk about it all the time. It bonded us as children. Everyone who overheard thought it was something we’d made up. I’m honoured that you’ve all fallen in love with it like we did…’ Her kindly smile turns awkward as she looks between me, Lissa, Ava, and the diary. ‘And I’d really like it back…’
