‘Edward, Peter.’ Her cry carried to Beatrice on the wind, bouncing off the cliffs, echoing around. ‘Mummy said . . .’ Beatrice couldn’t make out what Mummy had said but imagined it to be something about not going out too far. But the boys dived like dolphins under the waves and kicked spray at one another and ignored their sister who gave up after a bit and instead helped the smaller girl draw pictures on the sand with driftwood. Beatrice returned to her pool and concentrated on levering a blood-coloured anemone away from a rock.
‘Hello there!’
When she looked up again, the golden girl was coming towards her, glowing with life, her hair flying out everywhere. Beatrice rose to her feet, brushed sand from her shorts, and waited for the girl to reach the rocks.
‘What are you doing?’ the girl called, placing a bare foot on the lowest rock and craning her neck to see. ‘Ouch. Can I come over?’
Beatrice looked down at her own sensibly sandalled feet and said doubtfully, ‘If you want.’ The golden girl plotted her way painfully across the barnacled rocks. She was like the mermaid in the story Beatrice often read, who was given human legs but condemned always to feel she walked on knives.
‘Oh, you’ve got an an-em-one,’ the girl cried, reaching her and peering into the pool. ‘I love an-em-ones! Their mouths are like people’s when they kiss you.’
Beatrice gazed at her in astonishment. She considered the talcum-powder pecks her English grandmother gave her and the smacking kisses from her French relations and thought their mouths were nothing like anemones. She hated it worst when people pinched her cheeks as though testing whether she was fat enough to eat. She imagined they must find her disappointingly scrawny.
The girl was talking away in a quite uninhibited fashion. ‘I have to say an-em-one slowly because I nearly always call them anenomes. It’s Greek. Mummy’s name is Oenone and that’s Greek too. Some people don’t know how to say “In-ony”, because it’s spelt funny.’ She laughed, her face open, happy. ‘Edward, he’s the biggest, does Greek at his school so he always says words right. I wish he wouldn’t laugh at me, though. It’s not my fault girls don’t do Greek or Latin. I think it sounds more fun than boring old geography. At which Miss Simpkins says I just don’t try. What about you?’
Beatrice was startled at this long, complicated speech, but managed to say, ‘I like geography,’ as she loved examining maps and saying the strange names of cities and rivers to herself, but sensing the girl’s annoyance she added quickly, ‘Well, some of the time.’ She was torn, frightened of displeasing this extraordinary girl by disagreeing with her, but still sore from a recent misunderstanding when her mother believed her to have lied. ‘Always tell the truth, Béatrice,’ she had remonstrated in her accented English. ‘Even if it makes trouble. Your integrity is the most valuable thing.’
She was relieved to see the girl was still smiling. Close up, Beatrice could see her large clear blue eyes and just the faintest smattering of freckles across her creamy skin. She must be the same age as herself, or slightly older – thirteen, perhaps – already tall, with long languorous limbs. She held herself confidently, too. Her shirt was tight across her chest, and when she crouched down to poke about in the bucket, there was something self-aware about the movement. ‘I’m sorry, do I talk too much?’ she said, her face now an appealing frown. ‘Nanny says that empty vessels make most sound. Gosh, I say, look at that stripey fish. It’s so pretty I could just eat it up. Not literally, of course. I mean, it’s just a heavenly blue, don’t you think? I love all animals but horses best of all.’
‘Oh, so do I!’ Beatrice couldn’t help bursting out.
‘Do you keep a horse? We have two, but they’re Mummy’s, though I’m allowed to ride Cloud. He’s only a pony but it’s quite true, Jezebel does bite. Cloud’s name is Claud really, but Cloud is a grey – which means white – so it suits him so much better. Don’t you agree?’
Before Beatrice could admit that, no, her family didn’t have horses, nor was it likely they’d ever have one in a thousand years, a boy’s deep voice called, ‘Angie!’ and she saw the other children hurrying towards them over the sand. They waited in a line, where the rocks began. The little girl said, ‘Angie, you’ve got to come. Now.’
Edward, the eldest, who studied Greek, stood arms akimbo. He said, ‘Good afternoon,’ to Beatrice in a polite, very grown-up way. Then to Angie, ‘I say, would you and Hetty go and get our shoes and things. I vote we go round to the other cove.’ All five of them looked to where a passage of bare sand had opened up between the sea and the jagged rocks of the headland. ‘I want to find that cave Daddy told us about.’