Keep Me Safe

Book 1: Seal Island

by Daniela Sacerdoti

Genres: Sea Adventures; Contemporary Romance; Science Fiction Romance

Synopsis

From the author of the No. 1 bestseller Watch Over Me, over half a million copies sold, comes a heartwrenching, uplifting novel about a mother who'll go to the ends of the earth to bring her grieving daughter back to life.

What do you do when your eight-year-old daughter starts telling you about her other mother, her other life? When she recalls events she never experienced, people she has never met?

This is what happens to Anna after her daughter Ava's father disappears, leaving behind a devastated little girl. After three days of silence, Ava begins to share misty memories with her mother, and to draw pictures of a place she's never visited. But a mother's love goes beyond doubt and incredulity, and Anna knows that the only way to unravel the mystery is to find the place Ava is talking about—a tiny island called Seal. There, on the edge of the Atlantic, where their past and their future meet, there might just be a whole new world, a whole new life waiting for them...

Release date: April 6, 2017

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 260

Sample

Little soul

Where I am, there is no day and no night, there is no time. There is nobody but me, and all these little flames that move and flicker, even without wind. Sometimes I feel whirlpools brushing past me, touching me with wispy, invisible hands, their breaths and sighs cold against me. I hear them whisper, talk about their lives and their deaths, and I listen.

So many stories.

So much love and pain and happiness and sadness, so many lives and so many deaths. I try to call, I try to stop them, so I can speak to them. But they never listen, they never stop. They flow and float away, invisible currents of fog inside fog. All that is left is a little flame gleaming in the distance, and a memory, a shadow of their story – and I’m alone again.

I know things now, things I used to not know before. I listened to the whispers for so long, I’ve known so many lives. I was a child but I’m not a child any more, for all I know and for all I have heard. I dive into the sea of souls and listen to the voices of those here with me. I listen and I know what they carry in their hearts.

I remember my time as a child. I remember when the sea came, and how it was stronger than me, stronger than those who loved me. I’d always known the sea wanted me; I’d been nearly taken when I wasn’t much older than a baby, but my father held on to me and took me home, dripping and distraught, and he and my mum said to each other what a freak accident, how could it have happened, I was watching her, I really was, I know you were, thank goodness she’s here, you brought her home.

And now the sea was back for me. I screamed in my child’s heart: please let me go.

Please let me go home.

Please, sea, don’t take me.

Please, sea, give me back.

I cried and cried and thought I need to breathe, I need to breathe – but I couldn’t feel my tears in the water that was all around me, I couldn’t fill my lungs with air. And then everything was peaceful, black and warm. I didn’t hurt any more, I wasn’t cold any more. I’m saved, I thought. But I wasn’t saved, I was drowned.

When the darkness disappeared and my eyes could see again, there was a golden light in front of me. From the light I heard voices calling my name, calling me to go with them. The light pulled me and pulled me, just like the sea that drowned me; and the voices were tender, promising to enfold me with love, and I wanted to reach them, I wanted their embrace because I’d been so scared and in so much pain. But I needed my mum and dad. I couldn’t go in there, I couldn’t leave them behind. I couldn’t leave my family.

And so I turned away from the golden light – and then the greyness and loneliness frightened me, because it was all so desolate, like I was the last person in the world, the only one left. I turned back, but the light and the voices were gone. I was left in the grey and the lonely.

Little lights appeared all around, over my head, under my feet; little flickering flames.

And now I am here, and I wander and listen, and sometimes I cry, sometimes I sing tunes I used to know. Everything is grey and soft, like walking in cotton wool.

I am not sure if a long time has passed or just a little while.

I don’t know where I am.

I just know I want to go home.

Whispers echo in the fog, my soft sobs, the tunes I hum. They come back to me a hundred times. But then, one day – if there’s such a thing as day where I am – I hear something else, something that is not an echo. Someone calling. The flames all around dance and dance, like they’ve heard her too, and whirlpools move the fog in slow currents. I walk among the little candles and follow the voice – joy overwhelms me, and I haven’t felt joy in so long, so long, it’s like I feel it for the first time. It’s all new and warm, it feels like sunshine, and I want to laugh and cry at the same time, and I run, run towards whoever is calling me. It must be my family, it must be. It’s me, I’m here, I cry without noise – I put my hands up in the white fog and the sound of calling and crying is everywhere, please, Mum, hold my hands and take me home – and she does, she holds my hands and pulls me through.

Everything is black for a moment, and then I open my eyes.

Anna

When Ava started inside me, sudden and surprising like snow in March, I didn’t have time to ask myself the reasons for such a miracle. I was working too hard, worrying too hard. With all the practical problems and the morning sickness and trying to stay awake during my night shifts, I didn’t have much time left to consider what was happening: a human being had taken up residence in my belly, and was growing, growing. Somebody with eyes and ears and hands and legs and a heart. And more; she was more than a body and its parts. A soul lived inside this body-in-the-making, a consciousness, a set of feelings and emotions and thoughts like sparks inside her tiny brain.

I fretted about how I’d look after a baby, with my shifts and little money and no family at hand to help, while the man who did this to me in the first place was lost in one crazy project or another. He was forever wheeling and dealing somewhere while I threw up and cried and surveyed the wards full of new mums, their babies beside them in plastic cots, not quite believing I would be one of them soon. I couldn’t sleep, and when I did, I had strange dreams, dreams of water and the sea and grey waves swallowing me. And then Toby would caress my barely-there bump and promise me the world, promise our baby the world – I didn’t believe him any more, of course, but I didn’t want my child to grow up without a father, like me.

I knew she was a girl. And not just any girl – she was Ava. I loved her with an intensity that blew me away. Somehow, in the lottery of procreation, one I witnessed every day in my job, this baby, this baby and no other, among the millions of possible genetic combinations, had been given to me. An old rhyme came into my mind, one my Scottish grandmother used to sing:

Of all the babies who swam in the sea

Ava was the one for me . . .

While I was making beds, or fetching nappies for the midwives, or cleaning up mess, I was aware of her, like a constant song in the back of my mind. My belly grew, the fears grew, my love for her grew. In this city of eight million people, I thought as I contemplated the London skyline out of the staffroom window, there was now one more.

Months went by as my secret came into the light, my bump too big to hide. Ava talked to me in every way but words. I know you, baby – I’ve known you forever, I thought as I chose curtains for her nursery, and a Moses basket, and I dreamt of the day I’d hold her in my arms. I love you, I’ve loved you forever, I whispered to her as we lay in bed in the middle of the day, waiting for another exhausting night shift.

I lay half naked with a little thing breaking me from the inside, my body clamping onto itself over and over again. When she finally came out, after what seemed like days, I looked into her eyes, semi-blind and alien black, and I had the strangest thought: that I had fooled myself believing I knew her, this little soul that had sat inside me waiting, this creature I’d been a vessel for.

I didn’t know her at all. I had no idea who she was.

I never told anyone about what came into my mind the moment she was born – about the way I didn’t recognise her like I thought I would, and how that feeling of of course, it was you all along never happened for me. A sense of knowing the creature that has been inside you for nine months and finally getting to meet her – it wasn’t like that. I didn’t know her, I never had known her. She was somebody other from the little life I had imagined.

It would have been impossible to explain such a weird sensation. People don’t talk about these things anyway, and your head is all over the place after you’ve given birth. You’re bound to have strange thoughts.

I soon forgot all about it as Ava grew into herself and I grew into my new life, a life where it was Ava and Anna, our little family.

My daughter’s eyes have lost their alienness and now she’s fully here, fully herself. Now, I do know her. Ava Elizabeth Hart, six years old, happy and chatty and lively and fearless like I never was, so different from me and yet so much mine, a part of Toby and me and yet herself.

But when it all began, when Ava told me about a life she had without me, with people I didn’t know – that day I thought again of the moment she was born. I thought of the moment they placed her gently in my arms, wrapped in a white blanket, my blood still encrusted in her hair, and she opened those other-worldly eyes and the first thing I thought was I love you, and the second was Where were you before?

Anna

I always knew it would happen one day. I always knew Toby would leave us; I was even surprised he’d waited so long. Despite all my efforts, I had failed to keep this lopsided little family together.

I dreaded the day he’d go, not because of me – all my feelings for him had ebbed away a long time ago – but for Ava. She was so close to him, even if he kept letting her down in one way or another. She adored her father; whether or not he actually deserved to be adored was of no concern to a little child.

One winter afternoon, my child-minder, Sharon, phoned me at work to say that Toby had been to the house, stuffed some of his things in a suitcase, and left. I stood there with the phone against my ear, frozen. I could only imagine how it must have felt for Ava, sitting in tears and terror while her dad rushed around packing clothes. It was like a bolt from the blue for her; as for me, I’d played the scenario so many times in my head, I nearly had a sense of déjà vu.

Sharon told me that he’d left behind a note addressed to me, and a distressed little girl sobbing her heart out. She said that before stepping out of the door he’d spoken to Ava, that he’d told her he was very sorry, but he was going somewhere far, far away, that we’d be better off without him; that he was a loser, that he’d tried but nothing had worked out for him.

He said all that to his six-year-old daughter.

Anger burnt scarlet through me as I put the phone down and ran to the ward sister to tell her I had to go home at once. I was a new nurse – I had gained my qualification at last, after years of menial jobs and studying at night while Ava slept – and I was working for an agency.

I hurried out into the freezing evening air; I jumped on a train, and then another, in a daze, tears not of regret but of fury swelling in my eyes. He’d hurt Ava. He’d done the one thing I could not forgive him for. After all the years I’d forced myself to be with him, so we could give Ava a family . . .

When I barged into the flat, Ava was on the sofa watching CBeebies, clutching Camilla, her favourite doll. Her eyes were puffy and red, but she wasn’t crying any more. She was sucking her thumb, which was something I had been trying to help her grow out of. She looked very small and very lost.

‘Ava, sweetheart . . .’ I said as I sat beside her.

She didn’t look at me, she didn’t move.

‘Ava . . .’

‘She’s been like this for over an hour. She hasn’t said a word,’ Sharon whispered, her kindly coffee-coloured face shadowed with worry. I felt my heart quickening and my hands tingling; the familiar signs of panic.

I wrapped my arms around my daughter. She let me hold her close, and leaned her head on my chest, still sucking her thumb. I stroked her long black hair and her face – milky skin and almond-shaped black eyes, maybe the heritage of an Asian ancestor we knew nothing about.

‘Everything’s fine. Mummy is here . . . Where’s the note?’ I asked Sharon in a low voice, not wanting to disentangle myself from Ava. Sharon seized a piece of paper, roughly folded in four, and handed it to me.

Dear Anna,

I’m so sorry. I’ve been nothing but bad news in your life. I’m off to Melbourne to stay with a mate for a bit, and then hopefully get a working visa. I explained everything to Ava, so she wouldn’t get too upset . . .

I’m going to kill him, I thought.

. . . you deserve somebody to look after you properly. Ava deserves a proper father . . .

You’re right on that one.

You and Ava are better off without me. Please remind Ava how much I love her.

Toby

And here’s where you’re wrong, Toby, I said to myself. Very, very wrong. I am better off without you; Ava isn’t. You stupid, irresponsible, selfish man who couldn’t hold down a job, who would spend thousands of pounds on a fancy car and then have no money left to buy food, who would feed Ava ice cream for lunch and dinner and then be aghast if she threw up, who was always too busy for the nursery run but found time for a daily catch-up with his friends – your daughter needs you. Not just someone to look after us, but her father.

But you left anyway.

‘It’ll be okay, baby,’ I said into Ava’s hair, squeezing her dimpled hand. I felt her letting out a small sigh, full of the grief and loss she didn’t know how to express.

It was dark outside, and Ava still hadn’t spoken. Dinnertime had come and gone, and she was sitting at the table with an array of untouched plates in front of her. Fish fingers and mash, a ham sandwich, a bowl of tomato soup. Nothing tempted her.

‘Let’s order pizza!’ I said, trying to sound cheery, or even just normal. I was getting desperate.

‘What do you say? Pizza?’ I repeated, exhaustion squeezing the sides of my head until I felt nauseous. No reply. ‘Please, Ava. You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.’

She just sat there looking at me with a blank expression, not saying a word.

I phoned the hospital and then the agency, and told them that my daughter was sick and I had to take a few days off. They weren’t happy, but they grudgingly accepted my unexpected leave. Then I called Sharon and said I wouldn’t need her for a while, but I would keep up with her wages, of course. Finally I phoned Toby’s mother. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I would get any sympathy or help. Whatever her son did – rack up thousands of pounds of debt, leave yet another job, get beaten up by someone he owed money to – she just found excuses for him, and cried, and said he was such an affectionate boy and it wasn’t his fault if he was a bit immature.

‘Did you know about this?’

‘About Australia? Yes. He told me not to tell you until he was ready . . .’

‘Well he told Ava. Before telling me. He told her he was going away and she was better off without him. Ava is six years old, for God’s sake!’

‘He’s confused. He’s just a confused boy with nobody to advise him properly,’ she pleaded.

‘He’s not a boy, Gillian.’

Oh, all the things Gillian didn’t know. Toby was very much a man, a man who ranted at me whenever things didn’t go his way, who slammed doors, who always knew the right thing to say to make me feel I was worth nothing. But his mother didn’t know any of this. She was never to know. It would break her heart, and one heart broken was more than enough.

‘You know the way it is. They are always little boys to their mothers!’ She laughed a foolish laugh. There wasn’t even any point in being angry with her.

‘Good to know that my daughter has a boy for a father,’ I hissed.

A little silence, and then came her favourite mantra, her excuse for so much of what Toby did. ‘He wasn’t ready to be a father.’

As if it had been my fault. As if I’d planned it. I closed my eyes briefly, cursing the day I’d been taken in by his charm, his endless optimism. I was young, and I was alone and starved of affection after a cold, loveless childhood; I’d fallen for his promises.

‘If he phones, Gillian, tell him we never want to see him again.’

‘What? You can’t stop him seeing his daughter!’ she whined in a tremulous, how-can-you-be-so-heartless voice.

I put the phone down.

‘Please, sweetheart. Maybe a cookie?’ I tried again.

I’d made chocolate chip cookies, hoping that baking would channel my confusion a bit, and that they would tempt Ava into eating something.

Still no answer. She just looked at me with those dark eyes of hers, two pools of silent sadness in her white face.

I was ready for a long, long cry, but I couldn’t do that in front of Ava. I gently led her into the bathroom and gave her a warm bath with bubbles, chatting to her in a low voice, though she never replied. Then I took her to her room, where I slipped her Little Miss Sunshine PJs on, dried her hair, and tucked her, Camilla and myself into her bed. We lay together, hypnotised by her magic lantern turning and turning, until we both fell asleep.

She didn’t speak for three days.

Dawn rose on the fourth day of Ava’s silence. I was lying on a mattress in her room, after another white night. Later I would take her to the doctor; I couldn’t deny any more that something was terribly, terribly wrong. That something had broken inside her.

I propped myself up, resting my head on my hand. She slept on her back, her chest slowly rising and falling. Little Briar Rose, trapped in an evil spell. She was so beautiful, my daughter, and so small, so vulnerable. It broke my heart that I couldn’t protect her from everything, anything that could harm or upset her. That I couldn’t save her from this heartache, like I hadn’t been protected or saved when I was a child. That I hadn’t given her a better father, or, it turned out, a father at all – she would be fatherless, like I had been. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked so hard all those years . . . Maybe all the nights I spent on my course books and all the times I was too exhausted to even speak had slowly corroded our family life. But I’d had no chance of an education, no chance to do anything for myself – I had to get my qualification. I had spent too many years watching the nurses doing their amazing job while I was stuck cleaning floors. I knew there was more in me; I knew I had more to give. And I did it for Ava too, to give her a better future. To give her the chances I’d never had.

Tears threatened to flood out of me again, and again I stopped them. During those three ghastly days, I had only cried once, when I was sure Ava was in deep sleep; I couldn’t bear the idea of her seeing me crying, and alarming her even more than she had been already.

All of a sudden, she stirred. She jerked her head towards the wall and back again. A small whimper escaped her lips, and then another, as she tossed and turned. I sat on her bed and took her little body in my arms. She began to cry, harder and harder, and her sobs rose to the sky and wrecked my heart. And the worst thing was that she was crying with her eyes closed, like all that pain was coming from the depths of her, unbounded and unchecked, exploding after four days of silence and stillness.

‘Shhhhh . . . Mummy’s here . . .’ Tears were falling down my cheeks too. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear to see my daughter in so much pain.

‘Mummy!’ she cried, and again those dreadful, dreadful sobs – the cries of someone abandoned, all alone in the world. I could feel what she was saying with those sobs – I’ve been abandoned, I’m lost – and I held her tight.

‘I’m here, baby, I’m here with you,’ I whispered in her ear.

Suddenly her whole body became tense and tight; she was rigid in my arms, just like she used to get as a toddler when she was throwing a tantrum. My heart bled. Then, at last, she relaxed. Her eyelashes, damp with sleep and tears, fluttered some more.

‘Ava. Ava!’ I called.

Finally she opened her eyes.

‘Mummy,’ she said in a whisper.

My heart soared. She was speaking again.

‘Ava . . .’

‘Mummy,’ she repeated.

‘I’m here . . .’

She blinked over and over again, studying my face. Then she looked straight at me as if she didn’t recognise me, and I’ll never forget the words that came out of her mouth. I’ll never forget the moment when, as I held her in my arms, my face so close to hers that our noses nearly touched, she asked calmly and quietly: ‘Where’s my mum?’

‘Where’s my mum?’ I asked Miss Carter, my teacher.

I was six years old, a crown of tinfoil on my head and wearing a long white tunic – a shiny triangular cloth with a hole for a head, but to me it seemed like an evening gown, the dress of my dreams. I remember feeling so pretty in my costume, like a princess and a fairy and an angel all mixed together. My hair was loose on my shoulders; the other mums had woven my little friends’ hair into braids and buns, but mine didn’t have time. She had been out all day and couldn’t come to fetch me from school, so I’d had to sneak out on my own – we weren’t allowed to go home by ourselves – and go to our neighbour’s. It happened often, that my mum wasn’t around and Mrs Ritchie had to look after me; my sweet, loving grandmother had died three years before, and since then my life had been pretty much chaos.

When Mrs Ritchie looked after me, I tried to spend as much time as I could in the street so that she wouldn’t be annoyed by my presence and then tell on us to the teachers or social workers or whoever else. My mum always said we weren’t to tell anyone that she wasn’t around much; that if someone asked, I was to say she’d gone to the shops.

But it was December and very cold, so I couldn’t stay out for long. I waited and waited in the Ritchies’ kitchen for my mum to turn up. It was the day of the school nativity play, and she’d promised she’d come. Mrs Ritchie had given me tea with her two . . .