Free The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield Page A

night and dreams of the Bucca traipsing along with no company but his trinkets and thinks how lonely he must be.
    The next morning she sits on the harbour wall with Nicholas and Jack. The sky is overcast and it’s hot. There have been distant rumbles of thunder but no rain.
    â€˜There’s a new lugger left at Skommow Bay,’ Nicholas says.
    Jack kicks his feet against the wall. Alice is below them on the sand, as she is most days, chopping dogfish. He has a small pebble in his hand and raises it above his head. Pearl and Nicholas watch him, both silent. He whips his arm down and Pearl waits for the pebble to fly towards Alice, her stomach clenched at the thought of Alice being hit and blood coming from her cut head. But the pebble doesn’t fly. Jack is pretending. His lifts his arm again and again, each time practising a different shot at Alice who carries on chopping fish into wet chunks.
    â€˜Don’t,’ Nicholas says.
    Jack scowls at him, weighing the pebble in each hand. ‘She deserves it,’ Jack says.
    Pearl doesn’t want to go to Skommow Bay and she doesn’t want them to fight either, but she knows if she doesn’t think of a game there might be a row, or something might happen to Alice. Pearl knows that Jack likes stories. His father doesn’t tell him any. She’s lucky to have a father who loves her and who will tell her stories, so she tells Jack about the Bucca because it’s a kindness.
    â€˜Where does it live?’ he says.
    â€˜He’s a he,’ she says, ‘and he lives on wrecks. He sleeps in a proper bed with long curtains that he draws to keep the fish from bothering him.’
    â€˜He’ll be friends with the mermaids then,’ Jack says. ‘Maybe they give him things, from the wrecks. I know a story…’
    Nicholas sniggers. Jack doesn’t tell them about the mermaids, only blushes and fiddles with the pebble in his hand. Nicholas prefers stories about ships, real ones he can learn and list. At school he’s good at knowing where countries lie on the map. But he believes in keygrims, or at least pretends he does to scare her and Jack. It’s the story she likes least of all.
    â€˜The Bucca’s not real,’ Nicholas says. ‘Your father’s spinning you a tale, Pearl.’
    â€˜My father doesn’t tell tales!’ she says.
    â€˜He does, because there’s no such thing as Buccas, or mermaids.’ He sees she’s growing angry and softens his voice. ‘Come on, limpet-legs. They’re only stories.’
    They watch Alice heaping the bloodied bits of fish into a basket. She looks up, but not at them on the harbour wall. Someone, a man, is walking towards her across the sand. It’s Mr Michaels, the artist from the north. He speaks to Alice, though Pearl can’t hear what he’s saying. Alice nods and then Mr Michaels points towards a building on the seafront. It used to be a loft for keeping nets dry in the winter but now it’s loaned as a studio. Miss Charles from the art school uses it for her pupils. Alice wipes her hands on her apron and leans against a rock to rest her bad leg. She’s nodding again. Mr Michaels leaves her then and Alice goes back to chopping fish.
    â€˜Are we going to Skommow Bay?’ Jack asks.
    When Pearl goes home for dinner Jack comes with her. Her mother has set a place for him at the table, as she often does. Jack’s father is out at sea today, as her own father is, and Nicholas’s, but Jack has no mother at home to make his dinner. Pearl’s mother does all the cooking in their house, helped by Polly. There are often potatoes and turnips, and eggs from the chickens that live in the yard. Before they eat they say a prayer for full nets and to keep the men safe at sea. Today they have mackerel left from the morning’s catch.
    Her mother and Polly have been out selling the fish. When her father has unloaded the catch and most