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СКАЧАТЬ around at her sisters, Molly noticed they weren’t wearing those tacky seashell bras, like mermaids do in cartoons. Instead they were wearing elegant long-sleeved tops – perfectly fitted and cropped just above their tails, in the same shimmery colours as their scales – that they definitely had not left the house in. Even her mum, who’d had a double mastectomy not long after Minnie was born, wore a top so well-fitting it was like her very own skin had turned a glittering lavender-purple. Molly looked down to find her own pyjama top had somehow been replaced with a beautiful shimmering white top.

      Molly dimly wondered how all their pyjamas and shoes had disappeared, but it seemed quite minor compared to suddenly sprouting a fishtail, so she shook the thought away.

      ‘I’m . . . I’m a mermaid?’ she said, as though saying it out loud would make it feel more real.

      ‘But you only get the tail when you’re near water,’ Margot explained, adjusting her sleep turban. Her poppy-coloured tail was vivid and, Molly had to admit, beautiful.

      ‘How near?’ Molly asked.

      ‘When you can feel the ocean in your heart, then you’re near enough,’ murmured Mum, eyes glazed and glassy.

      ‘Right, fantastic,’ Molly snapped. ‘In my heart. Got it. But just as a rough estimate, how many metres?’

      ‘The mermaid instinct cannot be measured in metres,’ her mum answered, laying her hand over her heart. ‘There’s no tape measure for the soul.’

      Wondering gravely why her mother had suddenly transformed into a raving lunatic, Molly tried again. ‘Right, but if there were a tape measure for the soul, what might it say? Like, am I going to flop around the school hallways whenever it rains outside? Am I going to knock people out with my flailing tail whenever we pass the swimming pool?’

      Mum nodded. ‘If your soul desires it.’

      Molly had the strong urge to slap her mother with a wet cod, but reckoned there was every chance mermaids liked that sort of thing.

      ‘Mum’s mastered it to the extent where she doesn’t transform until she’s actually in the water. It’s very impressive.’

      ‘Hence the skinny-dipping,’ Margot added with an eye-roll.

      ‘How is this happening?’ Molly whispered fearfully, a thousand questions simmering in her brain.

      ‘How does anything happen?’ Mum answered. ‘It just . . . is.’

      ‘So if Minnie came home one day with an elephant trunk you’d say, oh, never mind, it just is?’

      Margot snorted. ‘Be realistic, Molly.’

      ‘Realistic! You call this thing realistic?’

      Myla tutted, shaking her head. ‘You’re really being very closed-minded.’

      ‘Well, excuse me for not just immediately being like, oh, I have a tail, cool, what’s for dinner?’

      ‘We already had dinner,’ Margot pointed out. ‘It was awful.’

      ‘Oh my God, why are you deliberately dodging my questions?’

      Mum snapped out of her sea-witch whisper and sighed. ‘Molly, if you’d just calm down –’

      Anger bubbled in Molly’s throat. ‘How do you honestly expect me to calm down?’

      Melissa inhaled deeply, then exhaled exaggeratedly. ‘Just . . . breathe.’ She looked up at Mum for approval.

      ‘Through what, my face or my gills?’ Molly snapped. ‘Assuming I have gills? For the whole breathing underwater thing?’ Running her hands over her once smooth neck, sure enough there were a set of gills. ‘Brilliant. Just what I’ve always wanted. Holes in my skin! The hot new look! Coming to a freak show near you!’

      Even Margot looked worked up now, wringing her hands together and gritting her teeth. ‘Molly, seriously, can you please just relax?’

      ‘I’ll relax you!’ Molly shouted. ‘Permanently! You know, because you’d be dead.’

      ‘Molly!’ her mum yelled, raising her voice for the first time in forever, at the same time as Margot said, ‘That’s a bit much.’

      Molly wasn’t about to stick around to be told off. She began shuffling up the beach as best she could, using her hands to drag her impossibly heavy tail through the wet sand. Gasping and panting, Molly cursed this stupid situation as she moved mere flounders at a time, while her mother and sisters watched with alarm – and a little amusement.

      She’d gone no further than two metres when she finally gave up, collapsing to the ground with a sob.

      Mum shuffled over to the spot where Molly lay face down in the sand, and rubbed her shoulder affectionately. Her palm was warm and soft and comforting. ‘Molly, talk to me. Why is this upsetting you so much?’

      ‘Because . . . because . . .’ Molly spluttered, mouth full of sand. ‘I’m a freak. We’re all freaks. We always have been, and now we’re even more so. Why can’t I – we – just be normal?’

      ‘There will come a time when you’re grateful for the things that make you stand out. Trust me. Until then, you just have to weather the storm. And you’re a Seabrook – we’ve always been good at weathering storms.’ Mum gestured to her flat chest, then her empty ring finger, and smiled warmly.

      Molly did understand what Mum was saying, but all she could muster was a half-hearted, ‘Hmph.’

      ‘And you mustn’t tell a single soul, all right? This is a secret we will take to the grave. Not a single soul. Do you understand?’

      Molly snorted then. Did her mum think she was some kind of idiot? Like she’d ever tell anyone how much of a freak she truly was.

      And that was it. The truth bigger than all of this. Bigger than discovering her freakish family were in fact mermaids. Bigger than having her very own tail.

      Fit Steve would never fancy her now.

      And she would never, ever be popular. Not in a million years.

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