‘You will,’ I said, and I was surprised by the strength and certainty that was there in my voice. ‘You will, Grandpa Joe.’

Chapter 40

40

It was later that afternoon that the doctor came to tell me the bad news.

‘It’s broken, Miss Smith,’ he said. ‘Your back. Broken in two different places, we think.’

I was falling through the air again with the chalk dust and the chunk of clifftop. Once more I felt the jolt as my body slammed into the ledge below. Broken. Broken in two places. There was only darkness – darkness and the song of the stones.

‘Will it heal?’ My voice sounded much braver and calmer than I felt inside.

‘The back itself will heal with time,’ he said. ‘But we don’t know yet about the nerves in your spine that are responsible for the feeling and movement in your legs. It may be that the nerves are just bruised.’ His expression changed then. ‘But it’s quite possible, Miss Smith, that they may never fully recover. It’s possible, I’m afraid, that you might never walk again.’

This had been my nightmare all my life, both sleeping and awake: to be frozen. Paralysed. Petrified. But this was not how I had expected it to happen. And there was something else unexpected too: I did not feel as helpless as I had thought I would. Do you know what the name Petra means? I can tell you now if you don’t know. It means rock. Stone.

I was a Daughter of Stone now.

And stone is strong.

The hospital was clean and comfortable, and the nurses were cheerful, but I had never been away from home before, and it wasn’t long before I started pining for the big skies of Stonegate and the bright sea air. It didn’t seem to matter that I couldn’t move about on my own – here in the hospital, inland, I was a fish out of water anyway. Every now and then I would hear the distant calls of gulls through the open windows and it made me ache even more than my bruises did.