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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. The Borough Press An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009 Copyright © Tracy Chevalier 2009 Chapter head motifs © Neil Gower Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014. Cover illustrations © Neil Gower Tracy Chevalier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780007178384 Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 9780007341108 Version: 2016-11-21 This is for my son, Jacob Table of Contents
1. Different from all the rocks on the beach
2. An unladylike pursuit, dirty and mysterious
3. Like looking for a four-leaf clover
5. We will become fossils, trapped upon beach forever
6. A little in love with him myself
7. Like the tide making its highest mark on the beach and then retreating
8. An adventure in an unadventurous life
9. The lightning that signalled my greatest happiness
Postscript: The reader’s patience
Lightning has struck me all my life. Just once was it real. I shouldn’t remember it, for I was little more than a baby. But I do remember. I was in a field, where there were horses and riders performing tricks. Then a storm blew in, and a woman – not Mam – picked me up and brought me under a tree. As she held me tight I looked up and saw the pattern of black leaves against a white sky. Then there was a noise, like all the trees falling down round me, and a bright, bright light, which was like looking at the sun. A buzz run right through me. It was as if I’d touched a hot coal, and I could smell singed flesh and sense there was pain, yet it weren’t painful. I felt like a stocking turned inside out. Others begun pulling at me and calling, but I couldn’t make a sound. I was carried somewhere, then there was warmth all round, not a blanket, but wet. It was water and I knew water – our house was close to the sea, I could see it from our windows. Then I opened my eyes, and it feels like they haven’t been shut since. The lightning killed the woman holding me, and two girls standing next to her, but I survived. They say I was a quiet, sickly child before the storm, but after it I grew up lively and alert. I cannot say if they’re right, but the memory of that lightning still runs through me like a shiver. It marks powerful moments of my life: seeing the first crocodile skull Joe found, and finding its body myself; discovering my other monsters on the beach; meeting Colonel Birch. Other times I’ll feel the lightning strike and wonder why it’s come. Sometimes I don’t understand, but accept what the lightning tells me, for the lightning is me. It entered me when I was a baby and never left. I feel an echo of the lightning each time I find a fossil, a little jolt that says, “Yes, Mary Anning, you are different from all the rocks on the beach.” That is why I am a hunter: to feel that bolt of lightning, and that difference, every day.
