The Love of My Life(11)

When I did eventually hold the photo in my hands, I was studying for a marine biology master’s at Plymouth University. I took it straight to one of my tutors, a decapod expert.

She looked at it for a long time before taking off her glasses and saying, ‘Good Lord.’

There was a grapsid crab species, native to Japan, she told me, that had probably invaded Europe via the ballast water of a Japanese container ship. The first was found in La Rochelle in 1993. In the years that followed, it had spread along the French and Spanish coasts, eventually travelling north to invade Scandinavian waters.

‘But it hasn’t reached Britain yet,’ she told me. ‘Unless you found the first one five years ago.’

That crab was called Hemigrapsus takanoi. ‘But this one doesn’t really fit the spec.’ She frowned. ‘It’s got some very unusual features.’ She showed me how Hemigrapsus takanoi had patches of bristles – setae – on their pincers, and spots of colour across the carapace. They also had three distinct spines.

‘But yours has four. Look! Four spines! The bristles cover the whole chelae, and the spots are red, which I’ve never seen before. This could be quite a significant finding.’

I was copied in on many emails between my tutor and her decapod colleagues around the world. Much of what they said was beyond my understanding, but there was one thing on which they all seemed to agree: it seemed as if I had unwittingly come across a new form, a different phenotype of Hemigrapsus takanoi. A phenotype so distinct, it was well on its way to becoming – or in fact could be – a new species.

Quite something, for a master’s student.

I returned to the Northumbrian coast soon after, and when I didn’t find anything I returned again, and again. Over the years I must have gone forty, maybe even fifty times, combing the sands of Alnmouth, Boulmer and beyond. My tutor had suggested that, if this really was a new species, the only way it could have evolved was in total isolation, away from the other Hemigrapsus takanoi in the North Sea. So I scoured every remote cove, every wave-beaten spur, every inaccessible rocky shore between High Hauxley and Berwick – but I never found another one.

I still go. When my mood is low, it’s what I do; Leo’s always encouraged it. I check into a tiny B&B in Alnmouth and I walk and search and walk and search. I’m conducting my own study at Plymouth, too – I won’t give up. I will find ‘my crab’, as Leo calls it. One day.

‘You’re right.’ I spear the final piece of Tunworth and offer it to Leo, who eats it straight from the knife. ‘It’s been ages since I went up there. Let’s work out when I can go again.’

I eat the last cracker, even though I’m full. ‘In fact, maybe we could all go together. Ruby wouldn’t survive my crazy walks, but you two could do beachy things.’

Leo swallows the cheese, kissing his fingers. ‘I’d love that. Let’s do it. In fact, sod it, let’s do it next week! I have to take some holiday before I lose my entitlement.’

‘I . . . Well, maybe. Let me check with work. But if not next week, soon.’

He doesn’t notice my moment of panic. He’s far too happy.

Full of cheese, we collect our girl and take her up to our favourite summer spot on the Heath, where London tumbles away towards a dusty horizon and the long grass offers opportunities for endless three-year-old’s adventures. I tell Ruby I no longer need to go to hospital for special medicine and she tells me she is a beetle called Mr Cloris.

Leo takes several photos of us, although he’s been doing this since I was first diagnosed. On the Lymphoma Facebook group everyone complains about how their families won’t stop taking pictures of them, as if we won’t guess the subtext. But how can we object? If we die it’s them who’ll be left with only images to hold.

When Ruby goes to bed later on we have more wine, sitting out in the garden, and Leo tells me how relieved he is. I feel alive and precious and rather beautiful, which means I must be drunk. Leo strums quietly on his banjo, before sagging slowly into exhaustion. By five to ten he is lying face down in the grass, asleep. This happens a lot. He was asleep before 10.15 on our wedding night.

I message my friends and colleagues, Leo’s brother and parents, and my one-time housemate and oldest friend, Jill. I lie back and study the sky, tracking the orange bloat of light pollution until it fades into inky space, marked by a single star. Messages of relief ping into my phone. More stars appear, further and further way; distant smudges.

I think of my father, who showed me the Plough just before being posted to Montserrat with his Marine commando when a volcano erupted. On his return, he told me the mission had gone well, but didn’t seem to want to resume our astronomy conversations. I’d often find him looking up at the sky, but he seldom spoke.

I go in to check Ruby is breathing, and return with a blanket for Leo. (I had to do this on our wedding night too, when I found him napping in a corner while our guests danced.)

Only then, when there are no further tasks to do, do I feel brave enough to think directly about the phone call.

It stopped me in my tracks at Waterloo yesterday morning, coffee undrunk in my hand; commuters swarming around me. His voice was distant, as if he were calling from a mountain thousands of miles away.

I asked him to repeat himself, but he knew I’d heard.

I didn’t make it out of Waterloo, let alone to Poole Harbour. The departures board scrolled on through the morning, the commuter rush receding, and I stood still in the middle of it all, immobilised.