The Art of Not Breathing(13)

“Oh,” I say. I stare into my cup at the black tea, wondering if Tay is his son.

“I’m Mick.” He shakes my hand. “What’s your name?” he asks. And then I smile because he doesn’t already know.

“Elsie.” I pronounce it carefully, as though I’m saying it for the first time. I slide myself back on the stool and sit up straight. “Elsie Main.”

“What you doing out here on a Thursday night?” he asks. “Have you lost your friends?”

“I don’t have any friends,” I tell him. “I just have a brother, but I don’t know where he is.”

He tells me he lives in Munlochy. “A quiet wee place.”

Munlochy is a few villages away, back down toward Inverness. That’s where Paul the therapist lives too. There’s nothing there, not even a supermarket.

Behind the bar, there’s a poster of a pale-skinned woman underwater. She’s smiling, and tiny bubbles trail out of the side of her mouth. Her black hair fans out into the water like a silk scarf, and her body is long and curvy in a shiny wetsuit. Her arms are lifted away from her body, like a bird’s wings just before takeoff.

Mick sees what I’m looking at. “That’s Lila Sinclair. She’s the under-twenty-one national freediving champion. Scotland’s deepest girl.” He winks and says quietly, “I taught her myself.”

“She’s pretty,” I say, wishing I had a body like hers.

“It was her in the video you were watching from outside the other day.”

When I don’t reply, he winks at me again. I can’t help but smile. I take a gulp of my tea, and liquid burns my mouth and throat. I know that later the skin on the roof of my mouth will feel rough and I can play with the dangly bits with my tongue.

“Can you swim, Elsie?”

“I used to.” I hope he can’t hear the tremor in my voice.

“If you can swim, then you can dive. The only difference is, you hold your breath and stick your head under.”

The thought makes me feel lightheaded. I thank him for the tea and tell him I have to go.

“Come whenever you want,” he says. “I do a great hot chocolate too.”

As I slide off the stool, I think that I’m not going to make it home without peeing myself. I look around, but I can’t see a sign.

“Erm, is there a toilet here?”

I’m so embarrassed when he takes me behind the bar and through a door that leads to steps down into a storage room.

“We’ve not got the main ones up and working yet,” he says apologetically.

The storage room is cold, and it takes me ages to go. I think about the video of Lila Sinclair, and I feel a mixture of excitement and fear. It’s not that I want to go into the water, but I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be down there and not feel as though I’m drowning. Goose bumps appear on my legs as I sit on the toilet. Maybe I’ll just stay for a hot chocolate to warm up.





When I head back up the stairs, I hear voices and panic that it might be my father. I’m sure he follows me sometimes, because I know he doesn’t trust me. I look to see if there is another way out, but there isn’t. I am doomed. I step through the door, ready to face the music.

There are four boys, all in various states of undress, and Tay is one of them.

“You’ll never beat me!” he says to a boy with extremely curly hair, and then he sees me and goes quiet. His Adam’s apple rises up and down, and he gazes at the floor. His wetsuit is rolled down to his waist, revealing a blue shiny running top, and his feet are bare. He throws a cigarette into his mouth and runs his fingers through his slicked-back wet hair, spraying water everywhere. I wish there were a hole to fall through. I look away from him, and my eyes fall on the tallest boy. He has blond hair like Dillon’s and is bare from the waist up, with muscles so defined, I want to run my fingers over them. He puts a dripping-wet net bag on the table and slaps Mick on the shoulder.

“All right, Dad?”

“This is my son, Danny,” Mick says proudly. “Boys, this is Elsie. Elsie, this is Danny, Rex, Joey, and Tavey.”

“Elsie,” Danny repeats, looking from me to Mick and back to me, suspiciously.

His eyes are strikingly blue, the same color as my mum’s Bombay Sapphire.

“Bit young to be a barmaid, aren’t you?” he asks.

I blush and come out from behind the bar.

“That’s your job,” Mick says to Danny. “There’s a delivery in the storeroom that wants sorting.”

From a shelf behind the bar, Danny grabs a dry T-shirt and slips it over his head. He gives Mick a little head wiggle that I’m sure means “get her out of here.” Then he disappears through the swinging doors. I’ve seen his type before. He’s the kind of guy who thinks he’s better than everyone else. The kind of guy who looks through people like me.

Rex is the one with extremely curly hair. It’s out of control like mine, but his is sandy, not dark. He’s odd looking, with a torso that’s too long for the rest of his body and one arm covered in moles. I can tell he thinks he’s the funny one of the group when he goes to hug me. I duck under his arms. Joey is the smallest out of the four—he also looks like the kindest, with long hair down to his chin, and enormous brown eyes. He’s the only one still wearing his full wetsuit. “Hi,” he says shyly.