The Art of Not Breathing(19)

“Who was that guy?” Mum asks, staring at the spot where Danny’s car had been earlier. “Your boyfriend?”

“Just a friend.”

She snaps her head to me. “I don’t think you should hang around with him. He’s too old for you. It’s odd that he would want to hang around with someone your age—I don’t trust him.”

“He’s eighteen, same as Dillon.”

But she’s right. There’s something suspicious about him, and he knows too much. My throat feels itchy just thinking about him.

Mum blows on her fingers and then reaches under the sink for the bottle of Bombay Sapphire. It’s half empty, and I know she only bought it two days ago. She glugs it straight from the bottle, and when she finally puts it back down, her eyes water but there is a serene look on her face.

“Go on, have some,” she says. “You seem as miserable as me, sometimes. Let’s not let those boys get to us.” She takes another gulp and slams the bottle on the table in front of me.

“I thought everything was okay with you and Dad.”

“Never assume,” she says. “Never think that everything’s okay.”

The gin makes me retch after the first sip. She throws her head back, laughing, and says, “It’s a bit of an acquired taste.”

I want to acquire the taste. I get a glass and pour some into it.

We stay there at the table and as the light fades, our bodies form long, wavering shadows over the kitchen surfaces. She glugs from the bottle and I take tiny sips from my glass, getting used to the burning in my throat. She doesn’t stop me when I pour myself some more.

“I miss her,” she suddenly says.

At first I wonder who she’s talking about, but then I work it out. I sometimes forget that Granny isn’t around anymore—she stopped visiting when Eddie and I were nine, so it’s been a long time since I saw her. Dad says she visited once after Eddie had gone, but I must have been at school that day.

“Yeah, I miss her too. It’s hard to believe she’s gone.”

Mum looks wistful, like she’s remembering something nice. She never talks about her childhood, except to say that when she was really small, it had been good.

“Why did Granny leave the Black Isle?” I ask, thinking it’s a good way in and maybe Mum will open up to me. She seems to be in a sharing mood.

“It was the bridge,” she says, as if that’s all the explanation needed.

“The bridge? Why? What happened?”

“It got built.”

I find it strange that a bridge could make someone leave their hometown. Before the bridge was built, you had to drive all the way to the bottom of the peninsula and then back along the estuary to get to Inverness. The bridge has always been there for me, so I don’t know any different. It’s not even like we go across it much anymore, but knowing that we could makes this place seem less forgotten.

“Wasn’t the bridge a good thing?”

“Granny didn’t think so. For her, the bridge meant more people. Tourists, city locals. Strangers. She didn’t like it at all. She’d moved to the Black Isle to get away from all the people. She liked the isolation.”

“Didn’t you feel cut off?”

Mum takes another sip of gin and looks up at the ceiling.

“We used to play on the mud banks. That was what we did at weekends. I’d look across at the mainland, and I used to feel proud of being on this side. Like I was something special. My mum stayed a year or two after it was built, but she couldn’t cope. She wanted a quiet life.”

I can’t imagine a quieter life than living here. And these days I’m glad about the tourists. I can hide among them. They don’t know who I am.

“Mum, why didn’t you and Granny speak anymore?”

I sip my drink and wait for the answer.

“I screwed up, Elsie. I made a terrible mistake and I have to live with that.”

“What mistake?” I whisper, leaning in close.

She moves away from me and sits back in her chair.

“Let me tell you something. Don’t ever let anyone in your life die without them being able to forgive you. And, Elsie, don’t make my mistakes.”

“What mistakes?” I ask again, but she changes the subject.

She tells me again the story of how my father was on the other side of the world when she was giving birth to Dillon.

“I kept calling the ship. That’s men for you, always last-minute,” she slurs. “And here I am, eighteen years on, still wondering if he’s coming home.”

“Is he going to leave us?”

She looks at me. “Me, yes. But he’d never leave you.”

She starts laughing then, and when I try to take the gin away, she clamps her hands around the bottle and tells me that she is a bad person and everyone thinks so. I’m scared of her when she’s like this—when she starts to sway and I wonder whether she’ll topple right over and crack her head. But she’s like one of those wobbly clowns with the ball inside: just when I think she’s going down, she springs back up with those fixed eyes and that cherry-red grin.

“I miss Eddie,” I say, hoping that she’ll want to talk about him.

“Shhh,” she replies. “Eddie’s asleep.”