The Art of Not Breathing(53)

16



THE BABY OTTER IS NOT MOVING. ITS PAWS LIE ON THE DRY ROCKS, and its fur has dried in clumps. There are flies hovering around its head. I’m at Rosemarkie beach with Frankie because Tay has to help out at the Black Fin, and I can’t bear to sit in the house all day with Dillon, especially now I know he’s been talking to Dad.

Frankie reaches out with his foot and nudges it gently. The otter’s body indents where his foot makes contact and then springs back again.

“It’s still warm,” Frankie says. “Not much we can do.” He pushes his glasses up his nose and squints at me. “Come on.”

I’m on a slant and feel my shoes slipping down the rock I’m on.

“What will happen to it?” I ask.

“Not a l’otter,” says Frankie, sniffing.

“Frankie!” I cry.

He looks at me, confused. “Well, what do you want to do? Take it home?”

The storm clouds are rolling over the water toward us. Frankie looks in his bucket and starts counting his collection. A wave of deep sadness passes over me as I look at the small animal lying helplessly half in and half out of the water. I wonder where its mother is, and then I see a small splash a few meters out in the smooth, clear water.

“We have to do something,” I say. “We can’t just leave it here.”

“We could roll it back in,” Frankie suggests.

I suggest that we bury it, but Frankie says he doesn’t want to touch it and then points out that the only place to bury it would be in one of the rock pools.

“How can you be into science and not want to touch a dead animal?”

“I’m more of a numbers scientist than a biologist,” he says.

I don’t bring up that he plays with dead crabs and other shellfish all the time.

“Do you think it drowned?” I ask.

“Unlikely,” Frankie says. “It’s not even in the water.”

I think that it is possible, but I can’t reason with Frankie today.

In the end we walk back to town and tell the police, who phone the wildlife center, who say that they’ll send someone down to collect it.

“Collect it?” I ask.

“So it can be incinerated,” the policeman says.

Outside the police station, Frankie puts his arm around me, which is really awkward because I’m a head taller than him. I get a waft of his weird smell, and then his lips are suddenly on mine, and as I pull away, his teeth catch my lip.

“What are you doing?” I yell, moving my hand to my lip to see if I’m bleeding.

Frankie steps back. The crabs rotate in his bucket.

“I thought you liked me,” he says sulkily. “I thought maybe you asked Lara not to come because you wanted to be alone with me.”

“Why would you think that?” I cry. Instead of trying to make him feel better about it, I just keep yelling at him.

“Lara is not my friend anymore, and neither are you, so leave me alone.”

“But I love you,” he says.

I want to cry. I don’t want him to love me.

He trundles off with his bucket. I should go after him, but all I can think about is the dead baby otter. It feels as though everything around me is decaying.





17



THE NEXT DAY I WAKE IN THE EARLY HOURS, THANKS TO A dream that the dead baby otter was in my bed. After double checking it’s not there, I watch the sun roll up at four thirty from the living room window. Its glare coats the underside of the clouds in a magnificent orange. When Mum has gone to work to run the emergency clinic at the surgery, Dillon appears next to me with his duvet wrapped around his shoulders.

“Let’s have a duvet day and watch DVDs,” he suggests.

“But it’s really sunny,” I say. “I want to be outside.”

I want to be with Tay on his day off.

“Just watch one with me,” Dillon pleads. He is already on his stomach on the floor, pushing a DVD into the player. I agree because I want him on my side and because I miss him. I feel bad that I’ve neglected him. We sit on the sofa together, and Dillon arranges the duvet over us, but I kick it off because it’s so warm. When I touch Dillon’s arm, it is icy cold and makes me shiver. I sit with my hands holding my breasts, trying to make the pain go away. Luckily Dillon doesn’t notice I’m in pain. How could I tell him what happened? I make a promise to myself that I won’t be involved in any more fights.

Halfway through Die Hard 2, Dillon falls asleep and I turn the TV off. He stirs when I move.

“Stay a bit longer,” he murmurs. “Don’t leave.”

I leave him on the sofa and go to the kitchen. The fridge and the cupboards are almost empty. I boil the kettle and slice up the last lemon.

“Please, just drink it,” I plead when I’ve woken him up again. “It’ll do you good.”

He stares at the cup and asks what it is.

“Hot water with lemon. Lemon is good for your digestion.”

I read this in one of Mum’s health magazines.

He sits up and takes the cup. I sit with him while he drinks it. It takes ages for him to bring the cup to his mouth each time.

“You don’t have to feel guilty, because I’m making you drink it,” I say, quoting a piece of advice on a forum for anorexics. It doesn’t make sense to me, but Dillon takes a sip.