‘You might at least have come over…’
‘Well,’ said Karl. ‘Can’t change that now.’ He bent down, turned on his outside tap, rinsed his dirty hands, and then wiped them off on his trousers, which only made them dirty again. ‘She was a fine woman,’ he said. ‘At first they thought I was family.’
‘And?’
‘I said no, and sharpish like. No way I was going to foot the bill. D’you know what a funeral costs these days?’
‘You might at least have told us. We live on the same island!’
‘And… are you family? Were you ready to get yer wallet out?’
‘No, but we were neighbours. I was fond of her. How much trouble would it have been for you to come and see us?’
‘Well, now you know.’
‘I mean, wasn’t she your…’
‘My what?’
‘You know… didn’t you two… for a while?’
‘Listen, Hammermann. I’m not coughing up good money for a corpse, don’t care whose it is. No one’s laying this at my door. She’s lying in a council grave somewhere. One grave’s as cold as the next. She’d be no better off elsewhere. And if you’re so keen to part with yer money, give them a call and tell them where to send the bill. Leave me out of it. I’ve got enough on my plate.’
‘Take it easy. I only thought because you two once…’
‘That’s no business of yours, Hammermann.’
‘But you were together, weren’t you?’
‘For a while.’
‘So it’s not like you were strangers…’
‘Who are you to tell me what to feel?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘Well, shut up about it then.’
Dad held up his hands as if Karl had pointed a gun at him.
Karl marched down to his cutter. ‘I’ve got things to do.’
That evening, Dad got the torch out and went over to Miss Augusta’s to close the windows, turn off the power and the water mains, and to wedge the crooked front door shut.
He came back with a houseplant under each arm, and banged the front door with his elbow so I would open it for him. He put the plant pots down on the table. Grains of soil fell out, dry as mince that’s been stirred round the pan for too long. Mum swept them into her hand and told me to fetch two old plates from the cupboard to put under the pots. Dad produced a shiny hairpin from his trouser pocket.
‘For you,’ he said to Mum.
‘What do you mean?’
‘From the lost and found. Now it’s yours.’
‘Mine?’ A pink shell was stuck to the head of the pin. ‘That belongs to Pernille,’ Mum said indignantly.
‘And now it belongs to you.’
‘You had no right to touch it.’
‘It’s no one’s, not anymore.’
She went to give him back the hairpin, but Dad turned to put our new plants on the windowsill and started plucking out the yellow leaves. They curled and caught fire as he threw them on the burning wood in the fireplace.
‘I really don’t want it.’
Dad hid his hands behind his back when she tried to give him her present a second time.
Next morning she wore her hair up, held in place by a shiny hairpin with a pink shell.
11
I tore the middle pages out of my notebook, the one with the lined paper, sat down at my desk, and started to write a letter. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? I wrote in one long wavy line at the top of the page. Dad, Dad, Dad. When are you coming back? I’ve looked for you everywhere. Mum too. The police came and Karl’s been out looking too. DadDadDadDad. I wrote and wrote till the whole page was full. In the very bottom corner there was just enough room to write Sorry. As soon as I’d written it, I crossed it out again. Stupid word. That’s what you say when you want to get away with something. I kept the start of Sorry and turned it into Sorrow, but that wasn’t right, either. I scribbled My fault over the top. You could hardly read it, but it was still there. I was to blame.
I rolled up the letter till it was thin enough to slide into the bottle. I plugged it with a cork, picked up one of the stones from my collection on the windowsill, and tapped the cork till it was snug inside the neck.
The letter was rolled up with the writing on the outside. A stranger might have trouble reading it through the uneven surface of the glass, but Dad knew my handwriting. He’d taught it to me himself.
I climbed over the barnacle-pocked boulders to a pointed rock that jutted six or seven feet out into the sea. It was the rock I must ‘never-never-never—look at me when I’m talking to you—never ever jump off.’ Cross my heart and hope to die.
I kept as far from the water as I could so the waves couldn’t snatch at my feet. Even at the spot where the sea was calmer, I was too scared to go right to the edge. Gaping monster jaws lay waiting in the deep.
As far out as I dared, I took the bottle from my coat pocket, pressed a kiss to the green glass, and hurled it with all my might. It disappeared with a splash, but luckily it resurfaced and started bobbing lopsidedly along. Now it was up to the sea to pass my letter from wave to wave till it reached Dad. For a moment I was afraid it might smash to pieces against the rocks, but it didn’t, and it began to drift steadily away. I tried to keep track, to see where the waves were taking it, but I lost sight of it amid floating clumps of seaweed that were almost the same shade of green.
Then the waiting began.
12
‘Time for your bath!’ Mum shouted up to me.
‘In a minute!’ I shouted back.
‘Now,’ she answered.
‘I want to keep looking a bit longer.’
‘No.’
Through my binoculars, I was expecting to catch sight of Dad sitting with his back to me, arms around his knees. On a rock or at the place on the beach where he’d left his towel. I even scanned the gulls circling in the air.
‘Just another minute? Please?’
‘Now means now.’ Her words were jagged round the edges.
I sat my backside down on the cold metal of the empty bath and turned the tap on as far as it would go. The water thundered. It made my willy float like a buoy as it crept up to my belly button and my knees.
Suddenly the stream of water stopped. Something was stuck in the tap. Before I could stick my finger in to feel what it was, a tiny figure tumbled out. He was still wearing his swimming trunks.
‘Dad!’
He dived deep into the bathwater and surfaced next to the island my tummy made. I helped him up with my finger and kept the island as still as I could. He lay stretched out, panting. He could fit both feet inside my belly button.
‘You’ve gone all little,’ I said, once he had caught his breath. We laughed, and the shaking of my tummy almost sent him skidding back into the water.
‘Where have you been?’
He shrugged.
‘Did you get my letter?’
Pressing thumb and forefinger together, he pulled an invisible zip across his lips.
‘Can’t