‘Mum’s been looking for you. Me too. And the police, and Karl.’
He splashed water at me. It went in my eyes, but right now I didn’t mind. I wanted to call Mum, but then I decided he had to put on his good clothes first and have a shave. He wouldn’t be allowed to kiss her with cactus cheeks. As if he could read my thoughts, he said, ‘Don’t say anything just yet.’
‘So you can talk!’
He clamped a startled hand over his mouth. ‘No,’ he whispered so quietly I could barely hear, and shook his head. Then he zipped his lips again and pointed at me.
‘Am I not allowed to say anything?’
He gave me a stern look from beneath his dark eyebrows.
‘Not to Mum?’
He gave a curt nod.
‘I won’t say a thing. Least of all to Mum.’ I spat in the bathwater to seal the pledge. ‘I swear.’
Dad smiled. He stood up and took a stroll across my tummy. His feet tickled. When he flicked water at me again, I flicked him back. We slapped the water and I made waves with my hands and kicked my feet. It sloshed over the rim of the bath but that didn’t stop us.
Suddenly Mum opened the door. ‘What’s all this?’
Dad vanished instantly.
‘Look! The floor is soaking wet.’ She felt the bathwater. ‘You’ve been in here much too long.’
As inconspicuously as possible, I groped around behind my back to see if Dad might be hiding there. I couldn’t find him.
In a single motion, Mum reached in and pulled the plug.
‘Don’t!’ I pushed her away and accidentally hit her in the stomach.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she gasped.
The bathwater was clear and empty. Maybe he had slipped straight through the shiny plughole and had managed to wedge himself tight in the pipe. My little fingers could just fit into the little holes.
‘Behave yourself.’
‘Wait!’ I cried.
‘Don’t act the goat with me.’ She grabbed me roughly by the arm and yanked me to my feet. The plughole slurped and gurgled. Mum began to dry me off, even though I’d been drying myself off for ages now. The rough towel scoured my cheeks and folded my ears this way and that. The red bath mat beneath my feet was dark and cold from the water.
‘Look at the mess you’ve made.’
‘Dad started it.’
‘What did you say?’
I counted the black tiles on the floor so I wouldn’t have to look at her. When I was dry, she handed me the towel. ‘Use this to clean up.’ She’d forgotten to dry between my toes, so I did that myself.
When I heard her go downstairs, I turned on the tap again very carefully, just far enough for a steady trickle. I put the plug back in so the water would break Dad’s fall and stop him landing smack on the hard metal. Nothing except water came from the tap, but I kept watching. It dawned on me that it would take him a while to find his way back into the tap. As long as I was patient, he’d appear all by himself. I stared and stared at the running water.
‘What did I just tell you?’ Mum had come back upstairs without me noticing.
‘To clean up. I’m supposed to clean up.’
‘Turn that tap off. Now.’
13
A few days later I put another letter in a bottle and threw it into the sea. Karl was standing on the quay near his house, a mound of fish spread out in front of him. Little fish jumped into the air one after the other, like they’d been jolted by electric shocks.
‘Mikael!’
I pretended not to hear him.
‘Mi-ka-el!’ I peered out from under my hood, and he beckoned me over. I was afraid he’d seen me out on the dangerous rock with my bottle and was going to tell me off, but instead he asked me to help him sort the fish.
‘Now?’
‘If you like.’
‘Okay.’
‘You know where they go, right?’ Karl pointed to the beaten-up containers all around us. ‘Like with like.’
‘Yup.’
‘If you don’t know where a fish belongs, you ask me.’ Over and over, he grabbed two or three fish of the same kind by the tail and whacked them into one of the containers. ‘Seen that?’ Karl nodded toward the faded nets hanging out to dry on the deck of his cutter. ‘They’re in a bad way.’
‘What happened?’
‘Dragged ’em way too close to the seabed, searching for your dad.’
‘Oh.’
‘Should be able to fix most of ’em up.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I stared at the ground. There were flounders, whiting, and even a cod. There was another fish, too, one I didn’t recognize. It had silver scales that gave off a kind of rainbow sheen and its tailfin was rounded, not pointed. I picked it up and took a good look, then let it fall again cos I didn’t want to ask Karl what container to put it in.
‘What does she do all day?’
‘Who?’
‘Your mother.’
‘All kinds of things.’
‘Does she ever leave the house?’
‘Sometimes she goes out searching. She doesn’t phone as much anymore.’
‘You two surviving over there?’
It felt strange to hear him say ‘surviving.’
‘Must be tough on you, too.’
‘Dunno.’
‘The sea’s a treacherous bastard. Hard to believe. One minute he’s walking around, next minute he’s gone.’ He shook his head.
A crab scuttled out from beneath the fish, claws raised, dragging a string of seaweed behind it. There was a starfish, too, legs curled up like caterpillars. They hold onto the rocks so tight, you have to peel them off like a plaster.
‘D’you fancy goin’ out on the cutter with me sometime?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Just a day out on the water. You can give me a hand. Beats sitting around over there all day with yer Mum.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Up to you.’
Karl fell silent and bent over his catch again. Most of the fish had eyes that were dull and dead. Eyes that could look through salty water without it stinging. Eyes that might have seen my dad. I concentrated on picking out the little fish, and nabbed the crab cos I was allowed to fling it back into the sea. I also found a yellow plastic bottle that must have contained some kind of cleaner. The label had been soaked off.
‘You find the strangest things drifting out at sea,’ said Karl.
‘Ever found a football?’
‘A football?’
‘A red one made of patches all sewn together.’
‘Not that I can remember.’
‘It was red.’
‘Easy to spot.’
I nodded toward the cove. ‘Over that way.’