Bright and Dangerous Objects Read online

  I’d been planning to do a twenty-mile run after this. But when James ordered the full Cornish, I knew I’d offend him if I didn’t order something extravagant. I pick up my knife and fork.

  James reaches across the table for my hand. I let him take it, but my fist remains clenched, still holding my cutlery.

  “Solvig,” he says. “I wanted today to be special for a reason.” He’s staring at the salt shaker as insistently as if it were my eyes. “I don’t know if it’s the right time to bring this up. You know what I’m like. I find it hard to keep things in.”

  He’s so porous, everything cascades out of him.

  “Seriously, if you’re not up for it, then say,” he continues. “I was thinking, though, that since we’re so settled now—we’ve got the house and the dog and our careers—that it might be nice, or even . . . amazing . . . to start, well . . .”

  My chest tightens.

  James squeezes my hand. “Start trying for a baby.”

  I focus on the condensation running down the window.

  James keeps talking. He talks about how he wants to do some fence repairs in the front garden, about how he’d love to re-create a nursery he’s seen on Pinterest, about how pleased he is that his parents live nearby, and about how fantastic his sourdough is going to taste.

  I nod in between mouthfuls of waffle. I nod and eat, nod and eat. I know how lucky I am. I’m so lucky to be here, in my idyllic hometown, with my kind and handsome boyfriend. Everything is perfect between us. We have all the necessary prerequisites to create human life. Why wouldn’t I want to start trying for a family? Why wouldn’t I want that?

  •

  After James heads to work, I’m desperate to run and run, as far as I can possibly go. Running on a full stomach is a bad idea, so I’m compromising and only doing ten miles.

  This baby thing has thrown me into disarray. Certainly, I’ve acknowledged that one day, I might want to grow a child inside my body. But even though I’m the grand old age of thirty-six, I’ve never stopped to think that “one day” might be today. And if it’s not today, then how much time have I got left?

  As I run along the seafront, I weigh up the pros and cons. Pros: babies make you feel fulfilled. Cons: babies stop you from feeling fulfilled.

  What if there are other things I want to do with my life, big things, things I couldn’t possibly do with children?

  I look up at Pendennis Point. Then I slow down, catching my breath. My stomach is in knots. I hurry down some stone steps leading off the pavement. They take me onto the beach. I hurry to the water, then hunch over, bent double, emptying my guts into the sea. A mass of burgundy-coloured winter berries floats, half-digested, on the surface. Flotsam.

  I wipe my mouth and lie back on the sand, squinting. The sky is blank. I extend my arms and reach out for it.

  4

  A hot shower makes everything better. That’s what my dad always says. But as I emerge from the bathroom, wrapped in a fluffy towel, it’s not my dad I’m thinking of—it’s my mum.

  She died two months before my third birthday. I don’t remember her. I don’t know if I called her Mum or Mummy or Elaine. I don’t know what her voice sounded like, or what she liked to eat for breakfast. I do know that it was my mum who chose a Scandinavian name for me. She was into hygge long before it was fashionable; said my name reminded her of a bowl of split pea soup. That’s one of the only things she wrote in my baby book. My mum was a genius and didn’t have time for filling in books for babies.

  I head into the spare room, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the floorboards. The shelves in here are crammed mostly with James’s stuff: tattoo guns, inks, needles, machine tips. We once had a house party where James gave free tattoos to his friends all night. There are people living all over Cornwall who’ve been forever changed by that party. Like Kensa, who works at the bike shop and has a top hat on his middle finger. Or Polly, who teaches at the university and sports “wanderlust” on her clavicle. I didn’t get a tattoo that night, of course. The permanence frightens me.

  I take a Quality Street tin off the bottom shelf. This is mine. I take off the tin’s rusty lid and sift through the old photographs inside. There’s me winning the long jump at school; me dressed as Fred Flintstone for Halloween; me and Dad on a canal boat, both gripping enamel mugs. I can’t remember the days these pictures were taken, but I know the photographs so well that they feel like memories. When I see the canal boat photo, for instance, I think about the taste of hot cocoa. It’s possible that we were actually drinking tea.

  At the bottom of the pile, there are six pictures that I know even better than any of the others:

  1. Mum is a baby, trying to eat her christening gown.

  2. Mum is a teenager, sitting on a bed with two girls and a boy, wearing bell-bottoms, laughing.

  3. Mum is lying on a sun lounger next to a swimming pool, wearing a bikini. The photograph is taken from above, presumably from a hotel balcony. My mum looks as though she’s sleeping peacefully.

  4. Mum is blinking, holding hands with my dad in front of a sparsely decorated Christmas tree. Mum is at least six centimetres taller than Dad. Dad’s pupils are glowing red.

  5. Mum is in the house my dad still lives in, lying on the sofa he still sits on. I am on the sofa too. We are staring at something off-camera, probably the television. There are two cans of beer on the coffee table.

  6. Mum is sitting in front of an IBM computer, wearing a brown smock. I, the photographer, am looking up at Mum at a wonky angle, cutting her head out of the picture. There’s a bottle of Smirnoff on her desk.

  I know my mother was a genius because of the things my dad has told me. About how she used to spend fifteen hours a day at her desk, and even then, she would wake up three or four times a night, scribbling notes on a pad beside the bed. I wonder how someone so focused on her high-flying career in IT felt about having me. Is it a coincidence that the photographs I’m in also have alcohol in them? Or was her heavy drinking by the end a way of trying to calm her busy mind?

  I share Mum’s passion for work. And being a saturation diver doesn’t exactly mesh with motherhood. Working away from home for big chunks of time. Risking my health—my life, even. Also, I’m self-employed. That means no maternity leave. No contract. If I choose to have a baby, I need to prepare myself for the possibility that I may never do the job I love again.

  My best friend, Anouk, is a practising physiotherapist. We haven’t discussed how she feels about her work-life balance since she adopted Nike. She’s never complained, so I’ve always assumed it’s going just fine.

  I send a text message asking if I can come over. By the time I’ve put the pictures of my mother back in the tin, I’ve had a reply. She says: Yes. Please. Now.

  I’m off to see my Mum Friend, I think experimentally, as I pull on a pair of tracksuit bottoms. She’s a mum, I’m a mum, we’re Mum Friends. I put on a faded mauve sweatshirt I’ve had for years. The kind of thing a mum would wear.

  “Where’s my baby?” I call in a silly voice as I walk downstairs. My seven-year-old Irish wolfhound, Cola, hobbles into the hallway. In human years, he is roughly the same age as Jeremy Irons.

  “Fancy a peregrination, old man?” I give his grey muzzle a stroke.

  Two years ago, when we got Cola from the shelter, he would get so excited at the word “walk” that he’d wee on the carpet. We started saying “stroll” instead, but he quickly cottoned on, so now I make full use of the thesaurus.

  I attach Cola’s lead to his collar and put on my parka, and we leave the house.

  As we walk, I look across Penryn River. The boats are pointing north today, towards Flushing. I love the way they line up depending on the swell of the tide. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t feel glad to live here.

  I take a right up Symons Hill, which I remind myself to go up extra slowly. Cola stops occasionally and looks up at me with doleful eyes, then shuffles on.

  “Good boy, Cola.” />
  Some people have already put their bins out ready for tomorrow. The most conscientious have blankets and ropes keeping their rubbish out of reach of greedy birds. The seagulls here are fat and ferocious. It doesn’t matter how posh your house is, or how delightful its shade of coastal blue, every exterior is splattered with guano.

  “Soffig!” a little voice cries out, accompanied by some enthusiastic waving. Farther up the hill, on Jubilee Road, is Nike. It must be at least six weeks since I was last at Anouk’s. I feel honoured that he remembers me.

  “Hoy there,” calls Anouk, letting go of Nike’s hand.

  “Look what I made, Soffig!” Nike runs towards me. He’s wearing a navy sweatshirt with a red collar poking out, and he’s carrying an A3 poster with black and green clumps stuck all over it. He pants exaggeratedly, hands me the poster, and then bends down and almost pokes Cola in the eye. “Hello, Mr. Coca-Cola.”

  I study Nike’s poster, trying to identify the blobs. “It’s lovely.”

  “His class went beachcombing,” Anouk explains, a few steps away from me now. “Nike’s picture is called Stupid Fish, isn’t it, doodle?”

  Nike is too busy stroking Cola to respond. I hand him Cola’s lead. “Remember how I showed you to do it last time? That’s it, let him lead you.”

  Nike nods solemnly, as if he’s been given the most important job in the world. As we walk up Beacon Road, Anouk and I hang back a little.

  “How’s he settling in?” I ask quietly.

  Anouk hasn’t told me why Nike was placed for adoption, and I’ve never asked, even though I’m dying to know. Would knowing help me understand Nike or Anouk better? I doubt it. It’s voyeurism, plain and simple.

  “Pretty good,” she says. “They’ve only been back at school for a week, but he seems much happier this term.”

  Nike is five. He’s been living with Anouk for almost a year, but she only officially adopted him in August. His foster family was in Plymouth, and relocating was tough on him. The adoption agency thought the quietness of Falmouth would do him good.

  Nike has definitely come out of his shell since he first came to Anouk. I remember that first week, when Nike hid behind the sofa, swearing. Anouk texted me every day with messages full of capital letters. Gradually, the messages subsided, and I presumed, perhaps incorrectly, that she wanted some space.

  “And how about you?” I ask. “How are you getting on?” I try not to ask this in a way that sounds like I’m testing her. Really, though, I am. Anouk is my litmus test. If she’s struggling with motherhood, then I’ve got no chance.

  Anouk laughs, patting me on the shoulder. “I’m fine. Frazzled. Discombobulated. But fine.”

  I know appearances can be deceiving, but Anouk doesn’t seem frazzled. She’s dressed in dungarees and a mustard chenille jumper. She has a polka-dot scarf wrapped around her head, red lipstick on, and looks about a hundred times as cool as I’ve ever done.

  I want to ask her if having a kid is worth it. Does she feel sure that she made the right decision? Instead, I say: “You’re doing great.”

  Anouk laughs again, then narrows her eyes. “You’re off tomorrow, aren’t you? Don’t worry, I’m not going through another psychic phase. James mentioned it.” Anouk has known James for longer than she’s known me. Sometimes I forget that they’re friends too, that they talk to each other when I’m not there.

  Anouk looks like she’s about to say something else, then stops. When we reach her place, a yellow-doored end-of-terrace with two palm trees in the front garden, she pats Nike on the back. “Why don’t you go around the back and play in the garden with Cola, doodle?”

  “Okay, pukey Anouky.” Nike sticks out his tongue.

  I sit on the sofa while Anouk makes tea. The living room has a nautical theme: blue and white furniture, shells on the mantelpiece, a framed print of a life preserver on the wall. A lot of Cornish homes are decorated like this. The main difference between Anouk’s front room and most of the others around here is the statue of Ganesha next to the television.

  Anouk brings in the teas and sits beside me. “I’m glad you got in touch,” she says, an unfamiliar vulnerability in her voice. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a smooth green pebble. “I’ve been carrying this around with me lately, but I’d like you to have it now.” She passes it to me. “It’s malachite. For protection.”

  Anouk used to work in a crystal shop in Camborne, near the Giant’s Quoit: a mysterious megalithic tomb. She took several boxes of stock home with her when the shop closed down, and she would jokingly administer “stones for yer bones” when we met up. “This one will cure your cold,” she’d say, or, “This one will stop you and James arguing over the remote.” Anouk is not laughing now.

  “You know I’m proud of you, girl,” she says, looking at the carpet. “But be careful, okay?”

  I frown. Has James told her he wants to try for a baby?

  “I saw this documentary a couple of nights ago,” she says. “The guy on it, a diver, he made one tiny mistake. He opened a valve at the wrong time, and the whole chamber blew up. I don’t want you to explode, Solvig.”

  Anouk must be talking about the Byford Dolphin case. When the chamber exploded, one of the divers was propelled through a sixty-centimetre opening. Fragments of his body were found ten metres away. “It was one of the tenders outside the chamber who made the mistake,” I tell her. “Not a diver.”

  Anouk scowls.

  “You big dafty,” I say, giving her arm a squeeze. I mean, really, I’m not going to come out and say it, but there’s no way a lump of rock is going to save me. It’s like the old saying goes: if it’s your time to be forced through a sixty-centimetre opening, it’s your time to be forced through a sixty-centimetre opening. Strange to hear Anouk worrying like that, though. She used to call my job “badass.”

  I pick up my cup of tea. “Anyway, how’s your work going?”

  “It’s fine,” she says. “I mean, it’s awful. Exhausting. Brilliant.”

  “Anouk,” I begin.

  Anouk looks at me. I notice the dark, puffy skin under her eyes. I think about how she’s been carrying a pebble in her pocket for protection.

  “Listen,” I tell her. “If you ever need a night off, and you want me to babysit, let me know. I’d be happy to look after Nike.”

  Anouk bites down on her lower lip. “Thank you, Solvig. By the way, you’ll know when danger is coming, because the stone will shatter. If that happens: watch out.”

  •

  “Good run earlier?” James calls.

  I take off Cola’s lead, then go into the kitchen and see James shredding celeriac. He’s been talking about this recipe for days. Crispy catfish with black-eyed peas and Southern-style slaw. The key to this meal, he says, is coating the fish with cornflakes instead of breadcrumbs. It sounds . . . gross.

  “My run was great, thanks,” I lie.

  I look in the fridge at the selection of half-drunk reds and whites. I take a red and pour it into two glasses without bothering to try any, then put a glass on the counter next to James.

  “Cheers,” he says.

  “Bottoms up,” I reply.

  I wonder if we’re going to keep carrying on as though the conversation earlier never happened. Maybe it’s my responsibility to bring it up first. James said I could take my time to think about it. What would happen if I thought about it for a year? Ten years? I put on my best smile. “Want some help?”

  “No need.” James grabs my waist. His breath is vegetal. James once showed me a YouTube video of a whisky taster who advised viewers to develop their palates by tasting unusual things. He recommended starting with a fresh bay leaf. I had a pack of dried leaves in the cupboard, and they were so sharp they sliced my tongue.

  I politely extricate myself from James’s grip and put out food and medication for Cola, then collapse on the sofa. Being on the verge of leaving really makes me appreciate what I’ve got here. We might not have cornicing, ceiling roses, or fa
ncy banisters like the homes facing the sea have, but our house—which looks over the harbour—is cosy, with big windows. The winter can be a pain, though. The house gets damp and freezing, and once it’s dark, all you can see out of the windows is yourself.

  My reflection is just starting to appear in the window now. I can see James’s too. I’m embarrassed by how we look together. The same height, both with blond hair and blue eyes. James’s hair is long and mine is short. Does that help? Not really. I once bought some dye, but I never used it.

  “I picked up a couple of books for you on my way home,” James says, nodding at the coffee table.

  I get a lot of reading done on my dives. Problem is, the library lends books for only three weeks, so I have to buy them. Inevitably, I end up taking a weird mix of whatever secondhand books this seaside town has to offer. Fortunately, the wintertime choice is generally more interesting than the summer. Come July and August, the shops are brimming with discarded tourist reads. That’s how I ended up with three books on the history of fascism in November, whereas in August, it was seven romcoms by Marian Keyes.

  I look at the books on the table: a crime novel and a book of Cornish folktales.

  “I had a flick through,” James says. “Some of the folktales look more disturbing than the thriller.”

  I laugh. “Thanks. You really don’t need to make such a fuss. It’s my job.”

  “I’m worried about you,” James says, stirring the black-eyed peas. “This—I don’t know what it is—depression, or whatever you’re feeling.” He carefully places two fillets into a sizzling pan. “You don’t have to do it, you know. We can find something else. Some of those inland diving jobs are—”

  “Love you,” I say, getting up from the sofa and going to give him a kiss. My lips miss and hit the corner of his mouth.

  •

  “Soul food.” James puts a plate in front of me.

  There’s a vase of snowdrops on the table and Van Morrison is singing about the fires of spring on the record player.

  “Turns out breakfast cereal and fish are a great pairing,” I say, after taking a small bite.