The Art of Not Breathing (9 page)

“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.”

Eddie is not asleep. He is sitting in the kitchen sink, staring out the window at the stars. “There’s the bear,” he says to himself. Then he turns to me and whispers, “Ellie, we never see shooting stars anymore. How are we supposed to make wishes?”

It’s gone midnight when my father comes in. Mum is asleep with her head on the table and her arms dangling by her sides. I try to look at my father, but the kitchen tips back and forth. When I try to stand up, I slide straight to the floor and bile rides up my throat. His polished shoes catch the moonlight just before I vomit all over them.

2

THE JACKDAWS CACKLE AND SCREECH OUTSIDE, AND IN THE
distance the church bells chime for Sunday mass. My head hurts too much for me to get out of bed, and the smell of cooking bacon downstairs makes me feel queasy. I wonder if Mum realized how much I drank. Perhaps she thought it was water in my glass. I reach for the notepad by my bed and make a new list.

NEW THINGS I REMEMBER ABOUT THAT DAY:

1. Dillon wasn’t swimming back to look for Eddie. He was looking for someone else. Find out who.
   

2. My father definitely wasn’t on the beach when Eddie disappeared. Find out where he went.
   

3. My father was holding something blue when he ran to me after I collapsed. Find out what.
   

I haven’t got much to go on, but I know two things for sure: Dillon and my father are hiding something, and I’m capable of remembering more—I just have to be under the water for it to happen.

My father knocks on the door, and I shove the notebook under the covers.

“Breakfast is ready,” he says, barely looking at me.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Neither is your mother,” he replies. “At least you got most of it out of your system.”

He looks at his shoes. He doesn’t tell me off, and I wonder why. Perhaps the bacon is the punishment. For me and Mum.

He wanders over to the window next to my bed.

“There’s a cold draft in here,” he murmurs. He tries to pull the window closer to the frame, and cement dust falls on his hand. “This place is falling apart.”

I slide back under the covers. As he leaves he says, “By the way, you’re grounded for a week.”

I hate him.

Another question spins around my mind. Does Tay know about Eddie? Would it be so bad if he did know?
Yes,
I answer myself. Because if Tay knows about Eddie, he’ll always be wondering about the bit of me that’s missing.

3

THE WEEK PASSES SLOWLY. MUM CRIES A LOT, BUT SHE DOESN’T
offer me any more gin. Dillon leaves the house before I’m even up so he can walk all the way to Lara’s and walk her to school. He doesn’t even come home for dinner. I’m not allowed out, because of the gin, but my father works late and has no idea that I go to the harbor after school every day. I wait for Tay in the boathouse, but he never shows up. I know he’s been there, though, because I find a pair of goggles and diving boots and a smelly towel on top of my cupboard. I’m sure that by now Danny has told him everything and he doesn’t want anything to do with me. It’s always the same. No one wants to be friends with the girl whose brother died. What if she cries? What if she wants to talk about it? What if she’s all weird and morbid? I long to be in the water again, to remember more, to recreate that moment where nothing hurt.

On Friday Mum goes to work and I skip school to avoid a maths test. In the morning I get supplies for Mum from Superdrug and pile up the goodies on Mum’s bed when I get home. Mocha lipstick and several colors of nail varnish. A mascara, too. I’d taken the nearest one because I was in a hurry, but it turns out to be a volumizing one, which she could do with. For lunch I eat a plastic-cheese sandwich with extra pickle and butter on both sides of the bread. I find the Veet I’d taken in my jacket pocket. My legs dangle over the bath, covered in white foam, while I smoke a cigarette. When I’m done, I wash the foam and my hair down the plug hole, clean the sink, bleach the toilet, and spray the room with lemon scent.

Next, I move to Dillon’s room. Even after all these years, it feels funny to be in here. I don’t know how Dillon copes with it, with the big space by the window where Eddie’s bed used to be.

I lie on the floor and shimmy my head and shoulders under Dillon’s bed. There’s old food down here, encrusted into the carpet and smeared along the wall above the skirting board. It makes my stomach turn. There are boxes of books and magazines and moldy socks, but Dillon’s old wetsuit isn’t here. I try the wardrobe, and it smells bad too. The top shelf is empty and thick with dust, and the bottom shelf is filled with neatly lined-up shoes. I pull out the hoodie he always wears and search the pockets for money. My fingers get covered in something sticky—macaroni cheese. I heave silently as the stale cheese smell wafts into my mouth. I almost cry.

But then I see it. The wetsuit hangs right in the corner, and I sniff one of the arms. It smells damp, like old boots, but I run to the bathroom and yank it on. It’s so tight, it hurts my fingers when I try to stretch it over my hips, but as I finally pull the zipper up at the back the fabric folds around my body, holding me in place, and I feel warm and glad. I hold my breath. At thirty seconds, my arms start twitching, and at forty-nine I exhale loudly. All the times I’ve held my breath when I’ve been upset or angry—I must have only managed about twenty seconds. I take in a few deep breaths and try again, feeling my face go red as the seconds tick by. I make it to sixty. Just. I’m too exhausted to do it again.

That evening, my parents go to the pub. They always go on Fridays because Mum feels better by then—well, better enough to talk.
A debrief,
Dad calls it, and he always sighs when he says it.

I walk past Dillon’s room and hear creaking. I peer through the keyhole and see Dillon in bed with Lara.

They’re mostly under the covers, but Dillon is on top and I can see his shoulders and the small muscles in his back contracting and relaxing. They’re very quiet. Dillon grunts a bit, but the noises are mostly just breathing. When they’ve finished, I see Lara’s breasts, which aren’t anywhere near as big or wobbly as mine. They’re small and perfect. Dillon lies beside her with his eyes closed, breathing lightly, hardly moving. Lara takes Dillon’s hand and places it on her breast. He smiles but doesn’t open his eyes.

I wonder if this is Dillon’s first time. I wonder if it’s Lara’s first time. If it were me, I wouldn’t choose to do it in my parents’ house. I would find a dark, secluded place. The boathouse, maybe.

The girls at school talk about sex a lot. They group together in the playground to look at magazines. I’ve never seen what’s in them, but they talk about Positions of the Month, and the boys talk a lot about girls’ anatomy. A few months ago a naked picture of Fifi Kent was sent to everyone in our year by her boyfriend’s best friend. I didn’t see it, though, because I don’t have a mobile phone—it would be too depressing to have a phone that no one ever called, and anyway, I want to be left alone. Some nasty things were said about Fifi Kent, and now she eats lunch alone too. Sometimes I think about sitting with her, but I suspect that she wouldn’t want to talk to me.

One last glance before I head downstairs. Dillon is propped up on one elbow staring longingly at Lara, twirling a strand of her mouse hair. I shouldn’t spy on people. I see things I don’t want to.

4

AS SOON AS THE WEATHER STARTS WARMING UP, OR EVEN BEFORE,
the Black Isle teenagers have parties down on the Point by the lighthouse. I’ve never actually been invited, but sometimes I follow Dillon down there and hide in the shadows. Today is the first one of the year, even though it’s not quite May yet, and Dillon has tried on three different shirts. He finally settles for a really ugly brown one. His hair is perfectly gelled and spiked. I hover by the door as he lies to our parents and says that he’s going to Lara’s house. He makes a point of saying that her parents will be there and they’re all having dinner together. I wait for them to go back into the kitchen, then go after him.