“Hello main course!” he said. “Been marinating in sea water for tonight’s meal. How the hell do you get the hook out?”
“Hope he knows how to eat a fish better than how to catch one,” Torren said quietly, winking at me. I sat back while she baited my hook. “This prawn is from my personal supply. Not that pulp we sold you earlier. You could land a whale with this.” It threaded onto the hook, curling neatly around, guided by fingertips. I glanced up at the skipper. His face glowed dimly behind a flaring cigarette lighter. In the gathering dawn I glimpsed him watching his daughter affectionately, tiredness briefly lifted from his face. Torren went to where the fish now lay tangled with line. The boat shuddered forward.
I still memorised football scores and recipe ideas to tell Lara. She inhabited spaces. Next to that wall when deciding the framed black and white of an abandoned railway station should hang there. Beside the window where her raucous laughter at our greyhound’s antics echoed. At the timber table where she arm-wrestled my younger brother, beating him twice, bending back his straining arm until it thudded dully wrist first into the table. Outside around a small glass table, sharing sports lift outs and reading articles to each other over coffee. The house felt like a display home now.
We made our final stop. The anchor chain rattled as it plunged into water. Sunshine lit the blue surface. My line dragged taut, cutting into the skin of my finger. I tugged the fish in, a bream, left hand, right hand, feeling it drag and swerve. Lifted it over the boat’s rail, fine water spraying me, tasting of brine, the silver body flashing and beating. It fell, slapping on the deck. I stared mesmerised at its fight, and the moments of panic and dread I’d lived with for months welled up inside me again.
“Let me,” Torren said, voice hushed, crouching next to me. She freed the hook, working it out from where it punctured through the side of the fish’s mouth. Cupping it between hands she passed it to me and as I grasped it, the fish squirmed and twisted in my palms. Bracing against the boat’s rail I let it slide from my hands, nose diving to water and streaking away. From the corner of my eye I saw one of the others shaking their head, but Torren looked at me differently, as if she’d seen something she wasn’t expecting.
