This time, I miss the ball. As I pick it up, James points at the sand.
“Look, a sea raft,” he says.
Is that another new tattoo on his wrist? Looks like an ouroboros. Tail eater. Constantly leaving, constantly returning.
“That’s unusual,” he muses. “It’s a by-the-wind sailor. From the Porpitidae family.”
It’s a glutinous disc of cobalt blue. Size of a Ritz cracker. There’s a flap of clear gel on top.
“That’s the sail,” James says. “It blows wherever the wind takes it.”
“A life of freedom,” I respond.
James shakes his head. “Completely at the mercy of the elements. A kind of prison.”
I kneel down, as if to inspect the creature. I find myself inspecting my trainers instead. The sole is peeling away from the left shoe.
“Don’t touch it,” James warns, “because of the nematocysts. Neat, aren’t they? Living at the intersection between air and water. Sails on top, polyps underneath. Organisms that live in and out of water at the same time are—”
“Amphibians.”
“No. Pleuston.” James buys nature books with Latin words in them. He watches programmes narrated by David Attenborough and Chris Packham. At work, he spends his days etching marine life onto people’s skin: a squid on the biceps, a koi carp on the thigh, a stingray on the sacrum. This fetishisation of the sea. Thalassophilia, as it’s known. Try spending ten hours on the seabed, people, I always think, and then tell me about your love of the velvet dogfish.
James has already moved on. “I’m going to capture the wild yeast in the environment.” He’s gesticulating a lot. I think he’s plucking imaginary yeast particles from the air. “I’m going to use it to naturally ferment my bread. Good, eh?”
We trudge towards Gylly Beach Café to warm up. Before we go in, James hands the ball to a little girl in frog-shaped wellington boots. Then he sits with his back to the window, so that I get a view of the sea.
“I can’t believe this is our last day together,” he says, once our drinks have arrived.
“It’s only for a month,” I tell him. “It’ll whizz by.”
“I wanted to do something special. I wish I didn’t have to work this afternoon.”
I lift my cup to my lips and take a sip of black coffee. “This is special.”
We’ve been together for nearly three years. Every time I go it’s the same. James is a romantic. But he wouldn’t be in love with me if I were the sort of person who didn’t go away regularly. And I wouldn’t love him if I stayed. That’s how this works: I get time to myself, and James gets a break from my dark moods before they grow unbearable.
“I’ll make it up to you later,” he says, taking his cup and gently nudging mine.
“A normal night in will be fine. I like our normal nights.”
Just then, a plate smashes beyond the swinging doors, in the kitchen. A crackle of jealousy runs through me as I imagine the waiter sweeping up broken crockery.
James studies me. “It’s happening again, isn’t it?”
It feels like my bones are being crushed. I nod.
“You get like this every time now,” James says, “right before you leave. I’m worried that your job is putting too much strain on you. I mean, you went to Go Ape the other day. You’re spiralling.” He smiles with his mouth but not his eyes.
James is wrong. My work isn’t stressful—it’s the opposite. I love it. I live for it. The longer I go without it, the more frustrated I get. After an idle week or two, a voice will pipe up. What are you doing with your life, Solvig? Is this it? Do you merely exist to drink Americanos and eat avocados and talk about the weather? Once the voice grows deafening, that’s when the physical pain starts. Sore throats. Migraines. Indigestion. The only cure is to get back to the grindstone.
Unfortunately, legally, I have to take at least a month off between jobs. And even if I could go back sooner, chances are there’d be no work for me. I can go half a year between assignments. Poor weather conditions, seasonal demands, plans changing at the last minute . . . if I didn’t love what I do so much, it’d be my worst nightmare.
Tomorrow I’m flying to Aberdeen. I’ll enter a pressurised chamber on board a ship on the North Sea. This will be my home for a month. Every day, I’ll climb out of a hatch in the chamber into a diving bell and plunge to a depth of around 130 metres. The proper name for my job is saturation diving. Saturation diving is my medicine. Hopefully, once I get back to it, I’ll stop obsessing over the Mars Project.
“I wonder if it’ll rain today,” I say.
The waiter heads out of the kitchen holding our breakfasts: full Cornish for James, waffles with winter berries for me.
James starts to eat. As I glance at his throat, which is one of the only places—save his face—that isn’t tattooed, I see a pulse beneath his skin. I feel the need to touch my own neck, first on one side, then the other. I don’t think I have OCD. That sounds too definite and interesting for what I’ve got. I’ve got a gnawing need for bodily symmetry. I try to ensure both eyelids shut with equal pressure. If I press one knee, I prod the other. When I look at James’s tattoo sleeves, I wish I could pull the peonies on the right arm down a few centimetres, to make them even with the skulls on the left. However, the fact
