It stings to hear James get the facts wrong. He’s getting them wrong because I haven’t been honest with him.
“I’m angry with you, Solvig,” he continues. “You should have talked to me. Relationships need communication. And given your job, and you having to go away so often . . . I need to know where your mind is. I don’t want to hear about where your body’s been once it’s already too late.”
“You’re right,” I say, stepping over a crushed Coke can.
James stops gesticulating. His arms fall limp by his side. “This thing that occurred, between you and the woman. It’s indicative of a much bigger problem between us.”
I wait for James to say more, but he doesn’t. I want to beg him to explain something to me, whether it’s how the Portuguese man-o’-war’s digestive system works, or how to save our relationship, but there’s only silence.
That time we were in the Lake District, when our relationship was a fragile bud, James shared something. “I’ve only ever been broken up with,” he disclosed, as we watched our campfire’s dying embers. “I’ve never been the one to end a relationship.” At the time, I found his words comforting. If I ended up breaking up with him, I figured, I’d be one of a long line of women who had done the same. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I know what James’s confession really was. It was a warning.
When we reach the sea, we stop and look at the waves. I dip my toe in the water. James presses his shoe into the wet sand and draws a line in it.
We turn and start walking along the beach.
“James,” I say, launching into the piece I’ve been practising all the way here. “When I’m on land, I want to be in the sea. When I’m happy, I’m waiting to be sad. When I’m here, I’m looking over there.” I point towards the far end of the beach, towards Newlyn, but really, I’m thinking about Mars. “It’s a way of trying not to feel trapped.”
“You felt trapped with me? Because I never—”
“It’s a trap of my own making. I’ve always had one foot in and one out. But I don’t want that any more. When I’m here, I want to be here. And when I’m gone . . .”
“Gone?”
“I mean, in the future. If my work takes me, you know, far away.”
“Further than the North Sea?” James sounds wary, and weary.
“I’ll give up diving,” I say, as though ripping off a plaster. “Being shut away for a month at a time probably isn’t good for me. I used to think I could stay locked in that chamber forever. Recently, I’ve realised how much I need the stuff on the outside too.”
“Right,” says James. I know that look. I saw him doing it after a regular customer started spreading rumours about him using unclean needles, then came into the studio one day, tail between his legs, asking for a new tattoo. It was a look that said too late for that now.
I stop walking. I taste the salt and smell the seaweed and feel the breeze. “James,” I say. “I’m pregnant.”
James looks at me blankly. Then his eyes flash with a series of emotions, like I’m watching them tick along on a zoetrope. Confusion. Disbelief. Horror.
“It’s from the last time we . . . I haven’t known for long.”
James turns away from me, towards the town. I think he’s looking in the direction of his parents’ house. When he turns back, his voice is almost inaudible. “I’ve been trying to break up with you.”
I look down at my hands, tinged blue in the cold, and I take off my eternity ring. The flesh is indented where the ring used to be. It’s worn me away.
I hold it tight in my fist; then I offer it to James. Automatically, he takes it, and I catch sight of the ouroboros tattoo on his forearm.
“The relationship isn’t healthy for either of us,” he says.
“Not at the moment.”
“How do you feel about the pregnancy?”
“Scared.”
We sit down on the sand, even though it’s damp and it’s going to stick to our clothes. Feels good to be grounded. I wonder if James is going to put his arm around me, but he doesn’t. We stare out at the horizon in silence.
At last, I say: “I’ve got an interview next week, in America. I entered that competition you told me about. To be one of the first people to go and live on Mars.”
James stares at me. And then he begins to laugh.
I laugh too.
Soon, we are laughing uncontrollably, shrieking and roaring and grabbing fistfuls of sand, then watching the grains fall between our splayed fingers.
•
In the car, I scream behind a closed mouth.
“I’ll support you whatever you decide,” James said after a stiff hug on the promenade. “Whatever you decide”: it’s obvious he was referring to an abortion. “We’ll make it work whatever happens,” he said after that. “Whatever happens”: he meant it’s over.
“Whatever,” I say now, under my breath, before I start the car.
I’m not proud of myself for the way I drive back to Falmouth. I get beeped at three times, and I have to do an emergency stop at a roundabout.
When I switch off the engine outside the doctor’s surgery, I notice how loudly I’m breathing.
“Fuck. Shit. Fucking arse shit.”
I get out of the car and head for reception. “Appointment, please,” I say, wiping sand off the back of my coat.
The man behind the desk takes my name and date of birth and asks whom I’d like to see. “Computers are down,” he explains. “Got to do it the old-fashioned way.” He opens a diary and licks the tip of his finger every time he turns the page. He finds an appointment for two weeks’ time.
“I was hoping for something sooner,” I say.
“Ah.” He looks over his glasses. “It’s an emergency appointment?”
I think about heart attacks and
