The Hollow Sea by Annie Kirby

Author:Annie Kirby [Kirby, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405949910
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2022-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

26

Charlotte: David

My first ghost child was more fully formed in my heart than the ones who came later. A face I could picture clearly, untameable curls, a cheeky smile. A life, a future mapped out before her. A name, the name I chose for her, carried in my heart but never spoken. She was made in a different place, this first ghost, a place of warmth and darkness, not a place of harsh light and gleaming steel, like her brothers and sisters. The child I sacrificed everything for.

Before I was an admin assistant, I had been a ceramics artist. My studio, rented from an arts cooperative, landlocked, where I made and remade the sea with clay. My trademark white clay, unglazed. Abstract curves in empty spaces. To my customers, the shapes might be anything. A foxtail, a toadstool, a galloping horse. I didn’t mind, they could choose. But I knew each piece was part of the sea that whispered to me in the night.

David. A wrong turning into the studio. These are amazing. What are they meant to be?

His eyelashes long and pale behind his glasses. I liked them. You decide. Whatever you think they should be. My favourite piece. Rag. Tiny woven strands of clay, a tattered edge. Bleached ragwort floating on the rag end of a wave.

I get to pick the meaning? That’s a big responsibility. Those eyelashes, almost brushing his cheeks when he blinked. Taking his time. Different angles, crouching down, noting where the light and shadows fell, eyes watery blue with concentration. A wave. I think it’s a wave. Kind of a weird wave, true, but a wave.

I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. Whatever you like. But he was the first, the first who had ever guessed correctly. He bought Rag, paling a little when I told him the price, but he handed me his credit card without blinking. I noted the name on it: David Farrier. He backed through the door cradling the bubble-wrapped sculpture in his arms like a new-born.

He came back the next day to invite me for a drink. I paid. He had bankrupted himself to buy Rag. We laughed a lot. The laughter made me feel strong and free. It hushed the calling of the waves. He was a social worker. I liked that. He wanted children, lots of them, and I liked that too. I went to see him play bass guitar in his indie cover band, the Fractal Caterpillars. They were terrible and I liked it. On our third date, we missed our dinner reservation when he stopped to chat to an old homeless woman. I didn’t mind about dinner.

In the years that came after, I tried not to talk about David because when I did those were the stories I found myself telling. How kind he was, how funny, how much he cared about old homeless women. The stories I could tell without my throat buckling. I didn’t talk about the time he left dozens of voicemails – in turns angry, pleading, cold – because I hadn’t called him from my friend Angela’s hen party.

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