The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller

Author:Claire Fuller [Fuller, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2023-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

As Leon lifts the pieces off my forehead and chest, and places them back in their little boxes and then into their places in the silver box, he says, ‘I’m sorry about Piper.’

I’m drifting off on a feeling of absent contentment and it takes me a moment to work out what he means, and then I realize he’s continuing the conversation we had before I went under about Piper’s grand plan. Fifteen or so hours had gone by in Greece, while here in the unit it must have been only – what, an hour?

‘I would have turned you down, anyway.’ I notice that my speech is slightly slurred.

‘But you’d have been missing all this.’ Leon strikes a pose, arms up like a bodybuilder. He knows he looks idiotic in his BioPharm robe and now he hops backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet, uppercutting like a boxer.

‘Nifty footwork but it won’t cut it.’

He moves faster, making little exaggerated puffs with his cheeks.

‘You don’t have any books.’

He stops moving, drops his arms.

‘You know what they say,’ I continue. ‘If you go home with somebody and they don’t have any books, don’t fuck ’em.’

‘I have books!’ Leon says, throwing his arms in the air. ‘I just didn’t bring them with me.’

Dearest H,

In my final meeting with the woman from HR and the PI, he claimed I’d compromised the whole experiment. He said they’d had to give all of the seven other octopuses a live crab to mitigate my action. That made me very happy. He and his colleagues had decided they could and would continue the study. The PI talked again about my response to the amputated arms, how I’d cried and stuck them to myself. What had you been expecting? he asked. When I tried to answer, it seemed his question was rhetorical. He said he didn’t think I was cut out to be a scientist. The woman from HR said I had to collect my things and leave. She said they would give me a reference since the study was continuing. I knew that giving me a bad one would have called the whole project into question.

Neffy

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