10:01
I’ve checked the date of the oldest prescription against our messages, our photos, I’m wracking my brains to figure out if we had a fight, if I was working too hard, if I was stressed, if there was some plausible, rational reason why you never told me you were depressed. I’ve come up with nothing. All I’ve worked out is that we were engaged when the oldest prescription was issued, on the date itself, you asked me what I thought about hydrangeas for your bouquet. You’ve had so much time, so many opportunities to tell me what was going on. What the fuck.
22
Net
Then
Ikeep my promise to him. In the mornings, while he meets with researchers at the university or in the field, I do my schoolwork at the desk downstairs in the cottage, diligently writingRomeo and Julietessays, filling the squares of my maths book. The schoolwork doesn’t come to me as easily as it did at St Matthews, my attention drifts, it’s the sea view, the higher standards, the Easter break, the breakdown. I have to keep bringing myself back to the page, telling myself to focus. My mind feels muffled and woolly.
In the afternoons, he takes me to the field. It is the only time I feel like my old self. The outdoors unzips my carapace and the girl who used to be me steps out. Except now, I’ve traded the slow walk through the museum for a coastal path, exchanged extinct exhibits for wild hedgerows. Daniel’s lab has become the dense crop of wild thyme, no microscopes or lenses or slides here. Nothing comes between our eyes and their object.
While I sketch plants, he is tracking the Blues; he nets them and puts them in the cooler. After each batch of ten, he takesthem out, sexes, tags and releases them; I watch them shake off the cold and flutter back to the thyme. It is the first time I realise the image I have of him in the Natural History Museum isn’t really him. Thisis who he is, the focus in his eyes, the quick snap of his wrist. How gently he untangles the butterflies from the net.
‘You’ve been observant these last few days,’ he says.
I look up from my sketchbook. Heat flushes through my cheeks. I try not to touch them.
‘I could really do with some help. What do you say? Could you take a break from your drawing?’
He speaks to me all the time about the Blues, he shows me the males’ low flight pattern, points out lumpy nests of ants, but not once has he asked me to help. The invitation, then, is a sort of initiation; if I do this right, I might graduate to assistant, protégée. I nod.
He passes me the net. It is different to what I expect, it is light, the frame aluminium, and it’s big, in my hands, the black net bag touches the ground, the opening large enough to catch a bird. I swish it through the air.
He smiles. ‘Butterflies are deaf but they have compound eyes, they can see thousands of versions of you holding that net. So, no sudden movements. You have to sneak up on them.’
I hold it still against my shoulder. Together, we look out over the thyme.
‘There,’ he says, pointing to a flash of skittering blue. It is a patrolling male, dipping in and out of the purple haze of flowers.
‘Wait.’
It stops on a cluster, hesitates and then flies to another.
‘Let it settle.’
It walks over the flower three times; I think it will fly off. But then it opens and shuts its wings slowly and starts to nectar.
‘Now.’
I swing down. Comical when still, the net is suddenly not comical at all, it slices through the air, a perfect aerodynamic weapon. There is a flash of cobalt and, inside me, a rush of elation, a clear, pure high. My heart pounds as I push back the gauze. But when I reach the butterfly, it isn’t moving. ‘I think I killed it.’
I hand him the net. He works quickly, closing the wings, drawing it carefully out. He sets it on his palm, strokes its legs to see if it revives. It doesn’t. From a distance it could be a leaf; with its wings shut, the bright blue isn’t visible, only the muted silver beneath. But up close, I can see the zebra stripe of its antennae, the black rounds of its eyes, the inky markings ringed in white. A lump grows in my throat.
‘The first time is always hard,’ he says.
‘I did it too fast.’
‘No.’
‘Too much follow-through.’
‘It happens,’ he says and I think he is either very kind or he really doesn’t see the brutal pointlessness of it. How a single mistake is the difference between life and death.
23
Moorgate