"There's a Selkie in our bathtub..."

There is a Selkie in our bathtub.

She’s quiet now, but usually, you can hear her moving about because the water splashes over the rim and Dad goes mad about the floor.

“Fish don’t pay the deposit,” he says.

“Miss McColl says seals are mammals, not fish,” I explain.

We had a lesson about animals and their families at the beginning of term and there was a whole bit on seals. They raise their pups on milk, like people do, and the mums look after them until they are ready to go out and swim on their own.

Dad does not find this helpful. His mouth goes all thin when he’s unhappy, like someone has pulled on the other side of his beard. A lot of it is grey, now.

The couple on the bottom floor has a big dog that always sniffs my pockets, with fur like silvery wire. He has a coat made of Dad’s Beard and is called Dennis. Sometimes he comes and watches me tie my laces in the morning, with eyes like jawbreakers. He just sits there. And then the lady will whistle for him and he pads home, big paws slapping like welly boots.

I think Dennis might have been a person.

...

Sometimes I dream about things like that. My mouth opens and bubbles come out, floating towards the ceiling, and the blankets go soft and slippery. You can pull them over you like a cocoon. My bones go to jelly inside my skin — but it’s a good thing. It makes sense, somehow.

Then I wake up and I feel even weirder; like someone has bundled all of my left shoes into a bag and dumped them off the pier.

“I don’t know where you get all this shite from,’ says Dad.

I try not to talk too much when he gets back from work, so mornings are the best time to ask him things.

How big can the waves get? Big.

Why doesn’t Gilly sink? Good boats don’t sink.

Do you have to go? I needed this shift. The old woman said she’ll have you.

Hmm. What’s the weirdest fish you’ve ever fished? It wasn’t a fish.

Dad doesn’t like talk after work. He’s always quiet. Angry, I think. Always smells like fish and salt and the sticky seaweed that gathers under the rocks. He used to get straight into the shower and stay in there for ages, coming out all red and scrubbed like a shiny lobster. But I don’t think flannel ‘once-overs’ are helping because he still stinks of Gilly.

Dad still goes straight into the bathroom, but he can’t use the tub because it’s got… her in it. Sometimes he goes in with a bucket full of glassy-eyed fishies.

It always comes out empty. No bones in the plughole.

...

I eat my tea in front of the TV, leaving four fish-fingers in the oven for Dad.

The volume has to be loud to drown out Mr Kinney’s radio upstairs — but sometimes I can hear him talking in the bathroom.

It echoes. His voice is low, rumbly. There might be a splash, the taps running, buckets being filled and brought out onto the landing. I brush my teeth there and spit into the toilet next door.

When I’m feeling brave, I can hold my breath and push my ear to the wall.

Thump. Murmurs. Low. Dad. Thump. Quiet. Splash. Thump. Quiet. Dad again. Thump. Thump. Thump.

I’m there for ages. A lot longer than I thought, because I’m getting sleepy and my toes are going all stiff in the cold from under the door. Then… a click. It’s loud and I scramble into my bed, thinking it’s Dad turning the light switch.

It isn’t.

He doesn’t eat his dinner. He talks to the tiles all night.

...

I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but Dad says not to especially tell Granny about the Selkie.

She’s not my real Granny, she’s actually the old lady who owns our bit of the flats and she’s been here for as long as I can remember. Her eyes are watery like milk and she smells like smoke, but she always stops to give me these little chewy toffees whenever I see her on the stairs.

Dad says I shouldn’t take sweets from strangers, even Mrs Keeley. He doesn’t like me calling her Granny. His nose wrinkles like he’s smelt something off.

Once she came and hammered on the door really loudly when I was in bed, yelling about lots of things. Dad’s weird hours and the water pipes clanging when she’s trying to watch the news. She’s always watching the news.

Sometimes she braids my hair when I stay over. Her fingers curl where they shouldn’t, but they still manage to brush out the tangles Dad can’t get when we’re rushing for the bus.

“You’re really good at that,” I say. My mouth is full of peppermint chew.

I don’t take my shoes off, sitting with my school bag tucked between my legs. The strap curls around me like seaweed.

“My Lorna was always head sore.”

Mrs Keeley sounds like she’s smiling, “I had to get her hair done quick or it wouldn’t get done at all.”

She ties off my plait with a bow. Blue ribbon. Her fingers hold onto the ends of it like she doesn’t know when to stop — and the jelly-bones feeling comes back, just for a moment.

“You never lose it.”

...

When I go back upstairs to our flat, Dad still isn’t home.

If this ever happens I’m meant to go back to Mrs Keeley and stay with her a bit longer, even though her rooms are always a bit too warm. Like she’s trying to heat the entire place up from top to bottom.

Our bit is quiet. And cold.

I want to show Dad my hair and how pretty it is — it looks like how Shauna’s Mum does hers. Sometimes I stare at it when I’m in science.

The tap drips. Once, twice, three times.

I’m supposed to be in bed, only allowed to pad to the fridge for those leftover fish-fingers from the other night. But I’m not hungry. My stomach is full of peppermint chews.

When I pass the bathroom, my foot catches the spot where the carpet has rolled up. The floor is squeakiest there and it groans when I go to catch myself from falling. My hand loudly slaps the landing wall.

Ouch.

Water hits the tiles on the other side of the wall, a huge spray clattering against the old shampoo bottles and soaking the shower-curtain. I can almost feel it under my stinging palm, and just know that Dad’s going to be really angry about the floor this time.

But I don’t care. I want to see her. Selkie.

My voice comes out all wobbly.

“It’s me…”

I don’t want to scare her, even though I sound a lot different than Dad.

She still hasn’t seen me yet — but she knows I exist. My name gets passed around the taps during those late-night chats. I think that’s enough.

...

Dad was in a rush that morning. He went to bed angry and woke up groggy, nearly putting his foot in the sink-that’s-actually-a-bucket. I think everyone had weird dreams, even if we didn’t dream the same thing.

I dreamt that the bedroom was full of water again. Fish swam in shoals through the wardrobe, picking at Dad’s thick mariner’s socks and hiding in the blankets. My shoes floated past me, hitting our bobbly ceiling with a thunk.

I looked down at the bed, with its pillows billowing like jellyfish, blotchy mattress lifting from rusty springs.

Something is there, right at the edge-

...

I take a deep breath and open the bathroom door. It’s cold, smelling of fish and the underbelly of the pier. Buckets are everywhere — some full of water, some with half-eaten fish guts sloshed up the sides. I feel a bit sick.

Our bath is pretty deep. It’s very old, the kind that takes up the whole boiler if you let it, so we have to top it off with pans heated on the stove if it runs short. I can’t peer into it from the doorway but I can see long, browning lines painted on the tiles. We have those markers on my classroom wall, groups of five scrunched together in a weird pattern. I think they’re called tally-

A CLICK sounds from the bottom of the tub, the noise loud and sharp.

I drop my bag.

The oily blanket stuffed at the bottom tumbles out of it, along with my sandwich crusts, landing by one of the buckets with a thump.

I’d go to reach it, but my feet won’t move. Jelly-bones again.

The world has gone quiet. All I can hear is my heart thumping loudly and the grumble-rumble of Mr Kinney’s radio. Dennis is barking from the bottom flat. Someone is yelling outside.

And the tap isn’t dripping anymore.

I step closer to the tub and my mouth flops open, like one of Dad’s biggest catches.

Dead fish. Hook-in-lip.

Stoppered in the spout is a toe, with silvery webbing connected between each one. There’s a long foot, leading up to a shaky knee crisscrossed with streaks of pearly white.

It’s hard to make out over the mottled brown patches blooming across her skin, but it’s a very pretty pattern. Like Mrs Keeley’s swirly carpet and-

“Coira.”

...

There’s nothing else to know.

I’m older — and yet younger than I’ve ever been.

My home is spread over miles of water, mountainous waves and my stomach is full of fish.

I have siblings now. A whole colony, rookery and herd of family. We go by many things.

Sometimes the men in the boats call us a ‘Bob.’

It’s a name that hurts the back of my head but the memory always slips away before too long, for I am coated in an oil-slick. Soft and sleek. Quick.

We spend our days playing in the long weeds, hunting, playing and nudging. Sometimes we even stretch out onto the beaches and soak up the sun.

Children come to watch us, their sticky fingers reaching to pull at our coats but the parents always steer them away.

They never let on to what they really know.

On a handful of nights, when the moon is full and bright, we walk on the shore.

My skin is bundled up and tucked behind a stump of the old pier, always kept within my sight.

It’s been years since I’ve seen myself like this. Longer legs, thick thighs and thicker stomach to keep us warm in the winter currents.

The brown and white mottles running up and down my skin are less graceful on me, more abstract. I think of a painting made with fingers — maybe mine? — from many years ago.

It hung on the fridge for months, until it got swallowed by angry red letters.

But we continue to dance. My eyes, which can see through shifting silt and roaring tides, do not search beyond the beach. I simply spin faster and the seagrass tied in my hair shimmers in the moonlight.

Sometimes I feel a person or two watching us.

One of my sisters laughs and it cracks through the silence like a bark, more voices rising with it until the calls of early morning gulls are drowned out.

It’s the darkest moment before dawn. In this light, the seagrass looks like a dark blue ribbon.