Sometime around the middle of the week, Dr MacLennan was allowed to see me for a while, after Diggs overruled my father's refusal to have me medically inspected by anybody else but him. Even so, he stayed in the room, glowering and suspicious, making sure that the examination was kept within certain limits; I was glad he didn't let the doctor look all over me, and I responded by becoming a little more lucid.
By the end of the week I was still having the occasional fake nightmare, I would suddenly go very quiet and shivery every now and again, but I was eating more or less normally and could answer most questions quite happily. Talking about Esmerelda, and what had happened to her, still brought on mini-fits and screams and total withdrawal for a while, but after long and patient questioning by my father and Diggs I let them know what I wanted them to think had happened — a big kite; Esmerelda becoming entangled in the lines; me trying to help her and the winch slipping out of my fingers; desperate running; then a blank.
I explained that I was afraid I was jinxed, that I brought death and destruction upon all those near me, and also that I was afraid I might get sent to prison because people would think I had murdered Esmerelda. I wept and I hugged my father and I even hugged Diggs, smelling his hard-blue uniform fabric as I did so and almost feeling him melt and believe me. I asked him to go to the shed and take all my kites away and burn them, which he duly did, in a hollow now called Kite Pyre Dell. I was sorry about the kites, and I knew that I'd have to give up flying them for good to keep the act looking realistic, but it was worth it. Esmerelda never did show up; nobody saw her after me, as far as Diggs" enquiries of trawlers and drilling-rigs and so on could show.
So I got to even up the score and have a wonderful, if demanding, week of fun acting. The flowers that I had still been clutching when they carried me back to the house had been prised from my fingers and left in a plastic bag on top of the fridge. I discovered them there, shrivelled and dead, forgotten and unnoticed, two weeks later. I took them for the shrine in the loft one night, and have them to this day, little brown twists of dried plant like old Sellotape, stuck in a little glass bottle. I wonder sometimes where my cousin ended up; at the bottom of the sea, or washed on to some craggy and deserted shore, or blown on to a high mountain face, to be eaten by gulls or eagles….
I would like to think that she died still being floated by the giant kite, that she went round the world and rose higher as she died of starvation and dehydration and so grew less weighty still, to become, eventually, a tiny skeleton riding the jetstreams of the planet; a sort of Flying Dutchwoman. But I doubt that such a romantic vision really matches the truth.
I spent most of Sunday in bed. After my binge of the previous night, I wanted rest, lots of liquid, little food, and my hangover to go away. I felt like deciding then and there never to get drunk again, but being so young I decided that this was probably a little unrealistic, so I determined not to get that drunk again.
My father came and banged at my door when I didn't appear for breakfast.
"And what's wrong with you, as if I need ask?"
"Nothing," I croaked at the door.
"That'll be right," my father said sarcastically. "And how much did you have to drink last night?"
"Not much."
"Hnnh," he said.
"I'II be down soon," I said, and rocked to and fro in the bed to make noises which might make it sound as though I was getting up.
"Was that you on the phone last night?"
"What?" I asked the door, stopping my rocking.
"It was, wasn't it? I thought it was you; you were trying to disguise your voice. What were you doing ringing at that time?"
"Aah… I don't remember ringing, Dad, honest," I said carefully.
"Hnnh. You're a fool, boy," he said, and clumped off down the hall. I lay there, thinking. I was quite sure I hadn't called the house the previous night. I had been with Jamie in the pub, then with him and the girl outside, then alone when I was running, and then with Jamie and later him and his mother, then I walked home almost sober. There were no blank spots. I assumed it must have been Eric calling. From the sound of it my father couldn't have spoken to him for very long, or he would have recognised his son's voice. I lay back in my bed, hoping that Eric was still at large and heading this way, and also that my head and guts would stop reminding me how uncomfortable they could feel.
"Look at you," my father said when I eventually came down in my dressing-gown to watch an old movie on the television that afternoon. "I hope you're proud of yourself. I hope you think feeling like that makes you a man." My father tutted and shook his head, then went back to reading the Scientific American. I sat down carefully in one of the lounge's big easy chairs.
"I did get a bit drunk last night, Dad, I admit it. I'm sorry if it upsets you, but I assure you I'm suffering for it."
"Well, I hope that teaches you a lesson. Do you realise how many brain cells you probably managed to kill off last night?"
"A good few thousand," I said after a brief pause for calculation.
My father nodded enthusiastically: "At least."
"Well, I'll try not to do it again."
"Hnnh."
"Brrap!" said my anus loudly, surprising me as well as my father. He put the magazine down and stared into space over my head, smiling wisely as I cleared my throat and flapped the hem of my dressing-gown as unobtrusively as I could. I could see his nostrils flex and quiver.
"Lager and whisky, eh?" he said, nodding to himself and taking up his magazine again. I felt myself blush and I gritted my teeth, glad he had retreated behind the glossy pages. How did he do that? I pretended nothing had happened.
"Oh. By the way I said, "I hope you don't mind, but I told Jamie that Eric had escaped."
My father glared over the magazine, shook his head and continued reading. "Idiot," he said.
In the evening, after a snack rather than a meal, I went up to the loft and used the telescope to take a distant look at the island, making sure that nothing had happened to it while I rested inside the house. Everything appeared calm. I did go for one short walk in the cool overcast, just along the beach to the south end of the island and back, then I stayed in and watched some more television when the rain came on, carried on a low wind, glum muttering against the window.
I had gone to bed when the phone rang. I got up quickly, as I hadn't really started to drop off when it went, and ran down to get there before my father. I didn't know if he was still up or not.
"Yes?" I said breathlessly, tucking my pyjama jacket into the bottoms. Pips sounded, then a voice on the other end sighed.
"No."
"What?" I said, frowning.
"No," the voice on the other end said.
"Eh?" I said. I wasn't even sure it was Eric.
"You said 'Yes'. I say 'No'."
"What do you want me to say?"
"'Porteneil 531. "
"OK. Porteneil 531. Hello?"
"OK. Goodbye." The voice giggled, the phone went dead. I looked at it accusingly, then put it down in the cradle. I hesistated. The phone rang again. I snatched it up halfway through the first tinkle.
"Ye-" I started, then the pips sounded. I waited until they stopped and said; "Porteneil 531."
"Porteneil 531," said Eric. I thought it was Eric, at least.
"Yes," I said.
"Yes what?"
"Yes, this is Porteneil 531."
"But I thought this was Porteneil 531."
"This is. Who is that? Is that you-"
"It's me. Is that Porteneil 531?"