I grunted.
Button John reached into the water and grabbed the top of the crab pot. “This one’s empty. Did you forget to bait it, Young Harry?”
“Cheeky bugger,” Young Harry said. “I’ve been doing this since before you were bloody born!”
“Dementia,” Button John said to me, pulling a sad face. “So tragic.”
Young Harry threw an empty water bottle. It bounced off Button John’s head, and I scooped it out of the sea and dropped it back in the tinnie.
“A seal could choke on that,” Button John said piously. “You’re an environmental vandal.”
“I’ll throw something harder next time,” Young Harry said, but he was grinning. He rummaged around in the canvas bag he wore slung over his chest and pulled out his cigarettes and a lighter. He squinted at me as he lit a cigarette. “Don’t you go telling Nipper Will I brought you out here today, young Natty.”
“I won’t,” I said, and got busy helping Button John haul the next crab pot up so that Young Harry didn’t see how angry his words made me. I wasn’t angry at him; I was angry at Will. Will wasn’t even on the island right now—the Adeline would be miles out to sea—but he was still controlling every second of my day. It burned.
I was still pissed off about it when me and Button John were heading home lugging a bucket of crabs between us. The water sloshed over our feet the whole way. We split the crabs at Button John’s place, and then I headed home with my share. I was passing the copper’s house when he came outside.
“Hey,” he said, and then looked around with a guilty expression.
I set the bucket down. “My brother already knows I’m working for you.”
“Oh,” Dominic said. “I don’t know if I should say I’m sorry or not.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, since he already knows, who cares if people see us talking?”
“That sounds like a trick question,” he said. “You care, obviously.”
“I don’t,” I said, although it was probably a lie.
“What have you got in the—” He came close enough to look. “Oh, wow. What—what are you going to do with them?”
“Cook them. What else would I do with them?”
He laughed, crinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, that was a dumb question, wasn’t it? How do you cook them?”
“I can show you, if you want,” I said. “I’ll even sell you one for ten bucks.”
“I might not know how to cook them, but I know that’s a bargain,” Dominic said. “Yeah, okay. I could use a crab cooking lesson.”
I reached into the bucket and pulled out the topmost crab. Dominic leapt back as I held it out towards him, and I tried not to laugh. “His claws are tied up. He can’t get you. Just take him.”
Dominic made a face as he did, like he thought the crab was going to burst out of the string and eat his face or something.
“First lesson,” I said. “Go put him in your freezer for an hour so he goes to sleep. I’ll come back then and show you how to cook him.”
“I—” He wrinkled his nose. “You know, logically I understand that in order to eat him, we have to kill him. Just, usually the supermarket has already taken care of that part.”
Mainlanders. I rolled my eyes at him and picked the bucket up. “Put him in your freezer. I’ll be back in an hour.”
When I got home, I left the bucket of crabs out the back beside the laundry tub and then went inside to check on Mum. She was sitting on the couch, gazing at the TV. One of those daytime soap operas was on.
“Hi, Mum,” I said, and crouched down beside the couch. “Got us some mudcrabs for dinner tonight. What do you want for lunch?”
She smiled faintly at me as her gaze slid over me.
“I’ll heat up some leftover cottage pie, okay?”
Mum hummed.
