Page 91 of One Summer

He whistles to hits from the eighties. His idea of a good time is watching a dog get a wash, set and blow-dry.

Not even to mention that he wears the oddest clothes imaginable. When I last saw him, he was wearing an over-sized T-shirt with the words BORN FREE beneath a child’s line drawing of a lion. Admirable conservation efforts notwithstanding, still highly cringe: something that obviously does not worry him in the slightest.

No, he just crashes through his life oblivious to the opinions of other people.

Oblivious to their feelings.

When I’m no longer incandescent with rage, and have moved on to the ‘simmering with resentment’ stage that I know so well from every relationship I’ve had in my life so far, I decide that the best course of action is to open the vodka.

I bought it in case a snake sank its fangs into me while I was scooping its poop – as per the snake removal method outlined in the binder. Since none of my charges have mistaken my fingers for rodents and tried to eat them, I still have a full bottle, which I intend to hit hard.

I’m on my third full tumbler when I notice that I’ve inadvertently failed to close the sliding glass door of Cedric’s vivarium. He has some loose branches in there that he likes to slither over when he’s shedding his skin, and one has fallen onto the edge of the vivarium’s opening and stopped the door from closing. It’s left a two-inch gap, which might be wide enough to afford Cedric escape.

I check his bathing platform, which is obscured by fake ivy, and the ceramic hides down on the floor of his home, but they’re empty.

All this time I’ve been so careful, and now, because I’m stupidly upset with Caleb, I’ve make a rookie mistake and Cedric is gone. I check every area of the bedroom, and then search downstairs, but I can’t find him anywhere.

It’s a warm evening and all the windows are open. He could have escaped outside without me noticing, and if he has, and gets into the undergrowth of the cliff, I’ll have no hope of finding him. He’ll die, without question. He has no wild hunting skills, and he won’t survive a Loor winter.

Seventy-Five

Method

I have to think and not panic. I might be drifting through my life, but I’m on Loor for a reason and I have a job to do. The number one item on that job description is to keep the animals safe.

There’s something in the binder about what to do in the event of a snake escape but I can’t remember what it is. I rush downstairs, head already spinning a little from the alcohol, and grab the binder from the coffee table.

Flicking through the pages, I find the right section and exhale. Given that only a few hours have elapsed since I failed to shut the vivarium sliding door, it’s highly likely that Cedric is still somewhere in the house, which means all I have to do is track him.

I go from room to room shutting all the windows and putting cushions in front of the kitchen white goods, so he can’t get behind them.

Then I’m ready to set up my tracking traps. I can do this. I just need one kitchen staple.

Standing on a chair, and groping in the farthest reaches of the topmost kitchen cupboard, I find it. An enormous, very full bag of flour.

I carry it to the threshold of every room and pour it in a thick line across all the internal door openings, leaving the doors themselves flung back.

When I’m done, I pray for Cedric to be a particularly exploratory type of corn snake who won’t spend his one night of freedom curled in a dark place, and then I pass out in a drunken sleep on the sofa.

*

In the morning, although I’m hungover to hell and bleary-eyed, I feel like a kid on Christmas Day, because I see it straight away. The flour line dividing the lounge from the downstairs bedroom where I first met Caleb has been mussed up and there’s a faint, vanishing trail of flour leading towards the bed.

Somewhere in this room, Cedric is hiding out.

It takes me an hour to find him, because he’s managed to wedge himself behind the heavy oak chest of drawers, in a deep groove between the back panel and the feet.

Overjoyed, I lift him gently so as not to startle him and he looks at me balefully through his tiny, red eyes.

He’s cold to the touch and barely moving in my hands, and I’m terrified his body temperature has dropped dangerously low in the night. I rush upstairs to get him back into his vivarium and under his heat lamp, and when I’m sure he’s finally safe, I sit back on the carpet, and weep.

Seventy-Six

Gulls

One of the drawbacks of living by the sea is that, in nesting season, the herring gulls seem to use our windows as target practice. This morning’s efforts have been so impressive that I have to go outside with a bucket of hot soapy water and a rag. Unfortunately, Caleb chooses the same moment to clean his windows.

‘Hi,’ he says, quietly. ‘I see they got us both today.’

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