Page 23 of The Woman Who Said Yes

As the last of it falls away, revealing a large and hefty wooden box frame, Trudy’s explanation – ‘We just saw it and thought of you!’ – floats somewhere above my head. Because encased in the antique frame, trapped beneath glass, is a fish of some kind. A dead one, obviously. Yet it seems to be challenging me with its glassy eye.

‘Oh, wow!’ Quickly, I manage to wrestle my expression towards something approximating delight. ‘This is… amazing. Is it real?’

‘Of course it is!’ Trudy’s arched eyebrows shoot up.

I tilt it up on the coffee table so as to demonstrate my full appreciation. It’s around the size and possibly the weight of my bathroom wash-hand basin. A little brass plaque attached to the lower part of the frame reads, somewhat abruptly: Pike 1937.

‘How did they do this?’ I marvel. ‘I mean, how did they preserve it so, so⁠—’

‘Well, it’s taxidermized,’ Trudy announces.

‘Incredible.’ My gaze fixes upon the two rows of tiny, spiky, inward-sloping teeth. The fish is gawping in an appalled kind of way, as if watching something distasteful on TV. They saw it and thought of me. It’s spectacularly ugly – not that looks are everything, but what will I do with it? I place it flat on the table, recalling the scathing look I was treated to when I tried to offload my ancient hair crimpers at a charity shop. ‘Elf-’n’-safety,’ the girl snapped, as if I’d brought in a desiccated turd, and I slunk back out with the offending item. What are the chances they’ll accept this?

‘You know how Trudy loves a good burrow in an antique shop,’ Dad says with a chuckle, casting her an adoring glance.

‘I do, yes!’

‘And we know you love something a bit different,’ she remarks. Do I? Is this the impression I give – that despite my flat’s decidedly basic IKEA vibe, quickly pieced together post-divorce, what I’ve been secretly craving is a wizened creature mounted against a background of murkily painted weeds? ‘It’ll be a real talking point,’ Trudy announces, as if my friends and I have nothing to talk about in normal circumstances. ‘We thought it’d give a bit of personality to your place.’

‘It will,’ I agree. ‘It really will!’

As she looks pointedly around my living room, my entire body breaks into a sweat as I know what’s coming next. ‘So… where will you hang him, Andie?’

So he’s a he now, already? ‘Oh, I’ll need to think about that,’ I say, as if it’s a treat I’m saving for later. The words have barely left my mouth when I see her registering the painting which hangs in pride of place on my living room wall. It’s a joyful painting of exuberant pink and orange flowers and was a joint gift from Sam and Eva after I’d admired it in a little gallery in Greenwich. We’d wandered in a little tipsy after a riverside pub lunch one glorious sunny Sunday and the rascals had snuck back and bought it for my fiftieth birthday. It’s the first and only piece of proper art I have ever owned, and I treasure it. But now Trudy is honing in on it like a shark and announcing, ‘He could go right here?’

‘Maybe,’ I splutter. But actually no, because my painting is there!

‘So, anyway, what are you going to call him?’ Dad asks jovially.

‘Erm, I don’t know, Dad. Any ideas?’

‘Well… how about Bert?’ he suggests.

‘Yes, that’s a possib⁠—’

‘I was thinking Gideon?’ Trudy cuts in.

‘Gideon?’ I repeat.

‘That’s a very good name,’ Dad announces. But he’d agree that Stinking Arsehole was also a very good name if Trudy had suggested it.

‘It’s a noble name,’ she announces. ‘It means “fearless warrior” and that suits the pike. They’re ferocious predators, did you know that, Andie?’

Hang on, let me flick through my extensive mental encyclopaedia of pike knowledge… ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Cannibals, too,’ she adds cheerfully. ‘The big ones eat the little ones if they’re desperate.’

‘Really?’ How very jolly. Now that really is a talking point.

‘This is actually quite a small one,’ Dad observes.

‘Yes.’ Trudy nods. ‘They can grow to the length of an adult man!’

Aren’t I lucky, then, that mine has the dimensions of a small baguette? That they didn’t go for a six-foot specimen? I watch, appalled, as Trudy reaches up to my painting, primed to take it off the wall.

‘Shall we just see how he looks here?’

What I want to say is, ‘No, we shan’t because you know what? I can put up with your barbed comment about my dress and my cooking but I cannot tolerate you moving things in my home!’ This was one of the best things, after Phil and I broke up – of knowing that things would remain exactly where I’d put them. I loved this new-found feeling of control over my home; of having a place that was truly mine. Now, though, something is happening and my cowardly self appears to be powerless to stop it.