Tired now, I sat down to examine it properly. Four distinct spines crossed its carapace. Its claws were covered in bristles.
I looked into its unseeing eyes, trying to imagine where it might have travelled from. I’d read that crabs rafted long-distance on all sorts of vessels – pieces of plastic, hunks of seaweed, even the barnacled hulls of cargo ships. For all I knew this creature could have travelled from Polynesia, surviving thousands of miles just for the chance to die on a Northumbrian beach.
I should take some photographs. My tutors would know what it was.
But as I reached into my bag for my camera, my vision took a sudden pitch. Light-headedness dropped like marine fog and I had to stay still, hunched over, until it passed.
‘Low blood pressure,’ I said, when I was able to straighten up. ‘Had it since I was a kid.’
We turned back to the crab. I got up onto hands and knees and photographed it from every angle.
The dizziness returned as I put my camera away, although this time it ebbed and flowed, imitating the waves. Pain was beginning to gather in my back, accompanied by a darker, more powerful sensation near my ribs. I knelt down again, tucking my hands in my lap, and the dizziness billowed.
I counted to ten. Murmured words of concern, laced with fear, tumbled around above my head. The wind changed direction.
When I finally opened my eyes, there was blood on my hand.
I looked carefully. It was unmistakably blood. Fresh, wet, across my right palm.
‘It’s fine,’ I heard myself say. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
Panic rolled in with the tide.
After I’d sat with my head between my knees for a few minutes, Janice called the maternity ward in Edinburgh.
‘Yes, she’s sitting down. No, not like a haemorrhage . . . But enough for there to be blood on her hands when she put them between her thighs . . . Yes. More than just spotting . . . No loss of consciousness. She just got a bit dizzy and had to sit down but now she’s . . . Hang on. Emily. Are you still bleeding?’
I checked again. ‘No.’
‘No. She’s twenty-one weeks pregnant. Yes . . . Emily, have you had any pain or cramping?’
‘In my back, yeah . . .’
Janice paled. ‘Yes, in her back. What do you think? Do we need an ambulance?’
I stared out to sea. There was an island, a couple of miles south, jutting out of the sea. A small wink of white on its furthest tip – a lighthouse, perhaps. It was as lonely as I felt. I might be losing my baby.
‘Well, she’s OK now, but I hardly think . . . OK . . . Right . . . Do you have their number? Oh, it’s no matter. I’ll get her there.’
She sat down next to me. ‘They said you should come in to get it checked. Because you’re so far from Edinburgh they suggested you go to the maternity unit in Alnwick. OK? It’s not far at all.’
The wind blew, clouds scudded. I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it.
The sun passed briefly over the island, over the tiny lighthouse.
‘I want to go to Edinburgh,’ I said, after a pause. ‘I . . . I don’t like hospitals. I’d rather go to the one I’m used to.’
‘Of course,’ Janice said. ‘Once we’re in the car it should be less than two hours. But are you sure, Emily? What if the bleeding starts again?’
Terror. There was terror in her voice.
‘I am sure,’ I said. I didn’t want to be with her anymore. I didn’t want to be anywhere near this woman, who already felt that this was her baby. ‘And I’d like to go on my own. On the train. I feel fine now.’