Silence and the otter

I’m called Pauline, but everyone (except Grandmama) calls me Pie. I’m 9.

My school is quite small. There are 7 kids in my class. It’s a pity that 5 of them are boys and there’s just us two girls – me and Annabel. I wish it was the other way round so that there were only 2 boys. Annabel is weird. She never speaks, except to her ma. I mean never.

The school’s small because it’s on an island. Mum and dad say it’s the best place in the world to live, but I don’t see why we have to do without cinemas and shiny shops and a place to go bowling. We live here because my dad sells pictures of animals and birds. His pictures are cool - sometimes you see them in magazines. But I don’t like to go out with him when he’s working - he sits for hours without moving or speaking and gets cross even if I cough. It’s boring.

If you go out of our house and turn left and cross the fence and walk 419 steps along the stones at the edge of the water, you can see where a mummy otter lives with her two babies. Sometimes I see them when I am looking for shells, but only for a few seconds because they swim away as soon as they hear me. I don’t know how daddy manages to get proper pictures of them.

One day mum said that Annabel was coming to stay for the weekend. Her mum and dad had been invited to a wedding that kids weren’t allowed to go to. Annabel’s mum was really cross because she said what’s the point of getting married if you hate children? But she had to go because it was her sister who was the bride.

Mum just told me to shut up when I said I didn’t want Annabel to come. What’s the point of someone coming to stay if they won’t TALK? What could we do all weekend? You can’t have midnight chats in the dark with someone who’s ALWAYS SILENT. Even my little sister is more fun than Annabel.

So the weekend came. We played some games at the kitchen table but we couldn’t play snap because you have to talk. Mum said we should go out and look for stuff on the shore. Maybe we could look for the otters and see if one of the babies still had a poorly foot. At tea-time on Thursday night I had asked dad if he’d seen the otters because I thought I saw one of the babies limping. But Dad said he didn’t know because he hadn’t seen the otters for ages. He was in a bad mood that evening, sitting in front of the telly drinking a beer. He’d had a bad day trying to find a little brown bird in the north of the island – some man from London had phoned him up and offered him some money if he could get a photo of it.

So me and Annabel went out. I didn’t even sing as we walked along because Annabel was embarrassing me by looking at me as if I was the weird one.

Suddenly Annabel grasped my arm so that I had to stop walking. She held me so tight that it left white marks on my arm. She pulled me down to crouch next to her. The otters were just in front of us, turning over stones at the water’s edge. One baby was limping and now I could see why. You know those round plastic things that hold four tins of beer or coke together - four circles to round the tops of the cans? Well, one of those was wrapped round the baby’s neck and foot, pulling its leg up at a funny angle. It looked really sore. And I knew from dad that hurt animals usually die in the wild because they can’t get enough food to eat and their mummies can’t always help them.

Still crouching, Annabel stepped backwards away from the otters. She pulled me back with her. Why was she so bossy all of a sudden? She walked back to our house and I had to follow her because mum had told me to be sure to stay with her when we were out.

She walked back into the house and opened my bedroom cupboard. Any normal kid would have asked me first but not Miss I-never-speak Annabel. She got out the Halloween costume that her little brother Sam had borrowed last October. What was she doing? It was April and anyway the costume wouldn’t fit her.

She just took the witch’s black cloak and left behind the hat and broomstick and spider’s-web T-shirt. (Another weird Annabel thing - they rest of the costume was nice, but the cloak was thick and prickly and smelt of mouldy wool.) Then she took my hand again and pulled me outside. I was getting sick of this, pulling and shoving me about like mum does with the washing basket.

Back we went to the shore. Annabel crouched down and took small silent steps along the coast. There were the otters still looking for food along the shoreline, just where the water meets the stones. They would stop in one place and spend time opening shells to get the shellfish inside and then move on. The beer-package one hopped along slowly behind its sister and mum.

Annabel stopped behind a rock. And sat and did nothing. And said nothing. And did shush-shushing shapes with her hands whenever I even BREATHED. It was cold and dull and we got wetter and wetter – I think the tide was coming in but for some reason she wanted to be right there, with our feet in the water.

I was about to SCREAM with cross-ness, but then I saw that the otters were coming closer, moving along the coast as they ate. I could see the mum’s thick fur and even hear her long claws scratch on the stones. I bet dad had never been so close.

Mum and good-leg baby snuffled about behind the rock eating. Then came bad-leg baby. Annabel leapt up and hurled the cloak over the rock. Then she threw herself over the rock and into the water on top of the cloak. What was she doing? Why was the cloak wriggling?

And then it happened.

“TAKE THE PLASTIC OFF ITS LEG” yelled Annabel. I stared at her. She could speak. She had a really loud voice. But then I saw what she meant. Poorly-leg otter was wriggling about in the cloak. Annabel held it tight while I unwound the plastic. It took me a few goes because the poor animal was making frightened, squeaky noises and scratching my hands with its sharp, sharp claws.

But we did it – together we got the bit of plastic off. Annabel dropped the cloak and the baby otter shook herself. And then ran off after mum and her sister. Still a bit shaky, but not limping like she was before.

I still wish there were more girls in my class. Sometimes I play with Annabel, but she’s never talked again and she can be really boring. But I did ask her home later that summer. We went for a walk and watched the three otters swimming in the bay.

I never did tell my mum and dad how I scratched my hands. It seemed like Annabel’s story, not mine. So I did what she did – I said nothing.