Excerpt from The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

DEAREST H,

Is it possible to fall in love at twelve? With an octopus? I met him in the Ionian Sea when I was snorkelling off the beach where my father had his hotel. I like to think he loved me back, as you maybe did too. I wonder often where you are and how you're doing. Are you dead or alive? Was it wrong, what I did? And is it better to live a small life, contained and enclosed where everything is provided and the unexpected rarely happens? A safe life. Or one where you swim out into the unknown and risk everything. I chose for you since the choice wasn't yours to make. But, I wanted to write to apologize  to ask your forgiveness  to explain myself.

NEFFY

Day

Zero

Minus

Two

---

A nurse collects me from the ground-floor lobby and takes me and my wheeled suitcase up in the lift. I smell the familiar odours of disinfectant and industrial cleaner, mixed with a kind of hopeful hopelessness. The nurse, whose head is level with my chest, is wearing the ubiquitous hospital top and loose trousers; the same as the nurses wore in the clinic in the hills above Big Sur and in the hospital in Athens. She's also got on a medical face mask like me but, above her brown eyes, neatly drawn eyebrows arch. She asks whether I had a good journey even though she must know they sent a car and that I sat in the back with a plastic screen between me and the driver. What she doesn't know is that I was smarting from the argument with Justin while the phone in my pocket vibrated with messages from him and Mum—apologies at first, rising to warnings and then angry admonishments to turn back now. Part of me worried I'd made another bad decision but the more my phone buzzed the more determined I became. I tried to calm myself by watching the empty streets of central London go by and counting the number of pedestrians we passed. When the car pulled up outside the unit, I was up to thirty-three.

The nurse has an accent; Thai, I guess. The lift stops on the second floor, the top floor. She tells me sixteen other volunteers will be arriving, and that I'm the first. "Volunteers" is the word she uses although we are being paid. That, for me, is the point.

"We'll get you settled in," the nurse says. "No need to be nervous."

"I'm fine," I say, although I'm not sure I am.

The lift doors open to a windowless reception with a long desk behind which sits a young woman in a white uniform. VACCINE BIOPHARM is displayed in large letters on the wall, with YOUR DREAMS, OUR REALITY beneath. An extravagant flower arrangement is at one end of the desk, a dozen tall stalks with orange flowers in a glass vase, and beside the lift there is some soft seating and a low table with glossy magazines fanned across it. The place looks like an advertising company from some American television series.

"Good afternoon," the receptionist says from behind her mask.

"This is Nefeli," the nurse says.

"Hello, Nefeli." The receptionist speaks like a children's TV presenter, too gleeful.

"It's Neffy," I say. "Hello."

The receptionist's nails click on her keyboard as she checks me in.

"Room one?" the nurse asks.

"Room one," the receptionist says as though this is the best room.

The nurse leads me to a wide corridor of closed doors and recessed lighting, a nurses' station, hand sanitation units at intervals along the wall, and glove dispensers. Our shoes squeak on the vinyl flooring, which is patterned with a sweep of a different colour as though to guide our way. My first name is already on the whiteboard attached to the door of room one.

"I'll change it to Neffy," the nurse says as she swings the door open and lets me go in first, like an estate agent showing me around. One of those tricks to make sure I'm impressed.

I'm relieved to see a picture window the full length of the far wall beyond the bed. Three weeks isn't so long if I can see more than four walls. I can do this. Outside is a view of roofs across to the east, and opposite, an old red-brick building which looks as though it's been converted into apartments. Behind a row of square-framed windows—what's the architectural term for them? Justin told me once—a woman shrugs herself into a raincoat and disappears into the depths of her flat. Separating us below is an alleyway and when I peer to the right I can see a sliver of the main road, with a bollard stopping any traffic from turning in. Leftwards, beyond the end of the unit, the alley meets a dead-end road, which turns the corner around the building opposite and out of sight.

Excerpted from The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller. Copyright © 2023 by Claire Fuller. Excerpted by permission of Tin House Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.