When my goldfish was pronounced dead, it was thanks to the ingenuity of our cat, Maz. He himself was a fine old fellow, a big, muscular black-and-white thing who looked like he had got into a fair amount of fights as a younger cat. He loved eating pieces of melon, and, as it turned out, fish. While we were changing the water in Charlotte’s tank, a fish bowl was placed high on top of a shelving unit in our dining room. On that fateful day, Maz somehow made it to the top of the shelving unit and – quite daintily I imagine – flipped the fish out of the bowl and on to the floor. He didn’t eat her – he just tortured her.
When my notoriously squeamish auntie came in to find the fish lying on the floor, she screamed and, rather than putting her back in the bowl, decided she was dead and that her boyfriend would have to deal with it. Auntie could just about bring herself to cover the dearly departed with a kitchen towel as she waited for him to arrive. I imagine she was trying to think of how she would explain to six-year-old me that my favourite pet had carked it. But when her boyfriend arrived and picked the fish up, she started flapping. More than an hour after the attack, Charlotte was alive. My family considered it nothing short of a miracle in a day and age when you were more likely to flush a dead goldfish down the toilet than nurture it into old age.
The mists of time, familial retellings and childhood fantasy colour this memory of Charlotte’s resurrection. Growing up in east London, it really did feel like some kind of urban fairytale. There was darkness, but there was also, for a young girl who loved to read about magic, plenty of charm. Charlotte is part of a kaleidoscope of glowing memories of a life before. Before we moved up to Scotland. Before I was an unsettled, excitable teenager. When there were fairies living in the moss at the end of the garden and the distinct possibility that I, too, could become a spellcaster, with Charlotte as my mascot.
I’ve probably got some of the details wrong. But still, I know that I did love that bright orange fish. I named her Charlotte, quite egotistically, after myself – or rather, the feminine name that for a while I wished I had been given instead of Charlie. She once starred in a short film, Gordon Bennett, and survived having a bag of cocaine (ie, icing sugar) dropped into her tank. I remember my dad telling me the scientists must have got it wrong, that goldfish didn’t have short memories, because when he whistled at the bowl, Charlotte would always respond by floating to the top and gulping, ready to eat. She had learned a command, my dad said.
She also didn’t ever stop growing. The best word to describe her as she got older was “chunky”. As it turns out, goldfish can grow incredibly large in the wild. I imagine if she’d been released, she would have had the potential to be as big as Carrot, the five-stone (30kg) goldfish that lives in Bluewater Lakes in Champagne, France.
I don’t know Charlotte’s exact origin story. My parents tell me that they were given the fish in a plastic bag by two Swedish students – they were neighbours of ours and were going on a two-week “holiday”, from which they never returned. What I do know is that when we moved to Scotland, Charlotte stayed behind with a family friend. Many years later, my parents checked in with them. She was still alive, at least 20 years of age. I like to imagine that all these years on, she’s kept on swimming. A fish who survived dry land and a cat attack. A fish whose presence will always remind me of the expansive possibilities of the child’s mind.
