I first had goldfish as a child: two lived in a little pond we had made out of a kitchen sink in the garden. But I always worried I had accidentally killed them. I have a vague memory of taking our guinea pig, Stripey, down to meet the fish, holding him over the pond to see them, and his poo landing almost straight in their mouths. They died shortly afterwards. So I never thought I’d have them again as pets, until about 25 years later a friend asked me to look after Squishy, an orange fancy goldfish.
Squishy looked an awful lot like a stubby penis. But I was instantly hooked and wanted to get him a friend. The first time I saw Bruno in the pet shop, I was enchanted. I had never seen black moors before and found their big, blueberry eyes so funny to look at. Bruno was only about the length of an index finger, his eyes taking up most of his head, and his scales were velvet-black.
Bruno was a gorgeous fish. I would lose minutes of my life just sitting and watching his long fins flow gracefully in the water. It became a new form of procrastination as I would peer over my laptop at the fish tank. Some days, I thought he would answer when I called his name by swimming towards me.
I guess a lot of people get pets to have someone to talk to, or someone to love and be loved by. Fish just give us their beauty to admire and care for. I find it calming knowing they’re in the room with you, just doing their best to exist.
To some people, it might seem cruel or silly to keep a goldfish – let alone believe you have formed a genuine friendship with one. But in his own little way, Bruno helped me through a difficult time when a relationship broke down and I made painful discoveries about what had been happening behind my back. It’s a scary and traumatic thing to have so much you believed to be true turn out to be the opposite. But at least Bruno was real, and I held on to that. I fed him when I struggled to look after myself, and continued with the regular water changes, reliant on that half-hour I could spend with him, focusing only on what I was doing.
I like to think Bruno, through his protruding eyes, saw everything that went on during that time. He came with me to a new flat, he met the wonderful supportive people in my life and watched as I became a much happier, liberated person.
When one morning he fell ill, I desperately searched for a fish vet, but before they could look at him he died. He is now buried in the garden behind some pink hydrangeas, but he will always be with me – I had his image tattooed on my arm.
