In short, even though everything was happening, nothing was happening.
I squeezed his hand as we climbed up through the woods, struck again by the dazzling simplicity of everything. There was birdsong, there was the sound of our breath, and there was the sensation of sinking into the mulch. And, beyond a deep feeling of contentment, there was nothing else. No grief, no guilt, no questions.
We’d walked nearly to the top of the hill when Eddie stopped. ‘There,’ he said, pointing up at a beech tree. ‘A mystery wellington.’
It took me a while to see it, but when eventually I did, I laughed. ‘How did you do that?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I just spotted it once. I have no idea how it got up there, or who was responsible. In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen anyone in this part of the woods.’
A very long way up – probably more than sixty feet – a branch, once heading skyward, had been snapped off. A black wellington boot had been placed over the remaining stump. Since then, a few younger limbs of pale green had grown below, but the trunk was otherwise smooth: impossible to climb.
I stared up at the welly, puzzled by its existence, delighted that Eddie thought it was something he should take me to see. I slid an arm around his middle and smiled. I could feel his breath, his heart, his T-shirt just on the brink of damp after a hot uphill climb. ‘A proper mystery,’ I said. ‘I like it.’
Eddie mimed throwing a welly a few times but then gave up. It was inconceivable. ‘I have no idea how they managed it,’ he said. ‘But I love that they did.’
Then he stepped round and kissed me. ‘Such a silly thing,’ he said. ‘But I knew you’d like it.’ His arms wrapped tight around me.
I kissed him back, harder. All I wanted to do was kiss him.
I wondered how I could possibly go back to LA when happiness of this sort was right here. Here, in the place I’d once called home.
Eventually we found ourselves in the leaves without any clothes on.
I had mulch in my hair, probably insects. But I felt only joy. Deep, radial branches of joy.
Chapter Seventeen
Dear Eddie,
I’ve thought long and hard about writing this letter. How can I possibly reach out – yet again – now you’ve made such a conspicuous show of being alive but unwilling to communicate? How can I be so desperate, so unwilling to heed your silence?
But last night I found myself thinking about the day we walked up to see that welly. What a silly, lovely thing it was to do; how we stared up at it and laughed. And I thought, I’m not ready to give up on him. On us. Not quite yet.
So this is it: my last-ditch attempt to find out what happened. To work out how I could have got it so wrong.
Do you remember our last night together, Eddie? Outside on the grass, before we hauled your enormous tent outside and then spent the next few hours trying to put it up? Do you remember that, before we both collapsed with exhaustion in the damned thing, I was meant to tell you my life story?
I’m going to start it now, from the beginning. Or at least the edited highlights. I figured that maybe it would remind you why you liked me. Because whatever else you might have managed to hide from me, the liking-me bit wasn’t made up. Of that much I’m certain.
So. I am Sarah Evelyn Harrington. Born Gloucester Royal at 4.13 p.m. on 18 February 1980. Mum taught maths at a grammar in Cheltenham, and Dad was a sound engineer. He did a lot of touring with bands, until he started to miss us too much. After that he did all sorts of soundy things locally. He still does. Can’t stop himself.
They bought a wreck of a cottage in the valley below Frampton Mansell, about a year before I was born, and they’ve lived there ever since. It’s about fifteen minutes’ walk along the footpath from your barn. You probably know it. Dad and his friend reopened that old path the summer he and Mum moved in. Two men, two chainsaws, several beers.
Being in that valley with you made the place feel very different. Reminded me of a Me I’d forgotten. And as I said to you on our first morning, there is a good reason for that.
Tommy, my best friend, was born a couple of months after me to the ‘slightly fraught’ (Dad’s words) couple in the house at the end of our track. He and I became best friends and we played every day until that strange, sad moment in adolescence where playing just isn’t the thing anymore. But until then, we forded streams, stuffed ourselves on blackberries and made tunnels through blankets of cow parsley.
When I was five, Mum had another baby – Hannah – and after a few years Hannah joined in our adventures. She was utterly fearless, my sister – far braver than Tommy and me, in spite of being several years our junior. Her best friend, a little girl called Alex, was quite literally in awe of her.
It’s only now, as an adult, that I realize quite how much I loved my sister. How I was in awe of her, too.
Tommy spent a lot of time at our house because his mum was – as he put it – ‘crazy’. I’m not sure, in hindsight, that was fair, although she was certainly preoccupied on a very deep level with very surface things. She moved their family to LA when I was fifteen and I was heartbroken. Without Tommy I had no idea who I was anymore. Who were my friends? What group did I belong to? I knew only that I had to latch on to someone fast, before I wheeled off the school social scene and became a confirmed loner.
So I latched on to two girls, Mandy and Claire, with whom I’d always been friendly – if not exactly friends – only now it was more intense. Intense and exposing. Girls can be so cruel when they’re young.
Two years later I was on the phone to Tommy at five in the morning, begging him to let me come and stay. But I’ll get to that later.
I’m going to leave it there. I don’t want to just vomit my entire life story all over you, because you may not want to hear it. And even if you do, I don’t want it to sound like I think I’m the only person on earth with a past.
I miss you, Eddie. I didn’t think it was possible to miss someone you’d known for only seven days, but I do. So much I can’t seem to think straight anymore.
Sarah
Chapter Eighteen
There he was: Reuben. Right there at a table in the BFI cafe, talking to his new girlfriend, whose face was just out of sight. The brown-husked remains of a coffee next to his hand, all about him the simmer of self-possession and new masculinity.
I remembered the shy, skinny boy I’d found quaking outside a Mexican restaurant all those years ago, his hair gelled and his neck sheathed in cheap aftershave. The crushed and trembling quality of his voice when he’d asked me out a few hours later. Now look at him! Broader, stronger, quite the Californian hero with his tapered fashion shorts, his sunglasses, his deliberately careless hair. I couldn’t help but smile.
‘Hello,’ I said, arriving at their table.
‘Oh!’ Reuben said, and for a second I saw the young man I married. The man I thought I’d be with forever, because a permanent life with him in that sunny, cheerful city was all I thought I’d ever need.
‘Hey! You must be Sarah.’ Kaia stood up.
‘Hello,’ I said, and held out my hand. ‘It’s very nice to meet you.’ Kaia was slim and clear-eyed. The soft imprint of old acne scarring on her jawline faded into smooth cheeks; dark hair trailed smoothly down her back.
She ignored my extended hand and kissed me on the cheek, clasping my shoulders and smiling warmly, and I knew in that moment that she would hold the balance of power today. She was complete, this woman, and I was not. ‘It’s great we made this meeting work,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to putting a face to your name for a long time now.’
Kaia was quite some woman if she hadn’t put a face to my name through Google Images. I was not quite some woman and had googled her as soon as I knew her surname, but Kaia, of course, had no online footprint. Too bloody pure.
She sat down, smiling as I found a space for my bag under the table and took off the cardigan that was forcing out beads of sweat across my forehead. She was the sort of woman I’d sometimes see meditating on the beach at sunset, I thought, as I freed my arms. Good and grounded, with salt on her skin and wind blowing through her hair.