I reached for my phone.
I felt oddly calm as I searched my own Facebook page. And there, of course, it was. A friendly message from Tommy Stenham, on 1 June 2016.
Welcome home, Harrington! Hope you had a good flight. Can’t wait to see you .
I put my shoes back on. I walked back towards the observatory and ordered an Uber. While I waited for it to arrive, I got out my phone and started writing. I had my answer.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Eddie,
I know who you are.
For years I used to dream about meeting you. The dreams took place in the darkest edges of my mind and in them you never really had a face or a voice. But you were always there, and it was always awful.
Then you were there, really there, that day in June, sitting on the green at Sapperton with a sheep. You were smiling at me, buying me drinks, and you were lovely. And I didn’t have a clue.
The world tastes like it did the summer I turned seventeen. Like bile in my throat.
We need to talk. Face to face. Below is my American mobile number. Please call it. We can arrange to meet.
Sarah
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘Sarah Mackey,’ Jenni said. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling you.’
I slid off my leather sandals and perched on the edge of a bar stool. ‘Sorry. I left my phone on silent. Are you OK?’
Jenni ducked my question, padding off to get us some water. ‘I can fix you a soft drink if you prefer,’ she said, handing me a glass. Her eyes were bloodshot and I could tell she’d been in bed since she’d got back from work.
Promptly, I burst into tears.
‘What’s happening?’ Jenni came back over. She smelled of coconut shampoo and marshmallow skin. ‘Sarah . . . ?’
How could I explain this squalid, sorry mess to a woman who’d just lost her last, cherished hope of a family? It was unthinkable. She would listen to me, and she would be horrified. And then crushed, because there would be nothing – absolutely nothing – she could do to solve it for me.
‘Tell me,’ Jenni said sternly.
‘It was all fine at the doctor’s,’ I lied, after a long interval. I blew my nose. ‘Fine. There are blood tests to come, but everything’s OK.’
‘OK . . .’
‘But . . . I—’
My phone started ringing .
‘It’s Eddie,’ I said, diving blindly around the room for my phone.
‘What?’ Jenni, suddenly capable of lightning reflexes, plucked it out my bag and hurled it at me. ‘Is that him?’ she asked. ‘Is that Eddie?’
And my chest drummed with pain, because it was, and the situation was unbearable. I could never be with him. I had found him at last, and we had no future.
‘Eddie?’ I said.
There was a pause, and then there was his voice, saying hello. Just like I had dreamed it would, only this time it was real. Familiar and strange, perfect and heartbreaking. His voice.
My own held just long enough for me to say yes, I could meet him tomorrow morning, and yes, Santa Monica Beach was fine; I’d meet him by the bike-rental place just south of the pier at ten.
‘I was beginning to think it was a lie that LA’s on the ocean,’ he said. He sounded tired. ‘I’ve been driving around for days and haven’t seen it once.’
And then the call was over and I curled myself into the corner of Jenni’s couch and cried like a child.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dear You,
Hello, Hedgehog.
Nearly two weeks have passed since you should have celebrated your birthday, but I still think about you every day. Not just birthdays.
Sometimes I like to imagine what you would be doing if you were still here. Today I imagined you living in Cornwall; a young, broke artist with paint in her hair. In this version, you study fine art at Falmouth and then take over a derelict building high on a hill with your arty friends. You like headscarves and you’re probably vegetarian, and you’re busy getting Arts Council grants, organizing exhibitions, teaching painting to kids. You’re electrifying.
Then comes the pendulum swing of grief and I remember you’re not in that crazy house on a hill. You’re scattered in a peaceful corner of Gloucestershire, a quiet hum of memory where once was my sunbeam of a sister.
I wonder if you know about what I’m doing tomorrow morning. I wonder if you know who I’m meeting on the beach. And if you do, I wonder if you will forgive me.
Because I can’t not go, little Hedgehog. I have to know how you were on the day you died: what you were doing, what you were saying, what you were eating, even. When I had to identify your body, I was pooled in the corner like something melted. It took me hours to get up and drive home. But when I got there, I found half a piece of toast by the sink. Cold and rigid, with the indentations of your little teeth on a corner. Like you’d considered the idea of a final mouthful but then skipped off to do something else.
What else did you eat that day? Did you sing a song? Did you change your clothes? Were you happy, Hedgehog?
I have to ask these questions. And I have to figure out why, in spite of everything, I am still in love with the very person who took you away from us all.
I feel like I’m letting you down so desperately by going tomorrow. I hope you can understand why I am.
I love you.
Me xxxx
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I watched a group of kids playing volleyball while I waited for Eddie. I wondered if he would even turn up, and wondered if it would be easier, better, if he didn’t.
The tide was far out, the beach quiet. A light carpet of cloud hovered between Santa Monica and the fierce sun. The air smelled of something fuggy and sweet – melting sugar, perhaps, or cooking doughnuts – a childhood smell; it lit up an old corner of memory. Long holidays in Devon. Scratchy sand, salty limbs, slippery rocks. The delicate patter of rain on our tent. Whispering late into the night with my little sister, whose presence in my life I had never then thought to question.
I checked my watch.
Over on the volleyball court, the kids finished their game and started packing up. The boardwalk rumbled as a lone rollerblader panted past. I ran damp fingers through my hair. Swallowed, yawned, clenched and unclenched my fists.
Eddie’s voice, when it came, was from somewhere behind me. ‘Sarah?’
I paused before turning to face him, this man who had lived in my head so many years.
But when I did look at him, I saw only Eddie David. And I felt only the things I’d felt before I’d realized who he was: the love, the longing, the hunger. The whump! as my body ignited like a boiler.
‘Hello,’ I said.
Eddie didn’t reply. He looked me straight in the eye, and I remembered the day I met him. How I’d thought to myself that his eyes were the colour of foreign oceans: full of warmth and good intentions. Today they were cold, almost blank.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. ‘Thanks for coming.’
A tiny twitch of his shoulders. ‘I’ve been trying to come and talk to you for the last two weeks. Been staying with my mate Nathan. But I . . .’ He trailed off, shrugged.
‘Of course. I understand.’
A family on yellow rented bikes pedalled along the boardwalk between us and he stepped back, watching me.
We walked down the beach and sat on the sand where it sloped to the water. For a long time we watched the Pacific crashing in on itself; sheets of silver foam on a relentless journey to nowhere. Eddie had his arms looped around his knees. He took off one of his flip-flops and splayed his toes in the sand.
The shock of longing almost winded me.
‘I don’t know how to do this, Sarah,’ he said eventually. His eyes were glassy. ‘I don’t know what to say. You . . .’ He spread his hands wide, looked helpless.
Once upon a time Eddie had a sister, a sweet girl called Alex. She had blonde, tangly hair. She sang a lot. She had large blue eyes, full of life and plans, and she loved fruity sweets. She had been my sister’s best friend.
My stomach clenched as I held her in my mind’s eye, waiting for what I knew was coming .
‘You killed my sister,’ Eddie said. He took in a sharp breath and I closed my eyes.
Last time I had heard those words, it had been through the big Panasonic answering machine next to Mum and Dad’s phone. It was one, maybe two, weeks after the accident and Hannah had finally been discharged from hospital. She had refused to get into the car with me; refused even to go home. There had been a scene, and eventually a patient transport bus had been found to take her and Mum home, while Dad and I drove.