by Meg Rosoff
‘Will you ever come back to the beach?’
‘Sure,’ he said, which sounded pretty much like no.
‘You promise?’
‘How’s Hugo?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘He’s great.’ He was pretty great, and still my best friend. ‘He lives in London now.’
‘That’s good.’
We talked for a while longer, about this and that – Mattie, Tam, plays, auditions, art school, politics – until Mal looked at his watch and said he had to go. We both stood up and then he pulled me into a hug, letting go only when things threatened to get maudlin. Gomez hauled himself to his feet with the usual commotion and shook himself noisily.
‘We’ll get together soon,’ Mal said.
‘We will?’
‘Of course.’ He smiled and then was gone, basset and all.
I peered out at the dark for some time in case he changed his mind and came back, but he didn’t, so I phoned Mum and then Hugo, and I’m pretty sure Mum told Hope. Maybe Hugo did too. Running into Mal was news.
I didn’t hear from him again.
A few months later Hope had a postcard from Florence Godden. She was still living in LA, ‘far too busy’ and ‘so proud of darling Kit’, but we didn’t even bother to google him.
30
When I think back on that summer it’s always with a sense of having lost something fragile and fleeting, something I can’t quite name. We still go to the beach and always have good times, but it’s never quite the same.
Hugo says he never wants to see his brother again. He says, ‘Who cares what happens to that bastard?’
Well, I don’t.
I don’t.
Obviously, I don’t.
But I do still think of that face and those hands and a voice telling me that I’m something else.
And more and more I think that maybe he was right.
About the Author
Meg Rosoff is the winner of the Carnegie Medal, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis and the coveted Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Meg Rosoff grew up in a suburb of Boston and moved to London in 1989. She spent fifteen years working in advertising before writing her first novel, How I Live Now, which has sold more than one million copies in thirty-six territories. She has written six young-adult novels, Jonathan Unleashed for adults, and a middle-grade series about a dog called McTavish, who rescues a chaotic family. Meg lives in London with her husband, daughter and two lurchers.
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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
This electronic edition published in 2020
Copyright © Meg Rosoff, 2020
Meg Rosoff has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5266-1851-1; TPB: 978-1-5266-2053-8; eBook: 978-1-5266-1852-8
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