by Holly Miller
“We’d had a drink.”
“Absolutely.”
“She’s not like that all the time.”
“Right.”
“She gets a bit more forthright after—”
I hold up one hand. “Got it. Honestly.”
“And that costume was just—”
“There’s really no need—”
“Well. I just wanted to say she was only joking. But she shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”
“Are you . . . talking about what Melissa said to me in the shop?”
“Yes . . . What are you talking about?”
I swallow. “Never mind. Crossed wires, I think.”
There’s no chance now, of course, to mention the shouting I heard much later the same night. It rang out like gunshots, shocked me awake. There was no female voice, so they can’t have been rowing—Joel must have been dreaming. But bringing it up now would feel odd and intrusive, like I’m some sort of voyeur, aka every neighbor’s worst nightmare.
Joel looks bemused but smiles like he doesn’t mind. “How’s Murphy with fireworks?” It’s Guy Fawkes this evening and already the sky is a disco, a nightclub of bass and neon.
“Ben offered to have him. His mum and dad live out in the sticks. No near neighbors for miles.”
“Good thinking.”
I rustle up a smile. “So do you have any Guy Fawkes plans?”
“Absolutely not,” he says, deadpan. “Can’t stand the bloke.”
I laugh. “Dot and her water-skiing lot are having a party at the country park.”
Possibility balloons between us. I want to invite him, I do, but surely he has a girlfriend?
I take a breath, search my stomach for daring. “So if you’re not doing anything . . . ?”
The slowest of smiles, the most agonizing of waits. “Okay,” he says eventually, his voice going gravelly. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
16.
Joel
I did have plans actually: shivering in Doug’s back garden with the rest of my family, watching two-thirds of his fireworks fail to achieve lift-off. But I’d been thinking of canceling anyway. I’m fairly exhausted after a few sleep-scant nights. Plus my dream about Dad has pretty much floored me. I’ve not been able to forget it, have been scouring every photo I have of us together. Rereading messages on my phone with tears in my eyes, like you do when someone’s died.
I think back to it now. You’re not even my son! I’m not even your father!
It’s just not the kind of thing you say off the cuff to hurt someone. I’ve got plenty of other shortcomings he could choose from to do that.
Which can only mean there must be something in it.
I need to find out more about what I foresaw that night. But asking Dad outright? The sheer gravity of that conversation just doesn’t feel viable. Not yet, anyway. I need to go to his house while he’s out, I think. Uncover the truth for myself.
* * *
• • •
I meet Callie out front ten minutes later. The early-November air is frost-filled and muddled with stars, the moon halogen-bright. It lends a strange midsummer quality to a sky already ablaze.
There’s nothing to suggest that spending this evening with Callie is a date, I remind myself. We’re just neighbors, off to enjoy the fireworks. Exactly as I used to with Steve and Hayley. A tradition, platonic, no strings.
We set off toward the river. Callie’s face is parceled between the gray woolen hat pulled down low over her head and the soft red scarf she’s coiled up to her chin. Our hands are stuffed into our pockets, shoulders occasionally bumping.
“So how long have you been seeing Melissa?” She sounds genuinely curious. Which I suppose you would be if you’d met Melissa.
I laugh uncomfortably. “That’s . . . not quite as it seems.”
I feel her look at me. “No?”
“I’m not sure I can explain. Or I’m not sure I want to.”
“Why not?”
“You might think worse of me.”
We walk a few more paces.
“Friends with benefits?” she guesses.
“Yep.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“It’s not good.”
“But life’s not perfect.”
“No,” I agree, thinking, Ain’t that the truth.
Above our heads, a boom, then a waterfall of light that turns us temporarily Technicolor.
* * *
• • •
A subtle hum of music leads us to Dot and the water-skiers by the boathouse in the country park. There’s an impeccably organized drinks table, and a health-and-safety-compliant bonfire in an incinerator identical to the one my dad has for his garden-leaf mulch. It’s been a while since I’ve attended a party with people other than my family. But there’s something charming about the wholesomeness of this. The man toasting marshmallows, the parade of people carrying baked potatoes back and forth. The children swooping sparklers through the air.
Dot flings her arms around me when we arrive. She’s rocking an early-sixties vibe, all lacquered lashes and back-combed hair. Her coat looks slightly military, her jewelry vintage.
Planting a kiss on my left cheek, she presses a cup of something into my hands. “Hello, Customer. I knew it.”
“You knew what?” I say, amused.
“What are we drinking?” Callie asks quickly, her cheeks pink from the cold and the walk.
“Bonfire Night punch. My contribution.”
“What’s in it?”
Dot shrugs, which I suppose is how most people make punch. “Bit of everything. Mostly rum.”
I take a sip. It’s good, super-sweet and strong. Like tropical fruit juice under the influence. I’d been planning to hunt down some coffee, but I guess I can get my fix later.
“I have my eye on a man,” Dot confides, looping an arm through mine.
I meet Callie’s eye, smile.
“He’s over there. The blond one with his back to us, faffing about with the marshmallows. What do you think?”
I struggle to judge a man I don’t know from the back of his head. “Well, he seems helpful. Capable.”
Dot mainlines her punch in silence. “Oh, you’re right,” she says eventually, coming up for air. “He’s so not my type. He’s the club treasurer, for God’s sake! Just look at how carefully he’s turning those marshmallows.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s true. What was I thinking? There’s not even a hint of pyromaniac in that man.”
“Sorry,” I say mildly, wondering how I’ve managed to divert Cupid’s arrow so dramatically in the space of less than thirty seconds.
“Right. More booze.” Dot heads off toward the boathouse.
“Something I said?”
Callie laughs. “To be fair, you didn’t have very much to go on.”
“Although pyromaniacs are top of her list, apparently.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Dot’s benchmark for the perfect guy is literally inexplicable.”
We walk a few feet to the dark edge of the lake. It’s actually an infilled gravel quarry, fringed by trees and sandy footpaths. The water’s an inkwell, flecked with moonlight.
“I like Dot’s nickname for me.”
“Customer? Unique, isn’t it?”
“Stops me getting ideas above my station, I suppose.”
She laughs again. “She does know your name. I think it must have had something to do with the punch.”
“What did she mean when she said I knew it?”
Callie lets out a staccato breath. “You know, I have no idea.”
At a regulation distance from the boathouse, Dot’s marshmallow man switches roles. A crowd draws together, dark like gathered penguins, as a stream of fireworks
roars obligingly to life.
The air becomes abstract art, pigment-filled. A Jackson Pollock with the sound up high.
“I feel a bit like a teenager,” Callie says, as the first run of rockets scatters to a close. “Hanging around the country park after dark, drinking homemade punch.”
I feign a lightbulb. “Knew I recognized you from somewhere.”
Laughing, Callie turns to me. Then hesitates. “Oh, you have . . . Dot’s lipstick on your face.”
“Ah.”
“Do you want me to . . . ?”
Before I can answer she’s removed her glove, raised her hand to my cold cheek. Slowly, she rubs the mark away with a warm press of thumb. “There you go.”
Inside me, something swings. I fight the urge to grasp her hand as she lowers it, tell her how beautiful she is. “Thank you,” I manage.
From the group, a voice shouts Callie’s name. We start making our way back up the grass slope toward the boathouse.
“Joining us?” Dot asks, striding purposefully forward.
“For what?”
She indicates the water. “Firing up the Jet Skis.”
Callie coughs on her punch. “You’re joking. It’s freezing.”
“That’s what wetsuits are for.”
“Dot, you’ve been drinking. Are you sure that’s safe?”
“Of course,” Dot says. “Nathan’s a fully trained instructor.”
Callie wrinkles her nose. She’s probably thinking, like me, that Nathan must in fact only be part-qualified, given he clearly skipped the module on not being an irresponsible jackass.
Dot waves a hand. “Oh, don’t worry, he’s been on the lemonade all night.” She turns to me. “Fancy joining us, Customer?”
“Ah, no, thanks. You don’t want to see me in a wetsuit. Believe me.”
Dot chortles. “We’re all friends here.”
“I think we’ll sit this one out,” Callie says.
Dot throws one arm around Callie’s shoulders, kisses her hair. It makes me strangely envious. “What am I always telling you?”
Callie shrugs. Dot jogs off back toward the boathouse, presumably to recruit more people to the cause of her open-water death wish.
I take another sip of punch. “What is she always telling you?”
Callie hesitates. “Fancy a walk?”
* * *
• • •
“Sorry about Dot. She thinks I’m old and boring.”
We wind along the footpath leading into Waterfen, the nature reserve. The moon seems brighter somehow, a giant hole punched into the dark card of sky.
Though she’s by my side, Callie’s leading the way. She’s as familiar with the route as a bird on migration, the constellations her compass.
“How old is Dot?” I’ve been curious about this.
“Twenties,” Callie says, like most people would say Monday, or in-laws.
“So ‘old’ would make you . . .”
“Thirty-four.” She glances at me. “You?”
“Even older. Thirty-five. All hope is lost.”
We cross the wooden footbridge marking the entrance to the reserve. Our footsteps are high-pitched, hollow against the boardwalk. Shadows lengthen the spines of the trees, their darkened arms reaching out to greet us in the gloom.
“Dot’s always telling me to . . . Oh, what’s the phrase?”
“Grab life by the—”
“Exactly. She wants me to kickbox and water-ski.”
“Is that what you want?”
Callie smiles. The hair not covered by her hat is beginning to glisten, damp with tiny droplets of night air. “Put it this way, I’ve held out so far.”
“Maybe you’re just different.”
She’s quiet for a moment, like she’s giving this some thought. “Maybe.”
We head farther into the reserve, the boardwalk a winding artery through its sensory system. The fireworks become distant aftershocks. We are steeped in the sounds of nature at night: the lone hoot of a tawny owl, the rustle of lumbering mammals. From deep in the woods drifts the occasional churr of a creature stirring.
“Just so you know,” I say, “I have no idea where we are right now.” The dark’s disorienting, screwing with my sense of direction.
Her laugh ripples. “Don’t worry. I’ve come here at night often enough.”
“Light sleeper?”
“Sometimes,” she admits.
* * *
• • •
We swap the boardwalk for a churned-up channel of footpath running along a narrow dike. Eventually, where the tree line parts like a curtain, Callie stops. She moves her head closer to mine. I catch the scent of her shampoo, a sharp twist of citrus, feel it climb inside me.
“This is one of my favorite views,” she whispers.
The footpath looks over a wide sweep of marsh. It’s plump with rush, adorned with the jewelry of silvery wading pools. Roosting wildfowl scatter the earth’s wet surface. Following Callie’s outstretched finger, I make out a group of grazing deer. Their dainty forms are slender and sculptural, washed over by moonlight.
We squat down on the footpath to watch. The wet-wool scent of the undergrowth rises to meet us.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” she whispers, transfixed.
I nod, because who wouldn’t find this beautiful?
There’s a gently rolling undercurrent of sound—waves of crepuscular whistling, sweet swells of companionable gargling. I ask Callie where it’s coming from.
“That’s the widgeon and teal, noisy lot.”
My eyes rest again on the deer. “They’re like a work of art.”
“I love seeing them like this. They’re nervy, and they’ve got a real talent for hiding. Apparently they can smell people up to a hundred meters away.”
We watch a while longer, curious as camouflaged mammals in our little nest of undergrowth. Then Callie smiles at me, a silent signal for us to move on.
17.
Callie
We keep talking, hardly pausing for breath, walking side by side as the path broadens out, then sweeps round to hug the river.
I tell Joel about my parents and their work—Mum’s dressmaking business and Dad’s job as an oncologist. He asks how long I’ve been into nature, and I say basically my whole life. It was Dad who first brought me to Waterfen, who created a little space in his vegetable patch just for me. He’d smile when I freaked Mum out by adopting invertebrates from the garden, would talk me down from the inevitable tears when I was parted from them. He taught me to tell apart frogs and toads, pointed out the difference between buzzards and sparrow hawks, high in the sky. Early on summer mornings we would sit in the garden together, where he’d narrate the dawn chorus for me, from first bird to last. We made bug hotels and houses for hedgehogs, pressed flowers and pond-dipped, mixed up compost for the worms and woodlice.
I describe the degree I never used, tell Joel about the assistant warden’s role here I still haven’t applied for. The vacancy went live on the website a couple of weeks ago, and the closing date’s this Friday.
He asks what’s holding me back.
I think about it for a couple of moments. “The idea of change, maybe. I feel like we’re all just about getting onto an even keel again, after Grace. And the job’s only a fixed-term contract, so there are no guarantees long-term.”
“Be worth it, though?”
I frown. “I’m risk-averse, I guess. My parents were always quite . . . sensible, you know? It’s the reason I never really traveled, probably. Staying the same has just always seemed safer, somehow. Like . . . if you don’t pursue your dreams, you can’t feel bad if you never achieve them.”
“Taking on the café must have felt like a risk,” he observes softly. “Quitting your old job, after so many years.”
He’s right, it did, but all my thoughts back then were distorted by grief. I barely considered the fear because the sadness was so much worse—like insanity, some days. And agreeing to work at the café seemed like a way of honoring Grace—a leap of faith, doing something on a whim. Because that was how she had always lived her life.
We continue along our path. Joel looks lovely tonight, insulated from the elements by a dark woolen coat and scarf. He suits winter, I think, with all its layers and understated appeal, its subtle complications.
As we walk I ask if he’s named after anyone, like for example Billy Joel, and he says no, of course not, that would be madness, before asking the same question of me—except he comes up understandably short on anyone famous named Callie.
“Actually,” I say, “my dad suggested calling me Carrie one night over dinner, when Mum was pregnant with me. They were throwing baby names back and forth—but typical Dad, he had his mouth full at the time.” I smile. “Chocolate torte, apparently.”
“She thought he said Callie?”
I nod. “And Mum loved it so much, he didn’t have the heart to break it to her. So Callie it was. He only told her when I turned eighteen—he made a little speech about it at the restaurant on my birthday. And I had chocolate torte instead of cake, of course.”
“That is quite possibly the best baby-naming story ever.”
“Thanks. I think so too.”
I ask Joel about his family, my mind reeling in sympathy as he reveals that his mother died when he was only thirteen. He doesn’t say much when I ask—just that she had cancer, and that they were very close.
We walk a little farther until, out of habit, I pause on the path beneath the old willow. “Grace and I used to spend hours in this tree when we were kids. You know, once you’re up there—”
“—you can spy on the world unseen.”
“You did that too?”
As he nods I feel the warmth of a new connection, the thump of ignition in my belly.
“Well,” Joel says, after a moment, “they do say fireworks are best appreciated from height.”
So together we climb, embarrassingly ungainly, into the crook of the willow’s broad shoulders, where I show him the initials Grace and I carved into the bark. Beyond our private landscape, the peculiar arson of Bonfire Night still dances across the horizon, gunpowder thumping like the footsteps of giants.