by Holly Miller
88.
Joel—six years after
Had a dream about Warren last night,” I say to Kieran and Zoë over breakfast. They’ve come to Cornwall for the weekend, their boys (now teenagers) safely ensconced at Kieran’s parents’.
“Tell us everything,” Zoë orders. She tears into a croissant, attacks the butter. Freshly showered and fully made up, she’s one of those annoying people with a complete immunity to hangovers.
Kieran, on the other hand, looks positively malarial. “Wait,” he says. “Was it good or bad?”
“Good.” I lower my voice. “He meets someone.”
“Meets meets?” Zoë says.
“Yeah.” I smile. “She seemed nice. We were on the beach. She was laughing at his jokes. And they were holding—”
“Morning.” A gray-skinned Warren appears. He stayed over last night, opting to pass out on my sofa rather than attempt the short walk home.
“Joel has news,” Zoë says. She and Warren are like kindred spirits, honestly. They finish each other’s sentences, share an identical sense of humor. Though Zoë’s tolerance for late nights far outstrips his.
“Yeah?” Warren says. “You got any—”
“In the pot.” I gesture at the stove. (I’m on the green tea myself. Still trying to get a handle on my caffeine habit.)
“Go on,” he mutters grimly. He fills a mug with coffee, keeps it neat. Flops down beside me, sticks his head into his hands.
“You suffering, mate?” Kieran asks him, with a smile.
“This is why I don’t drink anymore.” Warren’s words come out all stuck together.
“Yeah, those Jägerbombs should really come with an upper age limit,” I say. “Or at least a ban on buying in bulk.”
Warren waves a hand at me, presumably to bat away the memory of his demise last night. “What’s your news?”
“It’s more your news, actually. I dreamed you met a girl.”
He looks up. “What.”
“Well, a woman. You’ve got six months to sort yourself out.”
Despite himself, a smile. “Jesus. What’s she like?”
“She seemed nice. Willing to laugh at your jokes, for one.”
“From round here?”
“Hard to say. But we were on the beach.”
He groans. “It’s been a while. Probably won’t last.”
I clear my throat. Lower my voice. “I beg to differ. You were . . . holding hands.”
Zoë whoops. Warren winces. “Sure it was me?”
“Yep.” I finish my croissant and tea, feel delightedly smug in the face of the room’s communal hangover. I slept longer last night than I have in years. “So that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it? Right. Anyone joining me for a run?”
They literally heckle me out of the room.
* * *
• • •
I take my fitness addiction to the coast path. Feel the burn of elevation in my calves and lungs. The wind is a swinging blade through the air, mud spinning beneath my feet.
My mind drifts to Callie. I picture her eating breakfast, the children in their high chairs. She’s laughing with her husband about something, wiping flecks of food from the twins’ chins. Her face is radiant, warmed by the sun from a nearby window.
My stomach briefly seizes with jealousy that it can’t be me. But then I remember all the reasons why it can’t. At least this way she’s happy, and for now I’ve found a form of balance.
Ultimately, I know, we couldn’t have done that together.
I fill my lungs with frigid Atlantic air, run on.
89.
Callie—six years after
I stare at the invitation in my hand. “I still can’t believe Ben’s getting married.”
“Will it be weird for you?”
I smile, let a twinge of sadness subside. “Grace will have been gone nine years by the wedding. I think that’s possibly weirder, if that makes sense.”
“It does. Mia’s great, though.”
“I love Mia. And Grace would have loved her too.”
Nearly eighteen months old now, Euan and Robyn are propped up between us against the sofa cushions, bewitched by CBeebies. I reach down, absentmindedly stroke Euan’s hair.
“And the wedding looks pretty cool,” Finn says.
It’s a railway-arch venue in Shoreditch, open bar. Mia works in advertising and moves in terrifyingly hip circles.
“I might use the opportunity to see Mum and Dad for a few days while we’re up that way. Give them some quality time with Euan and Robyn.” Mum’s always nagging me to visit more, and they come to Brighton as often as they can.
Finn smiles, scooping Robyn onto his knee and bending to kiss her head. “Great. Your mum will love that.”
I glance down at the invite again. “I’m a bit surprised they’re letting kids in, actually. They do know children are legally obliged to disrupt the vows?”
“I reckon Esther had a firm word in Ben’s ear.”
I laugh and reach down to stroke Murphy. He’s up against my knee, chin resting on my thigh. “Probably.”
“Never mind the kids, though, I’m not even sure they should be letting us into this wedding. Are we cool enough?”
There’s nothing quite like having children for making you feel like a bona fide grown-up. Our breakneck social life, our holidays—those hallmarks of a child-free life—seem almost to have belonged to someone else now.
Not long after the twins were born, I’d sometimes find myself looking back through our photos, just to remind myself it had all really happened. After confessing this to Finn, I returned to the flat one night to find he’d blown up our best shots in black-and-white, framed them, and hung them on the walls. Our very first selfie, shot against the sunrise, the morning I left Latvia. The two of us on the boardwalk of a nature reserve in Florida, brown-skinned and beaming, thumbs up to the camera. Our last breakfast in Miami—omelets and strong coffee—the morning after we’d got engaged. Abseiling somewhere near Tunbridge Wells. Laughing with a group of friends, high up on the Downs. But in pride of place, Finn had positioned a photo that came before all of that: my diademed sandpiper-plover, nestled in the foothills of a Chilean volcano.
“I mean, how do you even dress for a wedding like this?” Finn’s saying. “Should I wear a suit, or will everyone be in pajamas or something?”
I hope he’ll wear a suit—he has one he brings out especially for weddings, gunmetal-gray. He usually pairs it with a floral shirt, sometimes shades, and he looks . . . Well, if there were such a thing as upstaging the groom, I’m pretty sure Finn would do it every time.
“Well, that’s kind of the beauty with events this cool. We could probably turn up in our wellies and look like we’re setting a trend.”
“Can’t believe we’re already calling Ben’s wedding an ‘event,’” Finn says.
“There’ll be people with earpieces.”
“Security checks.”
“A social media blackout.”
“I love you,” Finn says then, across the top of the twins’ heads.
I smile. “I love you too.”
“I don’t know . . .” He trails off, looks down.
“What?” I say, happily surprised by this sudden onrush of affection. There’s been so little time for it of late. We tend to talk in snatched half sentences now (Have you done the—, I just need to—, Should we quickly—), and though our sex life has made a tentative return, it’s an open secret between us that, given the choice, we’ll opt to shut our eyes rather than pounce on each other when we finally hit the mattress at night.
“. . . I don’t know what I’d do if I hadn’t met you, Cal. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me—you and the twins.”
I lean over, kiss him on the lips. It sparks something inside me, a
nd I think perhaps tonight I might pounce on him after all.
* * *
• • •
Later we undress and finish the kiss, urgent beneath the covers, our hands hot and damp in the cool of the room. Perhaps because it’s been a few weeks, or because we’re obliged to do everything at full tilt these days, it feels vital and frantic in the very best of ways. The heat and the vigor take me back to that very first night in Latvia.
Afterward I roll back toward him, about to whisper that we should really make the effort to do that more often, when the shrillness of a child crying rises from the room next door.
Finn starts laughing. “Ah, for once, kid,” he murmurs, still breathless, his skin damp with sweat, “your timing’s perfect.”
90.
Joel—six and a half years after
I’m heading to Nottingham with Doug to catch up with our cousin Luke and some of our other relatives.
I got back in touch with Luke just over two years ago. Building bridges felt good, and I wanted to do more of it. Surprisingly, for someone so inherently grumpy, my brother felt the same way.
Luke never did return to school after the dog attack. His family moved to the Midlands a year or so after it happened so he could stand half a chance of escaping the flashbacks. These days, he’s a celebrated chef, having steered two restaurants to Michelin-star status. We’ve eaten twice at his current place, had boys’ nights out together.
I haven’t yet told him about my dreams. Or, rather, one dream in particular. I’ve been getting to know him again first. Building a relationship before I bare my soul.
But I dreamed about tonight a month or so ago. (Highlights: Luke takes us to a blues bar where we’re treated like VIPs; Doug gets absolutely hammered.)
As we’re waiting for our train, my brother starts to get twitchy. He’s wearing his weekend uniform of jeans I suspect to have been ironed, and a slightly too-tight T-shirt. “Dying for a fag.”
“Tell me you’re not still smoking.”
He shrugs. “Only socially.”
“And yet you’re dying for a fag.”
Doug huffs. “Oh, I meant to say. Dad’s worried about you.”
I smile, wonder if Doug will forever respond to criticism by batting it straight back where it came from. “How come?”
“Says you’re looking too thin.” A disdainful glance in my direction. “I happen to agree.”
“Ah, it’s nothing.”
But the truth is I’ve not been myself recently. Time is accelerating, the years slipping by like landscape past a train window. I’ve been thinking about Callie, plagued with agonizing doubts. Have I done the right thing? Should I get back in touch, make one final attempt to save her?
I’ve been having a recurrent dream lately, my first ever. It’s the one about Callie dying, and it’s grown progressively lifelike. I wake up soaked in sweat each time, shouting her name.
Doug looks away from me. “Good to know. I was only saying to Lou the other day, you’re finally starting to act normal for the first time in your life.”
I smile faintly at the turned face of my half brother. He’s so different from me. And yet, weirdly, I wouldn’t change him for the world. That I can rely on his rudeness is strangely comforting somehow. When I think of all the turmoil that’s to come.
91.
Callie—six and a half years after
He’s standing on the opposite platform with his brother, chin sunk into the collar of his jacket as it so often was, hands stuffed into his pockets.
He looks thin, I think. Slightly haunted, not himself.
Or, at least, the himself I used to know. It’s been nearly seven years now. But already the intervening time has melted away, and I can only see him as I last did, facing me across the table in the restaurant. Forget about me. Do all the things you want to do, and more.
My heart on a string, I can only pray he’ll look up and see me.
I’ve taken a few days’ annual leave for Ben’s wedding, but Finn’s been working in Ipswich this week, so I’m traveling from Mum and Dad’s to London alone with the twins. Finn’s meeting us off the train at Blackfriars, and already I can’t wait—to be reunited after three nights apart, and for the second pair of hands. It’s the first time I’ve traveled with the twins by myself, so I have Euan on my hip, Robyn in a single buggy by my feet.
I don’t want to alarm my children—and the rest of the platform—by calling out. Joel’s deep in conversation, and just as I start to think he might never look up, he does, and I am once again stilled by his satellite gaze.
I never forgot about you, Joel.
The world falls away. Sounds become echoes, my surroundings fog. I can see just Joel, feel only the spin of my stomach as we take each other in.
But within moments comes the hydraulic rush of my approaching train, the flash of lights.
No, no, no. On time—for once—today?
I mouth, Joel, but then the train divides us and the crowd around me starts to move. And I need to move too—trains to London are only every thirty minutes, time’s already tight, and delay will mean keeping Finn waiting, rushing to find a cab, panicking about missing the wedding, the potential humiliation of being turned away by a band of doormen masquerading as Tom Ford models.
I have no choice. We have to board the train.
The temperature in the carriage feels stifling, like the AC’s on the blink. Mercifully our seats are at a table for four, where the only other occupant is a friendly-looking pensioner, who seems as though she might not tut too firmly if my two-year-olds decide to kick off. After checking with her, I stand up and open the top window before settling Euan on the seat next to me, pulling Robyn onto my lap.
But the whole time I’m straining, desperate to see if I can spot Joel outside. At first my eyes land only on strangers, until eventually they locate Doug, who I see with a jolt is now standing alone.
And then there’s a tap on the window behind me.
I turn, and it’s him. Lovely, luminous him. He must have sprinted across the overpass.
My eyes spring with tears as I mouth a hello.
You okay? he mouths back.
I nod fiercely. You?
He nods too, then hesitates. You happy?
I swallow the tears away, hold my breath for just a second. And then I nod again.
Because how can I paint for him the whole picture, the winding roots of the truth, through a window as the whistle sounds for my train to depart? What can I say in the space of five seconds to express all that I feel, in front of my children and a curious stranger?
On the other side of the window, Joel puts a palm flat against the glass. I reach out and do the same, and suddenly we’re together but divided, just as we always seemed to be.
Then comes the distress flare of a whistle before slowly, agonizingly, our hands begin to peel apart. Joel breaks into a jog, trying to keep up, but of course he can’t. My heart is tethered to him, a thread seconds from snapping. Then at the last moment he reaches up and drops something through the open window above our heads. It helicopters into my lap like a falling sycamore seed.
I grasp it, then look urgently up, but the station has already become the grimy façade of the railway depot. He’s vanished, perhaps for the last time.
I stare down at Robyn on my lap. Her face is raised to mine, like she’s trying to decide if she should burst into tears, and it occurs to me that it must have been a bit frightening for her, the unfamiliar figure at the window with the urgent eyes and muffled voice. So I draw her closer into me, cover her tiny hand with mine, give it a reassuring squeeze.
“I love you,” I whisper into her shining spirals of dark hair.
“Are you okay?” the old lady asks me quietly, her eyes wrinkled in sympathy.
I nod but can’t speak. I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll lose i
t.
“The one that got away?” is all she says, her voice gossamer-soft.
I glance down at Euan by my side. He’s staring up at the opposite window, absorbed in the sight of life rushing by.
Oh, how it rushes.
I blink just once, release a couple of hot tears. And she nods gently, because we both know there is nothing more to say.
* * *
• • •
Moments before we pull into Blackfriars, I unfold the paper napkin.
On it, scrawled in pen, are just five words.
I’LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, CALLIE x
92.
Joel—eight years after
I wait for her at the bend of the river, by the crooked old willow I saw in my dream. Though the air today is tonic-fresh, the light feels prophetically gentle. Soft-hued with sympathy, as if it knows what’s to come.
I look up at the sprawling tree, magnificent as a monument. Recall the loop of Callie’s C scraped into the muscle of its wood. I picture the letter in time lapse over all the years ahead. Warmed through with sunlight, powdered with frost, until eventually it’s lost beneath layers of lichen.
I’ve told none of Callie’s loved ones about today. The only thing she asked of me was to keep what I dreamed from her, and I couldn’t risk the secret spilling out. So though it’s crushed me to do it, I’ll honor her wish to the last. If I don’t, the past eight years will have been for nothing.
I guess she must be visiting her mum and dad, the children with their grandparents. I’m sure whenever she’s in Eversford she returns to Waterfen, drawn back toward it like a bird migrating.
Since I saw her on the train eighteen months ago, she’s been at every turn of my thoughts. A whisper on the breeze of my memory.