‘Where shall I meet you?’ Theo had asked.
‘At the top, of course.’
She hurried to climb as the crowd thickened around her. Every time she looked up, the cluster of people at the top had concentrated and spread. She reached them, slowed and began to make her way through. There were several fires already and those who had found the spot they wanted, settled firmly into place. Others, like Juliet, made their way round and round, looking for a better view or someone they had arranged to meet. Everyone glanced at their watches or asked one another the time, but this was to be a celebration and so they smiled at whoever got in their way and those they let pass thanked them. Every contact meant something. It was that kind of night, when all it took to make a decision was brushing up against another person’s actions or words.
At quarter to twelve, the hill was full and most decided to stay where they were and enjoy what they could. Some, though, could not do that yet. Juliet walked on round, each time more slowly. At five to twelve, she was at the front of the hill and stopped to look where everyone else was looking, across the city. She would not give up. Theo was back down here on earth and coming towards her.
‘Happy New Year!’ someone shouted.
‘Two minutes to go!’ shouted someone else.
‘I make it forty-five seconds.’
And so an inexact midnight rippled through the crowd, who made the most of it and then set off cheerfully back into the dark.
Juliet lingered, wanting to know what it might have been like had they been alone, had Theo been there.
There are not many people left on the hill now. She turns and climbs further, looks down and sees him running. She shouts but he does not hear her and so she shouts again, this time loud enough.
They stand at the top, alone as she had imagined – above the city, below the sky. It is one o’clock.
‘An hour west of here it is midnight and you made it on time,’ she says.
‘But we’re here and I didn’t.’
‘That,’ she says, ‘is the absolute truth.’
They start walking and turn a corner, beyond which someone is coming towards them. Juliet will have only the time between the moment at which she recognises Jacob and the moment they meet, to decide how to move past him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAVINIA GREENLAW is the author of a novel, Mary George of Allnorthover, and three books of poetry, Night Photograph, A World Where News Travelled Slowly and Minsk. She lives in London.
PRAISE
From the reviews of An Irresponsible Age:
‘Lavinia Greenlaw writes like the poet she also is, using words with an exhilarating unexpectedness … The writing is never precious, but does what all good prose should do: recreates life in a way we recognize but may not have seen before in quite this way’
PETER PARKER, TLS
‘Greenlaw captures the sense of life’s hopeless randomness, showing, with irony yet tenderness, the raptures and trials of love, and the folly of failing to seize the day. In a novel that treats romance with seriousness, the shirking of the duty to make each moment matter is the most venal and irresponsible act of all’
Scotsman
‘Greenlaw’s vision can be laser-sharp, her work displaying a talent for moving between the abstract and the keenly observed’
Independent
‘There is a deep sense of imminent reckoning pervading this subtle and intriguing novel; an unspoken understanding that the irresponsibility – personal and political – must come to an end’
Observer
‘Greenlaw, who is also a poet, superbly brings to life her characters’ inner life and their perceptions of their world … and gives the novel an irresistible emotional logic and force’
Financial Times
‘Greenlaw’s prose has an absorbing internal motion, gliding and swooping over events, pushing you forward, then pausing to capture a simple image. And behind it all is a moving, understated ode to grief that lingers after the last page’
Metro
‘Above all, An Irresponsible Age is terrifically funny; how could it be otherwise? This is Festen with the edges softened, transferred to the Home Counties’
New Statesman
‘It is hard not to compare this novel with The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen’s novel about family life at the end of the twentieth century … sensuous and richly descriptive’
Literary Review
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Mary George of Allnorthover Night Photograph
A World Where News Travelled Slowly Minsk
Thoughts of a Night Sea (with Garry Fabian Miller)
COPYRIGHT
Harper Perennial
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This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2006
Copyright © Lavinia Greenlaw 2006
Lavinia Greenlaw asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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