‘I love you too. Rose, you’re strangling me.’
‘Oh, shit. Sorry,’ I said, and let her go.
51
I went to the kitchen, made Con a gin and tonic, and brought it into the living room.
‘Thanks,’ she said, taking it from me carefully with both hands. Her eyes were bright, her back was ramrod-straight. ‘Are we ready?’ she said, gazing down at the A4 envelope resting on the coffee table. ‘Go on. You open it.’
I did as she said and pulled out the unfolded hardback jacket for The Mercurial. It was sublimely beautiful. Two-thirds of it were covered in shades of blue – lapis lazuli, cerulean, royal, Prussian, sky – one upon the other layered like a woodcut, yet with an impressionistic stretch of beach in sunflower yellow running all along the bottom third, over the spine and round the back. The font was in pillar-box red, and had a kinetic, 60s inspired shape to it. The primary colours popped out at you, as did two women – cut, it seemed, from collages of women’s magazines, their feet on the sand, but with their skirts at a different angle to their tops, their faces illustrated in fine black pen. The whole thing seemed to have a life of its own.
‘Oh, Connie,’ I said. ‘It’s incredible.’
‘It is,’ said Con. ‘A lot nicer than the crap they used to come up with.’
‘Here,’ I said. ‘You hold it.’
Delicately, she took it from me as if she was holding the original Magna Carta. She spent a long time drinking in its colours, its feel.
‘Do you like it?’ I whispered.
‘I love it. Oh, god. It’s incredible. Rose, it looks like where you’re going.’
We both looked down at the paper beach. ‘I think Costa Rica’s a bit wilder than that, Con.’
‘Take lots of pictures, won’t you?’ she said. ‘I want a full holiday snap situation. Overhead projector in here, the works. When you come home.’ She looked up at me.
I came and sat on the arm of her chair. ‘I’ll be here in time for publication. Don’t worry, I promise you I will. There’s no way I’m going to miss it. It’s still only February.’
She nodded. ‘I want you to do this,’ she said. ‘It’s important you do this.’
The air between us thickened with words we couldn’t say.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a palm tree in the wild.’
Connie smiled. We were quiet. ‘Right,’ she said, breaking the mood, brisk and businesslike. ‘I think it’s time to go.’
*
She’d offered to take me to the airport, and although I’d protested I could take public transport, she insisted. I thought about her safety – those hands, particularly – but the truth was, once Connie got behind the wheel, she was pretty confident. She had an old, small sporty car, low to the road. It only fitted two people, and my backpack in the boot. She was a fast driver – too fast, really, but I could see she was enjoying herself as we bombed our way to Heathrow.
‘Deborah wants to start interviewing candidates for an assistant for me,’ Connie said as we joined the flow of the motorway. ‘I told her no way.’
‘I think it would be good to have someone,’ I said.
It would; I knew it, Connie knew it. She had come to rely on me as much as I had on her.
‘They might make me eat diabetic-people biscuits,’ she said.
‘They might. But you could hide a few Penguin bars in your bedroom.’
We drove another mile or so in silence. ‘Would they – live in with you?’ I said.
I saw that familiar small smile on her face. ‘No. And the position would be temporary.’
‘Right.’
‘Until you come back. That’s your room, Rose. It’s there whenever you want it. OK?’
I felt my throat thicken. I swore I wasn’t going to cry. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
She carried on driving, and I got out my phone to text Kelly. It’s Costa Rica, I wrote.
She replied immediately. Noooooooo. And then the emoji of the Costa Rican flag, a wave, a sun and a heart. You’re going to see a jaguar! she wrote. So she’d remembered. I texted her the address of the house I was staying in, and told her I’d text again when I got there.
You’d better. Don’t go off with a turtle rescuer. For too long.
I placed my phone in my lap and stared out at the motorway’s indiscriminate blur of cars and green verge. ‘I haven’t told my dad what I’m doing,’ I said.
Connie absorbed this. ‘Give me his number,’ she said. ‘I’ll call him.’
‘What?’
‘I think it’s about time, don’t you? We’ve got something in common again.’
I imagined the dynamite of this; Connie, calling up with all the information on his daughter, Dad realizing he’d been left in the dark again. Except this time, she would be sharing what she knew and he’d be in the dark no longer.
‘It’ll be fine, I promise,’ Connie said. ‘I know how to say sorry. We’re old now. He loves you.’ She paused. ‘And so do I.’
*
We were nearing the departures terminal short-stay car-park. ‘Do you – think you’ll ever write about Elise?’ I said.
Connie considered the question. ‘Perhaps. What happened. Where she might be. It’d be a good story. But don’t think about that now, Rose.’
‘I won’t.’
She parked the car. ‘OK if I come in?’
*
People are turned anonymous, homogeneous inside airports. The air is heavy with the distillation of pain in parting – or the relief in parting and the joy of reunions, all swirling together incoherently. You cannot have a clear mind in an airport. You’re halfway to the place you’re going, already. No one ever really wants to be here, but it’s the price you must pay for getting somewhere. I checked in my backpack, and walked back to where Connie was waiting.
‘You take care out there,’ she said.
‘You take care, too,’ I replied.
‘I will. Deb’s coming round later. We’re having dinner.’
‘That’s good. I put lots of boxes in the freezer. They’re all labelled. You just take them out the night before and—’
‘Thank you, Rose,’ she said. ‘I do know how to defrost.’
I could tell she felt awkward, and I was frustrated myself at my inability to say what it was I wanted to say. Thank you, in essence. For everything – for the truth, for your shelter, for your trust. Thank you for giving me a chance. ‘I’ll send you lots of postcards,’ I said. ‘But they’ll probably arrive after I’ve come back.’
She laughed. ‘Thank you for letting me drive you here. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Just let me know when that is.’
‘Of course.’
Connie came towards me, took me in her arms and held me tight. ‘Go and find those palm trees,’ she said. She took two steps back. ‘Go on.’
‘Bye, Connie,’ I said.
I walked towards the security gates. When I turned round for a final wave, she was still standing there, waiting until I was the first of us to disappear.
When She Left
52
When you pack up and leave, it unsettles other people. They want you to stay where you are, because it’s easier for them to understand. Less work. But it’s time for you to go. Perhaps a hot place with spots of shade, the astonishing, distant growls of big cats. Fewer layers on your body, your shoulders exposed to the air. The simplifying of days, the letting go.
Always, they think you are escaping, not turning to face your reality. But the reality is this: someone gave you money. The purchase of the ticket, the flight, the being nowhere before arriving somewhere.
But you’re not naive any more, to think it’s a new beginning. You’ve entered many houses and left them again. You made your home elsewhere and then realized they’d sold you a story. And it was never quite right – not then, not there, not him, not her – it was never quite your story.
You know, too, that your choices are not made ligh
tly. The sweep of your arm to hand over your passport can feel like you’re dragging it through pondweed in murky water, where pike stalk your hip, where your feet sink in brown silt. You can feel weighted daily by the act of trying to stay alive, to keep your head above the surface. But you still want to go on, because this is your story you’re making. So imperfect, at times so wrong and unhappy.
And finally, when the beads of light come, and their apertures open to show orbs as bright as the sun, and a whole planet of happiness bursts into being, and you walk about with it inside your ribs – you realize. How you stood in the darkness for so long, in order for this moment of illumination.
Acknowledgements
My heartfelt thanks to Juliet Mushens, Francesca Main and Kate Green, for their unflagging encouragement, hard work and generous imaginations.
Thank you to the team at Picador, whom I am lucky enough to call my publishers.
My deepest gratitude to the readers, booksellers and librarians of this world.
And thank you, always, Mum and Dad.
Particular thanks to Alice O’Reilly, Amy Cudden, Elizabeth Day, Jean Edelstein, Lorna Beckett, Luke Kernaghan, Maura Wilding, Teasel Scott and Zoe Pilger.
Margot: endless companion, still here.
And Sam: my brightest light and calmest gem. Thank you will never be enough to cover the distance we’ve come, but it’s a start. I love you.
About the Author
Jessie Burton is the author of the Sunday Times number one and New York Times bestsellers The Miniaturist and The Muse, and the children’s book The Restless Girls. In its year of publication The Miniaturist sold over a million copies, and in 2017 it was adapted into a major TV series for BBC One. Her novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and she is a regular essay writer for newspapers and magazines. She lives in London.
Also by Jessie Burton
Novels
THE MUSE
THE MINIATURIST
Books for Children
THE RESTLESS GIRLS
First published 2019 by Picador
This electronic edition first published 2019 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-8616-6
Copyright © Peebo & Pilgrim Ltd 2019
Cover design and illustration Lucy Scholes, Picador Art Department
The right of Jessie Burton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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