by Luke Allnutt
A triumphant story about love, loss and finding hope—against all odds
“We looked down at the cliff jutting into the sea, a rubber boat full of kids going under the arch, and then you started running and jumping through the grass, dodging the rabbit holes, shouting at the top of your voice, so I started chasing you, trying to catch you, and we were laughing so hard as we ran and ran, kicking up rainbow showers in the leaves.”
Rob Coates feels like he’s won the lottery of life. There is Anna, his incredible wife, their London town house and, most precious of all, Jack, their son, who makes every day an extraordinary adventure. But when a devastating illness befalls his family, Rob’s world begins to unravel. Suddenly finding himself alone, Rob seeks solace in photographing the skyscrapers and clifftops he and his son Jack used to visit. And just when it seems that all hope is lost, Rob embarks on the most unforgettable of journeys to find his way back to life, and forgiveness.
We Own the Sky is a tender, heartrending, but ultimately life-affirming novel that will resonate deeply with anyone who has suffered loss or experienced great love. With stunning eloquence and acumen, Luke Allnutt has penned a soaring debut and a true testament to the power of love, showing how even the most thoroughly broken heart can learn to beat again.
“A breathtaking read that describes perfectly the joy and pain that comes with loving fully and all the compassion and forgiveness it requires. Brimming with hope to the very end.”
—Steven Rowley, bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus
“Anyone who wishes David Nicholls would write faster needs to grab this with both hands. It’s a truly stunning achievement.”
—Jill Mansell, Meet Me at Beachcomber Bay
Praise for We Own the Sky
“With literary chops and dramatic intensity, this heartbreaking story of a father’s love that defies all reason takes off on the first page and never touches down.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Deep End of the Ocean and Two if By Sea
“Luke Allnutt’s astounding debut is about memory, love, and how when we are broken, we still can become whole…. The kind of book you’ll have to share.”
—Caroline Leavitt, Pictures of You
“We Own the Sky offers something remarkable: light in the darkest dark and redemption where there ought to be none.”
—Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is
“With grace, emotional keenness and a steady moral searchlight, Luke Allnutt guides the reader through the darkest despair and back to hope.”
—Val Emmich, The Reminders
“Luke Allnutt’s writing is full of compassion. It made me hold my loved ones a little bit closer.”
—Katie May, The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club
“Movingly tender and unflinchingly honest.”
—Isabel Ashdown, Little Sister
“A haunting novel about having the world in your hands, losing it all, and trying to recapture a semblance of life and hope one sunrise and one starry night at a time.”
—Viola Shipman, The Charm Bracelet
“Visceral [and] heart-breaking.”
—Jem Lester, Shtum
“Beautifully rendered and profoundly moving…. Luke Allnutt is a major new talent in fiction.”
—Camille Pagán, Life and Other Near-Death Experiences
“A heartbreak of a novel filled with love, sorrow, pain, and—ultimately—hope.”
—Jill Santopolo, The Light We Lost
“Fearless and beautiful and inspiring. [We Own the Sky] made me think about the kind of person I want to be. Superb.”
—Katie Marsh, This Beautiful Life
We Own the Sky
Luke Allnutt
For Markéta, Tommy and Danny
Contents
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Tintagel
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Durdle Door
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Hampstead Heath
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
The Gherkin
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epsom Downs
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Box Hill
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
The Seven Sisters
Chapter 17
Somewhere Over Germany
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part Three
Chapter 1
London Eye
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Beachy Head
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Part One
1
She read up a storm before she left. In her favorite hard-backed chair; in bed, propped up on a mound of pillows. The books spilled over from the bedside table, piling up on the floor. She preferred foreign detective novels and she plowed through them, her lips chastely pursed, her face rigid, unmoving.
Sometimes I would wake in the night and see the lamp was still on: Anna, a harsh, unmoving silhouette, sat with a straight back, just how she was always taught. She did not acknowledge that I had woken, even though I turned toward her, but stared down into her book, flicking through the pages as if she was cramming for a test.
At first it was just the usual suspects from Scandinavia—Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson—but then she moved on: German noir from the 1940s, a Thai series set in 1960s Phuket. The covers were familiar at first—recognizable fonts and designs from major publishers—but soon they became more esoteric, with foreign typesetting and different bindings.
And then, one day, she was gone. I don’t know where those books are now. I have looked for them since, to see if a few of them have snuck onto my shelves, but I have never found any. I imagine she took them all with her, packed them up in one of her color-coded trash bags.
The days after she left are a haze. A memory of anesthetic. Drawn curtains and neat vodka. An unsettling quietness, like the birds going silent before an eclipse. I remember sitting in the living room and staring at a crystal tumbler and wondering whether fingers of vodka were horizontal or vertical.
There was a draft that blew through the house. Under the doors, through the cracks in the walls. I think I knew where it was coming from. But I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t go upstairs. Because it wasn’t our house anymore. Those rooms did not exist, as if adults with secrets had declared them out of bounds. So I just sat downstairs, in that old dead house, the cold wind chilling my neck. They had gone, and the silence bled into everything.
* * *
Oh, I’m sure she’d love to see me now, tucked into this gloomy alcove in a grubby little pub—just me, a flickering TV, some guy pretending to be deaf selling Disney key rings that glow in the dark. The front door of the pub has a hole in it, as if someone has tried to kick it down, and through the flapping clear plastic I can see some kids hanging around in the car park, smoking and doing tricks on an old BMX.
“I told you so.” She wouldn’t say it out loud—she had too much class for that—but it would be there on her face, the almost imperceptible raising of an eyebrow, the foreshadowing of a smile.
Anna alway
s thought I was a bit rough, could never quite shake off the housing project. I remember what she said when I told her my dad used to spend his Saturday afternoons in the bookie. Polite bemusement, that smug little smile. Because no one in her family even went to pubs. Not even at Christmas? I asked once. No, she said. They might have a glass of sherry after lunch, but that would be it, nothing more. They went bell-ringing instead.
It is dark now, and I cannot remember the sun going down. A car revs outside, and headlights sweep around the pub like a prison searchlight. I go back to the bar and order another pint. Heads turn toward me but I don’t make eye contact, avoiding the stares, the inscrutable nods.
A burly fisherman is perched on a stool, facing toward the door as if the pub is his audience. He is telling a racist joke about a woman having an affair and the plucking of a lone pube, and I remember hearing it once after school, in an East London alleyway where people dumped porn mags and empty cans of Coke. The regulars laugh at the punch line, but the barmaid is silent, turns away from them. On the wall behind her, there are pinups of topless models and framed newspapers from the day after 9/11.
“Four pound 10, darling,” the barmaid says, putting the beer down. My hands are shaking and I fumble around in my wallet, spilling my change out onto the bar.
“Sorry,” I say, “cold hands.”
“I know,” she says, “it’s freezing out. Here, let me.” She picks up the coins from the bar and then, as if I am a frail pensioner, counts out the rest of the money from my open hand.
“There you go,” she says. “Four pound 10.”
“Thank you,” I say, a little ashamed, and she smiles. She has a kind face, the type you don’t often see in places like this.
As she bends down to unpack the dishwasher, I take a long swig of vodka from my hip flask. It is easier than ordering a shot with every pint. It marks you as a drinker, and they keep their eyes on you then.
I go back to my table and I notice a young woman sitting at the far end of the bar. Before, she was sitting with one of the men, one of the fisherman’s friends, but now he has gone, screeched away in a souped-up hatchback. She looks like she is dressed for a night out, in a short skirt, a skimpy, glittery top, her eyelashes spiky and dark.
I watch the barmaid, checking I cannot be seen, and then take another swig of vodka and I can feel that familiar buzz, that sad little bliss. I look at the woman sitting at the bar. She is doing shots now, shouting at the barmaid, who I think is her friend. As she laughs, she nearly topples off her stool, only just catching her balance, her breath.
I will go over to her soon. Just a couple more drinks.
* * *
I flick through Facebook, squinting my eyes so I can see the screen. My profile is barren, without pictures, just a silhouette of a man, and I never “liked” or commented or wished anyone happy birthday, but I was there every day, scrolling, judging, scrolling, judging, dank little windows into the lives of people I no longer knew, with all their sunrises and sunsets, their cycle trips through the Highlands, the endless stream of Instagrammed pad Thai and avocado toast, the unfathomable smugness of their sushi dinners.
I take a deep breath, then a swig each of beer and vodka. I pity them. All those tragedy whores, with their tricolors and rainbows, changing their profile pics to whatever we are supposed to care about today—the refugees, the latest victims of a terror attack in some godforsaken place. All their hashtags and heartfelt posts about “giving” because they once helped build a school in Africa on their gap year and kissed a beggar’s brown hand with their pearly white mouth.
I change my position at the table so I can see the girl at the bar. She has ordered another drink and is laughing, almost cackling, as she watches a video on her phone, pointing at it, trying to get the barmaid’s attention.
I go back to my phone. Sometimes I force myself to look at the photos of other people’s children. It is, I suppose, like the urge to pick at a newly formed scab, not letting up until there is a metallic blush of blood. The stomach-punches of new arrivals, gap-toothed kids starting school, with their satchels and oversize blazers; and then their beach holidays, with their sand castles and moats, and ice creams dropped in the sand. Big shoes and little shoes, lined up on the mat.
And then the mothers. Oh, those Facebook mothers. The way they talked, as if they had invented motherhood, as if they had invented the womb, telling themselves they were different from their own mothers because they ate quinoa and had cornrows in their hair and ran a Pinterest board on craft ideas for the recalcitrant under-fives.
* * *
I walk back to the bar and stand close to the drunk woman. With enough drink inside me, I feel better now and my hands have stopped shaking. I smile and she stares back, wobbling on her stool, looking me up and down.
“Would you like a drink?” I say, cheerfully, as if we already know each other.
In her glazed eyes, there is a flicker of surprise. She forces herself to sit up straight, so she is no longer slumped over the bar.
“Rum and Coke,” she says, her swagger returning, and she turns away from me, tapping her fingers on the bar.
As I am ordering the drinks, she pretends to be doing something on her phone. I can see her screen, and she is just randomly flicking between applications and messages.
“It’s Rob, by the way,” I say.
“Charlie,” she says. “But everyone calls me Charls.”
“You’re local?” I ask.
“Camborne, born and bred,” she says, swiveling her body to face me. “But I’m staying up here now.” Her eyes are like lizard tongues, darting toward me when she thinks I’m not looking.
“You’ve probably never heard of Camborne, have you?”
“Mining, right?”
“Yeah. Not anymore, though. My dad worked at South Crofty, till it were closed,” she says and I notice how Cornish she sounds. The fading inflection, the soft rolled r’s.
“And you?”
“London.”
“London. Very nice.”
“Do you know London?”
“Been there once or twice,” she says, looking away again to the other end of the bar, taking a deep drag of her cigarette.
She is younger than I thought, midtwenties, with red-brown hair and soft, childish features. There is something vaguely unhinged about her, something I can’t place, that goes beyond the drink, beyond the smudges around her eyes. She seems out of place in The Smugglers, as if she has ducked out of a wedding party and ended up here.
“Down here on your holidays then?”
“Something like that.”
“So you like Tintagel then?” she asks.
“I only arrived today. I’ll go to the castle tomorrow. I’m staying in the hotel next door.”
“First time here then?”
“Yes.”
It is a lie, but I cannot tell her about the time we were here before. The three of us, the end of a wet British summer, wrapped up against the wind, raincoats over shorts. I remember how Jack charged around on the grass next to the parking lot and how fearful Anna was—“hold hands, Jack, hold hands”—in case he got too close to the edge. I remember how we walked up the steep, winding path and came to the top of the cliff, and then, out of nowhere, there was a break in the weather, an almost biblical respite, as the rain stopped, the clouds parted and a rainbow appeared.
“Rainbow, rainbow,” Jack shouted, hopping from foot to foot, the leaves dancing around him like fire sprites. Then, it was as if something touched him, or someone whispered in his ear, and he stood still, looking up through the column of light that pierced the clouds, as the rainbow faded into the blue sky.
“You okay?”
“What? Yes, fine,” I say, taking a sip of my pint.
“You were miles away.”
“Oh, sorry.”
She
doesn’t say anything and drinks half of her rum and Coke and shakes the ice around in the glass.
“It’s all right, Tintagel,” she says to nobody in particular. “I work in the village, at one of the gift shops. My friend works here.” She points at the barmaid, the one with the kind face.
“It’s a nice pub.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Better on the weekend, and there’s karaoke on Tuesdays.”
“Do you sing?”
She snorts a little. “Only once, never again.”
“Shame, I’d like to see that,” I say smiling, holding her gaze.
She laughs and smiles back, then coyly looks away.
“Same again?” I ask. “I’m having another.”
“Not having something from that then?” She reaches over and pats my jacket pocket, feeling for my hip flask.
I am annoyed that she has seen me and just as I’m thinking what to say, she gently touches my arm.
“You’re not exactly subtle about it, mate.” She looks at her watch and then realizes she is not wearing one, so instead checks the time on her phone.
“Go on then. Last one,” she says, chuckling to herself, struggling to get off her stool in her tight skirt. I watch her walk to the bathroom—a journey she chastely announces—and I can see the outline of her underwear beneath her skirt, the imprint of the bar stool on her thighs.
She smells of perfume when she comes back, and she has fixed her makeup and tied back her hair. We order some shots, and we are talking and drinking and swigging together from my hip flask, and then she is showing me videos of dogs on YouTube, because her family breeds Rhodesian Ridgebacks, and then clips of people fighting, people getting knocked out on the street on CCTV, because one of her mates from Camborne was a kickboxer but he was in prison now, assault.
Then I look up and it is all a blur, a skipping CD, the lights are on, and I can hear the harsh whine of a vacuum cleaner. I wonder if I have fallen asleep, passed out, but Charlie is still there next to me and I see we are now drinking vodka and Red Bull. I look at her and she smiles with wet, drunken eyes and she starts laughing again, pointing to her friend, the barmaid, who is scowling and pushing the vacuum cleaner around the carpet.