The Last Summer of Us

by Maggie Harcourt

  The tent must have gone up earlier in the summer: the grass inside, only partly covered by rubber matting, is green and damp. I can’t quite stop myself from bending down to touch it, to rub it between my fingers. It’s cool and soft and not at all like the grass outside. It seems strange that the two can feel so different – even smell so different – just for the sake of a little shade.

  At the far side of the tent from the stage, beside a bank of seating, there’s another much smaller platform. And on it there’s a row of cameras.

  Oh, Steffan’s just going to be thoroughly obnoxious now, isn’t he?

  twenty-six

  Steffan is pacing. Up and down, up and down, up and down, wearing a rut in the ground that’s almost as deep as the one made by the tractor. He’s flexing his fingers, wiggling them, keeping them constantly in motion in time with the music from the stage. And he’s gone a sort of beige.

  Steffan is nervous.

  I’m not surprised; if I were him, I’d be terrified.

  Since we got here, the place has filled up. And I mean filled. There are now people everywhere. The bar tent is heaving and the stage tent is a clammy, humid mass of bodies. It’s sticky. And pungent.

  The violin case is sitting on the ground. Steffan’s still pacing up and down by the side entrance to the tent – or what I guess you’d call the stage door. He looks like he’s going to throw up.

  I’ve never seen him this nervous. Gradually, all the bravado has fallen away until what we’re left with is the real Steffan. Not the rugby player, not the guy with the crappy old car who drives too fast and swears like a trooper and pretends to be untouchable…but the Steffan underneath it all.

  Because Steffan’s just like the rest of us; he wears a mask too. It’s one of the things that keeps us together, this strange little alliance. We see each other’s masks; see the strings holding them on – and more than that, now we can see through them. And when the mask slips in public, we cover the gaps, run interference. We always will.

  The real Steffan is quieter than he lets on. He worries more. He hurts more. He cares more. That’s what he hides behind his mask.

  Watching him pacing, I feel nervous for him. I can’t tell if it’s my heart or the bass drum onstage making the inside of my ribs rattle. I can taste Steffan’s fear in my mouth, as sharp as if it’s mine; of course I can. It’s what we do, for better or worse. He’s pacing and he’s flexing his fingers and then – suddenly – he stops. His eyes close, just for a second, and when he opens them he’s transformed.

  He picks up the case and he looks right through us – both of us, waiting with him. And without a word, he pushes his way into the tent.

  “Come on,” says Jared. “Don’t want to miss his big moment, do we?”

  The tent is absolutely rammed; after all, we’re into the big-hitting slots now. I pray to every god I can think of – and a few I’ve probably just made up – that Gethin’s band have improved since the last time I heard them play. If not for Gethin’s sake (or his dad’s, having presumably paid for this) then for Steffan’s.

  The band who were on before them are taking a bow and filing off the stage with their instruments. Who’d have thought you could get that many trumpets on one stage? The audience swells and shifts, the people who’d been watching at the front falling back while others move up to take their place. Some guy staggers as he passes me, waving a plastic pint glass overhead. I only manage to avoid the beer-shower that follows by jumping back and landing on somebody else’s toes. “Sorry!” They either don’t hear me or don’t care. Probably both.

  Gethin knocks over his mic stand. There’s a good start; feedback howls around the tent and everyone groans.

  If I stand on tiptoes, I can just see Steffan behind him at the back of the stage, holding his violin. The lights flit across his face and then spin away. He looks calm.

  He looks like he belongs.

  He does. He belongs up there with the lights and the crowd and the music – not stuck in a small town where no one will ever hear him or see him except for the gossips, who’ll tear your skin off in strips until you’re nothing more than one giant exposed nerve. He belongs up there, and I finally understand that it’s not just my mother I have to let go. I have to let him go too.

  To give them their credit, they’ve got better. A lot better. They’re somewhere on the borderline between “tolerable” and “alright” now. In fact, they may even be inching into “good”, but let’s not be too hasty.

  And Gethin’s still a dick, so there’s that.

  I find myself swaying slightly to the music. All around me, people are dancing. They’re laughing and they’re drinking beer that’s a little too warm or a little too flat – and they don’t care. The tent smells of beer and sweat and damp and people…and life. It’s alive.

  The drumbeats vibrate through the ground like a heartbeat, through me. They pulse against my ribs – and they’re even in time.

  And there, suddenly, is Steffan.

  The lights find him and he lifts his bow. He moves across the stage like he was born to it; side to side, his eyes open but not seeing. There but not there. The band around him nod their heads to the rhythm, and somebody, somewhere, starts to clap. Slowly, steadily, in time. I didn’t even notice when the drums stopped, when all the other instruments died away and left nothing but Steffan playing alone.

  The notes wrap around me, over me. They fill the air and everyone in the tent is clapping along…and just like that, the rest of the band burst back in and there’s music everywhere and Steffan’s still playing, faster and faster, and I can see the smile on his face from here as he stamps one foot and he plays and he moves and he plays.

  And from somewhere behind me, a hand takes mine. I know the feel of it already: rougher than you’d think, warm in the heat of the tent.

  He pulls me back towards him as I turn to face him, drawing me in. His eyes search my face, his other hand brushing my hair away and tucking it behind my ear. He looks so serious, so completely centred on me, that I could almost believe there was nothing else in the world. That there was no one else.

  He lifts his hand, lifts mine, lifts our hands, the fingers entwined, and he looks at me. Really looks at me.

  And then the corners of his eyes crease and his mouth twitches and his lips part into a smile…and he spins me away and around, and we’re dancing and I can’t tell if it’s the world that’s spinning or if it’s me. All I know is that I don’t want it to stop.

  If I could stop time, just once, this would be it. This moment; this now. This would be it – here in this tent with Steffan playing and the crowd hearing him and Jared spinning me around and around, pulling me close and then twirling me away; his eyes watching me. His smile all mine.

  This is the memory I want to save. This one.

  I can let go of everything else.

  I don’t even know when the music stopped; I didn’t hear it. All I can hear is the ringing in my ears and the sound of applause. And Jared’s pulling me into him again. I can feel his hand on my waist, on the small of my back; his fingers wrapped around mine. Close up, he smells of heat and of dry, dusty grass. Of smoke. Of warmth.

  He smells of beginnings. Beginnings set in motion a long time ago and overlooked. Beginnings which no number of endings could bury.

  I rest the side of my head against his shoulder, breathing him in.

  His hand moves from my back to my hair, smoothing it. His fingers trace the line of my neck, grazing my jaw. His thumb brushes my collarbone.

  And the light is blinding as the path opens up in front of me.

  We started this with a funeral. It ends with a wake. Our wake: Steffan, Jared and Limpet’s. The paradox that somehow worked. This is how we bow out. This is where we end. When we look back – and we will, sometime – this will be the moment we see. This is the ending and the beginning. This is all of it. All the mess and all the masks forgotten. All our scars charted and mapped. This is what it always was; what
it was always going to be.

  When Steffan comes to find us, his eyes shining and a drink already in his hand, he sees Jared’s arm around my waist and he winks and he raises his glass to us as we elbow towards him and throw our arms around his shoulders, because he already knew.

  Of course he knew. He’d known all along…

  You know what a limpet is, really? It’s a shellfish which attaches itself to something and holds on for dear life. It holds on so tightly that it’s impossible to remove without actually killing the stubborn little bastard. A limpet would rather see itself destroyed than let go of whatever it is that it loves.

  Sometimes we have to let go.

  We cling to the ships that carried us, even as they founder. We hold fast to them as they sink, not caring that they will drag us down with them into the cold and the dark. We follow the wrong stars, keeping our course even as the quicksand closes over our heads.

  We hide behind our masks, too afraid to let anyone see what’s on the inside. We worry the scars are all that anyone will see: the bruises, the cuts. The damage we’ve sustained. We’re frightened that the damage is all we are; that it will define us always and for ever. We’re scared that the cuts will make us sharper, that we will cut in our turn.

  Our damage, our history – it doesn’t define us. We define it.

  No more Limpet. She can go. I don’t need her any more.

  No more pretending, no more hiding.

  It’s time to move on.

  Picture me dancing, somewhere on the top of a hill where the grass is sunburned brown and there’s music and laughter and the air smells of spilled beer and hay; the ends of things and the beginnings of others.

  Picture me with my hair streaming behind me, laughing as confetti dances in the wind.

  Picture me as these things, because that’s how I’ll be. That is who I am.

  And my name; my real name…?

  My name’s Rosie.

  What’s yours?

  about the author

  Like Limpet, Steffan and Jared, Maggie Harcourt was born and raised in Wales, where she grew up dreaming of summer road trips and telling stories for a living. As well as studying medieval literature at UCL, Maggie has variously worked as a PA, a hotel chambermaid and for a French chef before realizing her dreams and beginning to write full time. Maggie now lives just outside Bath, and still visits Wales to wander the Carmarthenshire beaches and countryside.

  maggiehaha.tumblr.com

  maggieharcourt

  @maggieharcourt

  q&a with Maggie

  What was your inspiration for writing The Last Summer of Us?

  I think I’d been carrying Limpet around in my head for a long time. I grew up in west Wales, in a fairly small town where there wasn’t a lot to do when I was fifteen. I was visiting a place called Henllan, and I had an idea for a story about a group of friends on a road trip around places very like that one. I even went as far as writing something and typing it out on a typewriter I’d saved up for. It didn’t get very far, but I never forgot Limpet – and when I was back in the area, I picked up the story again…and here we are. In fact, the river at Henllan ended up being a direct inspiration for the place where Limpet, Jared and Steffan meet after the funeral.

  I wanted the story to be very specifically set in Wales and rooted in areas like Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire: I am Welsh, after all, and I had never really been able to find books about the places and characters I could see my friends in when I was growing up. More than anything, though, I wanted to talk about things like love and loss and friendship and hope, because we all go through them. We all feel them and the way we handle them helps make us who we are.

  The novel explores grief and how it changes a family; what message were you intending to pass on to your reader?

  Grief does change people, sometimes in big ways and sometimes in small ones. There are different kinds of grief, too: grief for a person or a relationship or a place (and there’s even hiraeth, the infuriatingly untranslatable Welsh word for a kind of nostalgic longing for the place you come from. More than just homesickness, it’s a sense of grief for what has been, and what could have been.) but it doesn’t have to change us for the bad and it doesn’t have to take away who we were before. We don’t have to let it.

  What was it like writing a character who is experiencing such emotional turmoil?

  Limpet had to be written as honestly as possible, and sometimes that was hard. Not just because she needed to be someone you feel you know, but because she represents something that people really go through. We all lose people, in one way or another – so to hold back felt like it would be a massive disservice both to readers and to her.

  I tried to be as emotionally open as I could – my own mother died a few years ago, and while I wasn’t in the same position as Limpet, I felt that having gone through that grieving process meant I could understand her better and make her more real.

  At the same time, it would have been a pretty bleak experience all round if it was all death, all grief, all the time – because that’s not true either, is it? Trying to show that Limpet was more than that; that grief wasn’t all she was and that it hadn’t taken away who she was deep down, mattered just as much. Finding a balance between the two – both for her and for me – could be a bit of a challenge, and I definitely had a few days where I just wanted to sit under the table with a blanket over my head and pretend I wasn’t there! But when it felt like I’d got her right, it was worth it.

  If you could tell your teen self anything, what would it be?

  I left home and went to university in London at seventeen, so I could easily fill a big, big book with advice I could have done with knowing then. Things like: “That haircut? No.” Or: “Stop refusing to change lines on the Tube. Seriously. It shouldn’t take you a YEAR to get past this. That’s ridiculous.”

  But if there was only one thing, it would be this: live. There’ll be things you’re glad you did, and things you wish you hadn’t…and both of those are okay, because you shouldn’t let anything stop you from living (not even a different Tube line). Life is a gift: why would you want to give it back unopened?

  songs inspired by The Last Summer of Us by The Bookshop Band

  Ben Please and Beth Porter are The Bookshop Band. Based in Bath, in the UK, they have been writing songs inspired by books for over four years. Now they have written two gorgeous songs inspired by The Last Summer of Us.

  Here in My Heart

  Watch Here in My Heart now

  Lyrics

  Here, in this car

  We are friends together

  This is a start

  And we’ll go where ever

  I’m not here to escape, but

  Just to feel the breeze

  Feel the wind on my face

  And breathe

  Here, in my heart

  Should I be another

  You, after all

  Look at me like some other

  Oh, whatever we forget now

  There’s nothing to forgive

  Winding down

  To let in air

  Take the wheel, like you’ve shown

  Take it real slow

  Do you feel you’re not alone, as you

  Take a stage of your own

  Here the wind has a flow

  But also many streams

  You can love who you lose

  And everyone it keeps

  We’re not here to escape but

  Just to catch a breeze

  Feel the wind shape the tree inside of me

  Here, in my heart

  Should I be another

  You, after all

  Look at me like some other

  The Lights

  Watch The Lights now

  Lyrics

  It looks like me

  But there’s a face that you can’t see

  I’m young and I should be free

  We’re young so let’s be

>   Take me away

  From the scenes of today

  Where I can be who I am

  Not sure if I can

  Though the lights are gone I must carry on

  Though the lights are gone I must carry on

  You know me well

  I know you as well

  There’s a time to hide

  And a time to cry

  I’d suffocate

  In this small space

  For so long, so long

  Get me out

  So I can carry on

  Though the lights are gone I must carry on

  Though the lights are gone you must carry on

  Unknown feeling

  Left us living

  We change as the world goes round

  Who knows where we are bound

  I’m pegged to the ground

  And I can hear the best sounds

  Though the lights are gone I must carry on

  Though the lights are gone you must carry on

  Though you are gone we must carry on

  It’s not the end

  It’s not the end

  what inspired the songs…

  Here in My Heart

  by Ben

  When I was fourteen years old I used to play a simple series of piano chords over and over again, and I had a few lines of a song to go with it.

  Here in my heart

  Should I be another

  You, after all

  Look at me like some other

  The lines were very much written from my insecure fourteen-year-old self, about feeling as if I behaved differently with different people and therefore not really knowing who I really was. I always wanted it to be a full song, but after twenty years of playing it occasionally, I never got any further. After finishing The Last Summer of Us, I kept thinking how Limpet was saying that the way people were treating her, or looking at her after her mum’s funeral defined her in a way she didn’t like. She didn’t want to be that person. Also, I remembered crazy little road trips to the beach I used to take with my friends. They were really wonderful times when I found that my personality, in a sense, was shaped by the group. We were all individuals, albeit trying to figure out who we were. But when we were together as friends, we were 100% that group. And that reminded me of Limpet, Steffan and Jared, and how confusing things can be when those dynamics change – people look at you in different ways, or you learn something new about that person and suddenly your relationship with that person changes, and in a little way, so do you. These were the same emotions as I was trying to get across in my song from all those years ago, so I felt that this was the perfect occasion to try and finish the song, using the similar themes from the book.