by Rosie Walsh
“Very much.” I reached round and slid my hand into his shorts pocket. “Very much indeed.”
Outside, the song of a blackbird fluted down from a branch. We both turned to listen.
“Final time,” he said. He handed me a flower of hawthorn blossom from the pot on his windowsill. Spring had been slow, and the flowers were still blanketed across the trees like whipped cream. “Final time. Should I cancel my holiday?”
“You should not,” I made myself say. I twirled the tiny stem between my fingers. “Go and have a wonderful time. Forward me your flight details and I’ll be at Gatwick a week today.”
“You’re right.” He sighed. “I must go on this holiday, and I must actually enjoy it. Normally I’d be over the moon at the thought of a week in Tarifa. But I can call you, can’t I? From Spain? I don’t care about the cost. Let me take your mobile number, and numbers for everyone you’re likely to be near until I can see you again. We can FaceTime. Or Skype. And talk.”
I laughed, squinting through cracks to put my number in his mangled old phone. “It looks like you’ve driven over this on a tractor,” I said, putting the little sprig of blossom on the windowsill.
“Put in the landline at your parents’ house,” he said. “And the landline where you’re staying in London. What’s your friend’s name? Tommy? Put his address in, too, so I can send you a postcard. Although you’re going up to Leicester to see your granddad first, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Well, give me his number and address, too.”
I laughed. “Trust me, you don’t want to end up on the phone to Granddad.”
I handed back his phone.
“Let’s make friends on Facebook, too.” He opened his Facebook and typed in my name. “Is this you? Standing on a beach?”
“That’s me.”
“Very Californian.” He looked at me and my stomach pitched. “Oh, Sarah Mackey, you’re lovely.”
He bent down and kissed my shoulder. He kissed the crook of my elbow. The pulse at the bottom of my neck. He pulled my hair up and kissed my spine as it dropped into my vest.
“I’m crazy about you,” he said.
I closed my eyes and smelled him. His skin, his clothes, the soap we’d used in the shower. I couldn’t imagine surviving without this for seven days. And as much as I’d loved Reuben, I had never seen separation from him as a matter of survival.
“I feel the same.” I held him tightly. “But I think you know that. I’ll miss you. A lot.”
“And I’ll miss you.” He kissed me again, pushing my hair back off my face. “Look, when I get back, I want to introduce you to my friends and my mother.”
“Great.”
“And I want to meet your parents, and your British friends, and your terrifying granddad, if he ends up coming to stay.”
“Of course.”
“And we’ll work out what to do from there, but it’ll involve us being together somehow, somewhere.”
“Yes. You, me, and Mouse.” I slid my hand back into his pocket, felt the little wooden key ring.
He paused. Then: “Take her,” he said. He pulled out his keys. “Keep her safe until I get back. I’m always scared of losing her on the beach. She means a lot to me.”
“No! I can’t take your lovely Mouse. Don’t be mad . . .”
“Take her,” he insisted. “Then we know we’ll see each other again.”
He placed Mouse in my palm. I looked at her jetty eyes, then at Eddie’s.
“Okay.” I closed my fingers around her. “If you’re sure?”
“I’m very sure.”
“I’ll take good care of her.”
We kissed for a long time, him leaning against the newel post at the top of the stairs. me pressed tight into his chest, Mouse in my hand. We’d agreed that he wouldn’t see me off at the front door. It seemed too final, too much like a proper separation.
“I’ll call you later today,” he said. “I’m not sure what time, but I’ll call. I promise.”
I smiled. It was sweet of him to acknowledge that: the old, crabby fear of not being called. But I knew he would. I knew he’d do everything he said he’d do.
“Bye,” he said, kissing me one last time. I took the blossom stem and walked down the stairs, turning at the bottom. “Don’t watch me go,” I said. “Make it feel like I’ve just popped out for some milk or something.”
He smiled. “Okay. Good-bye, Sarah Mackey. See you in a few minutes, with some milk or something.”
We both paused, watching each other. I laughed, for no reason other than sheer happiness. Then: Say it, I thought. Say it, even though it’s crazy, even though we’ve only known each other a week. Say it!
And he did. He leaned against the newel post, crossed his arms and said, “Sarah, I think I might have fallen in love with you. Is that too much?”
I breathed out. “No. It’s perfect.”
We both smiled. A point of no return had been crossed.
After what felt like a long, long time, I blew him a kiss and drifted off into the bright morning.
CHAPTER TEN
Dear You,
I’ve been missing you so much today, little sister.
I miss your naughty laugh and those milky sweets you always used to buy with your pocket money. I miss that keyboard you had when you were little, the one that played that infuriating tune when you pressed the yellow button. You’d pretend you were playing it yourself and you’d laugh yourself silly, thinking you’d fooled me.
I miss finding evidence of you having had a root around my bedroom when I wasn’t there. I miss the way you used to splodge jam right over the edge of the bread crust so you wouldn’t have any jamless mouthfuls.
I miss the sound of you sleeping. Sometimes I’d pause from my busy schedule of teenage angst and just listen at your door. Soft breaths. Stars on the ceiling. The rustle of your spaceship duvet, which you insisted on, even though the man in the department store said it was for boys.
Oh, my Hedgehog. How I miss you.
Things aren’t all that good for me at the moment. I don’t know what to do with myself—I feel like I’m losing my mind.
Let’s hope not, eh?
Anyway, I love you. Always. Sorry I couldn’t find anything more jolly to say.
Me xxx
CHAPTER ELEVEN
If you can’t reach me on my mobile, I may well be in my Gloucestershire workshop, it said on Eddie’s “Contact Me” page.
I keep things pretty simple down there: there’s a wood-burning stove, a temperamental kettle, and a desk, and that’s it, as far as luxuries go. But I do have a phone, in case I’m attacked by bears or bandits. Try me on 01285 . . .
I highlighted the number. “Call?” my phone asked.
“Sarah?” It was Jo, calling from the kitchen. “Can you check this soup?”
“Coming!” I pressed “Call.”
The phone started ringing and adrenaline mushroomed, pressing out at my skin like gas in an overfilled balloon. I leaned against the wall, hoping he wouldn’t answer, hoping he would. Wondering what I would say if we spoke, wondering what I’d do if we didn’t.
“Hello, this is Eddie David, cabinetmaker. Sorry I’m not here to take your call. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you soonest, or try my mobile. Bye!”
I hung up. Flushed the toilet. I wondered if it would ever stop.
* * *
• • •
I had been spending the month of June in England for nineteen years. Normally, I stayed three weeks in Gloucestershire, with my parents, and one in London, with Tommy. London was close enough to Gloucestershire for this to work well. This trip, however, had turned out to be quite different. Granddad’s sudden and total immobilization had prevented Mum and Dad from coming back. Trapped three hours away in Leicester, they div
ided their time between caring for him, trying not to kill him, and searching for a carer who would also try not to kill him. Any spare moments were spent on the phone to me. “We feel so awful that you’re there and we’re here,” Mum had said miserably. “Is there any way you could stay a bit longer?”
I had agreed to stay an extra two weeks and moved my return flight to July 12. I’d promised Reuben I’d start working remotely as soon as my holiday finished, and to prove it, had accepted an invitation to speak at a palliative care conference organized by our one and only British trustee.
Until I resumed work, however, I was staying here in London. The prospect of my parents’ empty house—with Eddie’s place a mere mile away—was too appalling to consider. Zoe had been away most of this time, so it was just me and Tommy: exactly what I’d needed.
But the lady of the house was back now, just in from an EU roundtable on tech law; tired yet immaculate as she stood by the stove in a sleeveless silk blouse, stirring the ramen I’d made to welcome her home.
I hovered embarrassedly in the doorway, watching her. She was one of those people who had no need for an apron, even when wearing silk. A woman of precision and economy, Zoe Markham, not just of speech but of body. She took up only a slim column of space and seldom saw fit to enlarge it with gesticulation or noise. In fact, had it not been for her behavior around Tommy during the first year of their relationship, I wouldn’t even have been able to swear that we were of the same species. She’d been reassuringly human back then; hadn’t been able to take her hands off him, was always forcing him into sentimental selfies, and even hired a pro photographer to take pictures of them training together.
“Ah, Sarah,” she said, looking up. “I rescued dinner.” She gave me a smile that made me think of cold cream.
You never knew what anyone did behind locked doors, I thought, but the idea of Zoe hiding in a toilet, calling some man’s workshop at 8 P.M.—in spite of him having cold-shouldered her for three weeks—made me suddenly laugh.
Tommy, who had no idea what I was laughing at, but who was nervy as a cat this evening, joined in.
Zoe sat still as marble as I served, watching me through gray eyes. It was one of the things about her that unsettled me most. The lack of speech, the incessant bloody watching. (Tommy once said it was this quality that made her such a successful lawyer. “She misses nothing,” he’d told me, as if this were a trait to be celebrated in the real world.)
“I hear you’re pining for a man,” she said.
“I don’t think pining’s the right word,” Jo said quickly. “She’s more . . . confused.”
Zoe’s eyes swiveled over Jo, but she said nothing.
I’d been surprised to see Jo tonight. She didn’t like Zoe and it never seemed to have occurred to her to pretend otherwise. (I didn’t love Zoe either, but I’d agreed with myself that I’d keep on trying. Zoe had lost both of her parents in the King’s Cross fire of 1987, and you had to forgive people with an excuse like that.)
Zoe tucked a wedge of ice-blond hair behind an ear. “So what’s going on?”
“The story’s just as Tommy probably reported,” I said. “We had a week together. It was . . . well, special. He went on holiday, said he’d call me before his plane took off, but he didn’t, and I haven’t heard from him since. I think something has happened to him.”
A tiny frown crossed her face. “Such as what?”
I smiled weakly. “I’ve driven Tommy and Jo quite mad with my theories. There’s probably no point going over them again.”
“Not at all,” Tommy said. “We’re as baffled as you are, Harrington.”
And Jo, who was not as baffled at all, but who couldn’t bring herself to stand shoulder to shoulder with Zoe, agreed.
“It’s quite a mystery,” she said. “Sarah’s put a note on his Facebook page asking if anyone’s heard from him, yet nobody’s replied. He hasn’t been on WhatsApp or Messenger for weeks and all of his social medias are quiet.”
“Media,” Zoe smiled. “‘Media’ is the plural.” With a small, skillful movement of her wrist, she lifted a perfect coil of noodle from her broth. She ate for a moment, looking thoughtful. Then: “Let him go,” she said, decisively. “He sounds weak to me. You deserve better than a weak man, Sarah.”
The conversation turned to the bombings in Turkey, but I realized that I’d drifted back to Eddie after a few minutes. What is wrong with me? I wondered desperately. Who have I become? No matter what I did, no matter how serious the events around me, I seemed able to focus on only one thing.
I might have to let go of him, was the thought that kept circulating. I might have to accept that he simply changed his mind. The idea left me immobilized, torpid with disbelief. And yet three weeks had passed since we’d said good-bye, and in that time I’d heard nothing from him. And nobody had replied to—nobody had even acknowledged—my appeal for information on his Facebook wall.
“We’ve lost her again,” Zoe said.
I blushed. “No, no, I was just thinking about Turkey.”
“We’ve all loved and lost,” Zoe said briskly. “And at least your BMI is down.”
“Oh.” I was thrown. “Is it?”
It was not impossible. My appetite was terrible, and I’d been out running every day, solely because it gave me a different type of chest pain to deal with.
“I could look at any woman on earth and tell you her BMI.” Zoe smiled.
I didn’t dare look at Jo, but I was pretty certain that “I could look at any woman on earth and tell you her BMI” would make an appearance in conversations to come.
“One of the key benefits of a broken heart,” Zoe went on. “Slimming down, toning up. You look fantastic!” She crossed her perfectly slim, perfectly toned legs and fished a prawn out of her bowl.
I was exhausted by the time I cleared the table. Too exhausted to unwrap the artisan chocolates I’d bought with the intention of pretending I’d made them myself. Too exhausted, even, to care about openly checking Eddie’s Facebook wall while I made coffee.
So I ended up staring emptily at his profile for a good while before I realized that someone had finally replied to my appeal for information. Two people, in fact. I read their posts once, twice, three times, then moved across the kitchen and slid my phone into Tommy’s vision.
Tommy read the posts a few times before handing my phone to Zoe, who read them once, said nothing, and handed the phone to Jo.
Thoughts spiraled like a tornado.
“Well,” Tommy said, “I think we might owe you an apology, Harrington.” He glanced at Zoe, who had probably never apologized to anyone.
Hot. I was too hot. I took off my cardigan and it fell to the floor. My head thrummed as I bent down to pick it up. I was too bloody hot.
“Blimey,” Jo said, looking up from the phone. “Maybe you were right.”
“Oh, come on!” Zoe laughed. “This post doesn’t mean anything!”
But for the first time in as long as I could remember, Tommy took her on. “I don’t agree,” he said. “I think this changes everything.”
This afternoon someone whose name I didn’t know, an Alan somebody, had replied to my post:
I just looked up his profile for the same reason and saw your post, Sarah. He went AWOL after canceling our holiday the other week. Has anyone messaged you about this? Let me know if you hear anything.
Then someone else, a Martin someone, had written:
Was wondering the same. He hasn’t turned up at football for a few weeks. Admittedly, he is not known for his reliability, but this is beyond the pale. I’m sorry to say that tonight we were thrashed 8–1. A shameful episode in our long and magnificent history. We need him back.
A few seconds later the same guy, Martin, had posted a photo of Eddie and had written:
Find this man. #WheresWally
And, finall
y:
It doesn’t sit well with me that you can’t punctuate hashtags.
I stared at the photo of Eddie, holding a pint.
“Where are you?” I whispered, horrified. “What’s happened?”
Into the ensuing silence, my phone rang.
Everyone watched me.
I picked it up. It was a withheld number. “Hello?”
There was a silence—a human silence—and then the line went dead.
“They hung up,” I told the room.
“I think you were right,” said Jo, after a long pause. “Something very odd is going on here.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Day Two: The Morning After
I should have been jet-lagged. Deeply exhausted and probably hungover; certainly uninterested in waking before midday. Instead, I woke at seven o’clock feeling like I could take on the world.
He was there. Asleep next to me: Eddie David. A hand snaked out in my direction, resting on the soft shelf of my stomach. He was dreaming. The hand on my navel twitched occasionally, like a leaf in a halfhearted wind.
His curtains frilled at the bottom as the morning moved silently through the open window. I drew in a great lungful of air, drawn straight from the valley like water from a spring, and looked around the room. Mouse was sitting with Eddie’s keys on an old wooden campaign chest.
I hardly knew this man, of course. I’d met him less than twenty-four hours ago. I didn’t know how he liked his eggs, what he sang in the shower, whether he could play guitar or speak Italian or draw cartoons. I didn’t know what bands he’d loved as a teenager or how he was likely to vote in the referendum.
I hardly knew Eddie David, yet I felt like I’d known him for years. Felt like he’d been there too when I’d been running around the fields with Tommy and Hannah and her friend Alex, building dens and dreams. Exploring his body last night had been like returning to the valley here; everything familiar and right and exactly as I’d left it last time.