by Julie Cohen
Today is a glorious autumn day, one of those days when the sky is so blue it nearly blinds you. I went out sailing this morning, to Monhegan Island and back. I met the lobster boats coming back into harbour, each one surrounded by a cloud of gulls. Some wheeled away up into the sky, and I watched them. The other sailors call them rats with wings but you always looked up at them, tilted your hat back and squinted into the sun to watch the way they circled and flew in spread-out Ms, like a child’s drawings of birds.
From below, you can’t see the spots on their beaks, red as drops of blood. You told me a long time ago that gull chicks were programmed to peck on those spots, to prompt their parents to feed them. You told me that baby gulls who pecked the red spots were more likely to survive than those who didn’t. It was a classic case of nature versus nurture. A scientist had won a Nobel Prize for his work on these red dots.
This morning I heard you saying this to me, in my head. And I held a single point of sail and I watched the gulls until I felt the sun beginning to burn my nose and cheeks. I had forgotten my hat. I forget these things, sometimes, now that you’re gone.
I never forget you.
Robbie, I was angry with you. So angry that, for days after you did it, I couldn’t unclench my teeth. I could hardly talk, let alone eat, and my jaw sent a fierce ache up the side of my head and down my neck to my shoulders. I was angry enough to welcome the pain because I thought somehow it would punish you.
I’m not angry any more. I’m empty.
I miss you. When I wake up I put my hand out and touch your uncreased pillow. A hundred times a day, a thousand, I turn to say something to you and you are not there. After all these years I had almost failed to notice any more how you made my life more solid, how I only truly knew things when I had shared them with you. Even small things, even the shape of a pebble or a spot on a gull. When I showed you, when we spoke of them, they became true and real and part of us.
And the large things we shared . . . there was so much we never spoke of, and perhaps that was a mistake, but we both knew those secrets. All we’d given up and lost, and all we’d found together. I saw the knowledge of them under your surface, like the currents under the ocean, stronger than any force on earth.
The days go on without you as you said they would, and the waves strike the shore and wear the rocks into sand. William has gone home, though he calls every Sunday, now, the way he never did when you were here. I have Adam and Shelley and the grandchildren, I have Tybalt and Rocco, I have everyone here in Clyde Bay. I have the ocean and the sky and the taste of salt and the view of sails from the shore, our house you built for us, the boat you built for me, all the memories of our life, well lived, together.
I have the letter you wrote to me. The words that you ended it with, before you walked across the yard and down into the sea away from me.
I love you. You’re my beginning and my ending, Emily, and every day in between.
You always used to say that you and I were free, if we were brave enough to take that freedom. I knew different. We were bound together, tangled up in exquisite complication.
But now, for the first time since I met you, I am free. Freedom was the last gift you gave to me.
And I would gladly give up that freedom, Robbie, to go back to the day we met and do it all again.
Acknowledgements
Teresa Chris, my agent, has been both loyal and fierce in her dedication to this story and to me. In twelve years of being my agent, she has never steered me wrong, and she is always, always, on my side.
Harriet Bourton is an extraordinary editor: sensitive, talented, and with the most marvellous instincts for story. It’s an utter privilege to be her literary partner in crime.
Thank you so much, Teresa and Harriet. You are strong, incredible women. This book is dedicated, with so much gratefulness, to you both.
Thank you to David Shelley, Katie Espiner, Sarah Benton, Rebecca Gray, Lauren Woosey, Lynsey Sutherland, Jen Breslin, Bethan Jones, and all at Orion who have made me so welcome. Thanks too to copy editor Kati Nicholl for saving me from an embarrassing error in military history.
Regine Smith has been my summer neighbour all my life, and she and I had an extremely enjoyable and useful conversation about her experience as an adoptive parent in 1970s America. I’m also indebted to the book The Baby Thief by Barbara Bisantz Raymond, about the Tennessee Children’s Home Society crimes which inspired the character of Elliot Honeywell.
My lifelong friend Captain Dennis Gallant, of Windjammer Angelique based in Camden, Maine, helped considerably with details of boatbuilding, boat maintenance, and sailing. (We’ll gloss over the story of how he successfully navigated across the Atlantic in a sailboat and then, on land, promptly got on the wrong bus.)
My parents, Jerry and Jennifer Cohen, also helped with sailing terms and explanations, and with choosing the perfect location on the Maine coast for Emily and Robbie’s house. It has been such a pleasure writing about the state that they and I love so much and will always call home. They also looked after my son while I went to Miami for research and then closeted myself away to finish this novel.
Captain Matt, of Ocean Force Adventures in Miami, Florida, answered questions about sailing the Bay of Biscayne and gave me a memorable tour of Miami from the water.
Pierre L’Allier made a generous donation to children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent to have his name and the name of his daughter in law, Sarah, given to characters in this novel, as part of the ‘Get in Character’ campaign.
Midwife Harriet Greaves gave me help with the childbirth and antenatal aspects of this story, and also kept me running. I stole her maiden name for Emily’s maiden name.
Rowan Coleman, Miranda Dickinson, Kate Harrison, Tamsyn Murray and Cally Taylor give me daily inspiration and support. Brigid Coady is a constant source of sanity. Lizi Owens rang me up, having read this manuscript, in floods of tears to tell me how much she loved Emily and Robbie. My dear friends: I love you.
Bhavya Singh, Patricia Lee, CT Gallagher, Liz Carbone, and Sierra Chittenden provided creative distraction when I needed it most, and sometimes when I really needed to be working instead.
I wrote a good chunk of this book nurtured and inspired by Janie Millman, Mickey Wilson and Rory at Chez Castillon, France.
Thank you to everyone, too many to name, who helped me with encouragement, booze, and listening to me complain how bloody difficult it is to write a book backwards. Also to my dog who is awesome.
I listened to two albums while writing this novel, hundreds of times on repeat: Glenn Gould’s 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach’s The Goldberg Variations, and Sufjan Steven’s Carrie and Lowell. These artists inspired me more than I can say, and the rhythm of their music is in every line of this book.
Finally, always and ever, thanks to my husband and to my son.
Also by Julie Cohen
Dear Thing
Where Love Lies
Falling
Copyright
An Orion Ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Orion Books
Ebook first published in 2017 by Orion Books
Copyright © Julie Cohen 2017
The right of Julie Cohen to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead,
is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 7177 5
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