One Endless Summer

by Laurie Ellingham

  She nodded. ‘Probably, but we’re already booked on a bus up to the Mondulkiri Project. It’s a flying visit. We have to be back in Phnom Penh by the evening to catch the bus by ten pm.’

  ‘The Mondu-what?’

  ‘The Mondulkiri Project. It’s an elephant sanctuary in the Cambodian jungle. We’re booked in for a week-long retreat before heading on to Vietnam.’

  ‘But you haven’t even seen Phnom Penh yet. When did you decide all this?’

  ‘About two hours ago.’ She laughed. ‘We all agreed that we’ve had enough of sightseeing temples and historical places. The only caveat was the sunrise over Angkor Wat, so here I am, or here we are, if you’re coming?’

  Ben pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m coming,’ he said with another groan.

  ‘Good, because I promised Jaddi and Samantha I wouldn’t go by myself.’

  ‘How do Jaddi and Samantha feel about you leaving them?’

  ‘It took some convincing.’ Lizzie pulled a face. She loved her friends, and couldn’t imagine the next few months without them by her side, but since her seizure, Jaddi and Samantha hadn’t let her out of their sights, and she was starting to feel suffocated. Besides, Angkor Wat was somewhere she needed to see on her own. Just her, the sunrise, a cameraman, and seventeen million people watching. Lizzie shook the thought away. She couldn’t dwell on the popularity of the documentary. She’d almost lost it in the bar thinking of the millions of people switching on their TVs to watch her. If it hadn’t been for Jaddi grabbing her hand under the table, she probably would have done.

  Lizzie flipped the screen back towards her. ‘This is going to be one spectacular sunrise,’ she said, before flicking the off switch. ‘See you out front in a few minutes,’ she called over her shoulder to Ben.

  Lizzie clicked the straps of her backpack in place and stepped out of the hostel. She could hear the sound of traffic from somewhere else in the capital, but here the streets were still, and pitch-black.

  After the muggy heat inside the hostel, the night air felt cold against her face. Lizzie was glad she’d thought to throw on her hoody for the journey. She stared out into the silent street and wondered briefly if her night trip to Siem Reap would be worth it. If they hit traffic or got dumped on the side of the road again, then she’d miss the sunrise and the trip would be wasted.

  Just then, Ben trudged out of the hostel doors, looking half asleep and dishevelled with his backpack slung over one shoulder and his camera bag over the other. ‘Where’s the ride then?’ he said in a voice still husky from sleep.

  Right on cue, a white pickup truck with an open flatbed turned into the road and pulled up alongside them. ‘Here.’ She grinned. The smiled dropped from her face as she saw the open compartment at the back. No roof, no shelter. They were in for a long, cold and uncomfortable journey.

  ‘Please tell me we’re riding in the front,’ Ben said.

  ‘Er … no. He’s taking his wife and child with him. I didn’t quite understand all of the night manager’s English, but I think they have family up there and are using the trip for a visit.’

  ‘You realise we’ll freeze?’ He raised his eyebrows and stared at her.

  ‘He got out of bed in the middle of the night and agreed to take us all the way to the temple so we shouldn’t really complain.’

  ‘No, you’re right, you shouldn’t complain. This was your crazy-arse plan. But I might complain some more anyway.’ He sighed, making Lizzie laugh.

  A stocky figure appeared from the cabin of the truck. ‘Come.’ He motioned to Ben and Lizzie. The man unlatched the metal flap on the flatbed and nodded at them before walking back to the driver’s door. Lizzie hoisted her backpack onto the truck and without thinking she rested her hand on Ben’s forearm, using his body for leverage as she climbed onto the hard metal.

  ‘Thanks.’ She smiled, shifting away from the edge so that Ben could climb on.

  ‘At least there’s cushions,’ Lizzie said, scurrying towards the front and resting her back against the glass window of the driver’s cabin. The base underneath her clanged and bowed slightly as Ben moved across the truck.

  ‘And a blanket,’ Ben said in mock cheer, sitting beside Lizzie and holding up a wiry sack which had been cut along the seam and sown in large looping stitches to another sack.

  ‘This is just like when I was little and my mum used to wake me up at four in the morning for the annual sunrise service at our local church. I used to be half asleep until the sun started coming in through the stained-glass windows, and then suddenly I was wide awake. We’d go home afterwards and my dad would have a fry-up waiting for us: eggs, sausages, bacon, toast – the whole works.’

  Lizzie smiled at the memory and shook her head. Why had she told him that?

  Ben shrugged. ‘This will be my first sunrise.’

  ‘You what? How can you have never seen a sunrise? How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-three.’ He turned to look at her; the whites of his eyes were bright against the darkness of the night.

  ‘And you’ve never watched a sunrise?’ Lizzie shook her head again. ‘How is that even possible?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just haven’t.’

  ‘But what about after a night out? When we were at university, we’d have these crazy nights, which always ended in the early hours of the morning with a portion of chips covered in chip spice, and me, Jaddi and Samantha, sitting on a park bench talking about our evening until the sun came up.’

  ‘What’s chip spice?’

  ‘What’s chip spice?’ Lizzie laughed. ‘Are you even human, Ben?’

  ‘I didn’t go to university. I did a college course in filming and a few apprenticeships. I guess I was more of a beers-on-the-sofa kind of guy.’

  ‘Was?’

  Ben smiled. ‘Good point. I am a beers-on-the-sofa kind of guy.’

  ‘Well, you’re in for a treat this morning.’

  ‘I bloody hope so, after the journey we’re about to go through.’

  Lizzie laughed again, suddenly glad for the company, even if it came in the form of a grumpy cameraman. She sat up as the engine roared into life. ‘I’ve just realised I know next to nothing about you.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, we’ve got five hours to kill. Maybe you could tell me where you live for starters.’

  The truck turned sharply in the road, performing a U-turn and sending Lizzie flying into Ben’s body. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled, shuffling over and repositioning herself against the window of the cabin.

  They sat in silence for a moment as the clattering engine jutted and vibrated beneath them. The noise and the motion reverberated in her ears.

  ‘I live in Balham in South London,’ Ben said, raising his voice to be heard over the engine.

  ‘Oh.’ She nodded. ‘With flatmates?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just me.’

  ‘That sounds very grown up. I can’t imagine living by myself.’

  ‘I had a girlfriend and a cat living with me for a while –’ he shrugged ‘– but she didn’t like the length of times I was away for. This job is an all-or-nothing kind of thing.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have done studio filming?’

  Ben raised his eyebrows as if she’d said something stupid.

  She smirked. ‘I just thought that a studio might suit you better because of your … er … people skills.’

  ‘Hey, what’s wrong with my people skills?’

  Lizzie smiled. ‘“I’m not your friend or your travel buddy,”’ she, said mimicking his voice.

  ‘Ah.’ Ben laughed. It was deep and loud even with the motor roaring around them. ‘Sorry about that. I guess I was kind of rude.’ Ben rubbed his hand over the short stubble of his hair. ‘It was partly because I’m not a good flyer. Actually, I’m not good with heights full stop, so I’d be grateful if we can avoid climbing ancient crumbling steps a hundred metres above sea level today.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I
want to watch the sunrise over the spires of Angkor Wat, so we won’t be doing any climbing, today at least.’

  They sat in silence again. After a few miles, the city streets gave way to a scattering of shacks, then fields and forests, she guessed, as she stared out into the dark. Occasional flashes of light from the headlights of passing vehicles gave the only opportunity to view anything more than half a metre in front of her face.

  The cushions they’d been grateful for had quickly become useless against the harsh oscillating metal beneath them.

  ‘What was the other part?’ she said, resting her head against the glass and feeling the vibrations against her skull.

  ‘Oh, I guess I’m always pretty grouchy on the first few days of filming. I wanted to film wildlife, not people. Big cats especially.’

  ‘So why don’t you?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s a hard business to catch a break in. I’d filmed a few music videos for free, to get some experience. The musician liked me and put my name forward for the documentary about her. I was grateful for the work at the time, but now I can’t get any wildlife jobs.’

  ‘You must be good at it though, to keep getting the work.’

  He smirked. ‘No need to sound so surprised. It’s the entourage bullshit. A lot of people who work as part of a film crew for celebrities get sucked into the life. They forget they’re not working for the celebrity. They let them do retakes and set ups. It’s how these reality soaps were created. All that stuff doesn’t interest me. I just want to film the truth. It’s how I got the nickname Sherlock.’

  ‘So, Sherlock, aren’t you going to collect any footage?’ she said.

  Ben glanced around them before shaking his head. ‘The noise and the motion would make anything I collect useless. Anyway, I’m already filming more than I can process.’

  ‘I thought you sent everything back to London for editing.’

  ‘Almost everything.’ He smiled, lifting his shoulders. ‘The editing suite in London will try and make the footage seem more exciting or dramatic than it really is. There’s nothing I can do about that, but I’m the one that’s here with you, getting to know you all. So I try not to give them too much ammo of any one thing, like Jaddi’s flirtatious side, or Samantha’s scathing remarks about herself. If you take them out of the context of their friendship with you, their protectiveness over you, and how funny they are, then it paints a very different picture.’

  ‘So what part of me do you cut?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Oh no, hang on. Let me guess – my sarcasm. Caroline mentioned it once or twice.’

  He laughed. ‘Got it in one. Caroline’s not all bad. She’s an incredibly dedicated producer.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Lizzie smiled. ‘But I’m glad she’s not here,’ she said, thinking of Caroline’s constant feedback. Lizzie moved onto her side, resting her head against the window again. Her bottom had started to numb against the cold metal of the flatbed.

  She closed her eyes and felt herself drift into a light sleep.

  CHAPTER 15

  Lizzie

  Lizzie jolted awake and all at once became aware of four things: the warmth of Ben’s chest where her head seemed to be resting; the griping pain stretching down her spine; the stillness of the truck, no longer juddering into her buttocks and thighs; and the persistent darkness of the night.

  Lizzie sat bolt upright, her eyes fixing on the creased area of Ben’s T-shirt before dragging them up to his face.

  ‘Are we here?’ she murmured, grateful for the darkness masking the flush creeping across her face. The last thing she remembered was resting against the glass behind their backs and closing her eyes. So, how had her body found its way so close to Ben’s? And how had her head found its way to his chest?

  Ben nodded and shuffled along the flatbed to unhook the latch.

  ‘I’d better go say thank you to the driver,’ she said, sliding their backpacks to the ledge without looking at him.

  Lizzie scrambled down from the truck and had a sudden longing for the bitter black coffee from the vending machines that sat in the corridors at every hospital she’d ever been to, and she’d been to a lot. She never thought that she’d miss anything about hospitals, but now, in the darkness, she craved that coffee.

  Ten minutes later, they’d purchased their tickets into the temple grounds and had followed a crowd of people to a wide stone wall.

  Lizzie and Ben positioned themselves with their legs dangling over the edge, facing into the darkness. Lizzie’s muscles cried out in protest as she sat on yet another cold hard surface. At least this one didn’t vibrate, she conceded.

  Ben pulled out his camera, seating it on his lap with the lens facing into the nothingness of night. Lizzie felt the presence of other people nearby, yet no one spoke. The anticipation floated in the air around them.

  The first glow of light could have been a handheld torch, almost out of batteries, being held up by someone a few hundred metres away. After a few minutes, Lizzie began to wonder if maybe that’s what it had been, but then, even without the presence of the sun on the horizon, the sky around them began to lighten. The three cone spires of the central temple were now visible on the other side of a large moat, which looked more like a lake, stretching across from the outer wall where they sat, all the way to the temple.

  Lizzie glanced at Ben and the red light glowing on his camera, and when she looked up again time had jumped forward. Within the blink of an eye the infinitesimal light had morphed into a spectacle of colours. Behind the black outline of the temple a splodge of dark orange glowed, spreading out into a vibrant fuchsia, then deep purples and dark blues.

  She stared, transfixed by its beauty. Lizzie had never seen such colours in the sky before. The entire scene reflected back at them in the crystal-clear mirror image from the moat, as if they were watching two sunrises at the same time. It was everything she’d hoped it would be, she thought with both joy and sadness.

  ‘What are you looking for when you look at the sky?’ he asked.

  She pulled her eyes away from the horizon, glancing first into his eyes before her gaze dropped to the camera now pointed towards her. She could feel herself preparing to answer, feel the emotion welling to the surface, but not yet.

  With every minute that ticked by, the sky before them transformed. The dark blues lightened, the pinks faded and the orange glow took on its spherical form. Eventually, the other visitors began to move away.

  Only when the full circle of the sun peaked above the highest tower of the temple did she feel ready to answer. ‘When I was nine, I spent a lot of time at Great Ormond Street Hospital, in London. There was a boy in the bed next to me, Ethan.’ Saying his name out loud felt like picking off a deep scab and feeling the pain of the wound all over again.

  ‘He had Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia so he was in for the long haul like me,’ she said. ‘I ignored him for a few days, probably because he was a boy and I was at that age when boys were the enemy, but it’s hard to ignore someone when you’ve heard them throwing up a metre away from your bed all night.

  ‘One time he spent the entire night dry retching. It was horrible to listen to, but I knew it was worse for him. You’ve got no idea how exhausting it is to be sick like that. I guess I felt sorry for him, because I walked up to his bed with a deck of cards behind my back, and he said, “What you looking at, baldy?” and I said, “You, baldy. Can you keep the noise down when you’re chundering, please? Some of us are trying to sleep.” It wasn’t very funny but suddenly we couldn’t stop laughing and we were best friends from that point on.’ She tilted her face to the sun and felt the first warmth of its rays. It felt right to tell this story here and now with the sky transforming above them.

  Lizzie pulled in a long breath before she continued. ‘It must have been around the time that Ethan had started to get better because I don’t remember him being sick after that. But the ward was never peaceful at night. There was always someone crying, or a machine beeping, nurses coming in and out, o
r worst of all, a parent snoring.

  ‘One of us would sneak into the other’s bed and we’d play our own version of rummy we’d made up because we only had three quarters of a deck of cards. It never occurred to either of us to ask our parents to bring a full deck in. After a while we’d get tired of playing and just lie there whispering about normal things nine-year-olds talk about. I remember we spent an entire night talking about whether Father Christmas was real.

  ‘We spoke about death a lot too, which I guess wasn’t very normal for children of our age, but it was hard to ignore it. A girl across from us, Becky, I think her name was, had been moved to a different ward. We overheard the nurses talking about her. She’d gone to intensive care, but had died a day later.’

  Lizzie paused, pushing back the mound clogging her airway.

  ‘Ethan talked a lot about heaven. He used to say that there was this point at every sunrise and sunset when you can see the gates of heaven opening to let people in. I used to tease him about it all the time, but he just smiled as if he knew something I didn’t.’

  A single tear slid down her cheek. Then another.

  ‘One night I sneaked inside the curtain around his bed and went to climb in alongside him, but before I got to him I could feel this heat radiating off him. They did everything they could. Pumped him with antibiotics and a cocktail of other drugs, but it didn’t make any difference … he didn’t make it to morning.’

  Lizzie reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of water. She took three long gulps, wiped the tears from her face, and pushed the emotions away. If she broke down now, then she’d never stop. ‘I think about Ethan all the time. Mostly, I wonder what he’d be doing now if he hadn’t died that night. Would we still be friends? Would he be a doctor and a goalkeeper for Tottenham Hotspur like he’d planned? I’d forgotten all about the whole sunset thing, until a few weeks ago, when it popped into my head completely out of the blue.

  ‘So, to answer your question, when I’m staring at the sunrise or sunset, I’m trying to figure out if heaven exists.’ She tried to say it matter-of-fact, but the quiver of emotion in her voice gave her away. Lizzie dropped her eyes to the water bottle in her hand and fiddled with the cap.