But his eyes, glinting with cold, hold mine.
And for a second, all is silent.
All is still.
‘All right,’ says Ana, slicing through that fragile moment of peace between us, scattering it. ‘Let’s get going.’
The scene doesn’t take us long.
It’s not a late night.
The perfect, heartrending aptness of this goodbye that Iris and Robbie share has, unlike everything following it, never been in dispute, and the words, the emotion, come readily to all of us.
I live it here.
I live it then.
‘You’ll guide us in,’ Nick says.
You’ll guide us in, Robbie says.
Their faces, their voices, morph, filling my sight, my senses.
‘Get us home.’Get us home. ‘Do you believe it?’
Do you… ?
Silently, unable to talk, I nod.
I nod.
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Say it, please.’
I need to hear you say it.
So, I say it.
‘I believe it.’
I believe it…
And Nick smiles.
Robbie smiles.
I breathe,I breathe, my chest feeling as though it’s about to explode with everything I’m containing within it.
And Ana callscut, wrenching me back to here, to now. But I know it’s all still happening. Ifeelit still happening – within me, around me: such boundless pain and fear and love and longing pulsing on, on and on and on, in the gusting cold; the smoky, frozen night. I raise my face to it, pulling in another deep breath, filling myself up with this goodbye that I want more than anything to have never ended, and which I can’t, I justcan’t, accept was the end.
Everyone heads to the dining room for a late dinner as soon as we’re done.
‘Will you come?’ Nick asks me.
‘You should come,’ Felix says.
I don’t.
I’m not hungry.
