I smile, wonder if Doug will forever respond to criticism by batting it straight back where it came from. “How come?”
“Says you’re looking too thin.” A disdainful glance in my direction. “I happen to agree.”
“Ah, it’s nothing.”
But the truth is I’ve not been myself recently. Time is accelerating, the years slipping by like landscape past a train window. I’ve been thinking about Callie, plagued with agonizing doubts. Have I done the right thing? Should I get back in touch, make one final attempt to save her?
I’ve been having a recurrent dream lately, my first ever. It’s the one about Callie dying, and it’s grown progressively lifelike. I wake up soaked in sweat each time, shouting her name.
Doug looks away from me. “Good to know. I was only saying to Lou the other day, you’re finally starting to act normal for the first time in your life.”
I smile faintly at the turned face of my half brother. He’s so different from me. And yet, weirdly, I wouldn’t change him for the world. That I can rely on his rudeness is strangely comforting somehow. When I think of all the turmoil that’s to come.
91.
Callie—six and a half years after
He’s standing on the opposite platform with his brother, chin sunk into the collar of his jacket as it so often was, hands stuffed into his pockets.
He looks thin, I think. Slightly haunted, not himself.
Or, at least, the himself I used to know. It’s been nearly seven years now. But already the intervening time has melted away, and I can only see him as I last did, facing me across the table in the restaurant.Forget about me. Do all the things you want to do, and more.
My heart on a string, I can only pray he’ll look up and see me.
I’ve taken a few days’ annual leave for Ben’s wedding, but Finn’s been working in Ipswich this week, so I’m traveling from Mum and Dad’s to London alone with the twins. Finn’s meeting us off the train at Blackfriars, and already I can’t wait—to be reunited after three nights apart, and for the second pair of hands. It’s the first time I’ve traveled with the twins by myself, so I have Euan on my hip, Robyn in a single buggy by my feet.
I don’t want to alarm my children—and the rest of the platform—by calling out. Joel’s deep in conversation, and just as I start to think he might never look up, he does, and I am once again stilled by his satellite gaze.
I never forgot about you, Joel.
The world falls away. Sounds become echoes, my surroundings fog. I can see just Joel, feel only the spin of my stomach as we take each other in.
But within moments comes the hydraulic rush of my approaching train, the flash of lights.
No, no, no. On time—for once—today?
I mouth,Joel, but then the train divides us and the crowd around me starts to move. And I need to move too—trains to London are only every thirty minutes, time’s already tight, and delay will mean keeping Finn waiting, rushing to find a cab, panicking about missing the wedding, the potential humiliation of being turned away by a band of doormen masquerading as Tom Ford models.
I have no choice. We have to board the train.
The temperature in the carriage feels stifling, like the AC’s on the blink. Mercifully our seats are at a table for four, where the only other occupant is a friendly-looking pensioner, who seems as though she might not tut too firmly if my two-year-olds decide to kick off. After checking with her, I stand up and open the top window before settling Euan on the seat next to me, pulling Robyn onto my lap.
But the whole time I’m straining, desperate to see if I can spot Joel outside. At first my eyes land only on strangers, until eventually they locate Doug, who I see with a jolt is now standing alone.
And then there’s a tap on the window behind me.
I turn, and it’s him. Lovely, luminous him. He must have sprinted across the overpass.
My eyes spring with tears as I mouth a hello.
You okay?he mouths back.
I nod fiercely.You?
He nods too, then hesitates.You happy?
I swallow the tears away, hold my breath for just a second. And then I nod again.
