“Hey, Cal,” Liam calls, lowering his own visor again in preparation for the next cut. “Don’t overthink it. Seriously—happens to the best of us.”
Liam’s being nice, but I’m shaken, and I wonder if perhaps it would be best to sit Joel down and ask him to tell me everything. But then I remind myself that a permanent ticking clock would be far, far worse than the occasional brush with mortality. It would be the most ominous of pendulums, counting down the sunsets, the summers, every kiss.
I can see why they say ignorance is bliss. Because if the end was revealed to be imminent, brutal, or both, I know I couldn’t live with the dread.
•••
Minutes later, Liam and I stand back to watch the tree finally fall. It’s a diseased oak, dangerous and close to a public footpath, so it had to come down. We say nothing as it descends, felled like a king on an ancient battlefield. It first saw sunlight in the era of Queen Victoria, its acorn wriggling through soil to become a bright green sapling under the watch of Charles Dickens, George Eliot. And now, nearly two centuries on, the whisper of leaves crescendos to a roar as it topples to the ground with a crack louder than thunder. I feel history exhale, a thousand kept secrets decimated, and I’m suddenly overcome.
“Awful, isn’t it?” I say to Liam, as the fen falls silent once more and the storm of stirred-up undergrowth settles. Birds have scattered from the boughs of trees still standing, like seeds blown off the head of a dandelion. “Watching something so old meet its end.”
“Yes and no.” Liam removes his helmet, rubs sawdust from his hair. “Worse if a limb falls and kills someone.”
I say nothing.
As Liam and I begin sawing the felled oak into logs, I try to envisage how my life would look if I let Joel tell me what he knows. Though he truly is blameless, I wonder whether I’d start eventually to resent him forfilling in the one gap we all take for granted, for snuffing out the warm glow of possibility. For giving me the full stop I never really wanted.
But we are where we are, and maybe I love him enough to surmount all that. Grace always used to say,I’ll either find a way or make one.
•••
I’m late home after staying to help quad-bike logs back to the yard. Though Murphy’s in his usual spot by the hearth, the flat feels empty, still as a stopped clock.
I spot a note against the kettle on the kitchen worktop.
Gone to Newquay for a couple of nights. Explain when I’m back xx
I sit unsteadily on the sofa, stare at the scrap of paper I’m holding like it’s a ransom note. Murphy nudges his nose onto my lap, looks up at me with eyes of liquid woe.
I know Newquay’s the area code for the number in the book Joel found. All I can hope is that whoever lives there might be able to help us, before it’s too late.
62.
Joel
He looks like me, just twenty years older. I recognize the dint of my own chin. The crow’s feet and Cupid’s bow. His eyes, dark as galaxies.
“Steady, steady... Hey, you okay?” He must think I’m about to pass out, because he’s making that face people do when they’re watching a natural disaster unfold on the news. He grabs me by the elbow, steers me inside.
His living room reminds me of Callie’s when I first met her. It’s packed out with stuff, bursting with color. There are houseplants, wall hangings, pictures of waves. Three surfboards propped up against a cabinet. A throw on his sofa that looks as if it’s fresh out of a souk. An old-school stereo beside a pile of CDs. A bona fide lava lamp.
“Here, take a seat. Tea?”
Though I manage a nod, he hovers.
“This happen often?”
“Turning up on the doorstep of strange men? I try not to make it routine.”
“No, I meant the color of your skin. You’ve gone a bit... chalky.”
“A shot of brandy in that tea might sort it.” I put my head right down between my knees, like I’m praying for something. Perhaps I am.
He claps me on the shoulder. Lets his hand linger there for a moment or two. “Coming right up.”
•••
His name’s Warren Goode, he told me on the phone. That’s all I know. I dialed the number inside my mum’s thriller as soon as I got back from my appointment. We had a short conversation, then I got into my car and drove to Newquay in one hit and fifth gear. Callie was on loop in my mind the whole way.
