She’s shaking, and I’m trying to work out the best strategy to help her back, when I feel her foot lift up as she reaches slightly higher with one hand.God. Here I was trying to get her down.
‘That’s it,’ I say, and she pulls herself up, her body rigid with fear while I shadow her.
It takes a full five minutes to ascend the next eight steps, and by now we’re being chased by a boisterous family with young kids, whooping and squealing below us. Reaching the next landing, Rachael runs her hands along the rail as if she can’t see, pushing herself into the corner, facing the rock wall, and not the increasingly sweeping views towards the coast and thehinterland, letting the family past. Parker is long gone now and hopefully behaving herself at the summit.
I don’t want to point this out, but the higher we go, the harder it will be to clamber back down. I’ve got visions of Rachael having a mental health crisis at the top and having to be helicoptered out.
‘Talk to me, Fraser,’ she says, determined progress being made as we set off towards the next landing. I’m right behind her, wrapped around her, more proud of her than I can articulate for even attempting this.
‘I think I’ve been taking you for granted for years,’ I blurt out.
I’m sure she meant for me to deliver some lighthearted, distracting banter and not a hard-hitting personal revelation. It’s just, if she’s going to cling to the side of a rock face and stare down her fears, maybe I should as well.
In any case, she’s not moving now. She’s got a vice-like grip on the upper rung, as a coastal breeze whips around us, wisps of blonde hair teasing my face.
‘We’re almost there.’ I bring a steady hand to her waist, palm resting on the soft Lycra at her hip. ‘We’re closer than you think.’
There’s another gust of the sea breeze, and I’m overwhelmed by the duelling scents of sunscreen and salt and eucalyptus and that perfume she always wears, that Ialwayslike, until it’s me who feels unsteady, and I have to release her hip and take the railing again.
‘Don’t let go,’ she whispers, moving her body back into mine, and I instinctively press forward to secure her between me and the ladder.
She doesn’t see how hard I swallow as I place my hand back on her waist and shut my eyes for a second as we push upwards together. We’ve held each other through the detonation oflosing Audrey. We’ve seen each other at our best and worst. But what she’s oblivious to is the fact that her turning up here and flinging her crossroads in my path has brought me to a crossroads of my own. It’s me with the vertigo. Suddenly, deeply, and in a time-sensitive, potentially life-altering way, everything I haven’t dared feel about this woman has rushed forward. I can’t tell her now, because what if we both let go and fall? But I am even more afraid than she is.
44
AUDREY
I’ve woken before dawn to a bad case of sunburn from yesterday’s antics on the cliff, but I barely notice the pain, because for the first time since Fraser’s funeral, music is exploding, properly, in my brain. It’s an almost overpowering synaesthesia of lights, colours, textures and tones. Emotions I can’t articulate transform into notes, clustering in phrases, rising and falling as temperatures fluctuate kaleidoscopically in my mind’s eye, and ear, as if I’m on some powerful hallucinogenic drug.
I’m hungry to capture it all. To pluck it from the sky. Save it in audio recordings. Scramble it onto the pages of the notation paper that has tortured me, blank, for so long. I am breathless with the return of this. Overwhelmed by the prolific intensity. Terrified it will stop.
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I hold my head in my hands and check the sounds are still there, scared to move in case I trip a wire and the creative onslaught evaporates. I haven’t had a rush like this since Fraser’s piece burst onto the page, so I reach for my phone and the portable keyboard, my laptop and the headphones, paper and pen, Miss Bennet instantly transformed from holiday camper to remote recording studio.
This is how it used to feel with Josh. Thisgrappling. Scared of dropping ideas. Frantic for every last note. I thought he andI had brought out each other’s best. Thought my music needed his. I never imagined that I’d be sitting here cross-legged on the bed of my tiny vintage caravan, sand on the floor, waves crashing on Pretty Beach—a world away from his glittering New York stages—with this blast of music that won’t stop. Because I won’t ever let it. Because it ismine. Yesterday’s cliffside unleashing of pent-up emotion liberated everything—and now there’s years’ worth of silence to fill.
By mid-morning, I’ve ripped the headphones off. Sunburnt skin is shouting louder than the music, spaghetti straps slicing through to my bones. I try to ignore it. Fraser would be so relieved by this breakthrough. This is everything he wanted for me. This, and the courage to take what I write now and actuallydosomething with it. To risk the constructive criticism I’m so scared of, always fearful someone will steal it or tamper with it and I’ll lose it.
Josh flashes to mind. I still crave his approval but have to stop myself from sending him samples. He’s been in New York for three years and I’ve seen him three times, when he comes home for Christmas with his family and I get invited over—not to the Christmas meal itself, of course, but something on the twenty-third so I can spend supervised time with Parker. I can’t contact her without running it by Maggie first.We don’t want to confuse her, she explained, even though my sudden disappearance from her life will have driven fresh cuts into her much bigger loss, and I’m left following her music online—listening to her grow up from a distance.
Thinking of her, another whole tranche of melodies falls into my brain. I need to get this down, but my red raw skin is blaring.
I set the laptop down and fish around in my belongings for the body cream.How can I have lost it in a space so tiny?
Fuck, I haven’t got time for this. I fling open the door and am greeted by the sublime sight of Beau, in black board shorts, washing his caravan. Why isn’t he sunburnt? Is his skin protected by the tattoos?Don’t be absurd …
‘Wow,’ he says, turning around, dropping the sponge into the bucket, and wiping wet hands on his shorts. ‘Look at you.’
‘I know, ugh …’ I pull at the pyjama top and run a hand through messy hair. I must be a picture!
‘Look at your eyes,’ he clarifies. And I can feel what he’s seeing. This spark. This afterglow from composing and knowing what I’m writing isgood, even in its first-cut, straight-from-brain-to-paper form.
Theseare the fireworks I promised Fraser. He never saw the expression I can feel on my face right now. One I haven’t felt since my undergraduate degree, pre-fallout. This is the revival of my real, creative self having taken the long way around, as he always said I would, his faith in me stretching well beyond his death, until I’ve finally caught up with it, too.
‘And look at that sunburn,’ Beau observes, wincing at the sight.
‘Do you have any aloe vera? I can’t find mine.’
He goes inside, returning moments later with a tube of cream.
