He sits alone at the summit of a hill, supported by the weathered wood of an ancient bench. Ahead, a patchwork of bright green stretches out under a March sky that has only a smattering of clouds. Between him and the Cotswolds hills, his dog, sniffing about in search of snack wrappers left by other walkers who were here brighter and earlier.
He hears the children first. The dog hears them, too, his pointed ears pricking up in apprehension, then delight. People to play with. The three boys arrive as one, a cartoon cloud of grazed knees and unruly hair, tugging at each other’s collars and tumbling towards the rest area. Behind them, a little girl with a pale face and tangled ginger hair that blows in all directions. She has her hands stuffed into the pockets of an anorak, gives the dog walker a look older than her years. A roll of the eyes says boys will be boys.
The adults lag behind, but the dog walker can hear their conversation carrying up the hill.
‘I still can’t believe he’d just leave,’ the first woman is saying.
‘Can’t you?’ says the second woman. ‘It’s what he does.’
‘And you have no idea where he is?’ the first woman says. ‘Augie?’
A man’s voice pipes up, defensive. ‘Woah,’ he says. ‘I don’t have some secret line of communication with him.’
The first woman comes into view. Her tight ponytail hangs from the back of a baseball cap. She wears durable leggings, a breathable zip hoodie tied around her muscular waist. The ascent doesn’t seem to have fazed her at all.
‘How long has it been?’ she says.
The second woman is struggling considerably more. She is not dressed for hiking, clad in jeans and Doc Martens. At the top, she catches her breath, wipes a sweaty brow beneath hair even more unruly than that of the little girl ahead of her.
‘Ten months,’ she says. ‘Give or take.’ An exhausted smile. ‘Who’s counting?’
‘I’ll kill him,’ says the first woman.
‘He used to say you were the only person in the world he was scared of,’ says the second. She sounds like she’s remembering something both funny and sad.
‘A lot of people say that about me,’ says the first woman, with a serious nod.
They look like siblings, these two. The same slight shoulders, the same dark-blond hair, the same sharp features.
Laughter arrives behind them, and a man with it. Old trainers, a moth-eaten jumper, a threadbare rucksack. A familiar, elfin face. Augie, they’d called him. The youngest, if the walker is making a guess.
Ahead of them, the kids are clambering all over the massive stone marker. The walker’s dog has joined them, is circling theplinth and yapping with delight. The siblings nod hello, then survey the view.
‘It’s funny,’ says the younger sister. ‘I feel a clarity about it now. Maybe it’s the new year. Or the film being finished. Getting it all out of my system.’ She takes a long inhale through her nose. ‘I’ve accepted that it’s over. I’m not going to waste any more time being sad about Seb.’
The other two share a look. She watches them do so.
‘I mean it,’ she says. ‘I’m done. I actually do think I deserve better, and it’s taken me a long time to realise that.’ She watches the children laughing, tumbling, picking themselves up. ‘We had our chance, and it passed us by, and I’ve made peace with it. At this age. With so many good things in my life.’
Augie rests his head on her shoulder.
She smiles a half-smile. ‘Besides,’ she says. ‘I think I was looking at it all wrong. My whole life, the big, long story of it. I don’t think it was ever about me and Seb.’
‘What was it about?’ the older sister asks.
The younger sister takes her hand. She takes her brother’s hand, too. ‘This,’ she says. ‘All of this.’
They share a moment. Then, still smiling, the younger sister begins to cry.
‘Oh, Clara,’ Augie says, folding her into a hug.
The older sister looks sympathetic, an expression the walker suspects she doesn’t wear often.
‘It was a bit about you and Seb, wasn’t it?’ she says.
Clara nods through her tears. ‘A little bit.’
Over at the marker, the kids are laughing. While Clarawipes her tears, Augie reaches into his rucksack and pulls out a Tupperware. He hands it to the oldest sister.
