‘I know that,’ she said eventually, and it was emphatic. She must have understood he needed to hear it in her voice.
It wouldn’t hurt like this if he hadn’t been in love with her, if he hadn’t been all in. She wasn’t a distraction either, never second place to a dream of having Annie.
‘I was your number one person,’ she said, and he wanted to crouch down to the sand and cover his face in his hands.
‘Will you be okay?’ he asked her instead, knowing they couldn’t stay like this much longer.
It was starting to hurt in a new way now, the way it feels when love really is irrecoverably gone and you have to walk away for the very last time.
He knew she was nodding down the line. ‘Yep,’ she said at last. ‘I’m going to find out who I am on my own.’
‘Me too,’ Harri said.
‘I think you already know,’ she said with a new kind of arrow-like precision.
‘We’ll talk again, won’t we?’ he said.
Neither of them really believed it, but both let the lie settle between them for the sake of the last ten years and all they’d shared.
They both cried when Paisley at last hung up. Harri let the phone drop to his side and he scuffed his boots and skimmed stones on the beach for a long time as the dark afternoon drew in around him, thinking the whole time that he could only be true to himself, and fair to Paisley, if he resolved to be content to be alone. No more dates, no more sleeplessness, no more clinging to a humiliating hope that a teen crush would miraculously become an adult commitment. He willed the tiny part of himself he’d held in reserve for Annie Luna to dissolve. He wouldn’t hold on to guilt about failing Paisley any longer, but he also couldn’t carry on walking around with this tiny barb in his chest for Annie either.
His unburdened heart beat anew.
‘Jonas is my best,bestfriend,’ one of the children, Barney Burntisland, declared, only to be cut down by Radia telling him imaginary friends don’t count.
‘Who’s your best friend forever, then?’ Barney shot back, making Radia even crosser.
‘I’m friends with everybody in my class.’ It didn’t sound convincing to Annie’s expert ears, putting her in mind of some of her middle schoolers who couldn’t quite negotiate close friendships yet. They were the kids who drifted between groups, never quite bedding in. Radia, she suspected, was destined to spend a fair few lunch breaks and recesses hiding out in the school library. She knew the type. She’d been one herself, still was, even if everyone mistook her for an extrovert. She’d spent so long as a kid cultivating her convincing happy-go-lucky demeanour, most days even she believed it.
‘Let’s focus on the words, shall we?’ Austen said over the chatter.
Radia did a good show of modelling attentiveness for the other children, sitting bolt upright, eyes fixed on Austen, her felt pen poised. The others, all eight of them, ranging in ages from five to nine, and all pupils at the nearby primary school, fell in line.
‘Can anyone tell me what it means to have a very best friend?’
One of the blond Crocombe boys, brought today by their mother, the school’s headteacher, raised a tentative finger.
‘Yes, Charlie?’ asked Austen.
‘Somebody to play football with,’ he said.
‘And trade Pokémon cards?’ his older brother put in.
‘Nice! So someone you can play with, and someone you can share things with? Let’s write that down,’ Austen said, marking the words ‘share’ and ‘play’ on the flip pad she held facing the group.
‘Anyone else? What is a friend?’
The room was quiet until another child said, ‘A friend plays with you.’
‘We’ve already had that!’ complained Radia.
‘Any of the biggies know?’ Austen encouraged, lifting her eyes to the adults watching on.
The younger Mrs Crocombe and Monica Burntisland, one of her school’s teaching assistants, who’d been catching up with whispered conversation standing at the back, didn’t even notice her asking, so it fell to Annie to help out.
‘Um, how about… friends forgive each other?’ said Annie.
‘Ooh, good one!’ Austen enthused, writing the word ‘forgiveness’ on her pad.
