My own held just long enough for me to say yes, I could meet him tomorrow morning, and yes, Santa Monica Beach was fine; I’d meet him by the bike-rental place just south of the pier at ten.
‘I was beginning to think it was a lie that LA’s on the ocean,’ he said. He sounded tired. ‘I’ve been driving around for days and haven’t seen it once.’
And then the call was over and I curled myself into the corner of Jenni’s couch and cried like a child.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dear You,
Hello, Hedgehog.
Nearly two weeks have passed since you should have celebrated your birthday, but I still think about you every day. Not just birthdays.
Sometimes I like to imagine what you would be doing if you were still here. Today I imagined you living in Cornwall; a young, broke artist with paint in her hair. In this version, you study fine art at Falmouth and then take over a derelict building high on a hill with your arty friends. You like headscarves and you’re probably vegetarian, and you’re busy getting Arts Council grants, organizing exhibitions, teaching painting to kids. You’re electrifying.
Then comes the pendulum swing of grief and I remember you’re not in that crazy house on a hill. You’re scattered in a peaceful corner of Gloucestershire, a quiet hum of memory where once was my sunbeam of a sister.
I wonder if you know about what I’m doing tomorrow morning. I wonder if you know who I’m meeting on the beach. And if you do, I wonder if you will forgive me.
Because I can’t not go, little Hedgehog. I have to know how you were on the day you died: what you were doing, what you were saying, what you were eating, even. When I had to identify your body, I was pooled in the corner likesomething melted. It took me hours to get up and drive home. But when I got there, I found half a piece of toast by the sink. Cold and rigid, with the indentations of your little teeth on a corner. Like you’d considered the idea of a final mouthful but then skipped off to do something else.
What else did you eat that day? Did you sing a song? Did you change your clothes? Were you happy, Hedgehog?
I have to ask these questions. And I have to figure out why, in spite of everything, I am still in love with the very person who took you away from us all.
I feel like I’m letting you down so desperately by going tomorrow. I hope you can understand why I am.
I love you.
Me xxxx
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I watched a group of kids playing volleyball while I waited for Eddie. I wondered if he would even turn up, and wondered if it would be easier, better, if he didn’t.
The tide was far out, the beach quiet. A light carpet of cloud hovered between Santa Monica and the fierce sun. The air smelled of something fuggy and sweet – melting sugar, perhaps, or cooking doughnuts – a childhood smell; it lit up an old corner of memory. Long holidays in Devon. Scratchy sand, salty limbs, slippery rocks. The delicate patter of rain on our tent. Whispering late into the night with my little sister, whose presence in my life I had never then thought to question.
I checked my watch.
Over on the volleyball court, the kids finished their game and started packing up. The boardwalk rumbled as a lone rollerblader panted past. I ran damp fingers through my hair. Swallowed, yawned, clenched and unclenched my fists.
Eddie’s voice, when it came, was from somewhere behind me. ‘Sarah?’
I paused before turning to face him, this man who had lived in my head so many years.
But when I did look at him, I saw only Eddie David. And I felt only the things I’d felt before I’d realized who he was:the love, the longing, the hunger. Thewhump!as my body ignited like a boiler.
‘Hello,’ I said.
Eddie didn’t reply. He looked me straight in the eye, and I remembered the day I met him. How I’d thought to myself that his eyes were the colour of foreign oceans: full of warmth and good intentions. Today they were cold, almost blank.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. ‘Thanks for coming.’
A tiny twitch of his shoulders. ‘I’ve been trying to come and talk to you for the last two weeks. Been staying with my mate Nathan. But I . . .’ He trailed off, shrugged.
‘Of course. I understand.’
A family on yellow rented bikes pedalled along the boardwalk between us and he stepped back, watching me.
