The kind where you can hear both your hearts beat. The kind that’s about discovering each other again, mouths and hands and laughter—like when Thomas finds the knife in my pocket, or the clumsiness as I try to take his glasses off. The kind that leaves you both breathless, and covered in grass, saying goodbye, and making promises.
The kind that stops time, in its own way.
Monday 1 September
[One]
A week later, we give Grey his Viking funeral. I tell Papa I’ll meet them at the beach—there’s something I have to do first.
It’s dark inside the bookshop, but I don’t turn on the lights—I won’t be here for long. In the attic, in a tucked-away alcove that no one comes near, I take Grey’s diaries out of my book bag. Turn the pages, see his handwriting, alive in ink: I RAGE AT THE UNIVERSE. BUT GOTTIE REMINDS ME, IT’S ALL GOING TO WORK OUT. I AM A VIKING.
There’s no time loop here, yet it’s winter all around me. Snow covers the books. I remember—
*
sitting at the kitchen table with my back to the wood stove, studying for English, wondering how I can explain E = MC2 but I can’t understand a gerund.
I’m texting Sof—Is it a type of dog?—when Grey comes in, filling the room. The table wobbles as he strides to the kettle, humming ebulliently.
A mug is plonked in front of me, then he half settles at the other end of the table, chuckling at the newspaper. I sip my tea, and jump when a giant hand slams my textbook shut.
“Come on, dude,” he says. “Let’s go for a drive.”
I squeak about revision, but let him steer me out into the icy garden anyway. Clinging onto the car door as he speeds us bumpily away from Holksea, happy to be out of the house.
“You know I used to do this with you, when you were a baby? We’d drive around, up and down the coast. You’d stop crying, and you’d watch me. Probably thinking, ‘Hey, old man, where are we going?’ Ned hated being driven. But you and me, kid, we’d motor to the sea. Sometimes I’d chat to you, like you were listening. Sometimes not, maybe we’d have on music, or just silence, like now. Whatever, you know, dude.”
He glances over at me.
“What you’re saying is…” I pretend to think. “You don’t know where we’re going?”
Grey laughs, a huge sonic boom.
“Metaphorically speaking?”
“Driving speaking.”
“Where do you want to go?” Grey asks me. “This is for you—one day’s escape from reality. I’m just the chauffeur. The world’s your oyster.”
The phrase gives me déjà vu. I check the dashboard. “About fifteen miles of gas is our oyster.”
“Then let’s get oysters,” he chuckles, flipping on the signal.
It’s too cold for that, so we get chips in paper cones, dripping with vinegar, and eat them sitting inside the car, watching the waves through the fog. The wind turns the sea to foam.
When we get home, he goes straight to bed, even though it’s only six o’clock.
“All that talking,” he tells me, dropping a kiss on my head, “it’s worn me out.”
The next day, I go back to sitting at the kitchen table, wrestling adjectives. Grey ruffles my hair with his giant hand every time he walks by, and takes to cooking stews to keep me company. We tune the radio to static, and we sing along to nothing. We’re happy.
Tick-tick …
Tick.
Tock.
The clock brings me back to the bookshop. And I let it. I consecrate a smile to the memory of my grandfather, driving me up and down the coast. Then I stop living in the past.
I stack the diaries on the shelf. The Book Barn is the right place for Grey’s secrets. Maybe someone will try to buy them. Or maybe they’ll disappear. As I hide them behind some paperbacks, I think I hear a meow. I think I see a flash of orange, scuttling away across the universe.
And all that time falls through my fingers.
The wrong date on an email and a cat who shouldn’t exist. A time capsule we found in a tree five years ago, and the boy who gave me a summer. A best friend from the fifties and a brother from the seventies. A father who fades in and out and a mother I will never, ever know.
And Grey. Grey, who it still hurts my heart to think about. Grey, who I will always mourn. Grey, who I will always be able to find again.
This is what it means to love someone. This is what it means to grieve someone. It’s a little bit like a black hole.
It’s a little bit like infinity.
Ned is waiting for me when I come down the stairs. He’s leaning against the desk, flipping through a book, his foot tapping to an invisible beat. He looks up and takes a picture as I approach, his face behind the lens all eyeliner and nose. My twisted big brother.
“Yo, Grots. Everybody’s waiting outside,” he says. “You coming?”
“Right behind you,” I tell him.
He bounds ahead of me to the door, cape billowing. On the porch, I stand for a minute, my eyes adjusting to the light. When I can finally see, everyone is piling back into Grey’s car, through the one stupid door that works. Ned, clambering over into the front passenger seat. Sof sliding in behind him, a sequin sparkle, then Thomas. He twists around to wave through the back window. We’ve got one more day.