Chapter 45
45
After
You were alive again last night.
It wasn’t a nightmare, Suze—and I’ve had plenty of those—it was just another world, exactly like this one but with a dramatic difference. Your presence. Your presence, which I took for granted.
In this place, we were cheerfully organizing a ski trip, sitting at a school desk, while next to a busy motorway. The cars thundering past made the table shake but neither of us were bothered. How about Switzerland? you said. We had plans.
(I wonder if Switzerland was some subconscious thing because that’s where Hester was, when you and Ed...? Haha, by the way, in return? You never get to complain about Finlay. PSYCH. Yeah don’t argue. You know I have you.)
It will always be this way, I’ve come to realize. You are never behind me, Susie. You are never something that happened. You are always alongside me.
I clumsily scrabble for my phone in the blackness, scroll down, and find the last text from Susie. Those words in a speech bubble on my handset. It still feels impossible there is no chance of any more, that it was a final word. That she’s not there, behind that screen, hovering out of sight. Waiting for a cue.
I type a reply:
SO much to discuss. Speak soon. I love you. xxx
Across the room, where I’d plugged her phone in to charge, there’s a firefly glow as it lights up, as if in response.
I hear her, clear as a bell, in my head.
Love you too, you iridescent beast. xxx
PS still have to say, my brother, GROSS
We make each other so happy, though!
I am not sure that doesn’t make it MORE gross. That’s what Mr. Pulteney the geography teacher said when we found out he and his wife were nudists, remember?
I laugh to myself. I will always hear Susie in my head. It’s an ongoing conversation. Lifelong.
Fin stirs awake. “You OK? Did I see a light on?”
“I’m fine.”
“That cat is not only heavy, he’s soaking!” Finlay says, registering Roger’s presence, and Roger yowls territorially, in reply.
“Rog is as Rog does.”
Finlay pushes his arms around me, and we lie in silence, side by side, for a while, listening to the swish of greenery in the wind beyond the window.
“I think the rain’s stopped,” he says.
I twist around to face him.
“So do I.”