Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
FLORENCE
I’m halfway to Pickering before I even know what I’m doing.
However much of my humanity I’ve lost, there are a few things that remain fully intact. And one of those is my fight-or-flight response. I’m not proud of it, but when it seems like one of my greatest fears is coming to life before my eyes, I am all flight and no fight.
I’m so focused on getting the hell out of there that when Josiah clears his throat next to me, I don’t react.
‘Florence, what are you doing?’ he asks in a low voice.
It’s careful, like he might spook me. Like he doesn’t know I’m already fully spooked.
But I must be, because I ignore him and turn back to the window, clenching my jaw as I watch the fields roll past. They’re a little less green without Quinn to point them out, I think, and then I curse myself when a fresh wave of grief crashes over me.
I brought this on myself, I realise that. There was a reason I told myself I wouldn’t date humans, and it was a good reason, too. I was trying to save myself from having my heart ripped out.
I was trying to save myself from this.
The problem is, I’m not sure staying away from Quinn would have hurt any less. I was doomed either way.
I wipe tears off my cheeks with the cuff of my jacket and sniffle as I studiously ignore the field of cows we just sped past. It’s only a field of livestock. Nothing more.
There’s movement in the seat beside me, then, an unmistakeable chill on my bare arms. Usually when I sense Josiah, it’s more abstract than that, a gentle breeze or a change in the air temperature, but this time it’s as if he’s actually beside me.
As though I might turn my head and see him sitting there, his thumb rubbing soft circles against his index finger, the way it always did.
But I don’t turn. I’m not sure I could deal with not seeing him there. Not today.
I bolt out of my seat when the train pulls into the station at Pickering and hop down onto the platform as soon as the doors open. I know exactly where I’m going. It’s the first thing I thought of when I heard about Quinn’s accident.
I got it from my mother, this urge to busy myself when my mind spins out of control.
In times of crisis, she’d be on the go constantly, fixing what she could even when the things she actually wanted to fix were irreparable.
The helping helps with the helplessness, she used to say.
And I’ve never connected with the sentiment more.
I can’t watch another person I love die.
I can’t.
And so I’m here, doing something I can do. Something I’ve been meaning to do for days.
‘Albert?’ I call through the letterbox, and when I hear his answering hum, I try the handle. It’s unlocked, which makes sense considering the state he was in. It’s probably been unlocked for years. I push the door open and I feel Josiah follow me into the house.
It’s just as dark as I remember, dusty too, and when I walk into the living room, I find Albert in his chair exactly where we left him, watching me with curious eyes.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again,’ he says, a faint smile creasing his age-worn cheeks. ‘Particularly not so soon.’
I smile in return, though the movement feels foreign on my face. ‘I brought you something.’
He watches me carefully as I shrug my backpack off my shoulder and fish out the second blood bag from the inside pocket.
‘You need a decent meal,’ I say, placing the bag carefully in his hands, ‘and a bit of help.’
I show him how I open the bag, how to sip from it like it’s an energy pouch, and then I clean the downstairs rooms of the house as much as I can while he feeds, sweeping and dusting and scrubbing until the surfaces shine, and the sting of tears in my eyes has faded to a dull scratch.
Then I sit down on the considerably less dusty sofa and talk to Albert. He tells me about his childhood, about Margot, the love of his life, and about how he thinks he may have been infected with the vampire cells.
‘It was a mugging,’ he says, ‘or at least that’s what we thought at the time.
I was supposed to meet some friends in York one evening and a man accosted me in a side street.
Afterwards, I couldn’t remember what had happened.
Though it always seemed strange to me that none of my valuables were missing.
’ His voice is clearer now, warm and steady.
‘Perhaps I had something else of more value to him.’ He gestures to the now-empty blood bag and I nod.
‘Not all of us can be trusted,’ I say. ‘There are bad apples in every bunch, but I think our kind is a particularly poor bunch.’
He studies me for a few moments, his cloudy grey eyes taking me in. ‘You’re not like that, though. You’re good.’
He doesn’t phrase it like a question. He’s telling me. The problem is that I’m not so sure he’s right. After all, didn’t I just abandon the man I love at his darkest hour? There’s nothing at all good about that.
‘You don’t believe me,’ Albert says, and that’s not a question either. He’s moving a little now and there’s some colour coming back into his skin. There’s a tremor in his hands I hadn’t noticed before. He tries to calm it by pressing his palms against his knees.
‘I did a bad thing,’ I manage to say eventually, and Albert’s face doesn’t fall like I expect it to. Instead, his thin lips pull into a smile.
He holds up the empty blood bag pointedly. ‘You did a good thing, too.’
Something dark and ugly tugs at the base of my throat despite his words. ‘Someone I love is hurt,’ I say quietly, ‘and I’m not there. I chose not to be.’
His brow furrows. ‘Out of spite?’
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Out of fear.’
Albert takes a heavy breath, and the exhale sends clouds of dust billowing out of him. I track one of the particles as it dances in the air, momentarily weightless, before it eventually settles on the arm of the sofa.
‘You don’t look to me like a woman who’s scared of much,’ he says, his voice a little stronger now.
I feel the first prickle of tears in my eyes, and I look away before Albert can see them. ‘I didn’t think I was.’
His laugh is a small thing – not much more than a rumble in his chest. ‘It takes you by surprise sometimes, doesn’t it?’ he asks, his tone warm and familiar.
My brow furrows. ‘Fear?’
‘No,’ he says, with another soft laugh. ‘Love.’
* * *
It’s late evening the following day when I get back to Whitby.
I stayed on Albert’s sofa last night, after he made it up to his bed for the first time in a decade. In the morning, I cleaned the upstairs rooms and started on the garden. I made a promise to him that I’ll go back and visit soon.
I head out of the station and down the hill, the night creeping in off the sea in shades of teal and plum.
It’s been a warm day, but the clear skies have brought a chill with them now the sun has set.
I’m still only wearing my T-shirt and jeans despite the nip of the air at my skin.
I almost welcome it. It feels like a penance.
I can’t go back to my flat, not with the lingering reminders of Quinn I know will be there, so instead I climb the 199 steps in the lamplight and hike out on the clifftop path towards Saltwick Bay.
It’s bracing up here, even on a summer’s night.
The rush of the wind pummels at my cheeks and whips my hair into knotty clumps as I scream obscenities into the churn of the waves below.
I almost don’t notice Josiah beside me. Not until he screams out a few curses of his own, anyway. I nearly fall off the cliff when I spin around and see him there. Because, for the first time since I buried him, I can see him there.
He’s not fully formed, not by a long shot, but there’s a faint glow that picks out his prominent features, the slightest suggestion of his body in the shadows. His lips pull into a smile as our eyes meet.
‘Hey stranger,’ he half shouts, but I still only just hear him over the crash of the waves on the beach below us.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m going to have to reassess that belief, because there’s one standing in front of me right now.
Instinctively, I reach for him, but my arms slip straight through his form, goosebumps racing across my skin from the cold air.
‘Ha!’ His grin widens. ‘I didn’t know that happened. It’s like in Ghost.’
I stop dead, my mouth falling open. ‘You saw Ghost? You died a hundred years before it came out.’
He considers me, his head tipping to one side. ‘You saw it.’
I did. I saw it more than once. In fact, I rewound and rewatched that video so often I was worried it would wear out, hoping the entire time that Josiah’s spirit might come back to me in that very same way. But that was thirty years ago. Which must mean…
‘You’ve been here the whole time? Even when I couldn’t hear you?’
He nods, before the movement shifts into more of a shrug. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘not the whole time. But when you’ve needed me.’ I just about see the small curve of his smile. ‘Like when you were sobbing so loudly over Demi Moore’s dead boyfriend that I could hear you from the other side.’
My brows pinch. I’m not sure I’m seeing the funny side of whatever’s going on, not to mention that I can’t help but feel upset I haven’t heard his voice in a while. Suddenly the roar of the sea feels like too much, and so I turn from the cliff edge and march back to the path.
Josiah … well, I assume Josiah floats after me. Nothing below his knees is visible, and from what I can see of his thighs, they don’t appear to be moving. Yet there he is, right next to me when I turn my head.
‘How are you here?’ I blurt out. It wasn’t intended to be an accusation, but it sounds like one. There’s more hurt in my tone than I expected, and I’m not sure if it’s because of him, or because of Quinn, or both.
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs, moonlight glinting off the slope of his shoulders. ‘I only just discovered I could do this. Or that this happened, I mean. I’m not sure how much control I have here.’
‘Ok,’ I say, something sharp and bitter building at the base of my throat. ‘Then why are you here? Why now, after you’ve been silent for days?’
I feel it again, the low swoop of my stomach, the way it drops to the floor when I remember the moment I listened out for him and heard nothing. It was like losing him all over again. His silence was an ache I felt in my bones.
‘Because you need me,’ Josiah says softly.
He reaches out a hand but lets it fall again, as if he’s remembered he can’t touch me anymore.
I wonder if that slices at him in quite the same way as it does me.
‘I was only here in the first place because I was so worried about you being alone. And now you’re alone again, but by choice this time. ’
My brow snaps into a frown. ‘Not really by choice.’
‘Ok.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘So how is Quinn?’
My heart squeezes again, a fist clenching so tightly that I can barely move. How is Quinn? That’s a question I’ve been too scared to ask, afraid of getting an answer that would break me into pieces. And yet here I am, breaking into pieces anyway.
‘You know,’ Josiah says, his eyes darting out over the sea, opalescent where once they were a deep blue.
‘When I first died, I was so angry. It wasn’t my time, I thought.
I had years left. Years with you. I replayed that day over and over like a broken record, torturing myself with everything that happened, how unlucky I was to be caught in the collapse.
But the more I saw, the longer I looked, I realised that it wasn’t luck at all. It was a choice.’
I turn to him, the sight of him blurred into a dim glow by the tears in my eyes. ‘I’m not following.’
He makes a small noise, a soft hum of reassurance. ‘It was my choice. You told me it wasn’t safe, over and over, and I didn’t listen. I chose chasing my fortune over staying safe with you.’ He dips his chin, his eyes boring into mine. ‘I did this to you, Florence, and you deserved better.’
‘I loved you.’ I swipe at a teardrop swelling at my jaw. ‘I never stopped.’
Another hum, louder this time. ‘I love you, too, and seeing you so alone all these years has broken my heart.’
He takes my hand as best he can, the cold air making goose bumps spread up the back of my arms. ‘When I saw you with Quinn, that was the first time I felt like I could finally rest. Because nothing makes me feel more at peace than the knowledge that you could be loved the way he could love you.’ There’s a gentle squeeze on my hands, and a simultaneous dimming of Josiah’s glow.
‘Florence,’ he says, his voice a little fainter but as insistent as he’s ever been. ‘Let him.’
I shake my head furiously, my vision blurring until it’s all soft light and not much more. ‘I’m scared.’
‘I know.’ I feel a brush of cold on one cheek, translucent fingers trying fruitlessly to gather another tear.
‘But that just means he’s worth it.’ I hear the small laugh he breathes out, and when I look back at him, he’s so faint I can only just see the curve of his smile. ‘He’s not bad looking, either.’
I smile at his joke but it’s fleeting, the rush of fear through my body dampening every other emotion.
‘I can’t,’ I whisper, into the dark.
‘You can.’ His voice is fainter still. He’s disappearing slowly in front of my eyes. ‘You can do anything.’
I swallow past the knot in my throat. ‘But what if I lose him?’
A shrug. ‘Haven’t you already lost him? What’s the difference?’ And then he fades into almost blackness, a whispered ‘Think about it,’ the only thing I hear before he vanishes entirely.
But I don’t think about it. Not for any great length of time. When I act, it’s instinct, same as before. Before I know it, I’m running again. But this time I’m not running away from Quinn.
I’m heading right for him.