Chapter Fourteen #3
That’s the one of Sebastian on the carousel horse. I don’t know where it might be, but LG must mean something to Emmett.
Montmartre in Motion.
That’s easy, we know where that is.
The Juxtaposition of Life and Death – PL cemetery.
And finally, the enigmatic blue door.
The Rubicon ????
My heart sinks. It’s clear that Emmett doesn’t have any clue where the blue door in Earl’s second from last painting might be.
There are other smaller paintings between the main exhibition pieces, sketches too, some half finished.
I recognise Tanya in one or two, or else parts of Northumberland, like Holy Island, the dunes we often went to.
But the main ones, they’re all Sebastian.
Sebastian was undoubtedly Earl’s muse, until he wasn’t.
Frankly it seems ridiculous that Emmett thinks we can get any sort of answer from visiting these places – we don’t even know where all of these places are.
How do you discover an answer when you don’t even know what the question is?
And yet it still feels right to be embarking on our Earl-based pilgrimage of grief and longing.
The exact sort of thing I should be doing right now, in the final furlong.
My legs are starting to ache from all the standing up.
I’ll need to go and rest soon. We don’t look at The Edge of Always, since the closer I get to it, the more I notice people starting to look at me.
I tell Emmett I need to sit down, and he doesn’t question why.
Instead, he takes me to the café here at MAM where I sip on a coffee, feeling quite unwell.
‘Is it okay?’ Emmett asks.
I nod my head and force myself to take a drink.
He doesn’t say anything, and when we’re done, we make our way back outside. I already feel better from the warmth of the autumn sun.
‘What do we do now?’ I ask Emmett.
He’s put his sunglasses back on, and would it be strange if I asked him to warn me before he did that? It’s inhumane, looking at him in those sunglasses. He tilts them down, the way that Mae used to do, to look at me.
‘It’s river cruise time.’
We walk along the path on the banks of the Seine, a slow pace which, let’s be honest here, is necessitated by me, and clamber aboard a vast boat with low sides and several vending machines.
I feel this isn’t the same as the boat Earl and Sebastian probably went on, but needs must – a boat is a boat.
Emmett, of course, looks like he was born to live on a fucking river cruise.
We’re standing up top, by the front of the boat as it skims the water – the Eiffel Tower on one side, Notre Dame in the distance on the other.
The wind from the cruise is making me all ruffled, but I love it.
It’s familiar and comforting, the wind. Emmett points out parts of Paris as we glide past them, and I find it incredibly sexy, how much he knows, how erotic it feels to have him stand behind me like this.
I allow myself to think, just for a millisecond, how it might be if things were different.
If everything were different. It hurts too much to think about a future where Emmett, in some indefinable capacity, is back in my life.
Or it would hurt, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m not going there.
My phone rings, and I take it as a welcome reprieve until I see that it’s Mum.
Mum rarely calls unexpectedly. We normally talk at 7pm on a Sunday night, a ritual that we endure for reasons that I can’t quite recall.
‘Sorry, it’s Mum,’ I tell Emmett, half relieved to have a reason to move away.
‘Mum,’ I have to half shout into my phone to drown out the water smashing against the sides of the boat, even at this sedate pace.
‘Luna, it’s your mother.’
‘Yes, I saw that. What’s up, has something happened?
’ I come from a generation genetically programmed to believe that if someone calls you, it’s because there’s been a death.
Unless it’s Mae, who knows no boundaries, personal, digital, or otherwise.
It’ll be Clive. The guy’s ancient. He still has the most impressive eyebrows, though.
‘Is Clive okay?’ I ask. The signal is patchy and I can hardly hear what Mum is saying. It doesn’t sound like she’s saying that Eyebrow Clive has died. I think she’d be happier if he did. She once said that it’ll be nice not to have to argue over the TV remote when he goes.
‘Clive is fine, Luna. But listen, you need to come home right now.’
I lose her a little at the end. But I got the ‘come home’.
‘Friday, I’m home Friday,’ I tell her as we pass under an ornate bridge.
‘No, Luna. You must come back.’
‘Why?’ I ask her. ‘Has something happened?’ I’m a little confused.
‘Think of your health, Luna.’ For one short minute, I’d like to not think of my health, actually. But never mind.
‘Dr Dave okayed the trip. I could get back quickly if I needed to. Don’t worry. And I messaged about Art Therapy. They were happy for me.’ It’s the truth. Hospices are much more about living than dying, after all. If anyone would know that, it’s me.
‘Except I do worry, Luna. Because I’m your mother.’
Her worry has always felt like an obligation, a millstone around her neck forcing her to act in a certain way. It’s not dissimilar to how mothering was to her – it just doesn’t come naturally. And we’re long past the time where I did as she asked.
‘Well don’t. I’m having a nice time in Paris and I’ll be home on Friday.’
She goes to talk some more but we pass under another bridge and so I call down my phone, ‘Sorry, signal’s bad. Got to go, bye!’
As I hang up, I feel rattled by the call.
Anyone who lives with illness knows that you can’t ever fully escape it.
If you’re not thinking about it, then you know that you’re not thinking about it, which is still thinking about it, in a roundabout way.
I know I can’t escape my illness in Paris, just like I couldn’t escape it if I went to the ends of the earth, but it was still nice to try for a moment.
I walk back to join Emmett. He has two hands on the railings and is studying the impressive facade of Notre Dame as we pass it on our left.
‘How is your mum?’ he asks as I slide my phone back in my bum bag, slotting it in between my meds and hoping that Emmett doesn’t see.
‘She’s okay. You know that she always was a lot, but she’s become an even more extreme version of herself as she’s got older.’ The boat comes to a stop and starts to turn around.
‘I didn’t think that was possible.’
‘Yep. And the age difference between her and Clive. He’s a really old man now – I don’t think she enjoys looking after him.
But then she never was super maternal. Last Christmas she told Mae that having us was a mistake.
Blamed Dad for making her have kids. She had been hitting the port hard, though. ’
‘Still, that’s… not good.’
‘Nope.’
‘I don’t think I realised, back then, how tricky things were for you at home. I was so fucking selfish.’
‘You weren’t. And anyway, even if you were, that’s the teenage brain, isn’t it. Designed for self-involvement. I know mine was. It’s no one’s fault, how Mum and Dad were.’
Emmett looks at the water for a second and then nods.
‘How is your dad?’ Last time Emmett saw Dad was the summer we broke up, so of course, Emmett doesn’t know.
‘Oh, he died.’
Over the years I’ve trained myself not to sugarcoat delivering this news. I just don’t believe that it’s my responsibility to make the person I’m talking to feel more comfortable about the fact that my dad died.
Mae says that it’s my ‘heinous bitch’ move.
It happens before I even realise that it’s happening.
Emmett wraps his arms around me, and at first, I’m struck by how much bigger his arms feel.
I thought that at eighteen, Emmett was a man, but I see now that he wasn’t, not properly.
Neither of us was an adult then. I think that, really, I should be pushing him away.
It’s not conducive to living a nice, neutral life, being on the receiving end of hugs like this, where the colour is becoming dialled up.
Hugs that are warm, tender and firm all at the same time.
But it’s like my body refuses to stage any sort of resistance.
Instead, I’m practically dissolving into the hug, letting Emmett take all of my weight.
I’m a rag doll in his arms, and my bones are melting. I’m hanging on for dear life here.
‘I’m fine, honestly, it was ten years ago.
’ I pull back from Emmett as a tear escapes from behind my sunglasses.
My dad wasn’t really any sort of great man.
He’s not in any of the history books. But I worry that no one thinks about him, that one day, there’ll be no one to remember that he ever existed.
‘He got the cottage in the divorce. Everyone wondered why he wanted it so bad, seeing as it meant living next door to Clive and Mum initially. But he fought for it. He knew he was dying, you see. Before anyone else understood what was happening. He left the cottage to Mae and me.’
‘Shit, Luna. He was way too young. That summer… I didn’t know.’
‘I know. It’s okay. Death doesn’t know to wait for old age.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ We’re still standing really close together. ‘I’m glad he had you and Mae at the end. People who are dying are even more in need of love than those who aren’t.’
He must mean that this is something he’s seen in his work as a doctor. It’s impossible that he’d be talking to me, though that’s how it feels. Anyway, I’m not sure that I agree. Part of me thinks it’s a waste, loving someone when there’s no hope of a future. It just makes everything worse.
‘Anyway, it was a volatile situation – Mae and me living next door to Mum and Eyebrow Clive. They cruised a lot and then moved away. We hardly see them now.’
‘She called just now though.’
‘Because I never go on random trips. I hardly ever leave home.’
We aren’t far from the dock now.
‘Why is that?’
I shrug. ‘I just like it there. I’m happy, or content at least. I don’t need loads of excitement in my life.’