Chapter Twenty-One #2
Earl’s caravan was full of artwork, stacked against cupboards and piled on the little table, and Luna was furious. It felt like her blood was lava. She was furious and she didn’t even know what or who she was furious with.
Luna couldn’t stop the tears, once they’d started, and Earl knew that she’d seen the leaflet. He tapped the sofa next to him and Luna went, stupidly crying big stupid tears, even though people survived cancer all the time? Didn’t they?
‘The leaflet did not cover this,’ Earl told her, pulling it back out from behind the cushion.
‘Emmett will be here soon,’ she told him. She didn’t know exactly why she said this. Except that already she wanted to protect Emmett from this. Earl nodded and tucked the leaflet away again.
‘It will not be so quick, little Luna. This is what the doctors say. Once Emmett has left, they think.’
‘You have to tell him,’ she said, still unable to believe that this was happening. How could this be happening?
‘Not yet. After his exams. Once he has gone.’
It seemed to Luna that some of the air had left the caravan. Why was it so difficult to breathe?
‘But that’s next year!’ she said, half gasping. ‘You can’t keep this a secret until next year. It’ll be obvious.’
Earl chuckled. ‘People believe what they want to believe, little Luna. And Emmett wants me to be well. I will have no big treatment, just enough to keep it at bay for now.’
For now. Luna felt sick.
‘But why?’ She wasn’t sure exactly what she was asking. Why not tell Emmett? Why is this happening? Why can’t things just be good and stay good?
Earl answered the first of her questions.
‘Emmett has a chance to get out of this place, Luna. To be free of his childhood. If he is ever to make his way back here, he must be allowed to take that chance and go. How could I live with myself if I were the person who stopped him, hmm? No, I think we must protect him from this.’
Luna wanted to tell Earl that nothing mattered, it didn’t matter, that Emmett should know. But she also agreed, this would destroy Emmett. What if it did rob him of his only chance to get away?
‘How… how can we manage?’
‘We will live in this moment, the same as we always do, Luna. This is the way of things, is it not?’
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. It shouldn’t be the way of things.
‘Do not tell him, Luna. I am asking you this one thing, yes?’
There was no time to reply because the caravan door was opening and Emmett was bundling through it. ‘Hi Earl… Luna, what’s wrong?’ he asked, stopping dead in the little caravan kitchen.
‘I, er… oh I was just thinking that…’ Luna floundered but she had nothing. Nothing other than the fact that Earl was sick. The fact that he was dying.
‘Luna and I were talking about The Arnoflini Portrait and how while there are many secrets in it, it is still a beautiful piece.’
Luna had no idea what The Arnoflini Portrait was, but there and then she made the decision to do what Earl had asked and save Emmett this heartache for as long as she could.
Maybe she was doing it for herself, too, in some way.
So, she said, ‘It’s just really emotional.
’ This wasn’t the first time that Luna had lied to Emmett.
She’d lied about her feelings for so long.
And she’d thought that nothing, nothing could hurt more than those lies.
She knew now though that she was wrong. This was the lie that hurt the most.
Earl nodded, satisfied, but Emmett said, ‘Okay,’ really slowly, and then laughed in a way that said, ‘Artists.’
They spent the rest of the evening outside the caravan, towards the cliff edge, looking out at the sea.
Zadie plaited Mae’s hair and Emmett, Earl and Ahmed played cards as the sun set.
Luna kept looking at Earl, half expecting him to just disappear one second, half wondering how it could ever be possible that he just wasn’t there.
Luna had never thought about death. It seemed to her like a foreign country, something far away and distant. She knew that it worried Emmett. He’d seen it more than her. When you had an addict as a parent, it became something of an inevitability.
But now, she was being forced to confront death.
And it struck her as nonsensical. How could it be that a man who had so much love and energy to give, more than maybe anyone else she’d ever meet, could one day not be here.
Where did it go when he goes? All that love and energy? It seemed unfathomable.
She wished that she could stop the passage of time.
Or, better than that, she wished that she could go back to how things were before she knew this awful thing.
She would keep Earl’s secret to protect Emmett.
And she’d keep the secret Mae had told her, about her mum and Eyebrow Clive.
She thought about the secret thoughts she had about herself.
The ones that told her she’d fail. She thought that all of these secrets might well have a way of coming for her.
She knew for certain that she couldn’t outrun them forever.