Chapter Twenty-Five
THEN
At the end of summer, she and Emmett would be going to university, just not the same one since Luna didn’t get into their first choice.
Distance shouldn’t have been a problem for them.
They were used to distance. But it seemed to Luna an indication that things were going wrong.
First Earl and the lie, and now this. When her brain wouldn’t let her rest, when not even drawing worked to calm her mind, she imagined how it would go down, what he would say when it ended.
It was like she was torturing herself. She wondered how normal this was.
Luna had convinced her mum and dad to let them all go to the cottage at Christmas and they’d had Christmas with Emmett and Tanya.
Eyebrow Clive had popped round, completely pissed, and Earl had been there too.
He didn’t look any worse than he had done last summer, so that was something in Luna’s mind.
Mae nudged Luna with her knee.
‘Ready for the best summer ever?’ she asked.
Luna laughed. It felt impossible to think that this summer could be the best summer ever.
The final summer ever, maybe. Whatever happened, Luna knew that the summers in the cottage were the times when she’d grown up.
She’d been shaped by her time up here with Mae, Earl and Emmett, buffeted by the wind and the sand.
‘We’re here, girls,’ their mum said from the front seat.
Luna tried to push her worries away, stomp them down, and hide them in a cupboard somewhere because there was Emmett, waiting on the step as always.
All those years Luna wanted to go to him, and now she could.
He wrapped her in his arms, and she breathed him in deeply.
‘Not here, Luna, it’s unseemly.’ Her mum brushed past them.
‘God yeah, you two make me sick. Hi big bro.’ Mae punched Emmett on the top of his arm.
‘You gave me a dead arm!’
‘That’s what I was trying to do.’
‘Fuck Mae,’ he muttered. ‘You look…’
He trailed off. Luna knew what he meant. Mae was gorgeous. She just sort of grew into all her features overnight. People stopped to look at her, that’s how stunning she was.
‘It’s totally unfair, right,’ Luna complained, when really, she loved that Mae had turned out so beautiful. It flew in the face of everything their mum warned her about. Plus, she let Luna draw her all of the time.
‘You’re both beautiful.’ Emmett kissed her.
‘Not here – Mum will have a seizure. I’ll bring your stuff in, Luna. Come back and save me later.’
Luna hugged her sister. She was hugging her more and more these days. The thought of leaving her at the end of summer made Luna want to grab hold of her and not let go.
‘Yes, yes. I’m truly amazing. Now go – escape before World War Three breaks out.’
They could hear their mum and dad arguing in the kitchen.
‘Come on,’ Luna said, holding on extra tight where their hands were linked. ‘Is Earl in the studio?’ she asked, trying to keep her tone light.
Emmett shook his head. ‘He’s had that chest infection again. He’s just resting in the caravan. Is your dad still poorly?’
The knot of worry that Luna seemed to carry around with her at all times grew tighter.
‘Yeah. I think it’s the stress of arguing with Mum the whole time. Mae says that as soon as she’s eighteen, they’ll split up. She thinks they’re staying together for me and her at this point.’
‘That’s crap.’
‘Yep.’
‘How’s your mum?’
Emmett shrugged. ‘Okay, mostly. She’s going to stay with her sister for a couple of weeks, later in summer.’
‘That’s cool. We can have sleepovers. I’ll paint your nails and curl your hair.’ Luna laughed to cover the awkwardness of talking about sex without talking about sex.
‘My hair is already curly.’
They were kissing then, pushed up against the wall of the gardens in the centre of the village. Luna felt the scratch of the rough brick against her back.
‘We don’t have to do anything,’ Emmett said.
‘I want to,’ Luna rushed out, and they kissed some more as a low-burning heat worked its way up her spine. ‘I really want to,’ she told him, pressing her forehead against his.
They spent some more time scandalising the local tourists before walking finally to The Edge. Luna felt that the caravan park looked more run-down this year, as if Earl’s health was tethered to it somehow. And if The Edge looked decrepit, so too did Earl.
‘Little Luna,’ he smiled. He was sitting outside on a reclining deck chair, a blanket over his legs. Zadie and Ahmed had taken up positions on either side of him. Ahmed closed a poetry book.
‘Hi guys.’ Luna tried to smile, zeroing in on Earl. He looked sick, really sick, so much worse than he did at Christmas.
‘Thank fuck you’re here,’ Zadie said, standing up and stretching. ‘Maybe this one will cheer up a bit now.’ She nodded her head towards Emmett. ‘Is Mae at the cottage? I think I’ll go and call for her.’
‘Yeah, she’s there. Go save her.’ Zadie saluted and sauntered off, sucking on a red lolly that had stained her lips extra pink.
‘What a tragedy.’ Ahmed looked after her. ‘Did you know that Zadie was a lesbian, Luna?’ he asked.
‘Yes, and I don’t really think it’s a tragedy, Ahmed.’
Not in the same way that Earl dying is, Luna thought, but didn’t say.
‘No, I suppose not. One day, I’ll find someone else, I’m sure.’ Ahmed stood up too, ready to begin that search right now. ‘I’ll leave you guys to catch up. Nice to have you back, Luna.’
Then it was just the three of them.
‘How’re you feeling, Earl?’ Luna asked, sitting down in the space that Ahmed had just left.
‘Much better now, little Luna, don’t you fret. I’ll be back on my feet soon.’
‘It’s really knocked him, but we’ve turned a corner now, haven’t we, Earl?
’ Emmett was chipper. He fussed around Earl, tucking his blanket in, and Luna thought that maybe it was only because she knew what she did that it seemed completely obvious to her that they were dealing with more than a chest infection.
Earl was so thin. His eyes were bright, but they were the only part of him that Luna recognised.
‘Yes, almost better now.’ Earl caught her eye and smiled sadly. ‘But enough about me. Tell me about you, Luna. You will carry on drawing, at law school? I should be very sad if you stopped. You must promise me?’
‘I promise.’
The afternoon stretched into evening, and it was comfortingly familiar, being together here, in the place where Luna had grown up. She sketched Earl in his chair, with Emmett next to him and at the end of the night, she gave Earl the drawing.
‘I will treasure this, Luna.’ He folded it and held it to his chest, and Luna felt that her heart might break. ‘You have a gift.’
Emmett smiled and kissed Luna on the forehead. Luna had never known him to be so persistently upbeat.
When Emmett left, with money from Earl to get them fish and chips, which Earl wouldn’t eat, Luna tried again to speak to him about Emmett.
‘I’m really worried about him,’ she said.
‘I am making some preparations,’ he paused, ‘for after. This brings me peace. It is my choice, to protect him from this, and there is still some time, Luna. It will be better for him not to see the end. He has seen too much death already.’
‘I worry about you both,’ she answered.
‘Do not worry about me, Luna. I am painting still; I have you and Emmett around me. And the others. I find that I am quite content. This is, as you say, the natural way of things. Only art lives forever.’
No one ever told Luna that growing up felt like sitting on the edge of this cliff, looking out at a future as uncertain as the seas. But for now, in this moment, they were here. And maybe that had to be enough.
‘Luna, Mae, we need to speak to you both.’
Luna would have had a bad feeling about this, but her life was already so full of bad feelings, she didn’t have space for more.
Her parents were at the cottage dining table. Their constant arguments had really taken their toll on her dad this year; he’d never really got over last year’s virus. Now, his ginger hair was grey and wiry at the sides.
‘What’s up?’ Even Mae seemed to realise that something serious was about to happen as she and Luna slid onto the other two chairs at the little round table.
Her dad twisted his hands together. Her mum sat up straight and said, ‘Well, I may as well just come out and say it. Your dad and I are getting a divorce.’
The word hung in the weak morning light.
Possibly, Luna should be upset. Possibly, she should feel something negative about this.
But all she felt was relief. Sheer relief.
Her parents’ unhappy marriage had loomed large across her childhood.
Every fun event punctuated by their sniping at each other, every happy day finite.
‘Okay,’ Mae said.
‘Okay?’ her Mum repeated back.
‘I mean, you guys haven’t exactly been a picture of everlasting love all these years. We thought you’d do it years ago.’
Luna’s dad began to cry, silent tears that made Luna feel something about this. It was pity. For everything they’d all been through over the years. Not together though, never together.
‘We may need to sell the cottage,’ their Mum said, and that one really did hurt.
The three of them, their dad, Luna and Mae, all began to speak at the same time. Protesting.
‘We agreed not to decide anything until we’ve spoken to solicitors, Jennie. There might be a way for me to keep it.’
‘You can’t sell it,’ Mae argued. Luna didn’t say anything. She knew that it was all too perfect. She was learning that she couldn’t have the things that she wanted.
‘Michael, you barely spend any time here, why do you want it?’
They began to argue again, but the anger in Luna’s mind drowned them out, a cacophony of negativity that made it impossible to think of anything other than how it felt as if everything was ending. And there was nothing that Luna could do to stop it.