Page 79 of The Next Chapter

Noah laughs. There’s a moment of silence as we set off walking again, which I of course aim to fill by just continuing to talk.

‘I think I’ve always been interested in, like, where we come from. Do you ever think that a hundred, or even a thousand years ago there might have been someone walking across this very field? And somehow, we’re connected to them, even though they don’t know us, and we don’t know them? Because I think about that a lot.’

Noah looks around as if he’s expecting to see neolithic man stomping across the field, maybe with a spear.

‘I never thought about it like that before, but I will from now on. What do you think our hypothetical historical counterparts were doing here, then?’ he asks.

I look around. The ocean is perfectly still. ‘Maybe fishing,’ I wonder aloud, ‘or coming to relax in the fields and enjoy the view. Maybe they were going wherever we’re going. Someone must have discovered it first. Ooh, I know, are we going to a burial site? I love them.’

My history chat is desperately unsexy. Which is fine, since this is a business outing. But Noah smiles and makes some agreeable sounds. We’re at the cliff edge, looking out over the ocean. There is a path. Hallelujah. However, it’s a steep path with a big ‘danger when wet’ sign in red at the top. Not ideal. It isn’t wet but it is steep. I’m on my bum. Essentially sliding down the cliff top. The crash of the waves on the shore gets louder as we descend, until finally, Noah announces that we’re here.

It’s not a burial site.

It’s a cave.

It’s a… gold cave.

‘Is this cave made out of gold?’ I ask. The rocks around the entrance jut out of the ground, glinting at us.

‘That’s exactly what it is,’ Noah answers. ‘The cave of gold.’

‘It really does feel like we’re discovering it for the first time,’ I tell Noah, stroking a finger down one of the rocks. It’s smooth and cold under my hand.

‘Come on, let’s go take a look. We can’t go inside, but we can explore around the cliff face.’

The entrance to the cave is almost like a door cut into the cliff, the jagged gold rocks around the edges.

‘Oh my god,’ I say, peering inside. It echoes and dances off the walls. ‘I can see why they call it the cave of gold.’

‘It’s the lichen growing on the rocks. In the sun, it looks gold,’ Noah tells me.

I almost can’t believe that this place is real. Just outside the cave a band of sunlight pokes straight down, like the light that might come through a church window. A strip of sunlight so bright it’s hard to look away from. It lands on a particularly gold piece of rock, making it glint and glimmer where it ripples in the light.

I’m weirdly emotional. It’s so beautiful, so unlike anything I’ve seen before.

I don’t want Noah to see how overcome I am, so I look around some more, running my hands over the jagged rocks, tracing what looks just like gold in them.

Noah, I notice out of the corner of my eye, takes his notebook out of his rucksack and leans back against the wall by the entrance to make some notes. It’s like someone conjured up everything that I might possibly find sexy in a person and rolled them into one Noah-shaped package. I really do have a thing for notebooks.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I tell him once I’ve made my way all around the edge. I’m standing just next to a shallow pool of sea water, directly in the beam of light, letting the sun warm me up again. ‘It feels, like, weirdly holy.’

‘Are you religious?’ he asks.

I shake my head. ‘No, but it’s like the history thing. I can imagine other people here. I imagine that they would know that it’s a special place.’

Noah moves towards where I’m standing by the entrance.

‘I like hearing you talk about history.’

Possibly it’s the vaguely ethereal nature of the cave, but it’s like Noah and I could be at any point, any moment in time and it wouldn’t matter. I try to remind myself why I can’t have this thing with Noah. I think that there was a list. Possibly. I can’t remember any of its points.

‘How about you, religious?’ I ask as he looks up, right into the sun. I look at him, so also like looking at the sun.

‘Nah. For a long time, I didn’t even believe in the good of people.’

‘That’s sad,’ I tell him. Even with all the awful stuff that has happened in the past, is still happening all over the world, I’ve never stopped believing in the good of people. If we don’t believe in that, what’s the point in it all?

‘Do you believe in the good of people now?’ I ask.