Page 104 of The Edge of Always

Chapter Twenty-Five

THEN

Luna was 17

Emmett was 18

Driving up the A1 for the final time felt to Luna like crossing some great gulf. Not so much a bridge between childhood and adulthood, but more like an abyss.

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?’