Page 31 of The Edge of Always

‘Of course, your mum. How is Tanya?’

‘Better,’ he nods. ‘She’s living with her sister,’ he tells me. ‘Down in Exeter. She’s clean.’

‘That’s good. I’m pleased for her.’

Emmett nods. ‘Things were hard back then,’ he says delicately. ‘For both of us.’

I refold my napkin and avoid eye contact.

‘What are you doing up there?’ he asks.

‘Oh, this and that.’ I’m absolutely not divulging that my main income is disability benefit; that would lead to way too many questions. ‘I have a blog on the art of dying. Death art basically, my followers are called Deathers. I’m just super into decay now. I have a dead squirrel in my room at home.’

Emmett coughs to hide his surprise. The last time we spoke, I was headed off to law school.

‘I always hoped that you’d do something with your art. What about law?’

‘I lasted less than a year,’ I shrug, thinking that hopefully this whole thing sounds cooler as a recollection than it was as a reality. My year at law school had been, by any definition of the term, a disaster. I hadn’t made any friends because, apparently, crying the whole time doesn’t make people like you. And then, Dad.

‘You’re doing art – Earl would love that.’

‘No,’ I answer, smoothing the already smooth tablecloth. ‘I’m not doing art. I just talk about it. I haven’t so much as picked up a pencil for years.’ Drawing, another thing that’s consigned to the Time Before.

Emmett doesn’t ask any more questions, so I guess he realises that it’s a touchy subject.

‘And what about you?’ I ask like a person who couldn’t recite his LinkedIn profile by heart.

‘Doctor,’ he tells me.

‘Congratulations,’ I say, surprised to find that I mean it, that I’m proud of him. ‘You did it.’

‘Yeah, it’s weird. I don’t know if I ever really believed that I’d get out of Bamburgh.’

‘See, I always knew that you’d go.’

Memory is nothing if not an unreliable narrator, so I don’t know how true this is. Back then I certainly hoped that he’d stay, that he’d see that part of the world the same way that I did. As an adult, I can see that with everything he endured, his leaving was an inevitability, something as sure as the tides.

He catches my eye. ‘There’s something different about you, Luna. You’re the same person, but different too. I can’t put my finger on it.’

‘Yes well, people grow up. They change. None of us are who we were then. Tell me about the painting. Please.’

Emmett takes a deep breath in and out. I watch his chest expand with rapt attention.

‘I don’t know a huge amount. But I do know it was the last thing he painted. I know for sure because he told me about it.’

I lean forward, just a touch. That half a memory I’d had at the gallery, it’s right there again, just a hair’s breadth out of reach.

‘Really, he told you he was working on it?’

Emmett nods and I won’t lie – I’m a little hurt that Earl told him, not me. Art was always our thing. It was Earl who taught me about art and artists, and Earl who encouraged me to try new things in my own art. Really, it was Earl who opened my eyes to a different way of looking at the world – he made me feel like it was okay to want to make the sort of art I wanted to make; I’ve always been grateful to him for that.

But Emmett lived next door to Earl his whole childhood. It was Emmett whom Earl wanted to protect, when he had the choice.

Our food arrives, and while I’m desperate to know more, I wait while our dishes are presented with a flourish.

‘So, he told you about it?’ I ask again, once we’re alone. ‘The Edge of Always.’

‘He told me he was working on a new piece, one that he thought was his best work, and that he hoped I’d like it. It was, you know, before what happened, happened.’