Page 57 of The Edge of Always

‘I’ve recently amended the policy to include ex-boyfriends.’

He laughs at that, and the tension passes.

‘So will we take a trip on the Seine, since Earl painted it?’ I ask.

‘I think we should.’

Emmett slides his phone away and instead pulls out a notebook and pencil out of the back pocket of his jeans. The whole carrying-a-notebook thing is seriously hot. He checks his list of paintings as we walk.

The Weight of Light – The Seine

Longing for Human Connection LG.

That’s the one of Sebastian on the carousel horse. I don’t know where it might be, but LG must mean something to Emmett.

Montmartre in Motion.

That’s easy, we know where that is.

The Juxtaposition of Life and Death – PL cemetery.

And finally, the enigmatic blue door.

The Rubicon ????

My heart sinks. It’s clear that Emmett doesn’t have any clue where the blue door in Earl’s second from last painting might be. There are other smaller paintings between the main exhibition pieces, sketches too, some half finished. I recognise Tanya in one or two, or else parts of Northumberland, like Holy Island, the dunes we often went to. But the main ones, they’re all Sebastian. Sebastian was undoubtedly Earl’s muse, until he wasn’t.

Frankly it seems ridiculous that Emmett thinks we can get any sort of answer from visiting these places – we don’t even know where all of these places are. How do you discover an answer when you don’t even know what the question is? And yet it still feels right to be embarking on our Earl-based pilgrimage of grief and longing. The exact sort of thing I should be doing right now, in the final furlong.

My legs are starting to ache from all the standing up. I’ll need to go and rest soon. We don’t look at The Edge of Always, since the closer I get to it, the more I notice people starting to look at me. I tell Emmett I need to sit down, and he doesn’t question why. Instead, he takes me to the café here at MAM where I sip on a coffee, feeling quite unwell.

‘Is it okay?’ Emmett asks.

I nod my head and force myself to take a drink.

He doesn’t say anything, and when we’re done, we make our way back outside. I already feel better from the warmth of the autumn sun.

‘What do we do now?’ I ask Emmett.

He’s put his sunglasses back on, and would it be strange if I asked him to warn me before he did that? It’s inhumane, looking at him in those sunglasses. He tilts them down, the way that Mae used to do, to look at me.

‘It’s river cruise time.’

We walk along the path on the banks of the Seine, a slow pace which, let’s be honest here, is necessitated by me, and clamber aboard a vast boat with low sides and several vending machines.

I feel this isn’t the same as the boat Earl and Sebastian probably went on, but needs must – a boat is a boat.

Emmett, of course, looks like he was born to live on a fucking river cruise. We’re standing up top, by the front of the boat as it skims the water – the Eiffel Tower on one side, Notre Dame in the distance on the other. The wind from the cruise is making me all ruffled, but I love it. It’s familiar and comforting, the wind. Emmett points out parts of Paris as we glide past them, and I find it incredibly sexy, how much he knows, how erotic it feels to have him stand behind me like this. I allow myself to think, just for a millisecond, how it might be if things were different. If everything were different. It hurts too much to think about a future where Emmett, in some indefinable capacity, is back in my life. Or it would hurt, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m not going there.

My phone rings, and I take it as a welcome reprieve until I see that it’s Mum.

Mum rarely calls unexpectedly. We normally talk at 7pm on a Sunday night, a ritual that we endure for reasons that I can’t quite recall.

‘Sorry, it’s Mum,’ I tell Emmett, half relieved to have a reason to move away.

‘Mum,’ I have to half shout into my phone to drown out the water smashing against the sides of the boat, even at this sedate pace.

‘Luna, it’s your mother.’