Page 93 of The Edge of Always

Chapter Twenty-One

Earl didn’t come back to The Edge that day.

Or the next.

The five of them, Luna, Emmett, Mae, Zadie and Ahmed, kept a sort of vigil by his caravan. Luna had picked her fingernails down to nothing, and Emmett’s hair was sticking up at all angles. She didn’t reckon that any of them were sleeping, but Luna was certain that he wasn’t. He just paced and paced, full of coiled-up energy. In one of his darker moods.

Tanya emerged from her caravan one morning with a black eye and a split lip, her first in several months, and Luna thought that without Earl, they were falling to pieces.

‘I’m going to see if he’s back,’ Luna told Mae first thing a couple of days later.

‘I’ll come.’ She threw herself out of bed. She hadn’t slept. Since the day on Holy Island, she had been euphoric that Emmett liked her liked her, finally, but also terrified that it would all go wrong.

Mae had responded to the news that Emmett and Luna had kissed with ‘about fucking time’. She’d been calling Emmett her brother-in-law ever since.

‘We’re going to check on Earl,’ they told their mum in the kitchen. She was staring with disdain at their dad’s models.

‘I don’t know, girls. It just feels like you’re spending a lot of time down there. It can’t be good for you. It’s not right, the things that happen there.’

‘It’s because Luna just can’t stop shagging Emmett,’ Mae said without missing a beat. ‘There’ll be babies all over the place if we don’t get her on the pill stat.’

Her mum went puce.

‘She’s winding you up, obviously,’ Luna added. ‘Though I don’t know why she’d do that.’ She looked pointedly at Mae.

‘The reaction is just priceless.’ Mae shrugged.

‘I don’t know why you bait her, what if she hadn’t let us come?’ Luna muttered to Mae as they walked towards The Edge. ‘Then I wouldn’t have seen Earl or Emmett today.’ They were all frayed around the edges. Luna didn’t feel like she had much energy for Mae and her ways.

‘Please. Have you seen how much time she’s been spending with Eyebrow Clive this week? She doesn’t care where we go so long as we’re not bothering her.’

‘True. Shit, do you think she’ll have an affair?’

Mae raised one eyebrow. ‘With Eyebrow Clive? I doubt it. She just wants to make Dad jealous so that he wants her again.’

‘Grim.’

‘I know. But it’s the truth. That’s how marriage works.’

They reached the gates of The Edge. It was slightly overcast for a change; Luna pulled her jumper over the ends of her hands.

Emmett was sitting outside his caravan, alone. He stood up when he saw them and Luna thought that however worried she was about Earl, Emmett felt it ten times as much.

‘Hi,’ he smiled, dark and weary until he was kissing her good morning. A sad and desperate kiss and Luna wanted it to take away all of his hurt.

‘It’s early, people, let’s keep it clean. What’s the news on the big man bro-in-law?’ Mae asked him.

Emmett’s sad smile brightened somewhat.

‘He’s coming home today,’ Emmett whispered. ‘Sorry, Mum had a bad night but yeah, Fred, you know with the horse?’

They nodded. They did know Fred with the horse; Earl sometimes walked his dog. ‘He’s going to pick him up later. Not on the horse obviously.’

Relief made Luna feel almost light-headed. Maybe everything would be okay.

‘That’s great,’ she said, kissing Emmett back, hard, pouring everything she had to give into it. ‘I knew he’d be fine.’

‘Course he will.’ Emmett smiled properly, finally, into her lips.