Page 94 of The Edge of Always

‘Yeah.’ Mae smacked both of them on the back. ‘He’ll outlive us all, Earl. I’m always right about these sorts of things.’

It took some time for Fred with the horse to get Earl back to his caravan. They waited there all day, joined by the others, until eventually, Earl was home.

Luna wasn’t sure how she expected Earl to look. Not really. She’d never been around someone who was sick, but she just assumed that Earl would be wearing his usual shirt and hat. The fact that he was in pyjamas and slippers made it very hard not to confront the fact that Earl looked… well, he looked like an old man.

‘He is an old man,’ Mae told Luna when she’d asked her if she was worried later that night. ‘He’s in his eighties.’

Mae was right. Even if no one seemed to know for sure how old Earl was, he’d been an old man the whole time Luna and her family had been coming to the cottage. It came as something of a shock to Luna, the reality that while she had been ageing over these summers at The Edge, so too had the people around her. And that included Earl.

Once he was home from hospital, Earl became the centre of all their plans that summer, as if through collective will alone, they could get him well again. Ahmed took out several books from the local library, ones that he thought Earl would like, and stayed up late reading to him every night. Luna heard Zadie mutter that it really was a pity she didn’t fancy boys.

Zadie and Mae took over the baking, conjuring up ever more elaborate treats to tempt Earl, who seemed to have left his appetite at the hospital.

The only person who didn’t seem worried about the fact that Earl looked to be getting more, not less, poorly, was Emmett.

Luna had been worried that Earl being sick would force Emmett to sink even deeper into his darkness. The sort where he spent a lot of time looking out to sea and asking what the point of it all was. But instead, Emmett had responded with such forced optimism that that in itself had become a cause for concern for Luna.

They were sitting tucked in against the edge of the cliff, having left the others with Earl. Emmett’s hand was in Luna’s hair. She was gripping the front of his T-shirt, doing her best to anchor them in this moment.

Between her parents and Earl, they didn’t get a lot of privacy, so there’d been no time at all, really, to play out the various scenarios that kept running on a loop through her head, the worries about Earl and Emmett battling for dominance. Like right now, Luna wanted to, she didn’t know, touch Emmett all over, but she was so worried that he didn’t seem to realise how unwell Earl was. She made herself break the kiss, but it took a few seconds of breathing deeply before she was ready to talk.

‘Do you think Earl’s getting better?’ she asked him, tiptoeing into the conversation. She wasn’t able to help kissing down the side of his neck.

‘Yeah, absolutely, he is.’ Emmett tilted his head back, and Luna kissed a path across his Adam’s apple.

‘It’s just…’ She pulled away again. Emmett’s cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were glassy. ‘He didn’t eat any of those muffins Mae made; you know cherries are his favourite.’

Emmett frowned at that, only for a second, before he schooled his features into a neutral smile again. ‘Maybe he just wasn’t hungry. It’s normal after you’ve had a chest infection to lose your appetite a bit. Don’t worry, Luna.’

He reached for her again and Luna went. She wanted so badly to believe him.

‘You’re sure?’ she asked.

This time, Emmett had no trouble summoning a bright smile. ‘Absolutely, Earl will be back to his old self in a couple of days, you’ll see.’

Earl wasn’t back to himself in a couple of days. And Fred with the horse had to take him back to hospital more than once. Luna was no expert, but she was fairly certain that Earl had more than a chest infection.

She wondered, on an evening in the dark, if this was the price she had to pay for being happy with Emmett. As if there was some cosmic, karmic force in the universe that said that in order to have so much happiness, pain had to come from elsewhere. There was Earl and there was her mum and dad. Mae had seen their mum sneaking into Eyebrow Clive’s house one day when their dad was on a long trip to the puffins. Luna felt sure that their dad knew too. Like Earl, he seemed grey and heavy. Her dad had always been a big bear of a man, and now to Luna he looked to be shrinking.

So she should feel guilty if her happiness was causing all of this pain. The uncertainty pushed her closer to Emmett. He was the only thing she was sure of, and she wanted to grab hold of him tight. She worried that she wouldn’t survive if it ever ended.

‘We should stop?’ he said.

‘What, no way, carry on.’

Emmett laughed. They were on his bed, and he was laid on top of Luna – the very last thing she wanted to do was stop.

‘Your mum might come home any second. Plus, we told the others we’d be back at six. It’s seven already.’

He meant from Earl-watch. They had a rota and everything, though Earl (and Emmett) maintained that they didn’t need one.

‘Alright fine.’ She sat up and straightened her clothes as Emmett rolled off her.

They walked, hand in hand, towards The Edge, and Luna thought, again, how easy life would be if she could just stay. Leaving felt like abandoning Earl and Emmett more than ever this year, and she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to stay and keep them all happy and safe.

‘I’m just going to go and water Miss Compton’s plants,’ Emmett said. Earl being sick had made them all realise just how much he was doing for the other people who lived at The Edge. Miss Compton had gone to visit her son, and apparently, Earl always watered her plants when she was gone, so now they had taken over, along with a whole host of other stuff that Luna had no idea that Earl was doing.

‘Okay.’ She kissed him. ‘I’ll see you at Earl’s.’