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Back Afterlove Save as PDF
Chapters (86)
  1. Title Page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. Love
  4. Before
  5. One
  6. ONE
  7. Two
  8. TWO
  9. Three
  10. THREE
  11. Four
  12. FOUR
  13. Five
  14. FIVE
  15. Six
  16. SIX
  17. Seven
  18. SEVEN
  19. Eight
  20. EIGHT
  21. Nine
  22. NINE
  23. Ten
  24. TEN
  25. Eleven
  26. ELEVEN
  27. After
  28. One
  29. ONE
  30. Two
  31. TWO
  32. Three
  33. THREE
  34. Four
  35. FOUR
  36. Five
  37. FIVE
  38. Six
  39. SIX
  40. Seven
  41. SEVEN
  42. Eight
  43. EIGHT
  44. Nine
  45. NINE
  46. Ten
  47. TEN
  48. Eleven
  49. ELEVEN
  50. Twelve
  51. TWELVE
  52. Thirteen
  53. THIRTEEN
  54. Fourteen
  55. FOURTEEN
  56. Fifteen
  57. FIFTEEN
  58. Sixteen
  59. SIXTEEN
  60. Seventeen
  61. SEVENTEEN
  62. Eighteen
  63. EIGHTEEN
  64. Nineteen
  65. NINETEEN
  66. Twenty
  67. TWENTY
  68. Twenty-One
  69. TWENTY-ONE
  70. Twenty-Two
  71. TWENTY-TWO
  72. Twenty-Three
  73. TWENTY-THREE
  74. Twenty-Four
  75. TWENTY-FOUR
  76. Twenty-Five
  77. TWENTY-FIVE
  78. Twenty-Six
  79. TWENTY-SIX
  80. Twenty-Seven
  81. TWENTY-SEVEN
  82. Twenty-Eight
  83. TWENTY-EIGHT
  84. Eleven Months Later
  85. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  86. Copyright

As soon as I get outside again, all I can see is Poppy. She’s sitting on top of one of the picnic benches outside the Komedia with her chin in her hands. When she looks up to find me standing in the doorway of the bookshop, she sits up and she looks so relieved that I almost look away, because what am I going to do?

How am I going tell her?

I have no idea, so I just stand there, taking her in, like I should have before I left her on New Year’s Eve. She really is beautiful. Not oil-painting beautiful or billboard beautiful – the sort of beautiful that makes blokes honk their horns as they drive past – but the sort of beautiful people sing songs about and write books about. The sort of beautiful that keeps you up at night, scared that you’re going to fuck it up because you’re not ready.

I smile and when she smiles back, this loose, clumsy smile, the way you smile for school photos when you’re a kid, she suddenly looks so young that it’s all I can do not to give into it. Fold down on to the pavement and press my cheek to the paving slab and stay there because it’s not fair. How can we be so unlucky? The pair of us dying within weeks of each other. Most people get to live whole lives. Have children and grandchildren. Get to make mistakes and learn from them. Burn bridges and build new ones. Get to live and love until they’ve worn their hearts out then hold the hand of the person they love and think, We made it, before they die in their sleep at ninety.

Why can’t she have that?

Even if it isn’t with me.

I think about what Mr Moreno told us last year, about that guy, the astronomer called Carl Sagan, who said that we’re all made of star stuff. The nitrogen in our DNA. The calcium in our teeth. The iron in our blood. All of it was made billions of years ago in the interiors of collapsing stars.

Mr Moreno says it’s funny because humans have spent years and years studying the universe. We’ve built rockets and pointed them towards the moon. Peered through telescopes, trying to see what fills the space between the stars. But the universe doesn’t have to do that because, according to Carl Sagan, anyway, we – our very existence – is a way for the universe to know itself.