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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

I’m wondering if she’s thinking the same thing as she leans in and kisses me on the mouth. It’s so gentle – barely there – like the way she just touched my lips with her fingers, and I’m glad. Glad that she doesn’t grab me and shove her tongue down my throat. She leans back and looks at me again, hands cupping my face, and I wonder if this is how it feels to be certain. To look at someone and know – really know – that they feel for you what you feel for them. That they’re not going to ignore you the next day at school or kiss the first boy that will kiss them back just to prove that it meant nothing. And by it, I mean me, of course. It certainly feels that way when she looks at me and it makes me think about the world and how big it is. How far away everything is. How short my life is. How short hers is supposed to be. Yet we’re both here, at the same time, on this same scrap of earth.

Do you know how impossible that is?

I think about it sometimes, about what would have happened if we hadn’t met that day on the boat. If our class had gone on the following one or hers had gone on the one before or Mr Moreno wasn’t as enthused about the wonders of renewable energy as he was and made us read a book about it instead. It’s not just that Poppy and I would never have met, but that I’d have gone to Donna Niven’s New Year’s Eve party instead, got drunk and kissed someone I shouldn’t have at midnight while Poppy sat on the beach, no doubt kissing someone else, before we went home and fell asleep in our make-up, not knowing what we’d missed.

That we’d missed this.

Us.

Here.

Now.

We sit in silence for a while, letting the stillness settle around us.

Eventually, she turns to me with a small smile. ‘Come on. I have to get out of here. I can’t breathe.’

I watch as she walks over to the wardrobe and opens it, taking out a black coat I’ve never seen and slipping it on before going over to the chest of drawers and pulling the bottom one. She tugs out a yellow tartan scarf that I’ve never seen before, either, wrapping it around her neck, then reaching for some black wool gloves.

She grabs a pair of boots that are on the floor by the bed then stops to glance around the room like she’s looking at it for the last time. She suddenly looks very sad. So sad that I take a step towards her.

‘What’s wrong, Pops? Do you want to wait until your parents get home so you can say goodbye?’