Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
‘What are they?’ she asked. ‘Do you know? What does it mean? Are they words?’
Robert moved closer again, his bulk cutting out the brisk wind as he leaned over her shoulder.
‘Cassie wanted to believe that they’re names.’
‘Names?’
He reached out, touching his fingers to where Anna’s had been only a second before. ‘When I was fifteen – actually, the week before that first date – I carved my name next to hers on the apple tree in my parents’ garden,’ he said. ‘With a heart in between.’
Anna realized what he meant. ‘She thought this might have been two lovers, doing the same?’
‘The thought always made me sad, to be honest.’
‘Sad? Why?’
He dropped his hand and stuck it into his pocket. ‘Because they couldn’t possibly have known,’ he said quietly. ‘They couldn’t possibly have known, when they were carving it, that this was all that would survive of them. That this is all they would leave behind.’
The wind was rising, whistling around them as it buffeted against the cliff, which was huge and eternal, made of age itself and carrying with it the only aspect of humanity that is as ageless, the only indelible thing that cannot be corrupted by time or infirmity.
‘But they have survived,’ Anna said. ‘Here they are, in the stone, whoever they were. They were here, together. They were loved and they loved in turn. What else does survive of us, whoever we are and whatever we leave, in the end?’
Robert didn’t look at her, even when she turned her head, even though he was close enough that the wind had spread her hair across his shoulder. She saw him swallow, instead, and take a breath as if suddenly the wind had stolen his air.
‘Cassie said the same thing,’ he told her. ‘She loved this place so much. I should have carved our names up there, beside these. I should have made us both a part of this cliff. Maybe then—’
Robert stopped himself and in the next moment had moved away. Anna continued looking at the rock, at the short series of marks that seemed so inconsequential but had come to mean so much.
‘Well, would you look at that,’ Robert said behind her a moment later. ‘The dolphins have come to see you.’
Anna turned and looked out over the water. There, in the depths beyond Cassie’s Joy, was a pod of dolphins, sleek grey commas leaping in curving splashes up, and up, and up again.