35

That day was, oddly, one of the best of my life. We didn’t talk about who killed Joe and how and why and what I was going to do next about it. We didn’t talk about Troy cracking up and leaving the country. We didn’t talk about the man at the mall, even though I really wanted Joe to take a photo of him. Instead we sat on a rock at the end of the beach and gave names to the seagulls in each of our realities, and threw stones into the sea. We didn’t talk about the past or the future, or compare notes or technologies or music, or anything. Joe didn’t do mad things just because he could. We talked. That was all.

‘Can you see that dog?’ he said. I looked, but there wasn’t one.

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Black Labrador.’

‘Cute!’

‘It’s running up and down the beach. It looks so happy. It’s like …’ He adopted a gruff doggy voice. ‘Hello, beach! I’m looking for sausages. Do you have any sausages, please, beach?’

I joined in, mimicking his dog voice. ‘If I dig I might find some sausages. A big hoard of them buried by pirates.’

‘Pirate sausages are the bestest sausages.’

We basically just talked nonsense for about an hour, and then I stood up.

‘I’m a bit cold,’ I said. ‘I guess you’re not.’

‘Nope. I don’t feel anything.’

I reached out to touch his arm. It didn’t work. I still forgot.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I said. ‘I came prepared.’

I plugged my earbuds in and put my phone back into my pocket, noticing a text from Jack. Sorry if I came on too strong the other day, he said. Yeah, I’d like to be friends. We could go for a coffee sometime.

Jack was lovely, but I tapped out a quick Sure, I’ll let you know when I’m free and muted the phone. I was with Joe. The technology side of things was boring for him now. After the first flash of amazement at the changing role of the phone, there was really no need for him to be astounded by the fact that technology had developed over twenty years. It wasn’t remarkable, or even interesting.

‘Yeah, and I’ll just walk around looking like I’m talking to myself,’ he said. ‘Who cares? It doesn’t matter. These aren’t real people anyway. None of this has actually happened and no one will remember it.’ He shook his head. ‘Bodmin Leo was more eloquent about that. It’s a headfuck, but it’s a headfuck that brought me to you.’

‘It is.’ I took a deep breath and just walked with him, enjoying the magic that had brought us together.

We walked back across the beach and along a few streets, and then right to the edge of town and out into the countryside. We didn’t talk much. It was nice just to be side by side, in the same place at different times. The town was smaller than I’d always thought: it took us less than half an hour to reach the open fields, and then we looked at each other, grinned and ran up a hill.

The sun was shining. Birds were singing. The air smelled like springtime. I felt warmth on my face, felt my blood pumping as I ran. I realized that I hadn’t exercised for ages. It was a good feeling.

‘This is lovely,’ I said, but when I looked at Joe his hair was wet.

‘In a weird way,’ he said with a little laugh, ‘yeah. I guess it is.’

‘Is it raining?’

‘Is it not?’

We sat on the top of the hill, and Joe pulled his hood up while I took my sweatshirt off. It was wonderful up here. The sea glittered green and pale blue below us. The sun shone across it, making a golden path to the horizon. The town was hidden in the valley, and the sky was huge and blue, the grass bright, bright green. It was like being in a child’s picture, a drawing made by Coco. Green grass, blue sky, greeny-blue sea. And Joe, and me. A boy, and a girl, side by side.

‘What does it look like?’ I said.

‘It’s drizzling,’ he said, ‘and the sky’s grey. The sea’s grey. The grass is muddy.’

We laughed at that. Then we just lay back and talked. I told him that Jack Lockett had asked me out again. ‘I said no, of course,’ I said. ‘I mean, politely. I said I’d like to be friends, and he knew what I meant. I only want you, Joe Simpson.’

He smiled at me for a long time when I said that. We talked about the seagulls that were soaring over both of us. We talked about the boats I could see, the walkers who passed him and gave him a worried look as he lay alone on a cliff in the rain. We talked about our childhoods, what we could remember of them.

He called his mum, and this time she answered her phone, and I listened to his side of the conversation, while putting my hand through his.

‘Mum,’ he said. ‘Yeah. No, I’m fine. I just wanted to hear your voice today. I miss you, Mum. I love you. And Dad, and Gus. I love all of you. And the kids Gus will have. The girls. Don’t worry, Mum. You need to be happy, no matter what. I’m glad you’re doing your yoga course. You should go to India.’

When he put his phone in his pocket, though, he was smiling. He lay back and grinned up at the sky. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now I’m ready. As ready as I can be. So, do you want to go to the moon one day?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It would take too much fossil fuel, and I don’t think there’s much of a mood for that. There are so many other things to focus on.’

‘We all thought that in the twenty-first century there’d be a lot more going to the moon.’

‘What do you think it’d be like up there?’

He closed his eyes.

‘Grey,’ he said. ‘Or maybe not? Is that just because we see black-and-white photos? No, probably greyish. Darkish. Amazing. I mean, standing there and looking down at Earth? That would be an incredible thing, wouldn’t it? And the bouncing around. I think it would be brilliant. I’m imagining us living in some kind of lunar module, with enough supplies and water to last us as long as we wanted. Not that I’d need them, I guess. It wouldn’t matter, up there, if we were a few Earth years apart.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, and I wished I could just lean over and kiss him. The feeling swept over me. It was the thing I wanted. The only thing.

‘I wish I could kiss you,’ he said, opening his eyes, reading my mind.

I sighed. ‘Oh God. It’s all I want.’

We looked at one another. I leaned towards him, and he leaned into me. It was the most pointless thing, and the most romantic thing, that had ever happened. I opened my mouth a little. He did too. I shivered as our lips went through each other. We couldn’t touch, but the thrill went up and down my body.

It was the most frustrating, most wonderful, most impossible thing. We stayed like that for ages, and I never wanted it to end.

It was Joe who pulled away. We didn’t speak for a long time. Then I found myself talking, just to break the sudden awkwardness.

‘Do you know where else would be a good place? If we’re going off-planet? Because there’s another one and it’s the one I’d like to move to.’

‘Mars?’

‘Better than Mars. Mars is the god of war. This is peaceful. We should go to the cloud tops of Venus. Mum used to talk about it, and I checked and it’s real. No one could come close to stepping on the surface of Venus because it has runaway warming and all that – though you’d probably be OK, to be fair – but above the clouds it’s perfect for humans. I think we’d have to live in a Zeppelin or something.’

Joe’s ghost fingers stroked my face and I shuddered. ‘I could get on board with that.’

‘My mum would be there.’

‘Cool. I love your mum.’

We mapped out a life above the clouds of Venus. We would live in our Zeppelin, and breathe the air (as this was imaginary it was filled with air that we could both easily breathe; in fact, it filled our lungs and made us sparkle). We would grow our own food.

‘Cloud-strawberries,’ I said. ‘And cloud-ice cream.’

‘Cloud-chocolate,’ he said. ‘Can we have some cloud-burgers? All the things I used to love. Chips from the chip shop, with lots of vinegar. A massive burger with all the trimmings from the fancy burger place.’

‘You can have that,’ I said. ‘Yes. And you’ll be able to taste it and swallow it. And we’ll just float around in the clouds, and it won’t matter who’s alive or what year it is because those things will be nothing.’

He lay back and stretched his arms up. I could see that it had stopped raining, for him.

‘The thing is, Ariel,’ he said, with his eyes closed, ‘that’s just as likely as this. And so, if we really want it to, it might as well happen. We might as well live there.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So let’s do it.’

In the absence of cloud-food I ate my sandwich and crisps and drank my Diet Coke, and Joe had his biscuits and juice, not because he wanted or needed them, but to keep me company. We talked all afternoon. He told me that he’d visited Mum on the way and talked to her and Sasha. I was properly happy for the first time in years.

And then, at the end of it, Joe said he didn’t want me to visit him any more.