23

I don’t know how long it was before I stumbled into the kitchen. Our round table was empty, of course.

Of course. Those were the words I heard again and again. I thought of Sofi touching his lips with her Vaseline, and the way Pip would lean, close, into her to see what she was cooking.

I went to look for them in Pip’s bedroom. No one, just blue walls and books for a boy much younger. I was about to leave when I saw my orange Hemingway on his desk. I suddenly felt that he couldn’t have everything, and went to take it back.

Underneath it, exactly the same size, was his leather notebook. I knew I shouldn’t, and that I would. I opened it on the first page and saw writing: spider small, leaning backwards, the nib of the pen never thin enough. I skimmed the lines and saw a time before us; the mention of a jumper, winter. I skipped forward. I looked for Sofi. All I wanted was to find Sofi.

I turned, until I saw, darker than the writing, taking up a whole page, across the lines, a drawing of a girl. Sofi? I thought. But it wasn’t her.

It must have been Esmé when she was younger; dark hair, almond eyes, a sadness that came off the page. She was even more beautiful when she was young; I wondered what she had to be so sad about.

And then I realized that the girl was me.

They were my eyes and my lips. My sadness. It must have been from the start of summer, because Pip had put me in the study. I had my hair tied back. I looked so worried; how had he done that in biro? But the curtains: he’d drawn them open. I ran my finger over the page, felt how his pen had changed the paper.

It was mostly writing, but there were one or two other sketches. One of three backs, a boy-sized one in the middle, sitting on the harbour wall. One of the Coupée, imagined from above. One of me, lying down – thin, too thin maybe, light little lines for my ribs – on our flint rock on Little Sark.

It was only on the very last page that I found Sofi. But it was Sofi and me. Together, heads touching. He’d drawn us in our wicker crowns, except he had put flowers in mine.

Together, touching. It had been us, and now it was them.

I cycled back to Bonita’s alone, and there was no moon. Somehow my body remembered when to turn left and right, and that I had to keep moving my legs to go forward. All of me felt heavy, wet wool on a coat hanger. I got back to Bonita’s and took a handful of her nuts for the birds, because that’s what Sofi would have done.

I lay on my bed and held the stupid nuts in my hand and I wanted to cry but nothing would come out. I kept on looking at my phone, locking and unlocking it to see if anything changed. I didn’t have Sofi’s number, because I’d never needed it. We’d been together the whole summer. Still, I wrote texts I couldn’t send. And what I said changed. I looked at her empty bed, and thought of another bed somewhere that would be full. Pip and Sofi, together. Behind my eyes and nose, it burned sharp and black.