The summer holidays let him escape the misery of school for six long weeks. Days opened their wings like butterflies, everything a dazzle of colour and light: spending afternoons with Ben, his friend from the village, poking about in the woods with sticks, building dens and coming home for tea, Mattie and Elle grinning at him from the other side of the table. His father worked up in town during the week, so it was just his mother and sisters at home, the Great Danes slobbering and farting.
Sundays, they had a family pew right at the front of St Mary the Virgin church. He sat with his sisters on a hard bench, his collar rubbing his neck and his shoes laced tight. While the priest droned on from the pulpit, Sam pinched his wrist in an effort not to daydream. Being at boarding school had taught him about power, about the body language of those who had it, and those who didn’t. When their family climbed into the Daimler to go home, the priest raised his hand in a special blessing, and the people in the churchyard dipped their heads as the long black car passed by; all except Ben, who stuck out his tongue.
During lunch, slices of roast beef eaten at a white tablecloth, his father tested him on the contents of the sermon. If Sam got an answer wrong, his father rapped his knuckles with a knife. ‘I’m not spending a fortune on your education for you to be a slacker and a fool,’ he said. ‘An Englishman is a leader.’ The dogs, waiting hopefully on the floor, whimpered. Dropping slivers of bloody gristle into their jaws, his father kept on with his own sermon: ‘A decent man leads a life to be proud of.’
That child – the one in Sam’s memories – is growing fainter, disappearing like a figure seen in brilliant sunshine, edges blurring until he’s swallowed by the light. But his father’s voice will not shut up. Sam can’t waste any more time thinking about him. He only wants to fill his mind with her – Cat – with what they did last night, with the weighted substance of her bones, the flawed beauty of her golden skin, the mole on her right buttock, the crease above her lip when she smiled her gap-toothed smile. He hasn’t felt that connected to another human being since … He runs through the relationships he’s had, and realises that he’s never felt it, not with anyone else. Not even with Lucinda, not even at the beginning, in Oxford.
They were in the same production of Romeo and Juliet at university. He was playing Mercutio; she was producing the show. She was frighteningly efficient even then, all five foot nothing of her. Everyone was in awe. He was flattered at first, when she showed interest in him. Once they started going out, he recognised how her need for perfection hid her fear of not being taken seriously. But when she let her guard down, she could be funny and sweet. He liked being the only one who knew the real Lucinda. Nobody else got close; she was too good at keeping her guard up.
Her face floats before him now, looking at him; her mouth, bright in her trademark Chanel scarlet, turns down, disappointed again. It’s an expression he’s come to know well. When did they become different people? And why didn’t they understand before? It’s been obvious for ages that they’d be better off apart. He feels bad about her, about the timing of things, but he can’t regret meeting Cat. He still hasn’t plucked up the courage to explain about Lucinda, and the longer he leaves it, the more impossible it feels. He’s afraid of ruining the time they have left together.
He counts the days on his fingers, and knows there are not enough.
Levi and the Dutch giants leave for home, poorer for their nights at the casino, but implacably cheerful. Levi clasps Sam’s hand. ‘So, you never got to New Orleans, buddy?’ he says. ‘I heard you singing the other afternoon. That was your own song, right?’ He gives Sam a keen look. ‘I think you’ve fallen for someone?’
‘I have.’ Sam grins.
Levi winks. ‘Good luck to you, man. Come and see me in Friesland some day.’ He turns at the door. ‘By the way, I liked your music.’ He nods, suddenly serious. ‘Yeah, man. Very cool.’
Sam sings with the band every night, with Cat watching from behind the backstage curtain. They return to the funeral parlour to have sex on those floor tiles again, and once on top of the mahogany desk, scattering leaflets, knocking into a vase of lilies so that pollen flies everywhere, making him sneeze. When she’s not working, they walk the watery edges of the city, the beaches and inlets. They sit on her favourite bench, gazing out at the ocean and talking, talking; they have a picnic at Absecon Bay, watching the fishermen catch bluefish, the arc of a bridge spanning the width of river in an elegant hooped line. He comes to appreciate the old painted clapboard houses and wide avenues of the wealthier areas, and to love the tawdry reality of the poorer ones with their laundromats, plus-size shops and barber salons with Lowest Prices in South Jersey plastered across nearly every window.
When Cat is at work, he’s got into the habit of sitting on his bunk with his guitar, composing songs. Every one of them inspired by her. He thinks of her face while his fingers move across the fretboard, how her features change depending on the time of day or her mood, so that sometimes her face is gentle, as he imagines a nun might look, and other times she seems lit from inside by a burning light, so radiantly, fiercely beautiful that it hurts him. He loves her crazy dress sense – jumbling colours like she’s raided a dressing-up box – the fact that she’s not afraid to be different. He loves that she’s got a childish sense of humour, that when she laughs, she snorts. He loves that she finds joy in ordinary things. Then there’s her unwavering moral compass – admittedly daunting, but in the end, central to who she is. He’s never written love songs before, never felt the need. But these songs are clamouring for his attention, rising up in him almost ready-made. He doesn’t share them with her, in case she finds them soppy, and because they’re not good enough. Not yet. Not for her.