The day is coming. The moon has slid away but there are stars above, around and beneath them still, falling through time and bouncing upwards again on the mirror of the sea. Far away to the east there is a low glow, a promise. The air is unusually calm, the almost-morning wind feathers their faces as they stand on the balcony outside the lantern room, with their backs to the glass and the angel inside. Shoulder to shoulder, hands side by side on the rail, not quite touching, when he speaks.
‘I don’t blame you. I’ve thought about it many times. Of course I have, living here. It would be so easy, look.’
They are somewhere between twenty and thirty feet from the ground, although it feels like more, and below them on this side of the tower is only a precariously narrow ledge, pockmarked and filled in with pools of builder’s gravel to make a way around the building for those who dare, but no more than eight feet wide before it falls away to the rocks. It looks narrower. Much narrower. Four seconds on from there, the outcome would be certain.
‘I’m not trying to tell you what to do.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, okay.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she says.
‘I get that. I’m trying to stay calm, Sarah, doing my best. Will you let me try and say something? I need to get this off my chest. For my own sake. I could have gone over that day, when I let her ashes go. I wanted to. I understand that desire to be with your mum – you can’t know how much. I’m a coward, maybe. It’s a long way down. I have seen the bodies, I know what happens to them. That’s not it, though. Rí didn’t want me to go. She didn’t want that.’
The wind hides Sarah’s face in a wrap of hair.
‘I heard her voice that day. She said no. Don’t do it. Maybe I’m mad. I hear voices. Her voice. No others, just Rí. She talks to me. I don’t know what it is, Sarah, but it sounds like her. She says the things she used to say, and that day she said no. Live. Breathe. Seize the day, bite the head off life – that was one of her favourites – and chew it until the juices run down your chin. Be alive!’
‘Did you talk back?’
‘I do. I told her: “That’s easy to say when you’re dead!”’
Sarah’s hand goes to her mouth to stifle a laugh through her hair. He puts his hand on hers and returns it to the rail. ‘Hold on. It’s okay, I was trying to be funny. You’re different, you know that?’
‘To her? Thanks for that.’
‘No. I mean different to when you came here. You would not have laughed. You would have given me that face.’
‘What face?’
‘This one.’ He tries to do a deadpan stare, and turns down the corners of his mouth with his fingers, but cracks up.
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘No, no. Yes. Maybe. A bit. Sorry. I don’t get much company up here.’
‘I can see why.’
‘You don’t have to go. Did I just say that? Oh God. Sorry.’
‘I do, Gabe. One way or another. Not long now.’ She looks towards the dawn. A crowbar of light is pushing a space between the weight of dark clouds and black sea. ‘Almost time.’
‘For God’s sake, Sarah!’ His voice flies out over the edge, dying into the drop. ‘Look, hang on, I’m sorry, Rí is right. There is too much beauty to see, too much to enjoy, too much life to live; you can’t just throw it away. You have to swallow the bitter and taste the sweet. You have to go on because there is no choice, this is what we have. This is what we do. It’s a privilege, Sarah, a privilege. You’ve made me see that, coming in here where nobody asked you, filling the place up with yourself. I didn’t want you here, but you came anyway and you’re waking me up, making me feel. I don’t want to feel, I want it to stop. I want to sleep, but you won’t let me and Rí won’t let me and you’re both bloody right. This life is a wonderful thing. Look. The sea never stops shifting, shining even in the night; that sun coming up over there won’t be stopped whether I’m here or not, but I want to be here because even when it hurts, so much, the pain is life and life is right. Live every moment. She had it stolen from her. She had no choice, do you see that? No choice. You have. You’re making the wrong one! Come on, Sarah . . . get a grip!’
He’s gone way too far. Sarah recoils, he can see her pained face in the light from the room, and now she is moving towards him with a weird, open smile, and maybe this is it, maybe he can stop her, because Rí would want that, because it would matter. Sarah’s hand is on his neck, she is leaning in close and her lips brush his cheek in a kiss and she whispers something in his ear. He feels the warmth of her breath and the shudder of arousal before he realizes what she has said.
‘You know nothing.’
Nothing, she thinks, running down the stairs. Nothing, she thinks, striding down the big steps and over the gravel on the land side of the tower.
‘Nothing!’
Nothing about the grief, the pain that never goes away, the throbbing, constant pain in her head, in her body – the doctors say it does not exist, but it is everywhere, always, now and all the time – he knows nothing about that or the coldness, the chill, the emptiness in her like a dead thing. ‘You don’t know,’ she says, stumbling over the ground beyond the lighthouse wall, where there is only deeper shadow and her feet are unsure. The ground is blue, her feet are blue, her clothes and hands are blue, the sea is blue and the sky is a deep, dark, mournful, moody black and blue. He knows nothing about her, nothing about the way Jack comes at her, nothing about the way he leaves her when he has done what he needs to do, nothing about the nothingness inside her. There is nothing. No feeling, no hope, no humour, no laughter, no light. She is all shut down. So let it stop now, this morning. Let it cease. Let there be an end to all this and let her go.
She feels her way along the wall to where it breaks down, to where she knows there is a little wooden stake driven into the ground, near the edge. Here it is. She plants her feet wide and opens her arms as if to plead for mercy, but it is far too late for that. The test will be negative, she knows that. She looks down and sees the blue ground give way to the rumpled blue sea just in front of her feet and knows she need only take a step to end her life now. You don’t jump, you walk. One step at a time. Just one. The little fire in the east makes her think of her mother in the hospital and the blinding white light. She opens her arms wide and feels the wind take her. This is the way they go. She is going.
She is dying for a wee.