It’s starting to rain.
“Ah, silence. Blessed silence,” I say, indicating to turn into the Makuti Park driveway.
I can feel you giving me what they call a Sideways Look.
“What?”
“Windscreen wipers. Silent. The ones on my dear Datsun squealed at me on every downstroke. Hideous, but there didn’t seem much point changing them when I was going to sell her and take over Mum’s.”
“Her?” You laugh and pull up the hood of your sweatshirt. “So you like your new car then? I’ll open the gate.”
You salute me as I drive past. Like I do several dozen times a day I fall in love all over again. In love with your abjectness as you hold the gate for me in the warm, soft rain. In love with the way I’m looking forward to walking with you into our home in a few minutes. Oh my God, I’ve really gone soft.
I park the Cressida directly behind your Land Cruiser, switch off, close my eyes to force the mental images to return. Mum and Rosie. All of us resolutely dry-eyed and standing around like spare parts in the terminal like we had no idea we were supposed to check in the luggage and were trying to work out the system. The two of them disappearing into security and passport control. The lights of the Jumbo disappearing into the night sky. Why do I feel so cold and detached?
You tap on the side window, questioning, your face shining wet in the light from the back porch.
“Let’s go and check on the horses,” you shout.
I leave my bag and my umbrella in the car and link my arm under yours. The rain has eased to a very fine mist and we can get under the stable eaves in a couple of minutes.
For a while we just talk to the horses, each one in turn, tickling muzzles, stroking necks, dodging Bravo’s teeth and laughing at him. He’s not impressed at being disturbed and he’s never understood why a human should want to cuddle him.
For once in my life though, these horses are not keeping my attention. I can’t let go of trying to reason why I feel so cold, so unemotional. At the end of the row we stand, hand in hand, staring out into the rain – sheeting now – lit into thousands of silver spears by the PIR light on the edge of the eave above us.
“Do you know something? I’m so unsure as to what I should feel at the departure of my entire family that I feel nothing at all. That can’t be normal.”
“What is normal?”
Good point. It’ll hit me soon enough, I’ll bet.
We’ll visit them next year, together, you tell me and the dark, rainy night brightens, like the end of the tunnel I didn’t know I was in has just appeared on the horizon. Yes, of course. You and me together, because that’s what we are now.
“I want to travel a lot. All over the world. Do you?”
Silly question. I know you do.
You stick a hand out into the deluge, turn it over a few times like you’re fascinated to see it getting wet.
“Yes. Then that’s what we’ll do. But right now there’s a much warmer, drier place to be than this and I’ll be the happiest man on the planet if I can travel there with you now.”
For the first time in weeks the sky-high has come back and I’m convinced life can only get better.