The chips were impressive, a big sloppy mess of them plus three batter—stick hotdogs with tomato sauce all wrapped in printed newspaper that had news of some fresh disaster in the South China sea. They hefted the whole thing down to the western end of the beach and up the iron stairs.
Lucia greeted them by the caravan as though no time had passed and nothing had happened and she was very hungry for chips yes indeed, and can I please have all of one hotdog and is there any fizzy drink?
Up by the tower there were animal bones and parts of a dollhouse stuck into the soil. The memory garden seemed to be growing. Lucia swore she hadn’ put anything extra in there since yesterday.
• • •
Two chairs above the ocean. The air dark and calm.
That cave seemed sensible in a way, the man said, edging around the topic. Feel the black weather coming in, people are a pain in the arse, give yourself some solitude. Wonder how long it’s been there.
Hedy brooded in the dark beside him, thinking too much.
You wonder why they need it so badly, she muttered. What this place does to people.
This town’s right on the edge, isn’t it, he said. Of a lot of things.
My Mum knew that before we ever came here, she said. I’m sure of it now.
So what happened to her, he asked. ’Bout time I heard that one, maybe.
Squeak of the plastic chair. Hedy rocking back and forth in the night.
We were staying in a beachside cottage, third from the end, the cheap one, she said. All we could afford. It’d been a wonderful bright summer. So many little moments. We’d had a nice night, she made me porridge for the morning, tucked me into my little bed. Find the invisible, she said, as she kissed me good night. She used to say lots of things like that. WItchy but also lovely, you know? She painted things and wrote poetry and would go naked swimming and all sorts like that. The last thing I saw was her walking out the door into the night, clutching the Dramolite. Never saw her again.
But I dreamed that night we were up on the clifftop, right beneath the tower. And she beckoned me across to where the Dramolite was set up, and told me to look through it. This felt so exciting, she’d never explained it to me before and I wasn’t supposed to play with it. So I looked in through the eyepiece, my hands on the dials, shifting it around, finding focus, all that. And in the dream the sky was wet and heavy with this enormous storm, all colours and violence but it felt somehow like home, and Mum told me, over here, Hedy, look over here, and right through the Dramolite I found the focus and saw her at the cliff edge, so tall and beautiful in the storm, and then—
Silence. Hedy gathering her breath in ragged gasps. Finally continuing.
Then I watched her walk off the cliff, Hedy said. In my dream. And I woke next morning with the sun shining but she never came back, ever. Just vanished.
Tiny spits of moisture in the air around them. Waves slapping and foaming the rocks far below.
I’m asking a stupid question because I don’t know what to say, the man said. Were there no police, he said?
I was seven, Hedy said bitterly. There were no police. You know there’s no graveyard in Tempest Bay. Time was people used to just come up here and jump off the cliff. But that’s the old times, apparently.
She was up in her chair, hovering, a long strange moment, and he wondered if he’d have to lunge—
Tell me about the invisible, Hedy said abruptly. The secrets you saw, in your life before. In all those computers.
• • •
A squall came in right over the clifftops. He felt lifted out of himself, talking as though he couldn’t hear himself.
He told her the things that had changed his world view. That had led him first to Lucia and then to the complete alteration of his future plans and outlook. Had led him on the start of a long strange journey and this moment, every moment, since.
Hedy listened. When he was finished she nodded. Absorbed. Responded showing no doubt or skepticism at all.
You saw all that, she said. And it’s the reason you’re heading south?
Yes, the man said.
Emotions are weather here, Hedy said. You felt it. They roll in off the ocean like invisible mist. I don’t know what kind of scientist I am any more, but that fascinates me. Exactly as much as it terrifies me.
And the whole world’s going that way, the man said.
Yes it is, Hedy said.
That was in that book nobody read, the man said.
You said you read it, Hedy said.
I did, the man said. It was part of what made me look at all those mountains of data a different way. Changed my life.
What’s south? Hedy said.
A bunker with enough food and power for twenty years, the man said.
You know what they say about running away, Hedy said.
What do they say? The man said.
It works. Sometimes.
• • •
Long silence. The Pacific ocean breathing.
I shouldn’t have eaten all those chips, he said. Fun at the time but now I’m regretting it.
Chips always do that, Hedy said. It’s practically the point of them.
Fucking British food.
Belgian, actually. Go shit in the memory garden. I have. As good a place as any.
There’s a 5 star hotel not ten kilometres from here, he said. I could have us all in sheets and ensuites by midnight. Hell, I could buy the hotel.
You do that, Hedy said. Right now I feel like this is the place to be.
• • •
Long silence. The lights in the town winking like fireflies. Pressure in the air falling and rising.
Thank you, Hedy said.
For what? he said.
Crawling into that cave with me. I saw your reaction. You didn’t want to be there. Especially in the dark. But you came anyway.
I did.
It’s been hard trying to figure out all this stuff by myself. It’s mad territory and it isolates us. Makes us feel alone.
This is what we do, he said. We walk into the cave ready to fight dragons.
Says the man with a bunker all prepped and ready, Hedy said.
First time I ever met Lucia, she made me play Dungeons and Dragons with her.
That’s when you knew?
That’s when I knew, he said.
So you going to tell me your real secret?
What secret?
The one you’re hiding, and running from, and using that poor girl to somehow atone for. The one that’s nothing to do with the weather.
Oh.
Long silence.
I’m going to go shit on a clifftop now, he said.
• • •
A sound over by the stairs as he returned. A glint of something in the dark.
We’re being watched again, he said.
The town’s always watching, she said. Especially the old ones.
Feels like that storm’s just about here.
It is, Hedy said. I plan to see right to the heart of it. I am, after all, a fucking meteorologist.