For the rest of the evening, through dessert and another glass of wine for Anna, we don’t talk about Jack—I think we deliberately don’t talk about Jack—but speak about old friends, their kids, divorces, new lovers. We pay the bill, and I walk Anna back to her hotel and it is an odd moment, with no clear idea of when or if we will see each other again.
“Please keep in touch,” I say, and we embrace awkwardly and she feels smaller than I remember, the jut of her collarbone palpable on my skin. I want to cry, but I feel as if all the moisture has been wrung out of my body. “I know I’m not allowed to say sorry again, but I am,” I say. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
“It’s okay,” she says, and we are still holding each other, but I sense that she wants to pull herself away.
Just as we are parting, Anna turns to face me, as if she has forgotten something. “Oh, I saw your website by the way. We Own the Sky. Your photos, they’re just stunning. Really beautiful, and it’s lovely to see all the places we went.”
“You saw the website? How?”
“Er, it has your name on it, Rob. I Googled you. I know, I’m brilliant, aren’t I?”
“I’m just surprised.”
“Well, don’t be. As I said, they’re lovely, and it brings back such happy memories for me. Actually, if you must know, your website was how I kept tabs on you—well, apart from all the Facebook messages you sent my friends when you were drunk. Every time you posted a new photo I knew you were okay. I always told myself that when you stopped posting the photos, I would come and find you. But you didn’t. Every week, every single week, you kept on putting up new ones, and I knew you were fine. I knew you were alive. You probably didn’t realize, but I always commented on every photo.”
The mystery commentator, the first ping I always received as soon as the panorama went live. Beautiful. Lovely. Take care of yourself.
“So you’re swan09?”
“Indeed, I am,” Anna says. “It wasn’t just about keeping tabs on you, though. It made me so happy to see your photos, because that was the man I fell in love with. Someone who would build things, create things.
“Anyway, I’m rambling on,” she says, taking a step back. She looks at her watch, still the same chunky Casio. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow.” And with that she is gone, disappeared inside the lobby of the hotel.
6
At the front of the hall cupboard are the four shopping bags stuffed full of Nev’s letters. I take out the bags and go into the living room. Some of the letters have been bound together with ribbon and string, I presume by the man in Nev’s old house. Others are haphazardly slung inside. They are dusty, some a few years old, the paper drying out and fading. Some are newer, whiter, the pen strokes on the envelopes more clearly defined.
I hesitate as I start to open one. I think I know what the letters will contain. Appeals from desperate people whose children were dying. Requests for information, pleas to be bumped up the patients’ list. What was I supposed to do with them? Give them back to Nev? Write to them all and tell them that Nev is a fraud?
The Cedars
Firmtree Farm Road
Gedstone
Nr Barnstaple
Kent
Dear Nev,
I wanted to write to you to see if you could help us. I am writing on behalf on my grandson Antony, who has recently been diagnosed with an advanced brain tumor. We are potentially interested in receiving treatment at Dr. Sladkovsky’s clinic...
I look at the date again. Six years have passed. I take another letter from the middle of the pile. It has an elaborate Indian postmark, a winged elephant flying above a river bend.
Dear Mr. Barnes,
I am sorry to bother You, Sir, but I am writing on behalf of my father, Engineer Bhagat. My father is very ill, very ill indeed, I might add. We have heard...
I read a few more, and they are all the same. I do not feel anger toward Nev, just a feeling that time and lives have been wasted. I sort through more of the letters, and can feel a chalky film of dust on my hands. After a while, I realize that the handwriting on some of the envelopes is the same. It is a neat script, by someone who has been taught proper cursive. It takes me a while to realize that the handwriting is Nev’s. They are letters from him, addressed to people all over the world, that never arrived and were returned to sender.
I open one of the letters and a picture of Josh falls out. Even though I now know that it is not Josh, it still feels like Josh, and I so desperately want it to be Josh. The letter is long and I read it all. Nev was telling his correspondent about a trip to the zoo, but it is written as if Josh were seven or eight, an age he never reached, doing things older boys would do, riding the cable car on their own, swapping football stickers. Nev wrote in detail about how Josh loved the gorillas, how he wanted his dad to buy him a book from the gift shop. And then, when they got home, Nev described how they watched the sunset together, how Josh fell asleep in his arms, his gorilla book in his lap.
In another letter, Nev wrote about Josh’s ninth birthday party and how he was overwhelmed that so many people came and what lovely presents he got, the Manchester United jersey, the tickets to Alton Towers. I open more of the letters,
