I started small but was soon overwhelmed. Parents, relatives—sometimes dying teenagers themselves—emailed, asking if we could send them a camera. When they wrote, they always said the same thing: they wanted to document and capture their worlds, the worlds they knew they were leaving behind.
They knew how people saw them: bald-headed, sickly, dependent on others. And that wasn’t how they wanted to be remembered. Because even though their worlds had shrunk, to the confines of their bedrooms, a hospital ward, there was still so much life they wanted to capture, to breathe in: a flock of seagulls zooming past their window; a board game lovingly laid out on their hospital bed; the day they sat with their family and watched the crimson sunset set the sky alight. These were the things they wanted to leave behind. And these were the things they wanted us to never forget.
I finish my coffee, zip up my coat and leave the café. The wind is getting stronger and people are starting to move inside, and I know it is time to go. I put my backpack over my shoulder and head up the path toward the cliffs. The air is almost intolerably muggy now, the storm threatening on the horizon. In the distance, there are flashes of lightning over the ocean and, as the wind picks up, I can hear gentle rumbles of thunder.
At the top of the hill, I leave the path and walk toward the cliff edge. In the distance, I can hear an engine stutter, failing to start, and somewhere, on one of the farms, the frenzied, infectious barking of dogs.
At first it seems like it might be a light shower, that the storm will just graze us, but then there are two giant claps of thunder and the downpour begins. The rain beats down on my head, slaps my skin raw, my raincoat sticking to me in the heat.
I stand still, looking out to sea, its swirls and whitecaps like impressionist brushstrokes. I am shivering now, but not with the cold.
The wind has picked up, and I know the time is right. I take off my backpack and dig deep for the party balloons and the can of helium. I choose a blue one, blow it up, and then write on the balloon with a black marker.
Dear Jack,
We own the sky.
Lots of love, Mom and Dad
I move as close as I can get to the edge of the cliff and wonder if I should say some kind of prayer, but I just think of how Jack would have loved it up here: the blustering rain, the wind whipping through the overgrown grass like a scythe.
He was always excited by bad weather. I smile, thinking of him charging around on a rainy Brighton beach, and then let go of the balloon. It doesn’t go far and starts heading down the incline toward the edge of the cliff and the rocks beneath.
And then it stops—perhaps some turbulence or an opposing gust of wind—and hangs in the air, and for a moment I think it is going to plummet down into the sea. What is amazing is how still it is, an inertia I don’t understand, as if it is being held in place by invisible hands.
I walk toward the balloon and, just as I am starting to clamber down the steeper section of grass, it is picked up by the wind, darting and diving, zigzagging up into the air.
I watch the balloon fly out across the gray sea until it is just a speck on the horizon. I watch it until I am sure that finally it is gone.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
I couldn’t have written or published this book without my agent, Juliet Mushens. It was her advice and unrelenting editorial input that turned my unstructured manuscript into a novel. Since our first conversation on the phone, she has always been my biggest champion and I couldn’t wish for a kinder, more understanding, kick-ass agent. Thanks also to Nathalie Hallam at Caskie Mushens for all of her help and support on some of the less thrilling aspects of publishing.
I also couldn’t have wished for better editors—Sam Eades at Trapeze and Liz Stein at Park Row Books. Since they first read the manuscript, their advice and reshaping have been invaluable. They have helped me trim and expand and shape and it has been more than a pleasure to work with them. Also, a big thanks to the copy editors, Joanne Gledhill and Cathy Joyce, for ironing out all the inconsistences, fixing my terrible punctuation and changing some of the more oblique Britishisms.
The book would never have gotten off the ground without the wonderful comments and suggestions on the first draft. So huge thanks to Kathryn Baecht, Andrew Gardner, Ruth Greenaway, Rob McClean and Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter. Thanks also to Jessica Ruston for her wonderful, extensive critique, which really helped me hone the manuscript. And thank you to Andrew Rosenheim, who gave me a chance on an earlier project, which convinced me I wanted to write long-form.
To all my friends and family in the UK and the Czech Republic, my colleagues at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, thank you for all the laughs and support over the years. Cancer is generally pretty awful but you all helped me get through it. Special thanks to “the lads,” as my mum would say. To all of you—in particular, Daniel Easton, Michael Howard, Ben Mellick, Neil Okninski and Glenn Woodhams—who, week in, week out, came to meet me for a beer before each round of chemotherapy. You turned something frightening and horrible into something lovely. I will never forget it.
Speaking of cancer, thanks to my amazing doctors who saved my life, Professor Paris Tekkis and Dr. Andrew Gaya, who have been what every doctor should be: compassionate, patient and always willing to listen to my panicky questions. The same heartfelt
