My throat grew thick. Panic filled me when I skimmed my thoughts. I can’t remember!
But Scanlon looked so eager, so encouraging, that my fears melted away.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said slowly, experimentally. ‘I think so. Maybe.’
Like tiny flowers, images began to open up softly in my mind. ‘There was one place we used to go near here, called … Blue Cove, I think? You could only reach it if you knew the secret way through the woods …’
It was like opening an old toy chest and finding all my faded favourites waiting inside for me. As I sifted through my half-remembered life, pain and love approached each other, gently.
‘We’d go there on Friday afternoons, after school, as soon as it was warm enough. We’d string up four hammocks on these trees we always used …’
Scanlon made himself more comfortable by lying down on the boards with his arms behind his head. ‘What would you do then?’ he murmured.
‘Well …’ I drew my knees up to my chest. ‘We’d light a fire and have crisps and squash, and then we’d rest some baking potatoes on the grill for later, and then we’d swim in the …’ my voice stumbled, ‘… sea.’
The pain turned sharp. I bit my lip.
Scanlon gave me one of his gentlest close-lipped smiles and it helped.
‘Birdie always went in the water first – she was like that – and Dad would always go last, doing a big showy-offy dive, making a noise like a whale with a blowhole …’ I laughed then, out loud. ‘Then we’d go back to the hammocks and the baked potatoes would be ready, which we’d have with baked beans and sour cream, cos you have to have sour cream with baked potatoes – that is a fact.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said a soft voice.
‘Then me and Birdie would drink too much lemonade and have a burping competition, and Mum and Dad would drink rum, and we’d play cards, and when the moon was high they’d tuck us into our hammocks and …’
There was a soft, repetitive sound from Scanlon, like deep breathing.
I stared at the wet boards. ‘… there were always loads of shooting stars.’
I closed my eyes. For a moment I saw the orange flames dancing in the night’s velvet, heard the snap of the logs and the sound of my parents talking quietly, while the waves moved gently on the beach as if they would never, ever hurt us.
I tilted my head back and listened to the rain fall on the leaves overhead, as my eyes widened with realisation. I’d been lucky. I’d been happy. I’d had everything a human being could need: adventure, love, a rickety-rackety house at the top of the world, parents who cared more about spending time with us than loading the dishwasher.
Yet ever since I’d died, I’d been pitied. Tourists had marvelled at how little we’d had, how simple and unlucky we’d been, and I’d believed them. Well, we had been unlucky – at the end. But the rest of the time we’d lived life the way it was meant to be lived.
But that sort of joy – quiet and private – is hard to imagine, unless you have it too. True happiness is the biggest secret in the world. It’s as impossible to capture as mist. You might as well try to put the solar system in a jam jar. It can’t be contained or explained; it’s beyond words.
So if the tourists didn’t understand – so be it. If all they saw was what we didn’t have, that said more about them, not us, and I’d just have to make peace with that. Besides, who could blame them for not really getting it? They did their best with the relics we left behind. If they thought we’d had a picture of someone else’s pug over our sofa, what did it matter? After all, when someone shows you their life, what are you expected to notice?
And it would happen to them too. One day, their descendants would look back at their time on Earth, and misunderstand them as well. It was just the way it was. But at least I knew what we’d had. I saw it properly, for the first time, and that was enough.
I looked over, feeling as if something inside me had loosened, and wanting to say thank you somehow, but Scanlon was fast asleep and snoring gently.
ONE AFTERNOON HE turned up with vivid bruising down his arms.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked.
‘I was building for my dad,’ he muttered in that sideways manner, flashing his Repeat Visitor card at Chrix and slipping into the dark hall. ‘Slipped. Fell into some scaffolding. Nothing to worry about.’
I eyed him uncertainly. I wanted to ask him what he’d been building that could have been so dangerous – he was twelve, after all, so it could barely have been anything more challenging than Lego – but something about the way he glared at me defiantly made me hold back.
Once we’d navigated the hall and kitchen and made our way into the garden, we fell into an uneasy silence. I waited for Scanlon to climb up the rope ladder of the tree house, as usual, but he seemed distracted.
He took a deep breath and glanced around. Something in the skin of his face seemed to sag. That smell came back too, the one of rotting fruit, and I was unexpectedly filled with dread.
‘Frankie, this is my last visit. I’ve come to say log off,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Log off. Er … goodbye? We’re leaving today. Packing up. We’re going somewhere else. Dad wants us to go to the Republic of Scotterland – he’s got a tip-off he’d like to investigate for his collection.’
‘D-do you have to go?’ I stammered.
He nodded grimly. ‘Yeah,’ he said softly. ‘I have to go. I always have to go.’ He straightened his back and met my eyes. ‘But
