DAY 100
Tell the truth
The tube was rammed again. Annie found herself crammed under the armpit of a sweaty businessman who had music seeping out from his headphones. She tried to channel Polly—Don’t get angry. Rise above it. A woman with a pushchair fought her way on, bashing into Annie’s ankle. She yelped.
“Sorry,” said the woman, who looked wild-eyed with stress. “It’s so busy.” The baby looked terrified at the crush of people around him, his red face smeared in some kind of organic baby food.
Annie laid a hand on the businessman’s arm. “What?” he said irritably, taking out an earbud. Annie realized she used to be that person. Burning with anger, drowning in sadness. Infecting everyone around her with her own toxic pain.
“Do you think you might move a little? Let this lady in? Only, it’s very cramped. Thank you.”
He shuffled up, guiltily. “Sorry, didn’t see.”
“You can sit here,” called another man who’d previously been playing a game on his phone and studiously ignoring them.
“Or here if you want.” Suddenly people were standing up all over the carriage, guilted into doing something.
“Thank you,” said the woman to Annie, almost tearfully grateful as she sat down, unbuckling the baby from his chair. “Would you like to sit, too?”
“Oh, no.” Annie stayed where she was. “I’m just fine, thank you. Just fine.”
* * *
Since she was already doing something crazy, Annie had splashed out and bought herself a first-class ticket. She settled into the wide seats as the train pulled out of London, flashing past houses and towns and villages and fields, millions of lives Annie would never touch, millions of hearts that would beat and break without her ever knowing them. The attendants brought her tea and coffee, and she savored the comfort and quiet, the sense of forward motion calming her mind. This was a good idea. Even if nothing came of it, it was always better to be moving than standing still.
* * *
By the time she finally got there it was very late, dark as pitch and freezing. The ground was damp under her feet as she huffed over the field, raindrops delicate as diamonds beneath her walking boots. This time, she’d been ready for the cold, knowing that June in Scotland did not mean actual summer. With no pollution, the sky bristled with stars, a million tiny points of light. She almost couldn’t see him, sitting alone on the hillside.
She cleared her throat. What to say after all this? Now that Polly was dead. Luckily at that point she tripped over a rabbit hole and went flying at his feet. He jumped. “Jesus! Annie!”
“Er, hi.”
“Are ye hurt?” His accent seemed even stronger now.
“I’m fine. Well, my body is.”
“Why are you—what are you doing?”
“Your mum said you’d be out here. Sitting in a field in the dark.”
“I have a blanket. Sit down, you’ll catch a chill on that grass.”
“Is that really a thing?” She crept onto the soft checked blanket beside him.
“Well, no, but a wet bum does no one any good.” He was facing away from her, his face in shadow. She could see his beard had grown back, practically to mountain-man or hipster length already. “What are you doing here in a more general sense?”
“Um. Well. Looking for you, since you ran out on me.”
“Hmph. I didn’t do that. I just had to go. I had to.”
Annie took a breath, her teeth chattering. She’d rehearsed this moment over and over on the train. “I thought you were going to kiss me once,” she began, launching right into it.
“Aye, I was. You pulled away.”
“I didn’t! I just—it threw me. It’s years since I did anything like that, and that was a complete disaster. I got my heart stomped on like an overripe strawberry. I just...couldn’t risk myself again. I didn’t know you well enough, I guess.”
“So the fact I spend my whole life trying to save wee babies and old folk and your friend, too, that counts for nothing with you?”
Annie sighed. “Can we not just blame it all on Polly, since she’s conveniently not about to mind? She convinced me we didn’t have time for romance.”
“She was so bloody selfish,” he said. “I mean, you didn’t even know her before this. Why did you care for her so much, and nurse her, and listen to all her nonsense? I had to be there every day, but you—you did it out of love. I’m in awe of that, Annie.”
Was. Did. The past tense still kicked. Polly had already been and done everything that she ever would. Their memories of her would crystallize like amber, and she would never be around to defend herself. “Because,” said Annie. “Look what she did for me. I was so miserable when I met her. I was so angry, and unhappy. I’d basically stopped living. But Polly—she lived more in these last few months than I ever had. And that made me ashamed. To have all this life, and be wasting it. That’s how she was.” Was.
“And I couldn’t save her. It was sort of the last straw. This amazing woman, this woman who was so alive, and I couldn’t do a thing to save her. Cancer one, me zero.”
“You did everything you could. She knew that.”
“I lost. She died.”
Annie sighed. “You must be used to patients dying on you. I mean—not to imply you’re a crap doctor or anything. But brain tumors, that’s a powerful enemy. Worse than Voldemort.”
“Don’t say his name,” he muttered.
“Polly wouldn’t want you to quit, for God’s sake. Aren’t there other people who need you? Cute kids? Helpless old ladies with large, loving families?”
“Annie. Did you come all this way just to make me feel bad?”
“Who says I even came for you? I do have family up here, you know.”
She felt him turn to her. “You’re going to see them? Morag and Sarah?”
“Well. Probably. Dad left me a bit of money apparently. Not that I really feel entitled to it.”
He made a noise of irritation. “Annie, for the love of Christ. You didn’t get a penny from him all your life. Don’t be your own worst enemy. Go and see them.”
“I know, I will. Maybe. It depends.”
“On what?”
“Er, how the rest of this conversation goes?”
“Hmph. How did you hope it would go?”
Annie realized she didn’t know. “I hoped you’d stop being mad at me. And come back, maybe. I don’t know. If you want to.” She sucked in all her breath. Damn you, Polly. Goddamn deathbed promises. “I hoped to just see you because I really, really miss you.”
For a long time, they just stared ahead, into the dark. She shivered. “Cold?” Without asking, he put his arm around her shoulders. He was so warm, so big, the heat of him radiating out from his smelly old Barbour jacket. Annie leaned in.
“Oh, Annie Clarke.” He sighed. “What are we going to do now? Now she’s gone? I mean, what’s next—a hundred miserable days? A hundred days of feeling crap? A hundred days of back to normal, and sleeping in the doctors’ lounge and getting my hand stuck in the vending machine?”
She rested into him, feeling the beat of his heart through the seventeen layers of clothes she had on. “How about a hundred days of doing our best to be alive—even if it’s sad, or ordinary, and we want to cry most of the time? That’s what living is, I think. Letting it all in. The happy days, the sad days, the angry days. Being awake to it.”
“You’re starting to sound like one of her motivational books.”
“Well, it’s your fault. With you gone, there’s no one to be grouchy and tell me all my ideas are doing more harm than good. Costas is no use—he’s all sunshine and rainbows. And George is going that way, too. Very sad to see a bitchy young man cut down in his prime.”
“Sounds like things are worse than I thought down there,” he said. “You’ll all be cleansing your chakras soon.”
“Maybe you should come back,” she risked. He said nothing. “Please come back,” she said, almost whispering. “We need you. I—I need you.”
His hand was stroking her neck, very gently. Annie could hardly breathe. How had she ended up here, freezing on the side of a mountain with a grouchy neurologist, her entire life hanging on what he said next?
“You said I tried to kiss you,” he said. “Were you—was that a suggestion I should try again?”
Annie said nothing. She reached up and took the hand that was around her neck, squeezed it. She’d almost lost all feeling in hers. “Max.”
“You’ve never called me that before. Och, here, you’re freezing, lass.”
Lass. She thought she might melt, if she wasn’t so cold. “Maybe we can go inside?”
“Just a wee minute. You didn’t think I was sitting out here for no good reason? Did you think I’d lost my wits, was that it?”
“Er...”
“Annie. You’re going to have to start thinking the best of me. I’m not your ex-fella who ran off with your friend, the scutter. I’m me. And look.” He pointed to the sky, which had turned an unusual shade. Like green lights were being shone on it. Like the luminescence from a large town, except there was no town anywhere near.
“Is that...?”
“Aye. I told you, you can often see them up here.”
“She missed them. She bloody missed them.”
She felt him smile as she rested her back against him, and together they watched the northern lights flicker and shimmer, all the colors of the rainbow. Purples and pinks and greens and blues, shining and shifting and the most beautiful thing Annie had ever seen. Unique. All-consuming. Like Polly. He said, “One of your motivational books might say she’s like that now. Far away. Shining.”
Annie tutted. “God veto, Max.”
“Fair enough. But it’s lovely, no?”
“It’s lovely.”
“So there’s still that, even if everything is shite and depressing and people are dying all over the show. We’re here now—admittedly with frozen arses—but we’re here, watching this, and we’re alive. Is that enough for you?”
Annie felt his arms around her, holding her close, just the two of them under the vast ceiling of the sky, the stars sending their light from so far away, even after they were dead and dark and gone. They still shone. Polly would shine, too, as long as they remembered her. Annie was here. There was no one like her on the whole of the planet, no one who had ever lived or ever would. There was not a single other person with her fingerprints, with the memories she carried in the tangle of meat and nerves that was her brain, no one with the blood beating in her veins. She was herself, and she was alive right now, despite everything. And so was he. “Yes,” she said. “It’s enough.”
* * * * *