Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night Page 5

  But it got them here, so here is where they need to be. He picks the closest piece of driftwood up – a small piece, no bigger than the palm of his hand, and opens the tupperware.

  "Protection on a journey," he says, trying not to feel guilty for knowing it. He was the one who brought Ari and Kay with him, who gave them the help that brought winter closer.

  "Protection on a journey," Layla repeats. He can't tell if she's agreeing or arguing, and he's not sure if he cares.

  This bit of magic feels easy in comparison, probably because this time he's not guessing at the ingredients. Nat puts it together and then – nothing. Maybe they will be safe and protected, all the way back to London on the Southeastern Railway. Even if that's true, it feels irrelevant.

  "Fucking Meraud," Layla mutters.

  Nat wants to agree, but more than that, he wants not to be here, on this cold damp headland where nothing makes sense and the man he loves is still missing.

  They stand there. He doesn't want to be the one who admits defeat. He doesn't want her to be the one who calls it, either – to decide that his idea was a bad idea, that his efforts to save Meraud aren't as good as hers.

  "Shall we—" he says, just as she begins, "I think—"

  "Yeah," she says. "We should head back."

  For a single fleeting moment he hates her for it, even though it was as much his suggestion as hers.

  "Thank you for coming with me." He tries to keep the grudging note out of his voice, he really does, but… But.

  "Yes, well."

  They're a few minutes into the long trudge back when the not-quite-drizzle becomes really-quite-rain. Layla stops to get an umbrella out, ever practical, while Nat uses the time to stare gloomily off into the distance.

  Every English coastal scene looks the same in the rain. Grey clouds, grey rocks, grey sea – only the lighthouse breaks up the monotony, which, he supposes, is the point. The broad red slash of paint across the white of its body tugs at his memory, perhaps dredging up some platonic lighthouse from a long-forgotten picture book. He's sure he's never been here before, but if he had to describe a lighthouse to someone, this is what he'd describe – the starkness of the white and red, a middle finger raised against the elements.

  "Are you coming?" Layla's a few steps ahead of him now. Her umbrella has cartoon ducklings on it, which in other circumstances might have been endearing.

  And now she's looking at the lighthouse. "Is that—?"

  As soon as she says it, he sees it. The lighthouse, the clouds, the sea, even the damned petrels circling.

  She finishes her sentence. It isn't a question. "The picture."

  The picture. The framed photographic print on Meraud's shelf that Nat threw aside when he was looking for the right bloody Bible. They've come all the way out to North Foreland just to see what Meraud left right there in front of them.

  Fucking Meraud.

  They sit together on the train back – there's no excuse not to – and even share the pack of breakfast biscuits Layla finds at the bottom of her bag.

  "I've got to go to work tomorrow," Layla says as they wait for a signal change outside Ashford. "And I've got to pick up the kids."

  Fine, Nat wants to say, but he's an adult who knows how to interact with other adults, so instead he manages, "I'll let you know how I get on, then?" He'll go tomorrow, once he's finished the air-freshener music.

  "Thanks." Layla's tone is cautious. "It'll be good to divide up the work, going forward."

  It wasn't worth both of them coming today, is what she means.

  "Yeah." Nat forces himself not to snap. "We can cover more ground that way."

  They'll part ways at Stratford – carefully, politely. Two adults dividing up a difficult task as well as they can. It makes sense, and barely feels like a loss at all.

  That's it. Or it would be it, except five minutes later, while they're still waiting for a signal change outside Ashford, Layla's phone rings. She takes one look at the display, swears, and declines the call.

  "Truth-in-kindness Moonchild," she says, disdain dripping from every syllable. She sighs. "If we tell her, she's going to try to help. And this is one of the very few spheres of life where she might actually be useful."

  It's only then that Nat places the name. Truth-in-kindness Moonchild, née Jennifer Maud Robinson. Meraud's hippy, dippy, neglectful mother.

  "You're not—" He stops. She is. She's honestly planning not to tell Meraud's mother about this. And maybe he wouldn't have, either, if Truth-in-kindness had continued to display her typical level of maternal interest in Meraud. But she's worried enough to be calling Layla.

  "Oh, for fuck's sake," he continues, finally letting out a bit of the hurt and pain he's been trying to keep down. "Really? You don't have the right to decide that." What he means is, neither of them have the right to decide that. But Layla reacts to what she hears – and if he's honest with himself, maybe he meant that a little bit, too.

  "You don't know her like I do." She's gone still next to him. "I'm sure Meraud's told you all about his childhood, but I was there."

  There's a scorn to her voice that isn't misplaced, exactly. All about his childhood, indeed. Meraud is not the sharing type. But Nat has heard just enough – in passing; in advert breaks and at pedestrian crossings – to think: hunger.

  Maybe Layla is about to say something worse, and maybe she's not, but he'll never know, because right then his phone goes. M's mum – EMERGENCY ONLY, the screen informs him.

  He answers, turning the speaker volume down to zero as he does so.

  Layla presses her palms against her eyes. "Fuck you."

  He manages some sort of greeting, narrowly avoiding addressing her as ‘Ms Meraud's Mum', and explains he's muted her. He tells her what's going on, more or less, and that she mustn't try to help.

  "We're blocking you on our phones," Layla says. Nat wouldn't have thought of that. "Meraud will call you when we get him back, or—"

  "He'll call you," Nat interrupts. No one benefits from Layla finishing that sentence.

  They hang up. Truth-in-kindness calls back immediately, but they make good on Layla's promise – they absolutely can't let her help them, even if a tiny part of Nat wishes they could. Hippy, dippy and neglectful she might be, but she would at least share the burden.

  "If she fucks this up for him—" Layla says, voice tight.

  Nat doesn't answer. What could he say? He wants her to shout at him properly, to say or do something to justify the nasty mess of resentment coiling in his chest. But she doesn't, because she's an adult and he's an adult, and this is what adulthood looks like, apparently: carefully not screaming in the face of your lover's other lover after failing to save his life.

  When he gets home, Nat does the spell again. It isn't necessary but feels like something he ought to do, with more care this time, sitting on the floor where Meraud showed him the lost things spell, rather than on the shore in the wind and grip of urgency. He takes out the rose and the lucerne and the driftwood and puts them together and this time feels self-conscious about it. This is Meraud's type of magic, not something rooted in Jewish tradition, not Ari's cautious step-by-step magic or the stuff they talk about on Reddit, but the wild unmoored. It's a window to the other place, here in Zone 2 amid the bustling of the neighbours and the rumble of the recycling lorry.

  Again, nothing seems to happen. Nat didn't think it would be dramatic: it's not something to light a candle or join together something broken. But it is, he decides, a guide or a wayfinder or a talisman of protection or whatever Ari called it, and that means it is, in its way, a gift from Meraud.

  Nat preserves the bits – protection, wandering and true love enduring – and thinks about going to Meraud's flat now; thinks about standing there alone in the empty room looking at a picture of a lighthouse and trying to work out what twists and turns Meraud's wild goose chase is sending them on next. It's an option. But he's tired and hungry and far, far too sad to think straight. He'd miss
something important, and probably fuck things up even worse than he already has. Might even end up crying on Meraud's empty bed, a thought so depressing he's embarrassed to have had it.

  He knows himself well enough that the next thing he does is text Killer Queens, his group chat with Ari and Kay. He's got to commit himself to leaving the house now, before he succumbs to the twin forces of despair and picking ridiculous arguments on Reddit. If I'm not at yours in half an hour, you can dye my hair any colour you like.

  ___

  Front door slammed behind her. Shoes off, with sand spilling from the soles. Handbag on the table with a thump.

  "What time do you call this?" Katrina asks, coming down the stairs. She's smiling, not serious. Layla makes a non-committal noise and starts turning out her coat pockets. More sand all over the floor, and also three little conch shells. Layla picked them up because the pink translucency reminded her of Amy's favourite colour. Super off-brand, for an anti-hegemonic-patriarchy queer family, but Layla likes it too.

  "Pretty," Katrina says. "Part of your thing with Meraud, is it?"

  She's in a good mood. She's been working a lot of weekends and evenings because of the corporate merger and Layla knows she was looking forward to a Saturday of hanging out with Amy and Jae, who are going through a unicorn phase that Katrina's very into. She got them some books about narwhals and eBay's best stick-on horns and the debris in the living room suggests a good time was had by all.

  "Kind of," Layla says, her mind still lingering on the sea and shore and the petrels wheeling over the tide. "In a way."

  "What it's all about, anyway?" Katrina asks idly. "I mean, not that I don't think it's adorable that you and Meraud's boyfriend went to the beach. In zero-degree weather. Somewhere beginning with M. Margate? Morecambe? Mars?"

  "Margate," Layla says after a moment, off the beat. "Yeah, it was… cold."

  "Layla?" Katrina's giving her an odd look. "You okay there?"

  "Fine," Layla says, giving herself a shake. "Nat was—well, he was kind of difficult. It's not a big deal."

  Katrina chuckles. "Well, I've never met the man so I'm totally on your side. What an unreasonable bastard."

  "He's…" Layla pauses. It was such a tiring day, and she's so worried about Meraud and she can't seem to get through a sentence in one go. "He's… you know. Nonbinary."

  "Well, I've never met the person, what an unreasonable bastard."

  She's so quick, Layla thinks. And now she looks worried, because she was trying to cheer Layla up and it didn't work.

  "Layla, if he really is being a dick to you, give it up," Katrina says briskly. "Whatever it is can't be worth that."

  "I can't," Layla says, suddenly restless. She gets up and paces the length of the kitchen. Amy is cross-legged on the hall floor, contemplating a unicorn drawing with adorable single-mindedness. "It's—well, I've got to see it through to the end."

  "Can I help?" That's always Katrina's first instinct. It's something Layla loves about her. Right now it makes her insides turn to cold water.

  "What is it, Layla?" Katrina adds, when Layla doesn't answer in time. "You've been running around on this thing for a week now and I'm none the wiser."

  "Honestly, it's just one of Meraud's things," Layla says, with more irritation than this remark warrants, but she's reaching the point where she wants to hide under a pillow forever. "It's not a big deal."

  "Humour me," Katrina says, with a corporate-merger edge to her voice.

  "Okay, fine." Layla sighs. "It's about some magic Meraud did involving the Thames Barrier. I know," she adds, off Katrina's look. "I know how weird that sounds. Anyway. Nat came to see me on Wednesday."

  In the time it takes her to explain the rest of it, her hands and feet warm up from their day in the coastal deep-freeze and she's starting to feel better. Amy is still intent on her unicorn drawing; Layla wonders whether to show her the conch shells now or wait until she can find a pretty bit of thread for them.

  When she stops talking, she's uncomfortably aware of the quiet in the house. The tap drips. In the other room, Jae is singing to her Lego. Katrina stands up, gets Amy off the floor and tells her that if she and Jae can play together nicely for a little while, there's an outside chance of strawberry ice-cream. When she comes back in she closes the door, blocking out most of the noise.

  Layla wants to say they never let them have ice-cream before dinner, but stops short when she sees Katrina's face. "All right," Katrina says, sitting down at the kitchen table. "Tell me that again, from the top. Every detail."

  Layla's not sure what's happening. She wanders over to the kettle to make the tea she's been dreaming of all afternoon and Katrina's gaze tracks her across the room. While the water boils, Layla tells the story again more comprehensively. This time she includes the body that the Royal Free asked her to identify, who even over the phone couldn't be Meraud because of the well-worn wedding ring. She includes Meraud's green Bible, and Kay and Ari and Ezra Pevensey. She doesn't know if any of this is what Katrina wants. When she's done she's still conscious of Katrina's steady gaze on her. She fishes out the teabag and carries the mug to the table.

  "Meraud is dying," Katrina says, into the silence of her own creation. The words are marbles thrown into deep water. "In a way he's already dead."

  Layla flinches. "He's not dead."

  "But if you don't manage this thing of yours, you and Nat, he will be. Before Christmas, if your Thames Water guy is right, and it sounds like he is. Is that what you just told me?"

  "Yes, but," Layla says. "It's not really—"

  "Important?" Katrina snaps.

  Layla had been going to say, it's not really like that. She's not sure in this moment why it's not really like that. She doesn't say anything else.

  "You told me, and I quote, it's some nonsense with Meraud," Katrina says. "You told me it was a magical thing. You told me it was no big deal. Like it didn't matter if I knew."

  "You're not supposed to help," Layla protests weakly. "When Ari tried to help, it all went wrong. We had to hang up on Meraud's mother, in case she helped!"

  "I'm not Meraud's waste-of-oxygen mother," Katrina says. Not raising her voice; not allowing anything to blur the lines of her cold, clean fury. "And I'm not supposed to help you cut up dead bodies, either, but you still tell me about your day!"

  Layla has seen her angry like this only a handful of times in their ten-year relationship. "Katrina, I'm sorry. But you don't even—"

  "I don't even like him?" Katrina says. "You're right, I don't. He's a flaky self-indulgent white man who thinks because he has the power to, he can do whatever he damn well likes. None of this proves me wrong on that, by the way. But he's a human being and you love him and he's dying. And you didn't think I would want to know."

  She's not just angry, Layla realises. She's hurt.

  "I deserve better than that," Katrina says. "Meraud deserves better than that, for Christ's sake."

  Katrina has literally never had a conversation with Meraud that wasn't about rising damp. (He spotted it months before the plumber would have, and put a lid on it while they were getting quotes.) But she has space to be indignant on his behalf as well as her own. Layla loves her.

  "Katrina, I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so, so sorry. I don't know why I didn't…"

  She trails off, because she does know why she didn't tell Katrina. At the nativity play, Nat turned up cyanide-bright and vivid and queer, and Layla thought, you can't be here. The racist old biddy had just finished raising her eyebrows, and Layla was half-asleep and only wanted to be invisible.

  (When did that become her sole objective, she wonders. Meraud and Nat and polyamory and magic, all on one side of the curtain. Katrina, Amy and Jae and the day-to-day things of life, all on the other. Wherever she stands, something is hidden from sight. It's not just Meraud who keeps all the parts of his life separate.)

  "I thought…" Katrina says, not angry now but wistful. "I thought you'd trust me."

  "I do," L
ayla says. She wants to cry, at this and at Meraud's absence and at the relentless pressure of winter. Even, ridiculously, at Amy, whose laughter they can hear through the wall. She's playing nicely with Jae. By the sounds of it they're building a Lego castle. "I do."

  "Then listen to me," Katrina says, and now she sounds like she's running a corporate merger. She never partitions off elements of herself; she uses all of them as appropriate. "Enough with, oh, I don't like Nat, and oh, I don't want to bother Katrina. You don't have time for that."

  "No," Layla says, feeling small and foolish for not telling Katrina to begin with. For letting her desire to keep her life in order blind her to the seriousness of what she's doing here. And – she's finally admitting this to herself – for resenting Nat. Nat loves Meraud as much as she does. If it sometimes feels like she and Nat know different versions of the same man – well, that's not Nat's fault.

  "Meraud is dying," Katrina says again, which makes Layla flinch. She has no doubt Katrina meant her to. "Get out, Layla. Get this done. And don't lie to me ever again."

  She turns away from Layla, busies herself with getting out the ice-cream for the kids.

  Layla picks up her phone to call Nat. She hears voices in the background when he answers and wonders for the first time if he has partners other than Meraud, but the chirping could be Ari.

  "I don't like you," Layla tells him, without greeting.

  "Okay?" Nat says.

  "But I love Meraud. So do you. I'll meet you at his flat."

  She hangs up. When she gets there. Nat is already standing on a footstool, lifting the picture off the wall hook. Layla is momentarily irritated that he started this without her, then shoves the feeling resolutely away. No time for petty resentments.

  "Hey," Nat says as she comes in. "You were… I guess you were right. Sorry if I was snippy at you today."

  He is actually a much nicer person than she is, Layla decides. "I'm sorry too. Don't you need a hand with that?"

  She helps him set the thing face down on the floor. Nat stays balanced on the footstool, looking at the wall, checking if there was anything hidden behind the frame. But Layla has a hunch. She prises the backing board off the picture and there it is: an envelope pressed flat against the inside surface. It's a second's work to rip it open.