He moves toward me and I move toward him until we’re about a hundred feet from each other, but as I open my mouth to greet this stranger, no words come out. I just look at him. I didn’trealize I’d stopped walking but he’s continued, closing the distance between us. And then he’s so close that if I stepped forward, two or maybe three paces, I could reach out and touch him.
I blink once, twice, but still no words come. Because the man standing in front of me cannot possibly be who I think it is. I used to see him everywhere. I used to think I saw him in the street or on the bus. I used to think that when I went to work I’d open the main door to the office and there he’d be, waiting for me. And then there was the time I’mpositiveit was actually him, on the train, silently saying my name, no longer divided by a continent and five thousand miles, but only by a centimeter of window glass…and so much more; so much that has been said—and so much that hasn’t been.
And so this man, in front of me in a poppy field in Montepulciano, cannot possibly be Davey. Although all the evidence tells me it is. My teeth are ground together and it’s only when the pain begins ricocheting through my jaw, and another kind of pain finds its way to my heart, that I dare to breathe, dare to speak.
Only he gets there first.
“Hannah,” he says, and the accent is unmistakably Davey’s. The slow smile that spreads over his face is his. The same as he had on all our video calls and the photos I deleted. And I can’t say anything. I can only nod, and then every emotion I held on to throughout all this time—and some I hadn’t—bubbles to the surface and I cry. He steps forward. “Hannah,” he says again, softer now. “Don’t cry.”
“You’re here” is all I can muster. Disbelief floods my synapses.
He nods and his eyes never leave mine. “So are you.”
“Yes,” I mouth, but I’m not sure the words are audible.
He moves forward and brushes a stray tear from my face. “I am so, so sorry,” he says.
“What for?” I ask.Davey is here.
“Everything. Everything I did. Everything I said. Everything Ididn’t say. Disappearing. I thought it would be like a Band-Aid, I thought saying goodbye to you would be like ripping it off and then the pain would leave me. I think I only just realized the pain stayed behind. Only you weren’t there. I’m sorry, because I pulled you into something that wasn’t yours to suffer and then, when you tried to be there, I wouldn’t let you. I was sure it was for the best.”
“You hurt me,” I say, because it’s the truth and because I can’t think what else to say. He’s actually here, standing in front of me. I was right, I do have to look up to see him; he’s so tall. And his hair isn’t quite as blond as it used to be, and now I can see his blue eyes so clearly that I notice little dashes of yellow almost forming a halo around both his irises. “I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help. You pushed me away.”
“I know.” He takes one of my hands and I can’t believe how good it feels that, after all this time, he’s touching me. His hands are bigger than I imagined they’d be. They engulf mine, and it’s as if all the electricity in the world is coursing through us. “Your hands are really soft,” he says. And there’s a shocked laugh as if he can’t quite believe I’m really here, what I feel like.
I can’t believe he’s really here, either, and I tell him as much.
But Davey has something he clearly needs to say and he steams onward. “Misdialing you…I don’t know if that was fate. I’m not sure I believe in that. But finding you here—now—and this time you’re actually in front of me. There’s no denying that you and I are supposed to be here, in this field, and I’m supposed to tell you I’m sorry and I’m supposed to say thank you. And after that…Jesus, I have no idea what happens after that.”
I clutch his hand in return now, my fingers folding around his tanned ones, because I don’t know what he means by what he says, and because he’s here and we might not have this chance again. I might not have this opportunity to hold his hand again, totouch him again. He might make another ridiculously noble gesture and cut me out of his life once more. I clutch his hand tighter. “Why are you saying thank you?” I ask.
“You saved my life.”
I know I look puzzled. “How?”
“You called me and unequivocally demanded that I go in for my last round of chemo.”
“You’d have done it without me.”
“I’m not actually sure I would have. As Grant said, I was being a selfish prick. I did it because of what you said—about others killing for the chance to have the treatment I was on. The chance to live.”
“How are you now?” I whisper. I hope beyond hope that the chemo has done what it was supposed to. The odds of him surviving only five years without it don’t bear thinking about. I couldn’t bear the thought of a world without Davey in it, even if he’s in this world and not with me.
“I’m good. I think. My blood results have been good. I’m alive. I’m a little messed up in the head now,” he says with a sideways smile. “But I’m here.”
I look up at him. I want to smile along with him, but instead I whisper, “What now?”
He smiles even wider. “I don’t know, Hannah.”
“I kept seeing you everywhere. And you weren’t there. And then you were. On the platform and then in the Tube carriage. Itwasyou, wasn’t it?”
He nods. “Yeah. It was.”
“Where were yougoing?”
“Nowhere. Everywhere. I know I’m gonna sound like a dick if I say I went to find myself, especially when it didn’t work. I didn’t find myself. And so I went to find you, without finding you. I went to Whitstable.”
My mouth opens. “Really?”
