Prologue
Four months ago, Cornwall
My name is Elena Godwin. I live an ordinary life in an ordinary place, and the greatest joys I feel are the simple ones – the ones so easy to miss.
I laugh at terrible jokes. I stop and stare at rainbows. I cry without embarrassment at happy endings. I try to appreciate every single good thing that this life has to offer.
We all have our own versions of ‘good things’, I suppose, depending on our tastes: one person’s Marmite is another person’s Nutella. The bright spots that shine in a sometimes grey world.
I don’t have an actual physical list of these good things – but maybe I should. Maybe it would be a wonderful form of mindfulness, to jot them down in a notepad, or start a spreadsheet, or get them tattooed on my back in Sanskrit (kidding – that would hurt way too much).
But my mental list is long, and ever-evolving. At the moment, it includes – but is not limited to – the following: a cold glass of water after a long walk on a midsummer’s day; a solitary train journey with a good book; the bread-and-beans smell of a coffee shop; a sleeping dog wagging its tail; the silken smoothness of a rose petal between my fingertips.
That first moment after winter when you notice blossom buds curving on branches and feel the sun on your face and know that spring is miraculously coming, yet again. Anything to do with the sun, really: its rising, its setting, its light and its shade. The way it sinks into the sea-lined horizon at the end of the day, as though it is putting itself to bed.
Some of my favourite things admittedly make me sound like I’m a hundred years old, not thirty-five, but I don’t care. I cherish them. The simple joy of settling into a comfy chair when your legs are aching. Taking your bra off at the end of the day. The feeling of complete luxury when you’ve changed your bedding, stretched out alone beneath a duvet cover that still smells of fabric softener.
Sometimes, the simple joys belong to someone else. Like the small swoosh of the heart you feel when you see young lovers kiss.
A group of women giggling together in a café. Drunk people dancing. An elderly couple waiting at a bus stop, holding each other’s hands.
Kids at the side of a flooded road, hoping that passing cars might race through the puddles and drench them. A baby asleep in its mother’s arms. The squeals and shouts as you walk past a school playground. Anything to do with children, really, even though it can feel bittersweet to a childless woman. The key, as with so many things, is to concentrate on the sweet.
I do my very best. I make sure that I appreciate these everyday pleasures, these mundane treasures, and I relish the normal routines of daily existence that allow me to experience them.
Daily existence, in all its tarnished glory, is full of small miracles if we pay close enough attention. Sometimes, we don’t even notice them happening – the moments that change everything, or the moments that change nothing. The moment you meet someone who will alter the way you view your life. The moment you stand at a hidden crossroads and make a choice that feels as unimportant as a snowflake, that becomes a snowball, that becomes an avalanche.
These days, I do pay attention. I notice as many of those moments as I can, and I don’t take any of it for granted – because I know what it feels like to almost lose it all. To be afraid in the dark, unsure if you’ll ever feel the clean caress of fresh air or drink that cold glass of water. Ever hear the sound of laughter again. Ever be able to stretch your limbs and fill your lungs and feel the space of the world around you.
When I was twenty-six years old my world was literally turned upside down and inside out, like a coat pocket being excavated for loose change. It was terrible, and frightening, and it taught me a lot of things I never wanted to know.
It taught me that the ground we walk upon isn’t as solid as we think. It taught me that our feet skim the surface of hidden uncertainty every single day. It taught me that we can all fall, no matter how carefully you step, or how strong your legs. It taught me that we can survive so much – but at a cost, always.
I learned about frailty, and strength, and the way that we are all made up of both. I discovered that the human body combines amazing resilience and amazing delicacy, one minute as robust and present as an ancient tree trunk, the next clinging on with the fragile tenacity of a dragonfly hovering above a sunlit pond.
We are made of bone and muscle and tissue, like the earth is made of a core and mantle and crust. Imperfect designs, with unpredictable flaws and unimaginable complexity.
On the night it all happened, I was still under the misguided belief that my destiny was in my own hands. That I could make my own choices.
Now I know differently, and in some ways that has been a blessing. It has made me value those small miracles so much more. But I also know that safety and stability are illusions; fairy tales we tell ourselves.
Change is all around us, even when we can’t see it. Cells mutating, valves straining, friction building, all hidden beneath the surface. Nothing stays the same, even when you want it to. That’s the thing about these moments that make up our lives – they all pass, no matter how hard we try to hold on to them. The moments become memories, and the memories become stories, things that happened to someone else – the person we used to be, long ago.
I recovered from that night, the night the world turned upside down – or at least I appeared to. Sometimes I wonder if I ever even left that place, or if in some alternate universe, a different Elena stayed: shattered, broken, buried in the earth. A distant memory.
Sometimes, I wonder if I think too much.
Now, almost ten years later, I can feel the subtle vibrations and internal creaks that tell me that things are about to change again. That the small miracles may be overwhelmed by larger events, and I will soon be yet another version of myself. I have agreed to do something that scares me, that could change me, that could divert the flow of my life. Point me in a different direction. It was one of those moments: the ones that leave you altered.
Today, I sense the tectonic plates of my life shifting; the unseen fault lines spreading. Subtle cracks are appearing where my truth is pulling away from other people’s truths; where there is a separating of realities, the intrusion of a never-quelled past into a never-whole present. A change that I have hidden from for too long.
I lie in bed at night, awake, next to him as he slumbers – a man-shaped shadow in a shroud of sheets, one arm slung over his head, hair tousled. Small snores puff from his lips, endearing or irritating depending on my mood. He is apparently untouched by the tremors I am feeling, the sensation that everything we have together is built on sand.
I am amazed and envious of his peace, of his lack of fear. This is his story, too, you see. It is a story that belongs to many people. In particular, in my personal universe, it belongs to me, to Alex, to Harry. The three of us, twined together like plaited rope. I know the beginning of our story. I know the middle. But I have no idea how it ends …
He dreams gently, and I stare at the ceiling, sleep a distant land. I am resigned to the sore eyes and fatigued mind, and I lie there waiting for daylight to bleed into the night sky and tell me it’s all beginning again. I stare, and I wait, and I wonder: what will the landscape of my world look like once the dust has settled?
I
