I clutch my bag, and behind my sunglasses I close my eyes tight, willing away the anxiety. Telling myself I have managed a long plane journey, a difficult drive through mountain roads. That I have faced fears and navigated dangers to get this far. That I can do this. When I open my eyes again, I see Em running towards me.
She has been here for a couple of weeks, so she is now off-white and incredibly freckly rather than ghostly. She has a baseball cap over her shaved hair, and as soon as she reaches me she swallows me up into a hug.
‘How are you?’ she asks, lifting my shades up so she can look into my eyes. ‘It’s a lot, I know. First time I walked through here I thought my head would explode.’
Even now, her nostrils are flaring and her fists are slightly clenched. This is the place where her father died, along with so many others.
It is quiet here now, peaceful, but I remember the roar and the rumble, the crashing and yelling, the smell of smoke and death. The horror of waking up alone, in the dark, crushed beneath an angry world. With him, the man I may or may not see today. I don’t know if he is here, and I am afraid to ask. I am afraid of so much.
I allow myself that moment of fear and nerves, then I suck in the fresh air, and feel the heat of daylight, and remind myself that I am safe. I am free. I am whole, I can breathe. I am with my friend.
I reach out for Em’s hand, and squeeze her fingers.
‘We’re okay, Em,’ I say. I make it a statement, not a question, and it seems to reassure us both. She nods once, briskly, and looks around her.
‘What’s the plan?’ I ask, nodding towards the small group of people milling around. I notice that they all have drinks, and smile at the thought of the villagers yet again setting up some kind of enterprise. Life does, after all, go on.
‘Well, I’ve interviewed all of them separately already. Now we’re just … I don’t know. Relaxing doesn’t seem like the right word? We’re chatting. We’re looking around. We’re remembering. Ollie has cameras set up all over the place, full disclosure, and the idea is that we simply capture what happens. We’re staying to film all night, so, you know …’
‘We’ll be here at the same time of day as it happened?’
‘Yep! You got me. So, it’s a shame Harry couldn’t make it.’
‘Not for Harry. He’s happy, Em. And he processed all of this a lot better than I did after it happened – he doesn’t need this.’
‘I’m glad he’s happy,’ she says. ‘But what about you?’
‘I am as well. It’s strange, living at home again, but it’s nice too. And the divorce is simple enough. We’re both moving on, and it’s past time. So thank you.’
‘Thank you for accidentally ruining your marriage?’
I laugh. ‘We were most of the way there already …’
It should be difficult, dismantling a marriage – but it hasn’t been. Once we’d made the decision, it all just … folded up. Got put away like garden furniture at the end of summer.
There were logistics to sort, finances to arrange, possessions to share out. But beneath all of that, beneath the practical, I think perhaps there was mainly a sense of relief – on both sides. It was incredibly amicable, which I think is less of a testament to our restrained and gracious characters, and more to the fact that we were both very ready to let go. It has been an unexpectedly quiet and gentle end to what has been a major era of our lives.
I think we are both aware of the suffering of the other, of pain caused and pain received, of mistakes made and truths untold.
We have both tried very hard not to hurt each other any further, and the disentangling of our existences was a tentative and cautious thing. We have sold the bungalow, and he has moved in with Alison. I wish him well, and was not at all offended at the speed with which they acted – we all know that life is too short to keep wasting chances at happiness.
We will soon be officially divorced, and in some ways that is simply a legal recognition of what was going on beneath the surface for so long – a slow and gradual parting of two people who never even should have been together. We have no children, no pets, no beating hearts to consider other than our own. It has been startlingly simple.
And now I live a different life, at home in Cornwall. I might stay there. I might not. I simply do not know. I feel like a deck of cards that has been thrown into the air, no idea where the hearts and diamonds and kings and queens might land.
It is exhilarating, in its own way, to be unsure of my future. To not know what lies ahead, to have twists and turns in front of me instead of a straight line. I could travel. I could retrain as a brain surgeon. I could become a dog walker at last. I could do everything or I could do nothing. I am rootless, and restless, and have no real ties to any one place or any one person – for the first time in many years, nobody needs me.
Coming here, to this place, could prove to me that I should stay at home and play it safe. It might encourage me to embark upon an adventure. Who knows?
For now, I am concerned with not having a panic attack as we approach the plaza, and with scanning the crowds looking for one particular person.
I have spent months wondering how it might feel when we meet again. How he will look, how he will be. He might have changed. He’s a human being, not a museum exhibit trapped in time just the way I remember him. He might be married, or have children, or have become a priest – though I would hope that Em would have told me, even though I have not asked.
It is not reasonable, or productive, to picture Alex as he was the last time I saw him, or to ponder too deeply how he might feel about me. We parted on difficult terms, both in pain. I have missed him every single day since then, but am not arrogant enough to assume that the same is true for him.
We are a few metres away from the crowds now and I realise that I am nervous, in several different ways. The natural nerves of meeting people in a social setting, the extra nerves of it being filmed. The nervousness of not seeing Alex, and the underlying fear caused by the location. By part of me wondering if I need to tread lightly, or the world might sink beneath my feet.
‘I’m a bit scared,’ I say to Em, stopping suddenly.
