My words were just midges in the air. He was elsewhere.
There was music playing faintly in the background. ‘Do you like this song?’ he asked, reverting to one of his favourite subjects. Music. ‘Listen. It is called “The Last Day Of Summer”. It is by The Cure. I wasn’t really the goth era. I was the Rolling Stones era. I was protest music. Soul and Dylan and Joan Baez and Sam Cooke and Gil Scott-Heron. Imagine me in eyeliner! But I’ve always tried to keep my mind open to later music. It is such a beautiful song. Julia – my wife – she loved The Cure. We saw them at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona. She liked this song a lot too. It is so underrated. It is a bit sad and not my normal thing. But listen. Listen to those guitars, how they create shapes, like a forest. Then his voice comes in and it is as natural as a shadow.’ He paused. ‘This song is exquisite.’
He reminded me a little of Karl in that moment. The way he talked about music as a kind of shield, so he could talk about emotion without talking about his emotion. I was going to get him back on topic, but then I realised this was the topic. In feeling the music, in feeling its memories and melancholy, he was letting it open himself up.
And when he began to open, I sensed he was hurting. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just, you know, I just thought it would be great to know a bit more about you.’ I was going to ask directly if he was ill, but it felt too indelicate so instead I said: ‘For instance, it would be lovely to know what you thought of Christina.’
He sighed. It was a slow, mournful sigh. ‘She was special. She made me feel like I wasn’t a fifty-two-hertz whale. She was on my wavelength.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Interesting.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was never like that.’ He reconsidered while staring philosophically at his juice. ‘Well, okay, it was a little like that. We had a great time. There was a romantic connection at the start. She had recently divorced, and Julia had died not long before. Christina was very good to me, and Marta liked her. For a few weeks that became something else. Why are you asking all this?’ He raised a presumptuous eyebrow. ‘It’s because I am more magnetic than Es Vedrà, right?’
I stared at the smile adorning his sun-battered, bearded face. There was something about him, I supposed. Something wild and pure and out of time. A kind of infuriating but attractive stubbornness that suggested he wasn’t just the metaphoric lonely whale but also that he wanted to be so.
He was reading me. ‘If you fit in, you disappear, right?’
‘I don’t know. I have always tried to fit in. I don’t want to go against the grain. It gives you splinters.’
‘Well, you are different now, Grace. And trust me, it isn’t so bad to be unique. You always know you are there. You know which one you are.’
Then I locked eyes with him for a moment and I felt something shifting inside him. As if suddenly he was opening the book of himself for me to read. He held my hand as it rested on the small table. It wasn’t strange. It was the gesture of a pure friend.
I decided this was the time. ‘That day at the hospital. You said the reason we had to get out was because we had to keep things secret.’
‘Yes…’
‘Yes, but you suddenly wanted to get out. And that made no sense. I mean, you never hide your beliefs. You have written books on them. People at hippy markets and grocery stores know about you and your “mad theories”. So why did we need to get out of the hospital?’
He hesitated. ‘I saw someone. Someone I know.’
‘The doctor. The one I saw at the airport?’
The pause was long. ‘Yes. Dr Pérez. The oncologist. I had to get out of there. I am sorry. I didn’t want you to know. Or anyone to know. Especially Marta. I am sorry. I should have been honest but—’
‘Will it be okay?’
‘I’ve had all the tests on my pancreas. The blood tests, ultrasound, everything…And she thinks I should have treatment, but she doesn’t realise I can see the outcome. I can see my own future. Whatever I do, it only changes the date by a week or so. Three weeks at most. We see the future that exists if we do nothing. That is true. But sometimes there is nothing we can do. At the moment I am fine, but eventually…’
I had no idea what to say. I held his hand again. Squeezed it. The wall was down. I saw everything now. He only had about two months. At most. His decline would be steep in his last days. He had no idea if he was going to follow Christina into that other world. I felt his sadness flow into me. But it wasn’t just sadness now. In fact, the sadness was fading. It was gratitude, relief and a kind of calm contemplation.
‘I haven’t wanted to upset anyone.’
‘But La Presencia,’ I said. ‘It heals things. Can’t it heal you?’
He shook his head. ‘It only comes to you once. Now, Salacia might be different. If I choose to try and take that one-way ticket, I may have a chance of being healed. Who knows? I imagine it’s possible. It might give me years. But it can’t make me or anyone immortal here. Earthlings aren’t meant to be immortal, Grace.’
I remembered his reaction to the discovery that Francisco had made it to Salacia. That was why it was so important to him. It could be a way out.
I tried not to cry.
‘The air is sweet there,’ I told him. ‘The sea is marvellous. Can you imagine the creatures that live there?’
He smiled now, and the smile seemed entirely real. ‘But for now, I am here. And the air and the sea here are beautiful too, and so I am staying…And I have never felt more alive.’
I entered his mind completely now.
It was wide open.
Like a meadow.
I went to him, inside his mind, and I was with him, and we just stayed there and we didn’t have to say anything. We were just together.
In a state of understanding.
On the same frequency.
It was lovely.
We sipped orange juice together.
Marta and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Marta lived on a finca in the north of the island. It was a calming but slightly chaotic place, with fig trees in the garden and cats roaming in and out of the house. If I’d been Alberto, I would have definitely taken her offer of the spare room. It was a definite step up from an old goat-bitten futon on the floor of his scuba office.
‘She has no extra-sensory talents,’ Alberto had told me, in a quiet and secretive and sensitive way. ‘La Presencia never came to her. But she is super-intelligent.’ Marta had studied at the University of Navarra and tutored there remotely and part-time. ‘The best university,’ Alberto said, with a pride that even I had to admit was charming, seeing that he had such a ferocious gripe with academia in general. ‘It breeds geniuses, Spanish prime ministers, polar explorers, film directors and the very best scientists. Everyone likes her. And she has an investigative mind. She is a brilliant astrophysicist and finds logic where no one else can. If we want to find who was after Christina, we need her. She is better at this than me.’
‘But she doesn’t know?’
