‘I know. I think I will stay.’
He paused then. We sat in silence as he gazed at the sky above the water and Es Vedrà.
‘It looks like a miracle,’ he said, after a while. ‘Every day Ibiza has sunsets like this, and I have taken them for granted. Does that make sense?’
It made sense. ‘Galileo called mathematics the language of the book of nature. And we are trapped inside that book. We are words in that language. So it is hard to read and absorb and appreciate what we are inside, what we are familiar with. Just as Marta said, there are patterns everywhere.’
‘Patterns, yes. You sound like Marta. I suppose that is a pattern.’
I contemplated this. The recurring mathematics of the natural world. The Fibonacci spirals found in whirlpools and pine cones and created by humpback whales in Antarctica to capture prey. Our blood vessels patterned like fork lightning and the twisting branches of trees. The fabric of the cosmos is woven with fractals and so are we. We are not alone in the universe, and we are not alone on Earth. We are connected not just to each other and not just to primates but to everything. To a goat, to a lobster, to the seeds of a dandelion. You said you felt you are in a pattern. A sequence. And you are. But it is vast and magnificent, this sequence. It connects you to every single thing in the universe. And one day it will surprise you in its expanse.
The light was still there in the sky, just a trace of it, as we sat on the beach. A strange deep red bleeding into the dark.
‘The sky looks so still,’ I said. ‘Even though it is going to be night soon.’
Alberto tutted at me. ‘Don’t think about the night, Grace. Not just yet.’
And I looked at the red sky. And I felt its wonder so powerfully. Like it was dangerous just to inhale because I might dissolve into the universe.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘A miracle.’
I want you to understand these moments. They are all around us on this familiar, alien planet of ours. In every raindrop and scattered particle of light. Life sings and blazes. Even when we are numb to it, when we hide from it, when it is too loud and painful to experience, when we aren’t equipped to feel it – it is there, waiting, to be cherished and protected, ready to give us at least one more blast of beauty before the night.
Dear Maurice,
I know I only clicked send ten minutes ago, and I know you won’t have read the manuscript yet, but I wanted to say one more thing about it.
I describe a lot of things we are taught to believe are fantastical and even impossible. Paranormal powers. Protective forces beneath the ocean. I have experienced all these things, but not a single one of them is more or less remarkable or ridiculous than everything already here.
The taste of fresh orange juice. A fig. The sight of a flower. The sound of music. A slab of sunlight on floorboards. Cats and dogs and goats and lizards and dolphins. Harrison Ford’s face. Imagine if you were from a planet with none of those things. Imagine how full of wonder everything would seem. How unjaded we would be by everything in front of us. How a picture of a sunset would never seem corny again. How a simple walk in an orchard would be utopia. How a cool breeze on a hot day would be a lottery win. How each and every bird song would be a symphony.
We should see ourselves as aliens, Maurice, because to the rest of the universe that is who we are.
Also – I should have said – if you want to visit, please tell me. It would be lovely to see you. I wish you well. I wish you everything. I sense your life will work out fine.
Your friend and teacher,
Grace Winters
PS: There is a bungalow in Lincoln I no longer need. I am sure you could get a good price for it. You didn’t mention your financial worries – you just wrote ‘there are other things too’ – but I know the struggles you are having, in the same way I know all sorts of things that no one tells me. I hope this can help you solve them. It contains too many memories, and I would like to give it to you. You see, I was once left a house in Spain, and it was a gesture that changed my life. So I would like to offer you a similar one. After all, knowing what I can now do in a casino, I no longer have to worry about money.
Dear Grace,
I know I have told you this many times, but I still can’t begin to express my deep appreciation for the bungalow. I thought you would like to know that a sale was agreed yesterday. It truly was a life-changing gesture and I will be able to help my sis a lot with it too.
But also, I want to thank you for your story. I shouldn’t have believed any of it, and yet I somehow believed all of it. You have helped me break the pattern. Or at least switch to a better one. And so I am coming to Ibiza. I am going to have an adventure and get a train all the way to Dénia and get the ferry. I hear it is best to arrive by boat. I will be there the second week of September. I have a good feeling about it. Maybe you could say a premonition. Last night I dreamed of the sea. It glowed. Maybe it calls me the way it called you.
See you soon, I hope.
An infinite thank you.
Maurice
x
Acknowledgements
All books are a team effort. This one especially. I have quite a lot of people to thank.
First, my brilliant editor Francis Bickmore, who I have worked with on every book since The Radleys fifteen years ago, and who always knows how to help me best tease out the story and gives me licence to embrace my weirder ideas. Also, I was very lucky at an early stage to have input from my international publishers, including invaluable comments from the shining minds of Patrick Nolan, Doris Janhsen and Iris Tupholme.
I’m equally grateful for my agent, Clare Conville, a literary legend who thankfully got into this idea right from the start and understood what I was trying to do.
I want to thank, as ever, Jamie Byng and everyone at Canongate Books. Thanks to the brilliant and indispensable team of Jenny Fry, Alice Shortland, Lucy Zhou, Jessica Neale, Charlie Tooke, Vicki Rutherford, Jo Lord and Sasha Cox.
My snippets of Spanish were helped by having the wonderful Silvie Varela kindly cast her eyes over the dialogue.
And, as always, I must thank Andrea Semple. My first reader, my first editor, my best friend – and not to mention the person who was there through the highs and lows of our early Ibiza years. And to Pearl and Lucas, for putting up with me trying to interest them with facts about seagrass and Spanish history.
This book is self-evidently shaped by my love of Ibiza, and I want to thank everyone I know and have known on that island. From when I first lived and worked there in the nineties, to rediscovering my love for the place and in recent years. I am grateful to the numerous old and new friends I have met there, and to the place itself. That magical, mystical, multifarious island in the Mediterranean which always defies any preconceived perceptions.
And I would like to acknowledge the people who do a lot of work in protecting the ecology of the island. In particular I’d like to mention Ibiza Preservation (ibizapreservation.org), which for nearly two decades has been working to protect the habitat of the island, with key projects to protect the island’s lizard population, to reduce plastic pollution on Ibiza and Formentera, and to preserve the endangered but vital Posidonia seagrass meadows against pollution, damage from boats and coastal urbanisation.
Last but not least, I want to thank you, the reader. I am very lucky to have you to share my stories with. I had stepped away from writing for a few years. But support from readers helped bring this story into being. I hope you liked it. Cheers. Gracias por todo.
About the Author
Matt Haig is the author of the internationally bestselling memoir Reasons to Stay Alive, along with five novels, including The Midnight Library, How to Stop Time, and several award-winning children’s books. His work has been published in fifty territories across the world.
