Eden by Joanna Nadin

my own face frowning now.
    “You weren’t at her funeral,” I say.
    “I—”
    “Your father,” I blurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… He – he died?” I say pointlessly.
    “Y–yes. He died. I couldn’t come then. I’m— I’m so sorry. I—”
    “It’s OK,” I interrupt quickly.
    His accent is rootless. Not the braying drawl I imagined it would be.
    “You came now,” I say. Like he said he would in his letter. He came anyway.
    “Yes, I— I hitched.”
    “She hitched all the time,” I say. “To Calenick. To Plymouth even.”
    But he’ll know this. He won’t want to hear it now and be reminded of her. I fall silent again.
    “What? What is it?”
    “Nothing,” I say. I hug my arms around my legs. It is hot, yet I am shivering, my skin dappled with goosebumps. “She’s gone,” I say. “Aunt Julia – Bea’s mum, I mean. If that’s who you came to see,” I add.
    “It’s not who I came to see.”
    Then who? Why come? To see Eden? To see me ? I push the last thought away as I feel my face redden. He was Bea’s. I peek a sideways glance at him – at this last piece of her, and then I realize why he’s here. He doesn’t want Eden or me. He wants to see Bea. Or rather traces of her, particles of her. He wants to piece them together so he can know all of her, remember everything.
    Just as I do.
    He reaches a hand out to me. I take it; let him pull me up. “I’m sorry I scared you,” he says. And he smiles. And I see what Bea saw. That he has strength and grace and beauty. And secrets. Bea loved secrets.
    I let his hand drop then, awkward again, shove mine into my pocket. “Me too,” I reply. Because I know that for a split second, in the shadow of the boathouse, with his body blocking the sun, he thought I was her. He thought I was a kind of resurrection, a ghost, a double.
    “I should go,” he says. “This was a mistake. I—”
    And I feel another sudden lurch of fear at the loss of him so quickly. “Stay,” I say, the word pushing past my lips, blurting out before I can trap it under my tongue.
    “What?”
    “I mean it,” I say. “Stay. For a bit. If you want.”
    “I want,” he replies.
    And I feel the heaviness seep out of me, I am light as air, as gossamer. “You can sleep here in the boathouse,” I say, words falling over themselves now. “We used to. And there’s running water. A stove, look. And I can get you stuff. Food and things. From the house.”
    He nods as he watches me whirl around him. I am dancing with determination, and desperation and delight. But then he catches me, stops me mid-turn.
    “Don’t tell anyone,” he says. “About me, I mean.”
    “But why?”
    “I— I just don’t want them talking… I mean I don’t want to talk to other people. My father— I shouldn’t even be here. If I’m going to stay, let’s keep it a secret. Just … just between you and me.”
    I feel heat in my face again. He wants to talk to me. He wants to know me. And in that second I understand. We can make it better for each other. I am all that is left of her for him and he is all that is left of her for me. We both feel guilty. We both argued with her.
    “I won’t tell,” I say. “Promise. Wait here. I won’t be long.”
    And I am flying again, up the path to Eden. And I feel it, I feel how I used to feel with Bea at the beginning of summer. On the brink of something; an adventure.
    An awfully big adventure.

MAY 1988
    THE CROWD heaves in one violent surge to the stage, and James and Bea are carried on the wave, their cheers lost in the sound of fiddles and a drunken drum roll .
    He saved weeks for this gig – two tickets to the Pogues at the Town and Country Club. His grant money set aside in an old tobacco tin, he’s been living instead on baked beans and end-of-night chips blagged from Nihal downstairs; spent his evenings soaking up the free heat of the library to avoid putting another 50p in the meter .
    It was worth it though, because now he’s