The Bone Clocks

Brendan’s features freeze in midsyllable, as if the wind changed direction just as he pulled a weird face. “Brendan? Can you hear me?” Nothing. I groan with frustration and Zimbra looks up, worried. I try rethreading, I try resetting my tab, I try waiting. I didn’t even ask if he’d heard from Sharon in Australia, but now the coverage has gone and something tells me it won’t be coming back.

UP IN MY room, I can’t get to sleep. Shadows bloom in the corners, swaying a little against darker darkness. The wind’s risen, the roof creaks, the sea booms. What Brendan said is on imperfectly remembered, nonstop shuffle repeat: I think of better things to say, calming things, but as usual it’s too late. My big brother, the onetime multimillionaire property developer, looked so hollowed out and so fragile. I envy the God-intoxicated Boyces of the world. Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better. At the end of my garden the sound of waves dies and gives birth to the sound of waves, forever and ever, Amen. Across the corridor, Rafiq says something in his sleep, quite loud and afraid and in Arabic. I get up, go to his room, and say, “You okay, Raf?” but he’s asleep and mumbling, so I go back to my warm bed. My stomach makes a buried squeal. Once upon a time “my body” meant “me,” pretty much, but now “me” is my mind and my body is a selection box of ailments and aches. My molar throbs, the pain in my right side is jaggedy, rheumatism rusts my knuckles and knees, and if my body was a car I’d have traded it in, years ago. But my small, late, unexpected family—me, Lorelei, Rafiq, Zimbra, and Mo—will last only as long as my body functions. The O’Dalys would look after the kids as best they could, I know, but the world is getting worse, not better. I’ve seen the future and it’s hungry.

My fingers find Jacko’s silver labyrinth, looped on its cord over my bedpost, and I press it against my forehead. The pattern of its walls, passageways, and junctions cools my hot brain down a bit. “I doubt you survived,” I murmur to any real angel, to any surviving Horologist, “so I doubt you’ll hear me. But let me be wrong. Give me one final abracadabra. Two golden apples, if you can spare them. Get the kids out of here, somewhere safe, if anywhere is safe. Please.”

October 28

MY OLD CURTAIN FILTERS the early rose-orange sun, but it’s cold rose-orange, not warm rose-orange. The wind and waves sound busy this morning, rather than relentless, like last night. I hear Zimbra coming up the stairs, and here he is, nosing his way into my room and wagging his tail to say good morning. Strange how he always knows when I’m awake. I’m aware I’ve forgotten something, something deeply unpleasant. What was it? Brendan. I wonder how he is this morning. I hope he’s being looked after. Only five years ago I could have booked myself a seat on an airplane, driven to the airport, flown over to Bristol, and within the hour been at Tintagel Gated Village. Now it’s like a trip to the moon …

What can’t be helped can’t be helped. I’ve jobs to be doing. I get out of bed like an old lady, carefully, open the curtains and open my window. Dunmanus Bay’s still a bit choppy, but I see a sailboat—probably Aileen Jones, out checking her lobster pots. The sea holly and myrtle at the end of the garden are being buffeted; back they bend towards the cottage, then spring up, then bend back towards the cottage. This means something. Something I’m missing, even though it’s there in front of me, as plain as day.

It’s an east wind, blowing from England; from Hinkley Point.