Forever Geek

  A smile or a joke, a wise word or a direction; coconut water when they had explosive diarrhoea.

  And as they speak, I realise how much one person can be.

  Away from the spotlight, without fame, without riches – without noise and without public attention – there can be so much greatness.

  Quietly and gently, one life can be so loud.

  Finally, the old man steps forward. He knew Bunty from a three-week trek across the Hebrides, fifteen years ago.

  Which was enough to bring him here now.

  “I think,” he says, standing with his orange lantern under the big tree, “I’d like to say a word about Bunty Brown.”

  We all wait patiently for a speech.

  The kind of long, tragic monologue that will unravel us all.

  “Kind,” he says, then steps back.

  “Generous,” a woman in blue with grey hair says, nodding.

  “Hilarious,” a man in green adds quietly.

  “Honest.”

  “Gentle.”

  And – one by one – everybody in the group says something: loving, affectionate, unconventional, adventurous, nomadic, energetic, incredibly unreliable (there’s laughter), impulsive, inspirational, charming, wise, hippy (even more laughter) … Words, rising through the treetops.

  Finally, it’s our turn.

  There’s a warm silence as we each look for our own individual way of saying goodbye.

  “Loyal,” Nat says, holding her red lantern higher.

  “Interesting.” Jasper smiles.

  “Sparkly,” Rin adds, nodding fervently.

  “Bonkers,” Toby states matter-of-factly, and there’s more laughter.

  “Maverick,” Dad says with a broad grin, hugging my stepmother a bit tighter. There’s a silence, and then Annabel kisses Tabitha gently on the forehead and looks directly at me.

  “Mum,” she says with a tiny smile.

  And that’s when I realise.

  These aren’t just words in the air any more: this is our narrative, and these are the stories we leave behind, written in the sky like stars. Across languages, across countries, across relationships, across years: these are the words that finally find somewhere to land.

  And when it’s all over, this is how we’re read.

  These are the words that matter.

  Swallowing, I look at the giant tree arching into the darkness and think of my grandmother. Of her compassion and her fearlessness, of her curiosity and courage and wit: of her refusal to ever be anything but herself.

  And as the golden sun starts to burn inside me again, I think of all the lessons Bunty taught me: without grades, without exams, without red marker-pens or little gold star stickers.

  Without me ever realising I was learning at all.

  Smiling, I touch the little dried daisy pinned to my coat.

  Then I hold my green lantern higher.

  “Brave,” I say clearly.

  One by one, each person quietly puts their lantern on the ground by the tree, until it’s covered in rainbow lights.

  Then I look at the list in my hand. There’s nothing else written there: just a blank space where Bunty used to be.

  So I look up.

  At all the places she is now instead.

  t turns out there are enough sandwiches after all.

  From out of nowhere, food begins to appear: baguettes, cakes, camping pots of casserole and curry, fried chicken and fish, crisps and salads, bottles of ginger ale and beer.

  Out of bags come guitars, sitars, banjos: triangles and flutes, recorders: pillows and blankets.

  Somebody lights a small and frankly dangerous fire.

  And, in the forest clearing, people start to chat, then to laugh, then to sing and dance.

  Until the wood is full of sound and colour.

  “Hello, my Baby-baby-Panda,” Wilbur says, awkwardly perching on a tree trunk next to me.

  I’ve found a fluffy blanket and a quiet place to sit, and I’m watching it all happening around me.

  Toby and Rin, dancing like robots with a girl from Tibet.

  Jasper, chatting to a man from Mexico about intricate art from the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican era; Nat, asking a heavily bejewelled woman where the fabric for her beautiful sari came from.

  Annabel and Dad, chatting quietly with Yuka by the fire.

  My baby sister, fast asleep in Dad’s arms.

  “Hi, Wilbur,” I say, smiling at my agent as he brushes a twig off his twinkly suit with a vague air of confusion: I don’t think he spends much time in the great outdoors. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “Treacle-chip,” he says, grinning. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Especially since the majority of it seems to be here anyway.”

  We look at the dancing crowd together and I can see what he means.

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever said thank you properly,” I say after a short pause, turning back to him. “For … everything.”

  “You don’t need to, my diddle-chop,” he laughs. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being your fairy godmother. It’s been a delightification. And on that note …”

  He pauses and looks over at Yuka, who gives an almost imperceptible nod.

  “This might not be the right time, poppet, but you should know that I’ve had a humongous amount of calls since the Sydney show. Gallons of them. I’ve been holding on to requests, until you’re ready.”

  I fiddle with the strap on my bag. “Thank you.”

  “You know that game of Snakes and Ladders?” he says with a swift chuckle. “I don’t know how you did it, but that was exactly the right ladder, little llama. The big one, that goes all the way to the top.”

  “Like getting a blank tile in Scrabble?”

  “What good would that be, Dingle-bat?” he frowns, wiggling his silver, mirror-encrusted wellies. “Board games are distinctly unfashionable but even I know you need letters to play Scrabble.”

  I smile, then look back at the crowd. “Can I think about it?”

  “Absolutement,” Wilbur nods. “But just so you know, I’ll always be your fairy godmother, Sugar-lump. I am not giving up such fabulous wings for anything.”

  Naz is an Urdu word that means the warm feeling you get from knowing you are loved, unconditionally, by people who will follow you to the end of the Earth.

  And as Wilbur and I smile at each other – as I look at my friends and family, glowing in front of the fire – I suddenly know without question that naz is what I’m feeling.

  Because – if I’d known where to look – it’s been there all along.

  “Just one more teensy thing to think about, chipmunk,” Wilbur adds, standing up and shaking his mirrored wellies. “Actually, not so teensy. About six foot two, in fact.”

  I blink at him.

  “Although,” he twinkles, winking over my shoulder, “something tells me you’ve been thinking about him already.”

  There’s a loud crackle from the trees behind me.

  I spin round.

  Walking through the dark, in a black suit, white shirt and black tie – holding a big white torch – is Nick.

  ometimes it feels like there aren’t enough words in the world.

  But at other times, there actually are.

  “Nick, you’re late.”

  He glances at the party, then smiles and turns his torch off. “Very, by the looks of it. Sorry. Although this isn’t exactly what I was expecting.” He looks down at his funeral suit. “Obviously.”

  Then he takes off his tie and jacket and sits down on the blanket next to me.

  “Here,” I say, handing him a big lime-green fluffy scarf somebody’s abandoned during their arm-waving dancing. “There are sartorial rules and colour codes in the forest, and they have to be followed.”

  Smiling with his head tilted to one side, he wraps the scarf round his neck. “Better?”

  “Infinitely.”

  “Apparently I don’t follow instructions properly,” he explains wryly. “O
r use a compass with any talent. And I’m not very good at navigating woods in the dark either, although there’s a shallow pond about a mile away that I know now pretty well.”

  He lifts his eyebrows and gestures at the thick mud liberally coating the bottom of his suit trousers.

  “I did tell you that being a certified Girl Guide was handy for life skills.”

  “I know,” he grins, “but they just wouldn’t let me in.”

  We both laugh.

  Then we sit in silence for a few minutes as the orange warmth of the fire flickers on our faces. It’s the kind of silence you could nestle under and wrap yourself in, should you ever need to be comforted by silence.

  Finally, Nick clears his throat.

  “Harriet,” he says quietly. “You broke my heart.”

  I turn to him, blinking in the firelight.

  “That’s what I wanted to say,” he continues as I stare at him. “That night on Brooklyn Bridge – I thought I needed to go home, but when I was home all I could think about was you. And when you didn’t respond to my letter I …” He pauses. “I didn’t handle it very well.”

  I open my mouth. “But—”

  “Like, at all. I drove my friends and family insane. For six whole months.”

  Oh. Ohhhh. “Is that why they—”

  “The diving job was supposed to get me away from all of it,” he continues quickly. “But then you showed up, doing disco moves underwater and nearly drowning in front of me.”

  I flush bright red. He saw that? “I wasn’t …”

  “You were,” he says, with a wry grin. “I know a Harriet dance when I see one. And I was scared, and that made me angry, and then I was hurt and confused. But then you told me about Jasper and it all made sense. I realised that you never replied last summer because you’d already moved on.”

  Glancing up, I look at Jasper on the other side of the fire: still talking to the Mexican man.

  And I suddenly remember …

  Six months of carrying a box with Nick inside it; of doing everything I could to forget him; of waking up, crying; of going to sleep, crying; of pushing every thought of him I could away, as hard as I could so it wouldn’t break me any more.

  It never occurred to me that he was breaking too.

  “That’s not what happened,” I say as Jasper looks briefly over, then goes back to talking. “Jasper and I—”

  “I know,” Nick interrupts. “Nat texted me just before Yuka’s show. She also told me that if I ever hurt you again she would rip my head off.”

  Eyes wide, I glance over to where my best friend is lurking by a huge oak tree, unconvincingly pretending not to watch us.

  That wily little monkey.

  “But how did she get your—”

  “Wilbur,” Nick smiles. “Ever the eternal romantic.”

  I can now see my agent, standing with Rin and Toby. Toby gives me a big thumbs-up, Wilbur doffs an imaginary hat and Rin makes a heart shape with her hands.

  “What I’m trying to say,” Nick continues quietly. “Is that you were there for me when you thought I needed you. And now … I am here for you.”

  There’s a lump in my throat so big I can’t breathe.

  After all this time, the truth finally tumbles out of me.

  “Nick,” I say. “I didn’t ignore your letter. I wrote to you. I wrote to you over and over again. But I couldn’t send them. I thought you needed me to let you go. So Bunty looked after them for me.”

  With a tug in the corner of his mouth, Nick reaches into his pocket.

  Then he pulls out a wad of envelopes.

  And there they are: every single letter I ever wrote to him. Every word I ran to the post box with, and sent somewhere else instead.

  Somewhere that couldn’t hurt him.

  “I know,” he says simply. “I read them at the party. Bunty gave me them all.”

  n 1972, the Apollo 17 mission was grounded.

  Thanks to declining NASA spending, Eugene Cernan officially became the last man in history to ever visit the moon: breaking – with his crew – several records, including the longest moon landing, the longest moonwalks, the largest lunar sample and the longest time in lunar orbit.

  Basically, he was up there a long time.

  So – while they waited to come back to Earth – Eugene decided to make the most of it, and wrote his daughter’s initials (TDC) in the dust with his finger.

  He knew that because there’s no gravity or wind or atmosphere in space, those letters would stay up there for billions of years: unchanging, unwavering, unshifting.

  So when we look at the moon, what we’re really seeing is a sign of love.

  Engraved into the sky for all eternity.

  “Nick,” I say slowly as the golden ball in my chest starts to burn again. “Nothing’s changed. The reasons we broke up are still there. We still live in different countries.”

  “Not for long, Harriet. I just got a place at Plymouth University to study Marine Biology. That’s what I was training for on the boat: diving skills come in handy when you want to study plankton.”

  I stare at him in surprise. “Plankton?”

  “Well, among other stuff,” Nick grins. “I probably won’t specialise just yet.”

  “You know that plankton is actually a Greek word that means wanderer?” I say automatically, suddenly thinking of the peregrine falcon on Brooklyn Bridge. “It kind of suits you.”

  “Thanks, Manners. You’re a bit like algae that lives near the surface of the ocean too.”

  We laugh, then I look away: because something’s been crystallising in my head for the last two weeks, and this news isn’t going to change it.

  “I’m … I should probably tell you I’m not going to be in England after school finishes,” I say quickly, fiddling with the backpack straps again. “I’ve decided to go travelling. For a year before Cambridge, so I can see the world.”

  I’m about to add Just like Bunty but as I glance at the daisies under the tree something tells me I don’t need to.

  Nick’s eyes widen in surprise, then he nods.

  “OK,” he says, visibly thinking it through. “There’s more than a whole year until that happens, and then maybe I could just meet you out there? We can check out Vietnam or Cambodia or Peru together.”

  “Halong Bay has 1,960 limestone islands,” I say, excitement starting to build. “We could stay on an authentic Indochina junk, which is a traditional Chinese sailing ship.”

  “Rich biodiversity in a marine environment,” Nick nods. “It would basically be research.”

  “Four hundred and fifty different types of mollusc and two hundred types of fish. As well as an oceanic and seashore bio-system and a tropical evergreen bio-system.”

  “All right,” he laughs. “You want to do my course for me?”

  “No, thanks,” I grin. “I’m going to dig up dinosaur bones, thanks very much. It turns out I’m not so skilled in water.” I frown. “But, Nick …”

  Briefly, I glance at Jasper again.

  Then I take a deep breath.

  “I’m high-maintenance. I get anxious and insecure, I worry, I try to control everyone and everything …”

  “Wait,” Nick says, eyes wide. “This is brand-new infor—”

  “I interrupt people, I talk too much, I tell them facts they’re not interested in. I’m a know-it-all, I’m competitive, I get easily distracted, I analyse everything—”

  “Just—”

  “Everything, Nick. Literally everything that happens. I like plans, I like lists, I like schedules. I lie more than I should. I like knowing what’s going to happen and I’m not breezy. I’ve never been laid-back in my life …”

  “Harriet.”

  “I care too much, about everything, all of the time. I’m impatient and I try too hard. I’m bossy. I break a lot of things and fall over. A lot. I don’t listen—”

  “Harriet.”

  “I’m not even listening now.”

  “Har
riet.”

  “I’m hard work, Nick. And I’m OK with that, but you need to be OK with that too because I’m not going to change.”

  Finally, I draw to a breathless stop.

  “But that’s the whole point,” he says slowly with a warm smile. “I don’t want you to change, Harriet. You’re not hard work for me.”

  And that’s when I know.

  As Nick laces his fingers through mine and the golden sun in my chest starts burning so brightly it feels like it’s going to explode, I realise that all that time we were focusing on our three stars, the moon had been there too.

  Coming and going – waxing and waning – but never really leaving.

  Always there: always shared.

  Always reflecting love and light back at me.

  “Acceptance,” Lion Boy says, kissing me gently. “Tick.”

  very story has an end.

  And as Nick and I kiss on a blanket in a rainbow-lantern-lit wood, I realise that this isn’t it: not quite yet.

  There are two things left that I still have to do.

  “Nick,” I say, pulling away with my cheeks flushed and my lips tingling. “Would it be OK if I—”

  “Course.” He stands up. “I reckon there’s a Toby Pilgrim conversation going on right now with my name written all over it.”

  I don’t know how Nick knows that I want a moment to myself.

  But he does.

  “Don’t let Tobes show you the Batman hankie,” I say quickly. “It’s been up that jumper sleeve for a really long time.”

  “Noted,” Nick laughs loudly, reaching into his pocket.

  “Here,” he adds, pulling out my planet necklace. “You dropped it on the beach – lucky I found it.”

  Oh, thank sugar cookies.

  Then he ambles off to where everyone I love in the world is gathered in a comforting little circle: Nat, Toby, Jasper, Rin, Wilbur, Yuka, Annabel, Dad, Tabby.

  Briefly, I see something unspoken pass between him and Jasper, then Jasper nods and moves over so he can sit down.

  And Nick takes his rightful place among them.

  Still glowing, I put my precious necklace back on, stand up and hoist the candy-pink backpack Bunty gave me on to my shoulders. Frankly, it’s significantly heavier than my satchel: I may have to do some serious weight training before my travel plans commence next year.