The Bone Clocks

I feel envious and pleased. “That’s brilliant. Your publishers will be doing backflips down the corridors.”

“There’s no guarantee anyone’ll read it. They’re stories based on people I knew at the center. Not a psychic in sight.”

“Right now, The Collected Shopping Lists of Holly Sykeswould go straight to number one on preorders alone.”

“Well, we’ll see. But that’s what I’ve been doing here all summer. Reykjavik’s a good place to work. Iceland’s like Ireland; being famous here’s nothing special.”

By chance our fingertips are almost touching. Holly notices at the same instant, and we pull our hands back onto our laps. I try to come up with a joke I can turn this micro-embarrassment into, but nothing springs to mind. “I’ll call you a taxi, Crisp. It’s gone midnight.”

“No wayis it that late.” I check my phone: 00:10. “Sodding hell, it’s tomorrow already.”

“So it is! What time’s your flight to London?”

“Nine-thirty, but can I ask you two last things?”

“Anything,” she says. “Almost.”

“Am I still ‘the spiral, the spider, the one-eyed man’?”

“You want me to check?”

Like an atheist wanting to be prayed for, I nod.

As she did in Shanghai, Holly touches the spot on her forehead and lets her eyelids almost close. What a great face she has but … it shouldn’t be that gray, or stretched. My eyes wander to her pendant. It’s a labyrinth. Some symbolic mind-body-spirit thing, I guess. From Ed?

“Yes.” Holly opens her eyes. “Same as ever.”

A possible drunk laughs maniacally outside. “Will I ever know what that means? That’s not my second question.”

“Some day, yes. Let me know when you know.”

“I promise.” The second question’s harder because one answer to it scares me very much: “Holly, you’re not ill, are you?”

She reacts with surprise but not denial. She looks away.

“Oh, sod it.” I want to unask my question. “Forgive me, it’s not—”

“Cancer of the gall bladder.” Holly attempts a smile. “Trust me to choose a nice rare one, eh?”

I can’t even attempt a smile. “What’s the prognosis?”

Holly wears the expression of someone discussing a tiresome inconvenience. “Too late for surgery—it’s spread to my liver and … um, yeah, it’s all over the shop. My oncologist in London gives me a—a—a five to ten percent chance of being here this time next year.” Her voice croaks. “Not the odds I’d choose. With chemo and drugs the odds improve, up to twenty percent, maybe, but … do I want to spend a few extra months puking in bin-liners? That’s the other reason I’ve been here in Iceland all summer, shadowing poor Aoife, like, y’know, whatsisface from Macbeth.”

“Banquo. Aoife knows, then?”

Holly nods. “Brendan, Sharon, their kids, my mother, and Цrvar too—I’m hoping he’ll help Aoife when, y’know. When I can’t. But nobody else knows. ’Cept you. People get so maudlin. I have to spend what energy I’ve got cheering them up. I wasn’t going to tell you either but … you asked. Sorry to put a downer on a lovely evening.”

I see her, and see Crispin Hershey through her eyes, and perhaps she sees Holly Sykes through mine. Suddenly it’s later. Holly and I are standing by the table, hugging goodbye. It isn’t an erotic hug. Truly it isn’t, dear reader. I’d know.

It’s this: As long I’m holding her, nothing bad can happen.

·   ·   ·

THE TAXI DRIVER has earlobes full of metalwork and just says, “Okay,” when I tell him the name of my hotel. I wave goodbye until I can’t see Holly anymore. I’ve arranged to go to Rye before Christmas, so I’ll just ignore this unpleasant premonition that I’ll never see her again. The radio’s tuned to a classical-music station and I recognize Maria Callas singing “Casta Diva” from Bellini’s Norma—Dad used it in the model-airplane scene in Battleship Hill. For a moment I forget where I am. I switch on my iPhone to text Holly, to thank her for the evening, and as I’m writing it, a message from Carmen gets relayed through. She sent it while I was delivering my lecture earlier. It has no text: it’s just an image of … a blizzard?

A blizzard at night through a windscreen?

I tilt my head and rotate the phone.

Mashed-up asteroids? No.

It’s an ultrasound scan.

Of Carmen’s womb.

With a tenant in it.

December 13, 2020