Page 45 of I Know How This Ends

The loss of Jules feels like a missing organ.

She texts and calls multiple times a day—begging me to speak to her—but I am still archiving her messages and silencing my

phone.

It doesn’t work—I’m still furious—so I spend the next few days with Polly, preparing for the test shoot. Perry and Paige—now

permanently camped out on my living-room floor—spend the entire time energetically trying to hug Cheddar with an enthusiasm

he’s not at all sure about.

“ Gentle ,” Polly says, still peering at her folder. “Be gentle with the kitten.”

“Mummy, I love him,” Paige squeaks as Cheds tries to climb on her lap, using her knees as scaffolding. “I love the baby.”

“Can we have him?” Perry asks. “At home?”

“Please, Mummy, please please please can we have him?”

“No, darlings.” Polly looks up and smiles gently. “Because he’s not your cat, and also you know Daddy is allergic. Maybe at

some point in the future you can have one.”

When they’ve gone back to trying to torture my pet, she grimaces at me.

“It’s the only thing I’m freaking out about,” she whispers, leaning forward.

“How the kids will react when we leave. How hurt they’ll be.

But I’m going to make sure he gets equal custody, and we’ll stay close.

No fighting, no drama. Just... not together anymore.

Not a couple. I still love him, in a tired, defeated way, and I have no need to punish him. I’m not a monster, right?”

“No,” I say firmly, remembering how Peter stared at my breasts and gave me a mark out of ten, like I was an Olympic gymnast

he wasn’t particularly impressed by. She is so much kinder and more dignified than I would be, in her position. “You’re not a monster, Polly.”

She nods in relief, then brightens again. “So, we’ve done a few run-throughs of the script, I’ve made sure they’ve got the

right props, and they’ve sent me a rough version of your little cartoon familiar. I think it’s adorable. What do you think?”

Polly pushes her laptop over to me and I stare at it.

It’s a cloud.

A small, adorable, fluffy cloud with huge eyes and a quizzical little mouth.

Your stupid cloud , I hear teenage Winter yell at me.

There’s a sharp wave of relief: any remaining doubt over whether I’ll get this job or not abruptly vanishes. I’ll get it,

I’ll be wearing a costume for the next decade, talking to an animated cloud and “humiliating” my stepdaughter on national television, and—I’ve got to

be honest—I am so ridiculously happy about it. Sorry, Winnie. I’ll make it up to you, somehow. And maybe, when you’ve passed

through the awkward teenage stage, you’ll actually be quite proud of me.

“I love it.” I nod. “It’s perfect. Perhaps we could call it Lenny?”

I think of the blue marble Henry gave me on our second date, now sitting on my bedside table to remind me that I have a man

who gives marbles as gifts and how lucky that makes me.

Polly looks confused. “Lenny?”

“It’s short for lenticular.” I smile. “My favorite type of cloud. Although technically he looks more like a cumulus cloud—they’re the fluffy ones—but I don’t think we want to be abbreviating that for an audience

of children.”

It takes a second for Pol to get it, and then she leans back and shrieks with laughter.

Perry and Paige are so shocked, they look up in tandem. Something tells me that however together Polly seems to be now, it has not been the easiest year for her—to say the least—and she probably hasn’t laughed that much

in a while.

I grin at her. “Unless—”

“No,” she says quickly. “Let’s not call this cloud Cumulus, please . ”

“Deal. Lenny it is.” I lean over the paperwork. “So it’s tomorrow morning, twenty minutes in total, we’ve got the costume

ready...”

We both glance simultaneously at the “costume” Polly has sourced. It’s certainly a deviation from my beloved navy, that’s

for sure. It was never my dream to appear in front of thousands looking like a giant toddler, but I’ll take the win where

I can.

“Yup. I’ll pick you up in the morning by yelling at you from the driveway.”

“Fab.” I nod as my phone beeps. “And I’ll yell back much more—”

I stare at the screen.

Maggie, where are you?

It’s from my parents.

What do they mean, where am I ? I’m in my own flat, exactly as I have been the last fifty times they’ve contacted me.

“Hang on,” I say, jumping up. “Just got to sort this out.”

I’m at home. Why???

My mother or father is typing for what seems like four years.

Go to your grandfather’s ASAP!!!!

I have literally never felt panic like it.

What’s going on? Is he OK?

The message doesn’t deliver. I try to call and it goes straight to voicemail.

WHAT IS GOING ON? REPLY PLEASE

“I’ve got to go,” I bleat as Polly frowns at my expression. “Right now.”

I’m desperately trying to call my grandfather while simultaneously slamming my shoes on, but he’s not picking up either. Fear

is bubbling at the base of my throat. He never responded to my drunk voicemail, but I’d assumed that he just couldn’t find

the voicemail button. I was planning to go round this evening, but—oh my God, is it too late? Why did I leave it? Why did I think I had all the time in the world?

“What’s happening?” Polly says in alarm. “What can I do? How can I help?”

“My grandad,” I manage, but that’s as far as I get.

I can’t say anything else—can’t speak the words, in case they become real—so instead I throw open the door and start running.

“Grandad!” I throw myself through the front door so hard it smacks against the hallway wall. “Grandad! Where are you?”

In my peripheral vision, I notice that the house seems spotless, tidy: there’s no post on the floor, no shoes on the side.

But these unimportant details are absorbed on an almost unconscious level, because all I feel is pure terror. There’s a lump

in my throat, my heart is banging and my eyes are full of tears again. Please, please, no, no no no—

“GRANDAD,” I yell, running down the hallway.

I smash through the door into the living room and see my grandfather: sitting motionless in his armchair, facing the window.

Everything in me starts breaking and the lump in my throat travels up, into my mouth, until I let it out in a guttural sob.

He is what roots me, I abruptly realize.

He’s the tree I have sat under, the shade I have sought, the one thing that was solid when the world shook.

Nothing feels safe or constant without him.

“Meg?”

I blink as the room starts rotating.

“Margot, what’s wrong? Are you unwell?”

My grandfather’s head turns slightly, and I start crying in earnest now: loud, ugly sobs as I hang on to the doorknob for

support, clutching my stomach.

“Gracious.” He tries his hardest to get up, fails, tries again. “Meg, sweetheart, talk to me. Is it Henry? Has it happened?

I mean... what has happened?”

Grandad gets to his feet, grabs his walking stick and starts ambling toward me as fast as he possibly can.

“I am going to kill my parents ,” I shriek at the ceiling. “ Kill them. ”

“Do you need help with that?” He puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Usually I’d be against murdering my own offspring and

his wife, but for you, Meg, I’ll make an exception. What did they do this time?”

My bloody parents. They could have written “ Hey, have you been to see your grandad this last week because we can’t reach him and we’re worried ,” but noooooo. Let’s leave cryptic messages that indicate there’s an emergency and then turn our phone off.

“You didn’t pick up the phone,” I sob, sounding a lot like Winter with a kitten under her sweater. “You didn’t pick up the

phone and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Oh, my Meg. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t reach it in time. I kept telling Alexa to answer it for me, but she’s being extremely

belligerent.”

“You scared me,” I bleat at him pathetically. “Don’t do that.”

“I’ll try,” he smiles, patting my shoulder. “My sweet girl, you mustn’t worry about me like this. I am an old, old man and

when it’s my time, it’s my time.”

“You’re not old ,” I squeak irrationally. “Stop saying that.”

“Nearly ninety-four isn’t exactly a toddler, even if it sometimes feels like it. I need you to promise you’ll stop worrying

about me all the time, Meg. Fear and anxiety are not the emotions I want to bring into your life. I want to bring only good

things, like you have brought me. Promise me?”

“No,” I sniff. “I’m going to keep worrying.”

“Your heart is too big,” he says, taking my hand and kissing it. “That’s always been your biggest problem, Margot.”

“Really? Because I could name like five hundred others that are considerably bigger.”

My grandfather smiles and pats the top of my head, like I’m still a child waiting impatiently for the months to turn over.

“I’m not going anywhere just yet,” he says quietly. “So try not to panic. OK?”

“OK,” I sniff, suddenly remembering his eyes on me—full of love—at my wedding. That gives us at least three years together,

possibly four, depending how long my engagement to Henry is. I should have remembered that when I was pelting down the road

with my shoelaces undone. “As long as you live forever, I suppose it’s a deal.”

“I’ll try my very hardest.” Grandad smiles and glances up at the little gray ball sitting on his mantelpiece. “Alexa? What

time is it?”

“The time is four twenty-seven p.m.,” she says politely: clearly finally trained.

“Ah.” Grandad nods knowingly. “At least we won’t have to wait too long to exact our cunning revenge on your parents. How shall

we do it? Do you have any specific murdering requirements, or do you want me to trip them up with my walking stick?”

I stare at him with a flush of sadness. He’s losing his memory now too. I suppose it was inevitable, eventually: the senses

all fading, one by one, until time doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

If it ever really did mean something.

“Grandad,” I say as gently as possible, while also wiping my wet nose on my sleeve and then rubbing my sleeve on my hem like a grotty kid. “Mum and Dad don’t live here anymore. Remember? They went back to Australia.”

“Yes.” He nods. “They went back to Australia. I remember.”

He continues to regard me calmly, so obviously I need to make this painful situation a little clearer.

“So, they’re in Australia,” I clarify as softly as I can.

“No.” He shakes his head. “They’re not.”

“They are.”

“They’re not, Meg.”

And I really don’t want to fight with my grandfather about geographical locations, but it feels like this is an important

distinction to make. “Grandad, I’m very sorry, I know it must come as a bit of a shock, but—”

“Helllooooooo.” A chirpy voice from the hallway. “In come the conquering heroes from their Antipodean adventure!”

My mouth opens and I stare at my grandad, who looks a bit smug.

“This is not good security,” I hear another voice say, less chirpily. “Joanne, why is the door wide open like this? Anyone

could walk in.”

“Anyone did just walk in, George.”

I’m still staring at my grandfather in shock.

“Told you,” he says with a wide, triumphant grin.

I turn to transfer my stare to my parents, who walk into the living room and stand there grinning tiredly at us both, as if

they hadn’t just magicked themselves out of thin air from the other side of the world.

“What the f—”

“Margot Jane Wayward,” my mother reproves quickly, holding up a hand. “Don’t swear in front of your grandfather. Have some

respect, for goodness’ sake.”

“What the fridge ,” I amend quickly so I can get to the point, “are you both doing here?”

“I told you,” my mother sighs, as if she is a long-suffering guardian cursed with an idiot charge. “I sent you a very thorough email

with the flight details, and we—”

“What email did you use?”

“Margotthemeterologist...” Mum frowns at me. “You didn’t get it?”

“Mum,” I sigh in frustration. “I’m a meteorologist . Not a meterologist. Meteors. Not meters. You spelled it wrong.”

“Oh!” She makes a little brushing-off hand gesture: unimportant. “I told you, and we texted you from the train, although you did not see fit to pick us up, your poor, exhausted parents, after a twenty-one-hour

flight.”

She knows I don’t have a car: did she expect me to piggy-back them here?

“Um. No, you didn’t tell me.”

“I did .” Mum glances at my dad, who lifts his eyebrows. “On the phone. I said we were homesick and coming back for a bit to try and shake it off, and you didn’t seem particularly

thrilled about the prospect, so I left you alone.” She sniffs lightly. “I won’t say it wasn’t quite hurtful, though. To your

own mother.”

“I said she wasn’t listening.” Dad rubs his neck and winces slightly. “I said something was going on with Maggie and it didn’t

feel quite right. I felt it in my bones. Bones that are now in quite a lot of pain, may I add. That country is very far away.”

“Something isn’t ‘going on’”—it is—“and I was listening,” I say indignantly. “So I think I’d remember if you—”

Wait. That phone call, a few weeks ago: the vision of the fight with Henry. I cannot believe I only visit the future for three

seconds at a time, yet I appear to have missed some pretty pivotal information. What the hell else have I missed while I’m

gone? It hadn’t even occurred to me that while I am Other Margot for those few moments, I am also not... me.

“You hung up on me,” Mum sniffs in confirmation. “So we figured something else must be going on with you, which only solidified

our plans. Didn’t it, George?”

I’m going to ignore “something else”: now is not the time.

“Hmm?” Dad is still rubbing his neck. “I’m telling you, never, ever get on a twenty-one-hour journey without a neck pillow.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” says Grandad. “Good to have you both back.”

They grin at each other—both visibly emotional—then go in for a hug.

My mother and I regard each other warily: we love each other, but hugging is not one of our love languages. Once, when I was fourteen, she greeted me after a school play with a Well done, darling and a handshake .

“So you’re back,” I say, struggling to suppress a grin. “For how long?”

“Oh...” Mum waves a hand airily, also attempting not to smile too hard. Like mother, like daughter. “Not too long. Just

a few weeks, while we check in on both of you. You can’t survive without us, it seems. Also, your father’s incessant gardening

is driving me doolally.”

When what she means is: We miss you and we need to be where you are.

Then I remember—or whatever the opposite of remembering is—my mother and father, both singing at Gus’s birthday party in three

years. There’s a comfort there, a solidity. They’re not visiting. They know him. They see him regularly. My family, the one

I thought was gone, is expanding by the second.

“You’re staying, aren’t you?”

“I think so.” Mum looks at me carefully. “That OK?”

“Yes.” There’s another lump in my throat. “That’s OK.”