by Holly Bourne
The earthquake stopped and reality snapped back.
“They’re coming for us again.”
The guards were charging back to their guns.
“Time to go.”
Noah pulled me in for one last kiss, which created a roar of thunder overhead. Then we clambered quickly through the shattered glass and escaped into the blackness of the storm.
I was soaked in less than a second.
“Remember what you promised,” Noah yelled.
And I did.
We ran down a grassy hill, slipping on the drenched ground, skidding in mud. I was half-running, half-falling. I took a breath and banished Noah from my mind. I could hear the rapid pulls of his breath next to me but tuned them out. At the bottom of the hill was a dark barrier of trees – it looked like the beginning of a forest. I urged my aching body to get there faster, pushing my hair out of my face where the rain had plastered it there with such force. I could still hear the sirens echoing from the facility behind me. Fear spurred me on and the woods got closer. I ran and ran and ran, my path lit with occasional lightning. And then the rain wasn’t falling as hard. I had made it under the canopy of the trees.
I was still aware of Noah’s body close to mine but forced my brain to ignore him. I wasn’t sure who was leading who. We were silently communicating directions without acknowledging each other, like two ghosts playing hide and seek. The rain got lighter as we got into thicker forest. At one point a helicopter flew overhead and we split up and spent half an hour hugging the sodden floor. It was borderline impossible to ban Noah from my mind. I was scared my brain would betray me and release some kind of traceable energy field.
We began running through the trees again. The chopper came back periodically but was quieter as the dense overhang of trees protected us. It was surprising, the body’s ability to just keep on running. I’d always been picked last in PE at school, destined to spend netball lessons standing around awkwardly and ducking if the ball came anywhere near my head. But somehow my body had found an inner strength. Terror was propelling me forward – desperation forcing my feet to lift and fall repeatedly. We ran for maybe an hour, maybe several – I wasn’t sure. Eventually our pace slowed and the rain stopped. The first slivers of dawn cast weak sunlight on random areas of dense undergrowth. Without talking, we came to a stop simultaneously.
I surveyed my surroundings. Who knew where we were? I assumed we were still in England, judging by the accents of the guards in the facility. But whereabouts in England was anyone’s guess. Everywhere I looked there was forest. Towns, civilization and, most importantly, help could be hundreds of miles away. I remembered the official signed letter Anita had given me and my stomach ached. What help? Who would help us?
Noah was climbing up a small hill and had apparently spotted something. I pattered behind him, looking for any clue as to where we could be. At the top of the hill we had a slight vantage point, but saw only the ocean of trees surrounding us. My heart sank. Noah pointed to a small collection of rocks. They appeared to be a makeshift entrance to a small cave. It wasn’t help, it wasn’t food, but it was shelter. My legs felt like I was carting around two logs of lead, my balance was shot and my lungs felt ready to explode. Rest would help. Then we could figure out what to do.
We scrabbled inside and examined the cave. It would do. It went deeper in than we’d first thought and had remained dry during our self-created storm. I fell against the wall, letting exhaustion seep through my body. Everything hurt. Noah collapsed in the same way opposite me. We sat staring at each other for a while, collecting our breath.
“Are we allowed to talk to each other?” I asked him, my eyes half-closed.
He winced. “I don’t know. I’m not sure how it works. I’m making this up as I go along.”
I smiled at him reassuringly. “Your guessing has got us pretty far.”
He looked down at the ground. “Probably not far enough.”
I longed to go over and hug him, to feel his arms around me and be comforted by his touch. But I knew I couldn’t. Even the thought of it could be dangerous.
Sensing my upset, Noah forced himself to grin. “I can’t believe we got away. Did all that just happen?”
I nodded. “I’m still waiting to wake up from whatever nightmare this is.”
His smile faded. “I knew what we had was special,” he said. “But I never imagined…”
My eyes filled with tears. “Noah? What are we going to do?”
He leaned his head back against the stone and closed his eyes.
“I don’t know. I just knew that, whatever happened, I needed more time with you. I couldn’t end things like that.”
A tear plopped down my cheek. My wet clothes were sticking to my body.
If I closed my eyes, two lives presented themselves to me. There was the life of Noah and me together. On the run, constantly looking over our shoulders, never being able to kiss or even touch, knowing that if we acted on our impulses, lost concentration for even a moment, then people could get hurt. Could our love survive that? Was that a life? What was the point in having a soulmate if you weren’t able to live the life that lovers should. A life of lazy lie-ins on Saturday mornings, kisses when you get home from work, the thrill of waiting for them to touch your skin, or just evenings on the sofa watching nothing on television, your bodies entwined, oozing comfort and affection out of every pore.
Then there was the other life. The life I would lead if we separated. The agony of spending every living day knowing I had a soulmate but couldn’t be with him, trying to make love happen with someone I wasn’t supposed to be with, constantly thinking about Noah, wondering where he was, what he was up to, whether he’d managed to fall into the usual “faux” version of love, always feeling incomplete, always carrying that emptiness.
What choice was that?
It wasn’t one. The word choice implied you wanted to pick one over the other. I didn’t want either. Both would bring pain, perhaps for every day of my life.
I lay my head back against the rough wall of our cave and sighed.
Noah’s eyes bored into me, watery and full of exhaustion.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, a twinge of worry in his voice.
My voice spoke without consciousness guiding it.
“We can never be together,” I said. And when the words fell out of my mouth, I knew they were the right ones.
But my heart. My heart was breaking.
Noah’s face crumpled. “Poppy, don’t say that! We’ve made it this far. We can learn how to be together in a new way, a way that doesn’t hurt people.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. We’re worth more than that, Noah. You know we are.”
“So you’re just going to give up on us?”
His words stung.
“You know that’s not what I mean. Think about it. Can we honestly spend the rest of our lives never even holding hands again? Never kissing? Never making love? Could we even get married? We wouldn’t even be able to consummate it. We wouldn’t be able to have children. It would destroy us, Noah. You know it would. What we have is so special, I don’t want it to fall apart. I don’t want to watch us fall apart.”
I saw a tear slide out of the corner of Noah’s eye. It made me cry harder.
“You said it before, that night in the hotel. Love isn’t supposed to be forbidden. It’s supposed to be easy. I don’t want our love to struggle. I want it to always be like this, even if it’s only left in my memory.”
And then Noah was standing and running over to my side of the cave. He flung his arms around me and buried himself in my shoulder.
He was crying.
“You can’t,” I said. “They’re going to be able to find us if we stay touching like this.”
“Then they can find us.” His voice was strained. “You’re right, Poppy. I hate it, I’m terrified, but you’re right. I can’t be with you but not be with you. I want to remember us always like this. As perfect as we are
. Young, and so in love we can hardly see straight.”
I laughed through my tears. “And of course a massive danger to the whole of civilization?”
He laughed too. “But of course! They should make a movie about us.”
“Or write a book. Amanda would love it. She loves all that crap.”
“Well at least Amanda would be happy.”
“And Lizzie would want to sell our story to the national press.”
“Of course.”
“The modern day Romeo and Juliet?”
Noah stopped laughing and clasped his hands in mine, a desperate look in his eye.
“Promise me, Poppy, that we won’t become like them?”
“Like who?”
“Like Romeo and bloody Juliet. Don’t ruin your life or end it, just because we’re apart. Live it. We can’t be together, but live it for me. Make the most of it. And I’ll live mine for you. And I’ll try and be happy for you and you’ve got to try and be happy for me. That way, somehow, we’ll always be together. We’ll be living for each other in the only way we can.”
I nodded through another sob. “I promise.”
Noah went to kiss me but I stopped him.
“We can’t. What if we hurt people?”
“There’s no one around for miles, I’m sure of it. Please, let us just be together one last time. Let’s make a memory we can hold on to when we’re old and grey. A feeling we can access at any time to remember what it is to be loved, to be really truly loved and to be really truly together.”
There were no more words, only feelings.
As Noah and I kissed, the heavens didn’t open and rain hell on us, the earth didn’t shake, a blizzard didn’t blow in. Instead, the sun shone a little brighter into our cave, making us warm again. The sky went the bluest I’d ever seen it. We kissed for for ever, or maybe minutes, I can’t remember. But I do remember smiling. The sort of smile that hurts your stomach, it’s born from so much happiness. The smile your face can only produce if you’re really, truly in love.
We curled up together on the cave floor. Noah was behind me, pressing every part of his body against my back, stroking my hair. The sun shone in through the gaps in the stones, making the world glow like we were stuck in an angel’s halo.
We closed our eyes and slept together.
And when we heard the helicopter we kept our eyes shut. Noah squeezed my hand and I knew it was his way of saying “I love you”.
I squeezed it back and we lay still.
When they came for us, we were both still smiling.
It started just like any other day, with the sun rising.
It streamed through the curtains and my halls-of-residence room was transformed into a deep egg-yolk-yellow colour. I closed my eyes, feeling the sun burn my eyelids. I wasn’t going to go back to sleep. I could tell.
I watched the glow of light move slowly up the wall as time passed. It was incredible really. How the world can just keep on truckin’, doing what it always does, without giving you personal acknowledgement that today wasn’t just like any other day. That today was going to be hard. I threw off my duvet and the cold air hit me. It was almost Christmas.
It was exactly two years ago today that they took him.
I’d already texted my course friends and Frank to tell them I was missing first lecture. With the grades I’d been getting, I reckoned I could get away with it. Frank and I’d ended up at the same uni after all, and did, on occasion, find the time to go to a “grungy” gig (much to Frank’s bemusement) or struggle through essays in the library together. I had Lizzie visiting that weekend and I’d cleared the weekend of essay work so we could properly celebrate her making editor of her student newspaper. She was arriving tomorrow, and I couldn’t wait to see her. Lizzie was still the thread that kept us all connected, and I was sure I’d hear all of the gossip about Amanda, Ruth (and Ruth’s new boyfriend, no doubt).
I skipped breakfast and stuffed my completed – and hopefully first-class – essay into my shoulder bag. Wrapping my knitted scarf around my head multiple times, I braced myself for the cold walk into campus.
They’re a weird thing, anniversaries. Marks in time against particular dates – small squares in the calendar that you count down to with either dread or excitement. Most of the time, life is all “What’s next?” “Who’s next?” “Where the HELL am I going, please?” But on anniversaries, you take the time to stop and look back and it’s like watching a play of your past dance across your memory.
At this exact time two years ago, Noah and I must’ve been handing over our letters. The letters they’d somehow found the heart to let us write. So we can always be there with each other, in a small way, as calendar squares are marked off, one by one, in the galloping blur towards whatever comes next.
Nobody was really sitting outside in the union garden; it was far too cold. I was glad for the solitude. One, because I needed to do this alone, and “alone” wasn’t a concept easily achieved at university. And, two, because banana milk becomes an even more uncool beverage to drink when you become a university student.
I took a seat on a cold picnic bench and turned my face to the weak winter sun. I picked up my glass and held it to the sky.
“Here’s to you, Noah,” I whispered to the heavens. “And here’s to us.”
I closed my eyes, wishing, waiting…
And, just as I’d begun to worry I’d only imagined it last year, on that horrible first anniversary, it happened again. A breeze picked up out of nowhere, rattling the trees, lifting my hair and giving me goosepimples. The air smelled like apples. I felt him all around me.
“I love you,” I said, and the sun suddenly burned brighter, illuminating every bare tree branch, giving my surroundings a yellowy silver lining. It was us doing this, together. I knew it. Because, wherever he was, at this precise moment, I knew he was looking at the same sun and thinking the same thing.
Here’s what I’ve learned since that awful day. What should happen isn’t always what does happen, especially where love is concerned. Happy endings are reserved strictly for the fiction shelves of bookstores. In reality, people don’t chase their lovers through airports to stop them getting on aeroplanes. The most popular guy in school doesn’t fall for the class geek. Friends don’t suddenly realize their eternal adoration for each other at the countdown to New Year’s Eve, on the top of the Empire State Building, in the rain.
Noah and I could never run into the sunset.
Real love doesn’t mend everything. Real love doesn’t conquer all. And, most importantly, real love doesn’t require a happily-ever-after – that’s not what it’s about. But real love does change you. It moulds you. It burns your heart into a charred cinder that relights like a phoenix, stronger and more blazing than ever.
I took another sip of my drink and smiled. I was so proud of myself. For getting here, after that awful time following the separation when I never thought I would breathe again. The true test of life isn’t how you cope when everything is going in your favour; it’s how you deal with things that could destroy you, if you let them.
I reached into my bag, pulled out my special notepad, and the letter fell out from between the pages. I wanted to cry just seeing his handwriting. I traced the imprint his biro had left on the paper with my fingers and swallowed the lump in my throat.
I unfolded it and read it again, although I knew all the words off by heart.
Poppy,
There is so much to say, so much I will probably leave out by mistake and then I’ll hate myself for ever for missing the opportunity.
But, if this is all you’ll have left of me, this is all I need to say really. I love you, Poppy. I will never have the chance to say that to you again but every time you read this, know that it is me saying it afresh, wherever I may be.
I will always love you, for ever, with every bit of my soul.
Whenever I feel the sun on my face I will think of you and those last moments we shared together. I am so
grateful we were able to make that memory. It will help me every day.
Life is long though, Poppy. Don’t break our promise to each other. Don’t make your life a sacrifice to us. Be you, be happy. Find happiness in everything you do. I ask only this: every year, on this day, let’s look to the sun and raise a drink to each other. Let’s both take a moment to remember us as we were. And that way, we’ll always be together.
You are perfect and I am yours for ever.
Noah.
That’s the thing about love. However you have it, however you’ve had it – it never goes. Once it’s touched you, it’s touched you for ever. You’ll be permanently scarred by its brilliance. You can walk through the rest of your life with that wonderful knowledge…
Someone once loved me and it was beautiful.
No one can take that from you.
And there are times, sometimes, when you need to remember that. Acknowledge it. Remember how lucky you are that you ever had it at all.
And then there are the times when the only appropriate thing to do is stop crying, let it go, with light and love in your heart, and to continue living your life to the best of your ability.
I actually can’t believe I’m writing my acknowledgements page for my first novel! You’ll have to bear with me a bit here because I’ve fantasised about doing this since about the day I discovered what books were.
So, firstly, a huge thank you to Maddy, for making this pipe dream real. Thank you for not only being a totally kick-ass agent, but also one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. Your support of, and dedication to, Soulmates has literally changed my life. There will never be adequate words to express my gratitude for that.
A massive bigs-up to Usborne, the perfect home for Poppy. I don’t think there is anything else you guys could’ve done for this book and I am so happy you took Soulmates on board. Thank you for all the tireless hard work you put in to make it so much better.
*cue emotional orchestral music*
Writing this book has been a bit of a journey, so I just want to thank the people responsible for holding me together throughout the process.
