Home. It was coming up through the deck.
He had to sit down, because all the strength had evaporated from his knees. When he looked up, Kite was sitting next to him, very still, not touching him. He looked anxious.
‘I know it must have been bad, leaving. But – I swear, they’re safer here than—’
‘I know,’ Joe said. He started to laugh, because when he said I, it felt different now. He knew who that was. ‘It all looks a damn sight better than the last time we were here, doesn’t it? Much nicer now it’s not on fire.’
Kite did his unbearable trick of turning to glass. ‘You remember that then?’
‘We were sitting here, with Tom and Rupert Grey.’ Joe studied the dust in the air. He could nearly see their ghosts in it, the lamps that night in the heat, the glitter of the wine glasses. ‘I think that was the happiest I’ve ever been. I’d been sick missing you, it was making me crotchety with the men, I could hardly sit still more than fifteen minutes for that last six months. And then there you were.’
When Kite cried, Joe’s whole chest hurt. Joe pulled him close, and even that didn’t feel near enough. He kissed him once, very softly, for permission, then again when Kite leaned up to him, cradling the nape of his neck where the bones were fragile. His fingertips already knew the pattern of the burn scars. And then it was all there, everything, and all of him: Jem, Joe Tournier, Joe Zhang, different and not, three winking facets of a person who he wasn’t sure had a name. Whoever he was, though, he had a surge of joy when Kite sank forward against his shoulder.
He put his head down a little. Kite smelled of cedar, from the sea chest his clothes lived in. Joe touched his arm where there was a new burn, too precise to be accidental. There were hints of cruciform shapes in it. Kite took it back and folded it close to his own chest without looking up.
‘Can I do something new on your other arm?’
Kite hesitated.
Joe caught his hands. ‘I’m not leaving again. You’re not going to get rid of me now. And the twins have adopted you.’
‘All right,’ Kite said, but not like he believed it.
Joe decided it didn’t matter. There was all the time in the world to make him believe it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, thanks to my brother Jacob for keeping me sane and telling me how to fix my stupid plots, even though he’s always busy with things that matter much more. Also to Alison and Sara Helen, my brilliant editors, who took me seriously when I insisted that the introduction of giant tortoises to nineteenth century Scotland would definitely solve everything. Huge thanks to Jenny, my agent, who stuck with this project even when everyone else thought it was ridiculous, and worked on it above and beyond the call of duty for years. Thank you to the Arts Council, who funded the 2018 project which took me aboard my first tall ship, Atyla, and thanks even more to Darwin 200, who gave me a place aboard Pelican of London in 2020.
And special thanks to Pete Best, the bosun aboard Pelican and the most incredible and helpful expert in tall ship sailing anyone could ever want (that is, when he isn’t hatching some horrendous plot to do with bananas).
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Natasha Pulley studied English Literature at Oxford University. After stints working at Waterstones as a bookseller, then at Cambridge University Press as a publishing assistant in the astronomy and maths departments, she did the Creative Writing MA at UEA. She later studied in Tokyo, where she lived on a scholarship from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, and she is now an associate lecturer at Bath Spa University and panel tutor at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her first novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, was an international bestseller, a Guardian Summer Read, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and won a Betty Trask Award. The Bedlam Stacks, her second novel, was published in 2017, followed by The Lost Future of Pepperharrow in 2020. She lives in Bath.
@natasha_pulley
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First published in 2021 in Great Britain
First published in the United States 2021
This electronic edition published in 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Natasha Pulley, 2021
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-63557-608-5; EBOOK: 978-1-63557-609-2
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