At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

‘So, I want you to picture the scene,’ Charlie said, his voice calm and far away. ‘This is my place where I come to think, to get away from everythin’ and one day, when it all gets a little too noisy down there and somethin’ bad happens that changes my life forever, I walk up those stairs and … well, yer know what I was planning to do; yer don’t need the details.’ He slid his free hand into his pocket and withdrew the orange marble that I’d seen him messing with in the café when we first met. But now, on closer inspection, I realised that it wasn’t a marble at all. It was frosted and misshapen into an almost oval and looked more like a glass pebble than anything. He didn’t mention it, just rolled it between his fingers like a worry bead. I was going to ask him about it, but I didn’t want to interrupt his story.

‘After hours of sittin’ up here until my fingers were numb from the cold, I decided that it was time. But I couldn’t do it, I was too afraid, and so I threw myself backwards instead and landed on the floor, right there.’ He pointed to the ground. ‘I lay there for a while, tryin’ to figure out what to do next, when a pigeon landed on the wall. I rolled my head to the side to look at it and that’s when I saw this.’ He unlaced his fingers from mine and walked back over to the ledge, crouching down and pointing to the wall that he’d just been sitting on. I moved to his side and knelt down beside him, following the tip of his finger to just below the lip of the wall. I hadn’t noticed it before, but from where I crouched, I saw the sticker for the helpline. It sat there, orange and white with patches where the weather had eroded it away to show the brick beneath. I read it and noticed a spelling mistake. ‘Caring for your mental heath.’

Around the edges, someone had written something in Sharpie pen, the letters still there but hard to read.

‘The sun will come up tomorrow, and who knows what the tide will bring along?’ Charlie said dreamily.

‘It’s beautiful. Is it a poem?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘No, it’s Tom Hanks. It’s something he says in Castaway, which is my favourite film. So, I’m lyin’ here, lookin’ at a sticker for a mental health helpline that I’ve never noticed before, despite the fact that I’ve been spending a lot of time up here, and that sticker just so happens to have a reference to my favourite film written in pen around the edge. Funny, don’t yer think?’

‘Seems almost like …’ I didn’t want to end the sentence, for fear of sounding like an idiot.

‘Fate?’

I nodded. ‘Like the universe wanted to make sure you stuck around.’

‘Do you have any idea who put it here?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it looked pretty battered when I saw it two years ago, so it must have been up a while.’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I’ve never seen us use stickers like this.’

‘That’s a shame.’ His shoulders sagged a little as he spoke.

Charlie ducked back inside the tower and tinkered around with a switch on the wall until the light from behind the clockface died down and he returned with an ancient-looking blanket, which he shook out and laid on the floor.

‘What did you turn the light out for?’ I asked.

‘To give our eyes time to adjust. You can’t see the stars with that thing on,’ he said, lying down on the blanket and folding his arms behind his head. I sat down beside him and lay back, mirroring his pose. He was right about this place being quiet, removed. From here the lights of the town were duller, the sounds muffled and unobtrusive. It hadn’t taken me long to start to feel the cold deep inside my bones and when Charlie saw me shivering, he shuffled closer, pressing his side to mine to share his warmth. The more my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the more stars became visible and before long, the sky was littered with thousands of glittering specks.

‘So,’ I said, breaking the silence and rolling my head to the side. ‘Not only did that sticker lead you to Ned, who spoke with you the first time, but also to me, who helped you the second time. And it just so happens that us two live together.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Charlie said, rolling his head to face me. ‘Improbable, huh?’

‘Seems to me that someone up there really cares about you, Charlie Stone,’ I said, still trying to comprehend it all. He turned back to the sky and swallowed what looked like a lump in his throat. ‘And someone down here does too,’ I added.

The slightest of smiles flickered across his face and his hand fell into mine. Something quite like butterflies, but bigger, albatrosses maybe, took flight inside my stomach at the feel of his skin on mine.

‘That’s nice to know.’

This felt like the moment, the one where I might lean over and kiss him. Everything was out in the open now, all secrets revealed. There was, hopefully, nothing else holding him back. But just as I was contemplating making a move, a sound so loud that I felt it in my bones made my heart falter and I sat bolt upright.

It took me a moment or two to realise that the sound wasn’t the police arriving to arrest us for trespassing or a bomb going off, but simply the clock behind us, tolling the arrival of midnight.

Charlie’s laughter could be heard through the pauses between chimes as he rolled around on the blanket beside me.

‘You bastard, you knew that was coming,’ I shouted above the din.

He sat up, once his fit of hysteria had ended, and placed a hand on my face. ‘I’m sorry, I meant to mention it.’