Chapter 86 — The Last of the Light

The restaurant stood on a slope west of the city, above trees and a bend in the river. From the road, most of the view was hidden. Luna saw the garden first, then the terrace beyond the windows, and stopped halfway through taking off her jacket.

I was pleased with the small sound she made. I had been hoping for something like it all afternoon, and managed to let her look for a moment before I began explaining anything.

Emma spoke to the manager while we went outside. Broad terraces stepped down the slope, their tables set for an evening which looked likely to stay clear. The staff kept glancing at a distant bank of cloud, however, and I told Luna we would eat inside if the weather changed.

She asked whether I owned this place too. ‘The family does,’ I said, following her towards the parapet. ‘It’s older than my excellent business career.’ She smiled without taking her eyes from the view.

Ken and Mary had left the property among things I was only beginning to understand. Keeping it running involved more people than I had known to ask about as a child. My contribution that evening had been requesting a table and answering the manager’s practical questions about food, time and transport.

Emma joined us to say she would eat downstairs. We could take our time, provided we remembered when Luna’s father expected her. Luna offered her a place with us, receiving thanks and an explanation involving a book Emma had been trying to finish for three days.

‘Oswald keeps finding other things I should look at,’ she added. I decided against defending myself in front of somebody who had just spent an afternoon looking at things with me. Emma took her book downstairs while I led Luna to our table.

It stood on the highest terrace, with more room around it than the tables below and an old wooden bench against the inner wall. The family used it when it was available. Beyond the parapet, the river appeared between trees and roofs, with the city spreading behind them in layers softened by distance.

We ate slowly. Luna asked how I had found the place, and I told her Emma’s story about an earlier Mercer who had liked the view enough to build a house facing it. The restaurant came later; each generation seemed to have changed something while insisting that the important part remained untouched.

When Luna asked which part that was, I pointed beyond the terrace. ‘Nobody’s managed to move the sunset.’ The light still caught the edges of the clouds, and we watched it shift while the plates were cleared.

I told her Emma used to bring me here after my parents died. Sometimes I had not wanted to talk, and at home that became the thing everybody noticed. Here I could look out at the view, leaving Emma something else to look at too.

I had not planned to explain that part. Once I began, however, it seemed easier to continue than to make a joke and pretend I had meant something less.

‘There are days I don’t remember clearly. Then something very small comes back.’ I turned the stem of my glass, watching the light move through it. ‘My mother putting her hand over a glass because I nearly knocked it over. Ken laughing at something Emma said. Nothing useful.’

Luna said the memories did not have to be useful. Her voice was quiet enough to make me stop turning the glass, and after a moment I agreed. I had spent too long trying to sort what I remembered by what it might help me do.

She moved her chair closer. ‘My mother used to say the evening made things easier to remember. I’m not sure she meant it quite literally.’ Luna watched a patch of brightness travel across the river, then said she thought about her mother when the light looked like this.

I wanted to ask more, but did not want to make her explain simply because I had begun explaining myself. We sat without speaking while a waiter collected the final plate. When he had gone, she left her chair close to mine.

As the light lowered, I showed her the bench beside the parapet. We carried our drinks across and sat with our feet on the terrace stones, above a garden falling away in planted steps. I told her it had been my favourite place, and she asked whether it still was.

I looked at her, then back towards the river before repeating the morning’s staring incident. ‘It’s making a good argument.’ She leaned against my shoulder, and I could feel the warmth of her arm through my sleeve.

For all the old memories in my head, I had little idea what to do with that simple fact. I had imagined saying something clever, but the longer I searched for it, the less likely cleverness seemed to help. I said her name and waited until she looked up.

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‘Would you like to go out with me? Properly, I mean, as more than friends who sometimes go for walks.’ Luna lifted her head from my shoulder, and I kept my eyes on hers instead of the view I had brought her to see.

‘Yes.’ She smiled as I let out a breath I had not meant to hold. ‘I would still like the walks.’

I assured her I had not planned to cancel them. She took my hand and settled beside me again while windows below caught brief pieces of gold. The river held the colour longer, and we stayed until Emma came up carrying her book to remind us of the journey back.

In the car, I kept finding reasons to look at our hands. Emma caught one of the glances in the mirror and smiled without commenting, a kindness I appreciated much more than I could have explained aloud.

At the Leaky Cauldron, Luna introduced me to her father. Xenophilius Lovegood asked whether we had enjoyed the day, then listened to her description of the mechanical toy. Before she finished, he proposed another explanation for the staircase, which she disputed on the evidence of a gear she had seen.

They were still discussing it as they approached the fireplace. Luna came back to hug me before stepping into the hearth, and asked me to write. I promised I would, watching her rejoin her father with rather less interest in leaving than I had shown in arriving that morning.

The first letter took longer than it should have. I crossed out three openings, complained to Leo that he was not helping, and finally asked whether she had persuaded her father about the gear. Once that was written, I found I could tell her I had enjoyed the evening without needing a more impressive way to say it.

Her reply arrived the next day. The gear remained in dispute, and she included a drawing from her walk, a question about my unfinished essay and a line saying she had liked sitting beside me. I read that line several times before returning to the question I could answer.

For a few days, each letter seemed to require an immediate reply. Leo carried them with patience I had not earned, until he returned from Devon, drank deeply and went straight to his perch. He did not even inspect the food on my desk, making me put down the letter I had already started.

Emma found me checking his wings. ‘He needs a rest,’ she said, and I agreed, although agreeing meant leaving the reply until morning. I also needed to explain that neither of us could expect the next envelope to arrive as soon as we thought of something to put in it.

Luna’s answer was practical. Their owl could carry some of the post, and several thoughts could travel together instead of requiring separate journeys. She began putting them in the same envelope, including the little observations I would have missed if she had decided only important news deserved sending.

The telephone question took longer. There was no convenient line at the Lovegoods’ house, and the mobiles available were considerably bulkier than the little devices I half remembered from later years. Emma helped arrange two handsets and the necessary accounts, checking the costs with me before we committed to them.

I asked Luna whether she wanted one first. She was interested in trying it, provided I did not expect her to carry it everywhere or answer while she and her father were out looking for something. That would rather spoil the looking, she pointed out, and I could hardly object after enjoying a day spent following her curiosity.

We practised making and answering calls before she took hers home. Xenophilius checked the charger with us and said there was somewhere suitable to use it. Luna wrote down the buttons she needed, then rang my handset from across the room.

Hearing her voice beside me and through the receiver made me laugh. She asked what was funny, still speaking into hers, which left me trying to choose which version of her to answer. By the time I explained, she was smiling too.

The first call from Devon broke up before we could say much. On the next attempt, she and her father walked beyond the house to a point on the lane where the signal steadied. She described the gate beside her carefully enough for me to picture where she stood, then moved a little further away and disappeared into a burst of noise.

We tried again from the gate. Calls still failed if she wandered away, and some evenings we could not get through at all. Letters remained useful, especially for things which would not fit comfortably into a conversation held beside a hedge.

Hogwarts would present another problem. For the holidays, an agreed call from that spot was enough, provided I remembered she had to walk there rather than expecting an answer whenever I picked up the handset.

During an early conversation I told her she did not need to shout. ‘I’m not shouting at you,’ she explained. ‘Daddy’s found something in the hedge.’ A distant exchange followed, too faint for me to make out, before she returned to say he sent his regards.

We met again when our plans allowed. Sometimes she chose a shop, sometimes I suggested a walk, and once she declined the following day because she had promised to help her father sort a cupboard. I discovered that being disappointed did not make the cupboard unreasonable, and we chose another day.

Harry asked me round during the same week. I already had plans with Luna and almost made my answer more complicated than it needed to be. Instead, I told him I was busy and offered Sunday at our house.

He came that Sunday. We played a game, ate too much of Emma’s lunch and argued about whether Ron would return from Egypt with a pyramid. It was an ordinary afternoon, and when Harry left I was glad I had kept it instead of treating friendship as something which would wait without being asked.

By the middle of July, the calendar beside my desk held letters to answer, appointments Emma had entered in a firmer hand and the dates our friends would be away. I drew a circle round the thirty-first and wrote Harry’s name beneath it. There was no chance I would forget, but I liked seeing a space which was already his.