Page 76 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘Yes,’ I answer myself, as if there is another version of me standing just out of reach.
‘Sunlight, when it must be about one in the morning, and we are far underground.’
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘When you came in, you travelled through both distance and time – it makes sense.’
‘We can only know if we go through,’ I say.
‘Then we go through – do or die,’ I agree.
Someone – I – take my hand, and we walk.
The face of a man I should never have met comes to mind: Danny Beauchamp. Danny was never meant for me, not in this time or the next or in a thousand lifetimes. And yet I know with a greater certainty than I have ever known anything that wherever he is now, he is the guiding light that will bring me home.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Saturday 15thAugust 1992, 12.32 p.m.
I know exactly where I am.
The Barrakka Gardens, on a bright day of celebration. Joy courses through me. I feel as if several tons of grief and trauma have been floated away out of my body, and I’m light, so light that I could float away into the sky, just like the coloured balloons that sail towards the sun.
Crowds throng around me, humming with chatter and laughter. Children run in and out of adults’ legs, some waving British and Maltese flags on sticks. I see the back of heads I think I recognise: a man holding a girl’s hand, her dark hair tangled in rat-tails down her back – somehow, I know she hates to have it brushed.
Then I see it, the banner, one of many that have been strung out across the arches that look over the harbour:
1942–1992
I am at the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the siege. Sal was here once – he might still be here. Perhaps I am here to find him.
That’s when I see the person I am really here to meet, the soul I’ve come home to.
Danny is sitting alone on a bench, as if he can’t really see all the celebrations going on around him. He’s older now, of course, in his seventies. His mop of brown curls has become fine white hair, cut neatly in a military style he never wore as a Spitfire pilot in Malta. He wears a grey suit over a pale-blue shirt that exactly matches the colour of his eyes, finished with an RAF tie. A line of medals is pinned to his lapel. His hands, knotted with age, rest on a walking stick. He is alone, seemingly apart from the crowds, as if he is here for another reason entirely. The sight of him grown old is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
My eyes are full of tears as I walk to him. The crowd seems to make a path for me, and I feel as if he and I have moved eons to put aside this moment just for us.
‘Flight Lieutenant Daniel Beauchamp,’ I say, sitting down next to him and taking his hand.
‘Stitches.’ Danny turns to look at me, a slow smile spreading over his face. ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Maia. Here you are at last.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
Tuesday 24thJune 2025, 12.15 p.m.
‘Wake up, Maia . . .’ It’s Dr Gresch’s voice that pierces my dreams. ‘Maia?’
Slowly, painstakingly, I climb back into this other body. That’s what it feels like – like pushing my way into flesh, dragging myself along every nerve ending and pulsing vein until finally I can open my eyes. The light is bright; the smell is sharp. I feel bereft.
‘Hello, there,’ she says gently. ‘We were a little worried about you – you were hard to rouse.’
‘What day . . . what time is it?’ I ask, trying to orientate myself. I’m not surprised I was hard to rouse – I didn’t really want to come back; I just knew I had to.
Lying back on my clean pillows, I submit meekly as the doctor checks my pulse and points a torch into each eye in turn. She tilts her head when she looks at me, puzzled.
‘It’s a little after noon. You slept very deeply. Your vitals are all good, but your brain waves were . . . very interesting. How did you sleep?’
She detaches me from a variety of machines, and I rub at the places where the sticky patches have left their residue.
‘Terribly,’ I say, rubbing the back of my neck. ‘I fell in love, met my father as a small child, watched a young woman die,and then came back here to tell my father I’m not staying, so . . . honestly, I could do with a sleep.’
