Page 77 of One Summer

I sit down across from him, with a thump.

‘There’s a barrel jellyfish down there,’ he says, motioning to the cliff edge. ‘It’s massive.’

I walk across the beer garden to have a look at the jellyfish, which is floating sedately up and down without a care in the world.

‘Did you see it through the mist?’ he says, when I come back.

I nod and try not to fall into a fit of maudlin self-pity.

‘My ex used to say I was a jellyfish,’ I say, morosely. ‘That I was just drifting along in the currents.’

‘Sounds nice. Peaceful.’

‘He meant it as an insult. But he was wrong; if anything, I was floating along in a fun way, more like an astronaut on the International Space Station.’

‘They’re not floating,’ he says, without looking up from his book.

‘What are you talking about? They’re weightless from the minute they’re up there. They post videos of themselves floating around, on Twitter.’

‘On the International Space Station, the earth’s gravity is about 90 per cent of what it is on the surface of the planet.’

He says this definitively, as if it should end this topic of conversation.

‘Then why aren’t they just walking around up there, feeling a bit sprightlier than usual – you know, 10 per cent lighter than their usual weight or whatever?’

‘Because they’re falling.’

‘That makes no sense.’

‘Yes, it does. They’re moving very fast. So even though they’re falling fifteen feet every second towards the centre of the earth, they’re also moving forward five miles every second, which makes a curve that matches the shape of the earth and keeps them and the space station in orbit. So what looks like floating is actually just falling.’

‘How do you know that?’ I ask, a tad put out.

He holds up a hardback with an astronaut in a spacesuit on the cover, which I must have noticed subconsciously and is probably what got me thinking of astronauts in the first place.

‘So maybe all the time you thought you were just floating through your life, you were actually falling. But also moving forward,’ he says, biting his chapped lip.

I ponder this idea, and don’t entirely dislike it. There’s something positive but deeply unsettling about it, like one of those daily affirmations you see online.

‘You know, at five miles per second, I could get back to London in record time,’ I say. ‘How far is it exactly from here to the Big Smoke?’

‘297 miles.’

‘Huh, so I’d be there in just under a minute.’

The mere thought makes me wistful. I could be having drinks with Henny before Caleb’s finished his pint.

‘Do you miss London?’ he says, looking up at me sharply.

‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this level of solitude. I didn’t realise how much I need people around me.’

‘I take it my nan just introduced you to the Loor Locals in the secret bar?’

‘She did.’

‘Those people not interesting enough for you?’

I make a face at him. ‘They’re great, but there was nobody in there that I fancied and I’d quite like to go on a date while I’m here. Maybe even have sex at some point in the next six months.’

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