Page 28 of Forever is Now

DAY THREE

Tuesday July 23rd, 2024

Summer Taylor-Braddon: What’s your favorite flower?

Adelaide James: Sorry, what?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Your favorite flower? Come on, you must have one.

Adelaide James: I’ve always liked honeysuckle, I guess.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I’ve always liked daisies. There’s something beautiful about them, even though they’re so ordinary. So simple. Those delicate white petals, the yellow center. The reassurance of them—that if you go to any grassy space, there’s a good chance you’ll find them.

They’re there. They’re reliable.

But whenever you ask someone their favorite flower, no one ever really says the daisy. It’s overlooked. People might say roses—because they’re beautiful, they’re works of art with the way their petals all whirl together. Or they might say lilies, with their elegance and gracefulness, the ballerinas of the flower world. Or they’ll say a dahlia or a chrysanthemum or a tulip or any other number of flowers. Or they’ll be like you and say honeysuckle—something sweet. Supposedly.

But I am a daisy. I feel that—have often felt that. I’m not massively beautiful or anything. People don’t stop to look at me in the street when they see me because of my beauty or my body.

I am a daisy that’s been magnified, made into this giant monster. People see me now, and they stop and stare, because of what’s been done to me. The daisy that’s been made enormous in the lab.

And I just want to go back to the grassy fields. I want to sit there with my friends, unnoticed, but constant. Reassuring.

But most of all I want Ruari, because he’s my field. He’s where I am at my safest.

And now he was back.

Adelaide James: Did you always plan for him to come back then, or had he just decided not to play along with your plan anymore?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: You know what, Adelaide? I’m not answering your questions just at the moment. I’m going to talk—tell my story. And then after I’ve talked, you’ll hear from my next guests. We’ll probably break that section up into several sessions, okay? You can talk afterward.

Adelaide James: Again, the interviewer normally decides how this goes.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Again, this is my story. I’ll let you know when you can speak again.

Adelaide James: I’m not one of your characters.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: But you’ll do as I say—otherwise I can just find some other journalist to work with me on this.

[Summer takes a deep breath]

Summer Taylor-Braddon:He’s a bit confused.

That’s what they told me first. Some doctors at the hospital said this to me over the phone. The British consulates all repeated it. Mum said it to me too.He’s a bit confusedbecame this mantra that just kept following me around, as I frantically tried to pack.

We were flown out to Australia, me and Mum, because that’s where he’d now turned up. No one really knows for sure how he got there. Whether he’d truly been swept in the ocean all that way, or if he’d been on a boat, a canoe.

There were so many official people about. The British consulates of several of the Australian cities and loads of police and security. There were lawyers, too, and medics.

I didn’t know about Ruari’s amnesia then. They didn’t tell me. I don’t know why. Why they thought that telling me he was a bit confused was enough.

Mum and I were in the hotel room that had been designed to be the meeting place. The reunion. Annmarie, one of the British consulates, was also here. She was sitting by the tea and coffee facilities, in her impeccable suit. A soft-gray pencil skirt and matching blazer.

Outside, the reporters were everywhere, and Annmarie was tapping away on her phone. “He’s being brought around the back way,” she told me, a few moments later.

I felt so, so sick. I fidgeted, couldn’t decide whether I should sit on the bed or at the desk. There were two chairs at the desk, and another by the window. There was too much choice, and I was like a jack-in-the-box, constantly on the go.

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