Free Gravity's Chain by Alan Goodwin Page A

wind and squealed with delight. Duncan, who until then had shown admirable restraint in his driving, slammed the accelerator and executed some well-timed handbrake turns, spewing plumes of sand off the rear wheels. He was much more careful in negotiating the concrete ramp from the beach to the houses. Once at the bach we all escaped the car as though it was a burning wagon and sprawled across the grass. Mike cracked some jokes and everyone laughed.
    Mike was the closest thing I had to a best friend. I say closest because he was a friend to everyone, but seldom gave himself exclusively to one person. There were always different facets of his personality he tailored for the person and their circumstances. I suspect there were many people throughout his life who thought Mike might be their best friend but were unsure. We had become closer only in the last couple of years and we were too old to stand in the playground and announce ourselves as best friends as children do.
    However, for me the uncertainty of our status was more about me than him. I never felt able to give myself to someone, never felt able to surrender. I always thought I should hold something back and keep some of myself in reserve. After all, look at what happened to Dad: he gave himself completely and then Mum left without ever contacting him again. Her betrayal left him defiled and spent. Why should I let that happen to me? So there was always this reticence with my classmates. They saw my behaviour as aloofness, even arrogance born of my gifts. A small group rejected that easy conclusion. Those at the bach at leastaccepted me, but the price was all of us being treated as a clique by the others in our school. I bore considerable guilt for this, but it wasn’t enough to break my fear of getting too close to them. There was just this fucking wall and I thought it would always stand. But walls have weaknesses and forces were gathering.
    Duncan was more Mike’s friend than mine, but I liked him and we always got on well. Helen was destined to be Mike’s girl, we all knew that; Mary had been Helen’s best friend since primary school. As for Jo, I don’t really know how she ended up with us, although I had some history with her. So we were all friends in varying degrees and I enjoyed being with them as we laughed about the oven that had brought us to the bach.
    The car took just five minutes to unpack. Once finished we headed, not for the sensible reassembly of our belongings in the house, but to the sea. This was a holiday after all. There’s nothing quite like the first sting of the sea: all those echoes of holidays past fill the ears along with the water, along with screaming children, cries of parents, salt on the lips and eyes blinking against the sharp reflection of sun from the water. We splashed and played like kids, throwing each other in the water, spraying water and running to the beach for brief rests before returning with a run and a dive. There were only a handful of people spread out on the kilometre-long strip of sand. They watched us suspiciously as we finally dawdled back to the task of setting up home for the week.
    I felt strange entering the bach, even uncomfortable. Apart from Dad, and in the early days, Mum, I’d never stayed there with anyone else. Seeing all the new faces of my friends made the place different, made me feel that outsiders were in the sanctuary. Familiar routines and age-old arrangements had to be explained rather than performed by instinct. I felt out of thegroup: they all shared a common bond of newness. So as we set about the day I felt unattached to both the bach and my friends. This wasn’t the first time I’d experienced such discomfort and it wasn’t the last. Over the years it became a common occurrence as my science and then fame took me further from reality and the people who inhabit it. Although I reconciled myself to the bach arrangements in the days that followed, I carried