The End of the World Is Bigger than Love Read online

  About The Book

  She said we didn’t know what the world out there had become. We had been alone there so long on that tiny island, in that tiny church.

  But in the night, I couldn’t bear it.

  My chest beat like wings.

  Identical twin sisters Summer and Winter live alone on a remote island, sheltered from a destroyed world. They survive on rations stockpiled by their father and spend their days deep in their mother’s collection of classic literature—until a mysterious stranger upends their carefully constructed reality.

  At first, Edward is a welcome distraction. But who is he really, and why has he come? As love blooms and the world stops spinning, the secrets of the girls’ past begin to unravel and escape is the only option.

  A sumptuously written novel of love and grief; of sisterly affection and the ultimate sacrifice; of technological progress and climate catastrophe; of an enigmatic bear and a talking whale—The End of the World Is Bigger than Love is unlike anything you’ve read before.

  To the memory of my mother.

  The ending is not the story.

  The End of the World Is Bigger than Love

  ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.’

  Albert Camus

  Contents

  Cover Page

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Summer

  Winter

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Summer

  The first thing you need to know is that my name is Summer and my sister’s name is Winter and I know—it’s ridiculous, right? But that’s the kind of dude our dad was, and it probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that he devoted a lot of his life to studying axolotls, which are those disgusting Mexican walking fish, and that’s why he was taken away by a bunch of guys dressed like ninjas. At least, that’s what we thought till we figured out what really happened, though now I wonder why we didn’t cotton on earlier. Probably because we were busy reading.

  You might be thinking, where was our mother? Surely she could have put her foot down, unless she was in some post-birthing medical haze and was all, like, YES! to giving her identical twin daughters matching trans-seasonal names. Well, sure, maybe she would have, if she hadn’t died with Winter still inside her, all curled up like a little fist and just wanting to hang around where it was dark and quiet. I was out by then, so I probably saw it go down. But do you want to know something creepy? The doc didn’t even know Winter was coming—total surprise, like when you open the front door and there’s a guy there in a gorilla suit and he’s singing you happy birthday.

  Did you know that once they used to do some kind of weird X-ray scan on pregnant ladies to show that sort of stuff—straight onto their skin? It’s gross to think about now, I know, but at least it would have given our mother the chance to up her bootie-knitting rate. And it wouldn’t have taken them until after she was gone to figure out that Winter was still in there, rapidly forming that part of her that likes to wander off in golden fields, trying not to hurt daisies as she picks them while I’m left all alone, going out of my mind with no one to talk to. That happened a lot once we got to the island. We were literally stuck by ourselves on a piece of land the size of a spitball. Oh, and we lived in the shell of a church. Not even joking. Our dad was there at the start, but then…you know. Just over a year later there was the whole ninja thing.

  After Pops (our dad) was taken away, we kept things going, like we had when he was still around. So if he ever came back one mid-morning, say, strolling in with his hands in his pockets, he’d see us pretty much where he left us, sitting on those big old wooden pews in the sunshine, reading through the set of our mother’s classics with the patterned covers and arguing about Jane Eyre, who I called Jane Airhead but who of course Winter really liked. Winter really likes everyone—she even felt sorry for that guy we saw kicking a dog on an excursion to the Refuse and Recycling Centre.

  But you wouldn’t understand all that, not yet, because I haven’t explained anything properly. Not Bartleby, the big old ruin of a church with half the roof busted in. How it became our home because Pops had to take us on the run and find somewhere to hide away until all his troubles blew over, though at the time he still insisted that the remote island’s unique ecosystem was needed to further his axolotl breeding program.

  I know it’s hard to believe now that nobody goes anywhere ever, but we had been before, to the island at the top of the world. It was one long summer holidays while Pops was away on axolotl business, and we were seven and had just learned to cartwheel with our legs straight. We sailed there from another, bigger island with my grandfather—right across the ocean, skipping over the waves in a proud little yacht, not even the tiniest bit afraid of being shot down by a plane.

  It was like a dreamscape from a book, that island—like a diorama made by the only kid in the whole school who really has a future in Art. The mountain sat at the back, huge and majestic, white-peaked, and, boy, was it high. Every time I looked up at it, I felt that shiver you get when you hear the roar of a lion, even through the TV. The next layer was the green plush of the forest on the right, the red rocks of the headland on the
left. Then came the church, with the bell tower and the moat, and alongside it the sweet burble of the river that came down the slope, all melted snow, so icy and clear you could see your feet turning blue as you slipped round on the rocks trying to cross to the meadow on the other side, where a tiny white shack sat on grass so bright it glowed green. If there had been anyone else on that island, we could have rented that lawn out for barefoot bowling, but it was just us—that was kind of the point. In front of the grass was the sand, fine as flour, and the little jaggedy cove, the shape of a bite mark chomped into the shore, which was where our grandpa pulled up the boat that first day.

  The whole place smelled like honeydew melon and sheets dried hot in the sun, and as we climbed out of the boat, Winter said, ‘Let’s never leave,’ and I added, ‘Except to get nachos,’ but even then I didn’t really mean it.

  Our grandpa’s name was Walter, and we called him that. He didn’t say much except with his eyes, and Winter was mad for him. ‘This is paradise,’ he said with his eyes as he introduced us to the island, and truly it was. I don’t even have the vocab for that kind of beautiful and I’m basically fluent in three languages.

  ‘What’s on the other side of the mountain?’ I asked Walter one afternoon, when the sun bounced off the water so strongly that it burned my nose.

  ‘The end of the world,’ he said, scrubbing at the hull of his boat.

  ‘Can I go there?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope,’ he said, not in a mean way, but so I knew not to ask why.

  ‘What’s this island called?’ I said.

  ‘The island,’ said Walter. ‘You sure ask a lot of questions.’

  ‘You bet,’ I said happily. ‘And look at this cartwheel.’

  For weeks we stayed in that wooden shack, so close to the beach that the sand blew in and got caught in the cracks of the floorboards, no matter how many times Winter swept up, hoping that Walter would notice.

  Walter slept under the table that summer, so that we could have the bed. He braided Winter’s hair to distract her when she found an octopus washed up on the shore, rotting purple, and our hair isn’t that easy to plait on account of being so curly. He planted things—saplings, I think, that he’d brought across in paper sacks. I guess they were the fruit trees we ate from, years later. Did he bring them there for future us? Was the island actually his?

  His boat was pulled up right outside the window, like a friendly dragon keeping watch outside a cave. In my mind, half the summer was spent scrubbing that boat, preparing for the journey home. Our grandpa was a thorough guy. He was a doctor once, Pops told us. He studied AIDS, which used to be a kind of virus, and you probably remember the hoopla when they found the cure—an injection quicker than a bee sting. Boy, was that a happy day across the planet. We weren’t that old, Winter and I, but I remember watching it on TV, the cities wrapped in ropes of white garlands that fluttered merrily as if they were hanging there to say ‘You see? There’s still hope for the future.’ But honestly? Hope had been fading for ages by then.

  And after that summer on the island, we never saw Walter again.

  Winter

  They sat by my bed. Adjusted my drip. White walls, white sheets, white masks on their faces. A curtain that was always closed.

  They watched me pretend to sleep sitting up.

  When I had grown thicker, they asked questions I couldn’t answer. Not even on paper.

  They gave me one sheet. They said, ‘Write what you cannot say. Write it down. Like it’s all just a story. Write it here. Write it down.’

  But Summer had made me hold that story inside so long. Now it sits in my throat, a dry cough. It won’t come out. There is nowhere to start.

  The next day, they came with this notebook, a sun on its cover. ‘Write your happiest memory. A toy. A pet.’

  And so.

  Summer

  Five years later, after Japan, after Egypt, after Turkey, Japan again, we returned to the island with Pops. What a time. If you’ve ever sunk a seaplane deliberately in the middle of the night, you’ll know what I’m saying here.

  Pops’s work had dragged us all kinds of everywhere over the years, and it sounds disgustingly smug but by then we’d seen enough places in the world to realise that Bartleby was pretty dang beautiful, and not just as far as remote abandoned churches go. Sure, it wasn’t anything like ending up in India, say, where even the smog haze felt electric, and currents of spicy smells ran under everything, and the people made rainbow tides. But in India, trying to watch all the coloured saris was like trying to see all the specks of a cloud of confetti at once (FYI—impossible), and the cows were so bony that even as I was saying to Winter, ‘Look at those tough old horns, they’re as strong as marble coathangers,’ one died right in front of her and she had to go and lay her cheek against it until the owner lashed at her legs with a big jerky piece of bamboo. Above all, the island felt safe, safe, safe, and though the shack was gone, returning still felt like coming home.

  The first thing we did that first day when the sun came up—even before we unpacked—was plant parsley, because did you know that parsley has the most calcium of any food ever? So I guess Pops always knew we’d stay a while if he was thinking about our growing bones, because it’s not like we had cows or goats or camels or any other kind of friendly, milk-giving mammal arriving anytime soon, and the last thing we needed was to grow up all soft-boned and bent over. It was going to be hard enough getting boyfriends in the future.

  The second thing we did was realise that sea water had ruined our sourdough cultures, which are those weird, alive yeast things that you bake bread from, and maybe it was because we’d been awake for thirty-six hours straight, but Winter really cried. And if I’m totally honest, which I’m trying to be, I cried too, because hot bread—proper leavened bread—risen and baked over some kind of fire, well, is there anything better?

  And Pops did what he always did when we cried: mutter something about needing to work, and put his hands in his pockets, and back out of the room quickly, though to his credit he came back a moment later with a box of books and slit it open before scuttling away. And what was the first one, just shining on out at us? It was To Kill a Mockingbird, and though everyone thinks it’s their favourite, we felt an especial connection, Winter and I, because we’d lost our mother, just like dear little Scout and handsome, moody Jem, and we were also often left alone. And I’m not saying our father was Atticus Finch or anything, but not everyone was that crash-hot on Pops, so when the townspeople turn against Atticus and want to bash his hat off, we could kind of relate.

  We lay under an almond tree in the sun, and I read it aloud until we may as well have been in the mossy balm of southern Alabama and that hot, salty mash of good versus evil, and eventually we drifted to sleep. When we woke up, the sky was pretty and the breeze was chilly and we agreed that if we were Harper Lee, we wouldn’t ever have written another book either, because nothing can be more perfect than perfect, and that’s how we felt about Mockingbird. And wasn’t that a scandal, when it turned out that the long-lost prequel was actually written by her lawyer with help from dear Harper’s personal diaries that the lawyer had swooped from the back of a garage and gone through with a highlighter.

  As the last of the sun hit the bricks of the bell tower, and gulls wheeled and the ocean murmured, we jumped up and did split leaps over the sand and yelled, ‘Pork!’ as we threw our ruined sourdough to the birds, and suddenly life didn’t seem so bad.

  We spent the next few days tracing over our summer with Walter, dragging our toes through the sand to draw an outline where the white house used to be. We were so into it that we almost forgot our twelfth birthday. If I squinted, sometimes I thought I could see us cartwheeling along the shore in the sunshine, the sea behind us breaking out in a rash of diamonds.

  Winter

  Our Pet

  His name was Pete.

  He was my mother’s dog. A springer spaniel, white and brown. His smile belonged on a birthday
card.

  Summer taught him to stand like a man. On his back legs, he could foxtrot to music. He waited for us by the big school gates. Like a nursery rhyme.

  Then my mother died. We were eleven.

  Pete started snapping.

  First just at flies. Pond fish in a park.

  Then the hem of a little girl’s dress.

  A baby’s sunhat.

  My father’s calf.

  We came to the island with chickens for eggs. Their blood crusted brown on his lips.

  On windy nights, he howled. He threw himself at walls, at the stained-glass windows of our small church. He was sick with love that had nowhere to go.

  ‘Did you know glass is actually a slow-flowing liquid?’ Summer said once as his rope lead burned in my palms. She was pretending not to notice him. When Summer pretended, I almost believed.

  Not long before the boy showed up, Pete started to circle Summer.

  He walked around her in slow, smooth circles. He purred like a motor. His teeth glowed.

  Eventually we ate that dog. Summer said it wasn’t dog meat, but I knew.

  I pushed the plate away with my eyes. I shook as she gnawed, her thumbs slick with grease right up to the joint.

  ‘Eat,’ Summer said. And then, ‘Eat. There’s nothing else left.’

  I wanted to try.

  Even for Summer, I couldn’t.

  The boy and I, we had watched her kill Pete. As she hacked off his leg, Summer frowned like she did when we pulled Christmas crackers.

  The boy held my hand. At least, that’s how I remember it.

  We were down in the moat. We often were. By then, we were one and the same. Or maybe just mingled together. Sand from two beaches on the point where they meet.

  But all that came after. I will go back.

  Summer

  You might be wondering right about now how we managed, two tweenaged girls all alone, not connected to anyone anyhow, gadgets or otherwise, and in a church to boot, not, like, a laser-tag arena or a mall after closing time, or any other place you might imagine being locked in if you had to write an essay about it for school.

  Well, we had the mountain, which was like a grandfather clock, or maybe even a grandfather, ancient and solid and friendly. Its party-hat peak nudging the clouds, making heaven feel closer and everything somehow less lonely. There was the sea, which, if you’ve been there—and who hasn’t?—you’d know is a big old twinkly sheet of kindness that makes everything else seem pretty irrelevant, especially you.