I nod my head. I’m used to having to spell out my surname.
“Um, I think you’ll find that’s pronounced Le Cane,” Sandy says, collapsing into laughter.
“What? No, it isn’t . . .” I trail off. Sandy is doubled over, snorting like a warthog.
“Trust me, it’s a common Jersey name, with a French pronunciation—you don’t say Ques-ne.”
My mind starts doing backflips. That’s how the woman from the airport pronounced it. Now I think about it, people have said my name like that before. I just assumed they didn’t know how to anglicize it. Why would Mum have taught me my name wrong?
“But no one speaks French here!” I say indignantly. “You have all these French names for things but then pronounce them in English.”
When Sandy finally stops cackling about the fact that I’ve been mispronouncing my own name my entire life, she says, “The island was originally French, before William the Conqueror got involved.”
“It was part of Normandy until 1204, and the traditional island language, Jèrriais, is a form of Norman French,” chips in the man sitting next to Sandy. He is in his sixties, dressed entirely in brown, and has long gray hair tied back in a ponytail.
“This is Raymond, he’s a bit of an island expert,” says Sandy, shooting me wide eyes.
“All the original road names were French,” Raymond explains. “Some get pronounced the original way, some have been mangled into English, which can get confusing, but people’s names stay as they always were, pretty much.”
Am I going to have to change the way I say my name? I wonder, as Raymond shifts his chair around to better join our conversation. Then he says, “Jersey history goes back more than two hundred and fifty thousand years. It’s only been an island for six thousand.”
Sandy is still looking at me with wide, unblinking eyes. She must be worried that Raymond is about to dispense quite a significant volume of history to me, because she quickly changes the subject, pointing out how good the surf is this evening. Then she tells me about what a good surfer Ted is, how he used to sneak out surfing at night if he knew there was a big swell coming in, then go to school with seaweed in his hair.
Ted catches my eye from across the circle. He shakes his head, but his eyes are smiling and, with a beer in his hand and his friends around him, he looks more relaxed than I’ve seen him all day. I can’t believe how at home I feel among these people I’ve only just met. It crosses my mind that I can’t think of the last time I made a new friend back in London.
Ilídio walks over and nestles down in the sand at Sandy’s feet, reaching up to hold her hand, smiling up at her with his huge white teeth. The affection between them appears so easy, so delightfully unfiltered. The thought prompts me to check my phone, waiting for Jasper to call. Surely, he’ll phone this evening.
Picking up a jug from the camping table, which is doubling as a bar, I help top up people’s drinks around the circle. When I reach Gerry, he beckons me to sit down in the empty chair beside him.
“Is everyone making you feel welcome, Laura?” he asks. I shuffle the chair closer so I can hear him better.
“Oh yes.” I nod. “Incredibly so.”
“What a night for it, hey.” He nods toward the fading light on the horizon, the warm red of the clouds as the sun disappears behind them. Gerry’s face is remarkably free of worry lines; he looks cheerful, even though he is about to say good-bye to the only home he has known. I watch his limbs vibrate in constant motion, and I imagine how exhausting his condition must be.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Gerry?” I ask, the glasses of sangria I’ve consumed loosening my curiosity about him.
“Of course—the best kind of question.” He smiles and widens his eyes.
“How do you stay so positive? Do you worry what’s around the corner?” He pauses, and I’m worried I have offended him. “Sorry, that’s a big question to ask.”
“It’s a good question,” he says, putting his drink down in the camping chair’s cup holder. “The thing is, with a degenerative condition like mine, if I look back at everything I could do before, the things I used to love—sailing, woodwork, playing the guitar—it can only depress me. Equally, if I look ahead to tomorrow, no doubt I’ll only be able to do less than I can today. The tremors and my eyesight may be worse, my step less steady. This is not something that gets better,” Gerry says with a calm smile. “So, if I can’t look back, and I can’t look forward, I’m forced to live here, right now. Today I can sit around a campfire and talk to my friends. Today I can watch the sunset, even if the outline is getting hazy. Today I have made a new friend and I’m enjoying her company and her vibrant conversation.” He makes a single, slow nod in my direction. “The Roman poet Horace said: ‘Don’t hope or fear, but seize today, you must! And in tomorrow put complete mistrust.’ All any of us have is today.”