Begin Again | ongoing

four

Delilah Jackson lives in the top flat of the tallest building at the end of the longest road up the highest hill in Black Sands, a road that undulates like a San Francisco street on a smaller scale. The closest bus takes Sunny to the bottom of the hill and by the time she reaches the top of the second slope, she's sweating and struggling for breath and she has to stop several times before she continues. How the hell people climb mountains for fun, she has no idea, considering a hundred metres up a paved road nearly wipes her out. If she lived here, she'd never leave the house. Or she'd befriend whoever lives at the bottom of the hill. Maybe she'd have to learn how to drive at last.

At the summit, she has to stop for air, until the urgency of her situation rears its ugly head and she jabs the buzzer for Delilah's flat four times before her ever patient friend waltzes over to the intercom and answers it with a sweet, "This is Delilah, how may I help you?"

"It's Sunny, we need to talk. It's an emergency," Sunny says. Delilah doesn't ask any further questions, just buzzes her up, and Sunny laments these beautiful old buildings turned into four storeys of flats with no lifts as she climbs the steps as fast as possible without bursting a lung.

Delilah's door is already open when she reaches the top. Sweet, dependable Delilah, standing at the threshold with a steaming mug of herbal tea in one hand and a freshly lit incense stick burning in the other. She's a vision of elegance in her silk dressing gown that clings to every curve, the same shade of mermaid blue as the dip-dyed ends of her box braids, her thick eyebrows pulled together above the chunky frames of her glasses. She steps back, door wide open, and ushers Sunny into her flat. Half an inch of ash floats to the floor from the end of the joss stick, which Delilah pushes into a crack in the doorframe from which dozens of charred remains protrude.

Flat 8, Sandy Hill is heaven. It's all natural light and bright colours, original art and galaxy prints on the walls and plants on every surface; the books scattered over Delilah's coffee table are an eclectic mix of physics and astronomy tomes; guides to astrology; DIY craft manuals, and cosy romance novels. Delilah is a hundred contradictions in the corporeal form of quiet girl with loud ideas, with eyes as deep as the ocean and dark as the night, her skin as smooth and brown as a chestnut.

The sofa in the centre of the room must be as old as the building itself, soft cracked leather that sighs as Sunny sinks into a deep cushion and digs her nail under a tear on the arm. It's as comforting as Delilah herself, who is not predictable but she is dependable to a fault. Delilah is a rock in a stream: turbulent waters may flow, but she remains unmoved.

"Start from the start," she says, her voice a honeyed hush. A second cushion gently wheezes as she takes a seat next to Sunny and places her cup on the pale ring long since worn into the scuffed arm of the sofa. That is one Sunny's favourite things about Flat 8, Sandy Hill – nothing is so sacred that it is put before comfort; no object comes before the people that Delilah invites into her home.

Except the telescope facing out of the enormous bay window that looks out over the entire town and the ocean beyond. The last time someone touched Griff – named after Los Angeles's Griffith Observatory, Delilah's favourite place on earth – without asking, they were never invited back. A shame, really. Sunny had liked Lauren, but she'd broken the cardinal rule and moved Griff out of prime viewing position, so Delilah had excommunicated her halfway through their third date.

"Either I've got amnesia or a brain tumour or I'm a time traveller," Sunny says.

Delilah doesn't flinch. She's unflappable. "Okay. Why?"

So Sunny goes back to the start and she fills in her friend with as much detail as possible, and she holds it together this time because there's something about Delilah, knowing that nothing is too weird for her. She doesn't judge. She listens, and she works her short, immaculate nails into every crevice of a problem until she understands it inside out, until she can help as much as possible. She's the best of both worlds, with a head for science and a heart for creativity, and she knows exactly how to use both sides of her brain.