A Map of the Sky

by Claire Wong

  “Every day since then I’ve thought about them all. I’ve wondered how Charlie’s swimming lessons are going. He was so proud when they let him move up a group and swim with the older children. And I wonder who will tell them how wonderful they are now, or whether Elsie knows how to make sure they feel secure so far away from their parents. And I wonder how much they will have changed already, what obstacles they’ll have overcome and new skills they’ll have learned. And then I remember I won’t be able to find out the answers to any of my questions.”

  “That’s heartbreaking,” Juliet breathed. Kit said nothing. He suddenly found Maddie a little frightening. That any adult could have such enormous emotions inside them shocked him, and he was more afraid now of her sadness than of her flaring anger, which was only a shade of sorrow after all. She looked at him with a concerned expression and perhaps she realized how much of the storm they had seen, because she quickly sat a little straighter and brightened up.

  “Saying goodbye is always sad, but that’s why I started my pilgrimage. By walking a long way and visiting all these different places, I’ve met a lot of new people. And that helps – it gives me some better memories of this summer.”

  “How far have you walked now?” Kit asked.

  “From my old home in Norwich. At the last count it was nearly two hundred miles.”

  “And you’re going to stop when you get to Whitby Abbey?”

  “That’s always been the plan. Though lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s the wrong destination after all. Lindisfarne would be the perfect place to end a pilgrimage. But even then I’ll have missed out on all the Scottish coastline, so perhaps I should extend it further north again.”

  “What will you do when you’ve finished walking?” He was beginning to feel as though he were interrogating her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you can find a new school to work at, with new children. Do you think the ones you left behind miss you as much as you miss them?”

  “Most likely they have got used to me being gone by now.” She leaned back against the boat and it supported her weight. The sea and sky stretching out before them had the same muted tone today. In the quiet grey light, a hush seemed to hang over it all. “It’s a funny thing, this sea.” Maddie did not look at either of them, but seemed to address her next thoughts to herself, or to the still waters ahead. “I’ve walked alongside it for so many miles now, and you get to know it, like it’s the constant, silent companion in your travels. On days like today it’s so peaceful and I could find something deeply spiritual in this place. And then you see the lifeboats rushing out one night in the middle of a storm to rescue some poor soul who’s been swept out too far off course, and you realize it could knock you off your feet in an instant. So gentle and yet so dramatic.” She ran her hand over the feathered heads of the grasses surrounding her boat.

  Kit decided to take a risk and share something with her. “If you want the best place to see it, there’s a gap in the gorse just over there.” He pointed across the field to the tangled vegetation on the other side of the path. “It comes out onto the cliff top, and then you have this view of the sea and the sky and nothing else for miles and miles. It’s amazing.”

  Maddie thanked him, and said she would have to investigate it. Kit hoped Beth would not mind him sharing one of the secrets of her map. It felt as though Maddie needed the cheering up.

  “Staying at Askfeld, I can see there are others just like me. We’ve all been washed up on this sea of unfinished stories, and we’re – I don’t know – waiting, or hiding, or gathering strength for the next mile, but we haven’t found our endings yet. We don’t even know if we could face them if we did.”

  Juliet stood up. The abrupt movement broke the spell of Maddie’s words with a jolt. Kit grimaced. It had all been too poetic for his sister, and made her uncomfortable. She could not understand as he did.

  “I’m so sorry to hear what happened. I wish there was something we could do to help. Still, I think we need to be heading back now, Kit. Mum will probably get home before we do at this rate, and I don’t want her to worry.”

  Kit shot an apologetic look to Maddie as he followed his sister away. He understood at last why she had not finished her pilgrimage, and why she kept on extending her stay at the guest house. She was afraid of ending that part of her story, in case it didn’t go the way she had hoped. There was always a risk she might leave Whitby Abbey still feeling as pained as the first day of her journey. He understood that fear: just occasionally he had found himself wondering whether the unfinished map would be enough in the end to bring his father home. If the map was completed and the Fisher family were still fragmented, he had no new ideas for how to fix that problem.

  As they walked north past Askfeld and the tarn back towards Utterscar, Kit thought about what Beth had said, about the people he could help being nearby. He could not shake the image of Maddie sitting under her shipwreck, so far from the life she had loved. If only there was something he could do to show her that she was not driftwood.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BETWEEN THE SALT SHORE AND THE SEA STRAND

  DAY TWENTY-FIVE

  If the sea was a person, it would be:

  1. A wise old man with a long white beard, who’s just watched the world go by for years and is never surprised at anything.

  2. A boy my age who’s fun to play games with (on days when the water’s sparkling because the sun’s so bright).

  3. A really angry teenager who storms out of rooms and breaks things (on stormy days when it crashes on the rocks).

  “What are you doing?”

  Juliet had caught him. She stood in the doorway, arms folded, fingers drumming against her forearm. They had driven over to Askfeld for Catherine to catch up on her emails, and Kit had seized an opportunity while she was out of the room to borrow her laptop. Juliet had been revising outdoors, her vocabulary lists spread over a bench bathed in sunshine, but she had come back for her bag when she ran out of highlighter pens. “Please tell me it’s not what I think.”

  He had been searching online for special needs schools in the Norwich area. The handful that he found all had websites, and by searching through the old news and events sections he soon found reference to a Miss Morley helping out with the annual sports day, and a photograph of Maddie surrounded by children in white polo shirts. She looked different in the picture. She was smiling, and her hair was neatly curled rather than straggly and weather-struck. She wasn’t looking at the camera; she was focused on listening to one of the girls sitting next to her who had just craned her head round to say something.

  “Well, that depends. What do you think it is?” he asked, deciding to be contrary rather than confess everything.

  “You’ve decided you’re going to fix things for Maddie somehow. I don’t know what you’re planning, but I know you, and I’m certain you’re interfering in something that’s none of your business.”

  “You said that before she told us her story, and then she told us it anyway. So maybe things are more our business than you think.”

  “Suddenly an expert on other people’s problems, are you? It’s laughable how much you don’t understand!”

  Kit scowled. Juliet could just have easily said “funny”, but he knew she was deliberately using the longer word “laughable” to show how grown up she was, to distance herself from him. He resented how she viewed him as a child and herself as an adult, when there was only a gap of five years between them.

  “What I don’t understand is why you’re so spiky these days. You just complain and criticize all the time!” he retorted, making a show of being very interested in what he was reading on the computer, so that he could ignore his sister. He wanted to appear cool and aloof, as she so often did, but could feel his face burning with indignation.

  “Only when there’s stuff that needs pointing out. Anyway, it’s better to be argumentative than too scared of conflict to ever disagree with any
one, like your weird birdwatcher friend.”

  Kit snapped his head back up at this. “What about Bert?”

  “Can’t you see it? He’s one of those people who’ll run a mile before telling you that you’ve done something wrong.”

  “No, he’s not! You’ve barely even talked to him anyway.” How could she presume to be an authority on Bert, or any of his friends?

  “Sure he is. Everyone says so. For someone who eavesdrops so much, you do miss a lot. You know his wife left him because of it, right? Apparently every time she tried to bring up a problem, he’d just avoid talking about it and say he had too much work to do right now, until eventually he was spending all his time at the university so he wouldn’t have to get into an argument. In the end she gave up and moved out. That’s why he spends all his time traipsing round the countryside alone, looking for rare birds. And it’s why he talks so much nonsense all the time, to avoid letting the conversation ever get uncomfortable. Mum heard about it from someone here at Askfeld.”

  He weighed this up. Could it be true? Bert had never mentioned having a wife, just some grown-up children. He was willing to bet the “someone” gossiping to their mother was Sean, and told Juliet as much.

  “Might have been. Why? Oh right, because then you don’t have to believe it. Because Sean’s the villain in your made-up story, isn’t he? Even though Beth made it perfectly clear she doesn’t need you to rescue her from anything.”

  It occurred to Kit that Bert might actually be somewhere in the guest house today, and even within earshot of this conversation. He did not want to be overheard gossiping about his friends, so he said nothing and waited for his sister to get bored and go away.

  After a pause long enough to make it clear the conversation was over, Juliet uttered a noise of disgust and walked out. Kit breathed a sigh of relief. Clicking on the contact page of the website, he made a note of the school’s address on the back of his hand, since he had not thought to bring any paper with him. Then he closed the browser window and sprang away from the computer as Catherine returned.

  “Mum, have you got any envelopes?”

  “Yes, I think there are some back at the house. Why?”

  “I want to write a letter.”

  “A letter? Who to?”

  He was prepared for this. “Toby, from my class.” Toby was one of his friends whom his mum had always liked. Toby was polite and dressed smartly even when it wasn’t a school day. He called Catherine “Mrs Fisher” whenever he came round, and took his shoes off in the hall. His stepmother was on the board of governors and wore a lot of perfume.

  It worked. “Of course, dear. I keep forgetting that you must be missing your friends. I think they’re in the kitchen by the recipe books. Have a look when we get home. And I have a book of first class stamps in my handbag. Do send our regards to Toby’s parents when you write.”

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  “How would you like to go out somewhere new today? I think we all need a break from unpacking boxes and sitting indoors. Don’t you?”

  Kit grinned. “Where can we go?”

  “I don’t know – there are some nice seaside towns within driving distance. Let me have a look at the map.”

  For a moment, Kit thought she meant the unfinished map, but then he remembered she could not know about it, and was probably talking about the road atlas she insisted on keeping even though the car had satnav. He hoped they could go somewhere nearby enough for him to find something for Beth’s map anyway.

  He heard his mum go and talk to Juliet, who would not agree or disagree regarding any plan until she had voiced a string of questions about where they were going and for how long. Negotiations and map-checking went on for some time before Kit heard his name being called and went to find them.

  “How about we go to Scarborough for the day?” his mum said. Kit’s heart sank. That was off the edge of the map. There would be nothing useful there. Then he remembered Beth telling him that there was a castle, and he cheered up a little.

  It was breezy but a clear sky stretched over Scarborough when they finally found a parking space and clambered out of the car on a small side street. Kit took a deep breath through his nose to take in the smell of this new place.

  “I can smell chips.”

  “I expect they sell a lot of fish here, being so close to the sea,” his mother said, putting the car keys back into her handbag.

  “Look!” Kit pointed. “There’s the castle.”

  On a headland at the north end of the bay, what remained of Scarborough Castle stood like a beacon overlooking the town.

  Catherine asked if they wanted to walk up to the castle, and Juliet shrugged. This was close enough to agreement for Kit, who marched ahead up the hill. It quickly became a steep walk past rows of neat red-brick houses with flowers lining the window ledges, and then a flight of steps where he had to wait at the top to make sure he hadn’t actually lost his mum or Juliet by walking too fast. When he was sure they were still following, he ran on to the slope up towards the gatehouse.

  While his mother dealt with the boring matter of purchasing tickets for entry to the castle, Kit looked around the little gift shop. His eye fell on a selection of wooden toy swords. A few years ago, he would have begged his parents for one so that he could pretend to be a knight. Then he would have insisted someone else buy a second, so they could battle up and down the castle walls. His dad would have been the most likely to yield, but there was a time when even Juliet might have been willing to challenge him to a duel. That was before she got a phone, before she had essays to write in the evenings and make-up to apply before weekend shopping trips. Now she was much too grown up to be interested in that sort of game. Kit reminded himself that he ought to be too old for it as well. The children at his new school probably didn’t play at sword fighting.

  He ran over the barbican bridge until he stood beneath the keep. The side nearest him was completely missing, the tower’s insides exposed as if it were one of those cutaway book illustrations that let you see inside buildings. He imagined soldiers marching up the stairs to the arched windows, their armour catching the sunlight as they steadied crossbows on the ledges, took aim, and…

  “It says here,” Juliet interrupted his reverie, reading aloud to the rest of them from an information board, “that half of the tower was destroyed during a siege in the Civil War. The castle was held by people on the king’s side, and Cromwell’s men attacked it.”

  “Who were the good guys in that war, Jules?”

  Juliet looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Was the king’s side good, or Cromwell’s?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not that simple. History isn’t like that.”

  Some of it was, Kit thought. The Romans were ruthless, clever and cruel, while the Celts were brave and tragically doomed to lose against the invaders. The Vikings were vicious invaders who murdered monks, no matter what Beth might say about them doing some good. Kit had not studied the Civil War, but his hunch was that the king had been unfairly attacked.

  “I wonder what the café is like here,” said Catherine. “They tend to be quite good at these historical sites. We could have tea and cake after we’ve seen the whole castle.”

  As they walked along the perimeter wall of the outer bailey, Kit imagined himself as a soldier on patrol, keeping an eye out for pirates or Viking raiders coming over the North Sea. The vantage point from the top of the wall was good; from here on the headland he could be the first to spot sails on the horizon. Beside him, Juliet was battling the fierce gusts coming off the sea and scraping her hair back into a bun to keep it from becoming any more windswept.

  After a proper tour of the castle, which involved climbing as high as they could into the ruins of the great tower and peering out through the arched windows (Kit refused to grip on to the wall in case Juliet spotted and laughed at him for his new-found fear of heights), their mother ushered them into the tearoom. She bought a pot of tea for hers
elf and Juliet to share, orange juice for Kit, and then they were each allowed to choose a slice of cake.

  “Can we sit outside?” Kit asked.

  “No, let’s stay indoors. You’ll get cold if you sit still for too long out there.”

  He offered to get up and run around after every third mouthful of cake to keep warm, but his mother just laughed and picked a table near the door.

  “Well, we couldn’t have done anything like this in our old home!” she said, smiling brightly at them both as she poured the tea with effortless precision. Kit admired how she could do that without spilling a drop.

  “You used to take us to historical sites all the time,” Juliet pointed out, “and we’ve had school trips to the Tower and the Imperial War Museum pretty much every year.”

  “Still, they weren’t right next to the beach, were they? We couldn’t have cake in a castle looking out over the North Sea back then. Kit, use the fork you’ve got; you’ll get chocolate icing all over your hands. Here, take this napkin to clean them. I’ll fetch some more.”

  Juliet picked at her scone, pulling sultanas from it and chewing them slowly. Catherine sat back down, sipped her tea, and looked quite content. Two elderly ladies in anoraks were leaving the tearoom, but stopped at the Fishers’ table. One woman was tall with sleek grey hair cut short around her face and a delicate silver chain at her throat, while the other had sparkling blue eyes and a complexion that suggested she had spent her life travelling to hot countries.

  “Aren’t they the spit of each other?” the taller one said to the other.

  “You look just like your mother,” the bright-eyed one said to Juliet.

  Juliet straightened up, self-conscious at being addressed by strangers. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I think I should be the one taking that as a compliment, at my age!” their mother laughed.

  “And do you take more after your father?” the first woman asked Kit. Kit was not sure how to answer. He had the same dark hair as his mum and Juliet, whereas his dad’s hair was sandy brown. Perhaps they did look alike in other ways.