A Map of the Sky

by Claire Wong

  The first was Kit’s mother, who had finished her conference call.

  “Goodness, I thought I could hear something going on,” she said. “Whatever has happened?”

  “Hopefully just a bad reaction to tiredness and rain,” Bert supplied, “but Sean is calling a doctor, just to be safe.”

  The next person to come into the room was Maddie. She looked a little dishevelled and bleary-eyed.

  “Ah, good, you’re back safely then,” said Bert. “You caused a bit of a stir this time, Maddie. However did you manage to escape getting drenched in all that rain?”

  Maddie looked at him oddly. “By not going outside. I overslept this morning and thought I’d come down to see if there was any chance of a late breakfast.”

  Bert frowned. “But you were seen leaving Askfeld. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what Beth said. Didn’t you say you’d seen Maddie going out into the storm?”

  Beth winced as she tried to turn her head towards him. Nick returned with two hot-water bottles and a thick woollen blanket.

  “Here we are. These are to warm you up if you need them. I’ll ask Sean where the painkillers are.”

  Kit frowned as he tried to remember what exactly Beth had said. He couldn’t believe she would be wrong about something like this. Then his mother spoke in a clipped, urgent tone that froze him to the spot.

  “Where’s Juliet?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  NINE FATHOM DEEP

  ASKFELD’S CHALKBOARD FORECAST

  High tide: 12:36 p.m.

  Low tide: 6:44 p.m.

  Weather: early morning mists, followed by heavy rain

  The question hung horribly in the air of the now silent room. Kit looked around. Her bag and coat were still on the chair where she had sat earlier trying to access the exam results.

  “She went to take a phone call,” said Bert.

  “When?”

  “I’m not sure. Sometime in the last hour.”

  Just before we heard the door slam, Kit thought. His mother turned to Beth.

  “Was it my daughter you saw going out?”

  Beth nodded. Catherine rounded on Kit next.

  “And you just let her go out? After I told you to stay with her!” Her eyes were wide and her face was completely white. Kit could not remember ever seeing her look so angry, even after he had gone out searching for the albatross.

  “You told me to stay here, and I did. She was the one who went out,” he protested.

  “I thought you’d keep an eye on your sister. Why do you think I haven’t left her on her own all summer?”

  Nick and Bert both looked uncomfortable, and kept throwing sympathetic glances towards Kit, which made him all the more convinced that his mother was not being fair. He had assumed that, as the youngest, he was the one she was most worried about getting into trouble, and that Juliet was being trusted to be in charge and make her own decisions. How was he supposed to have guessed it was the other way around?

  “Now, Mrs Fisher, don’t you fret,” Bert said soothingly. “I’m sure Juliet’s not gone far. There’s nothing to worry about.” He gave a smile that was almost convincing, but then it wobbled just enough to betray his doubts. Looking around the room, Kit could see that no one was about to be persuaded of an idea the birdwatcher himself barely believed.

  “Mr Sindlesham” – Kit’s mother drew herself to her full height as she snapped out her words – “my daughter suffers from high-functioning depression and anxiety. Why on earth would I take her out of one of the best schools in the country and bring my family to this bleak little corner of nowhere if there wasn’t a great deal to worry about?”

  High-functioning depression and anxiety. Such heavy words, Kit thought. Such long, clunky, prosaic words for whatever it was that had changed his sister. He remembered how Beth had once told him that her condition had a long name that was hard to pronounce too. Maybe they should employ poets to name conditions with words that conveyed a greater sense of meaning.

  Sean came back into the room. “The doctor’s on his way.”

  He looked around at the different faces in various stages of shock.

  “It wasn’t Maddie who Beth saw going out; it was Juliet,” Kit said, when none of the adults spoke. His words seemed to wake everyone from their trance. His mother grabbed her coat and started pulling the sleeves over her arms.

  “We’ll help you look for her,” Bert said, standing up. Kit’s mother gave him an impassive stare that suggested he was not her first choice for a helper, but she would not stop him. Maddie and Nick also offered to help.

  “And me too,” said Kit.

  “Absolutely not,” his mother answered. “Wait here.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t come too,” said Sean, “but I need to stay with Beth.”

  Kit’s mother assured him that she understood his need to take care of his wife, and she led the party of four out into the grey. Kit stood at the window and watched them split into two pairs. His mother and Nick headed inland to the fields and farm buildings, while Bert and Maddie went north along the cliff path. The rain had started again as the clouds rose higher, driven in from the North Sea.

  Sean went to rummage around in a cupboard by the stairs and hauled out a fold-up wheelchair.

  “Didn’t think we’d need this already,” he said, as he unfolded the chair next to where Beth sat. “Kit, come and help me. Can you hold the chair steady?”

  Kit ran over and grabbed hold of the handles and pushed down on them, while Sean lifted Beth carefully into the wheelchair.

  “I’m going to find her some dry clothes,” he explained, as he pushed the chair out of the room and down the corridor to the staff end of the guest house. “Do as your mum said and wait here, OK?”

  Kit stayed in the lounge, his nose pressed against the glass as he watched for any sign of the searchers returning. The guest house was suddenly very quiet after the flurry of activity and noise moments ago.

  Where would Juliet go? What had Beth been telling him to watch out for, while Sean was phoning the GP? He watched the waves rolling against one another over the darkening sea. Askfeld felt starkly exposed to the elements – the price it paid for its view of the sea.

  It clicked into place in his head. Of course! It wasn’t “look out” but “the lookout”. Beth had not been warning him of anything, but telling him a place from her map. The very first place Kit had found. It must be the direction she had seen Juliet heading in.

  He jumped away from the window. His mother had told him to stay here, but then she had gone off the wrong way. There were no adults available. It was up to him. He pulled on his coat and went outside, lowering his head against the strong winds bearing down on the coast.

  It was four hundred and twenty-three steps along the cliff path. He knew, because he had counted them. He paced them out again now, since the pelting rain made it hard to recognize any landmarks from last time. The fields were shadowed and muddy, the gorse waving wildly in the wind.

  At four hundred and twenty-three he stopped to search for the lookout spot. It occurred to him that Beth could not have been certain Juliet was going here, since she would not have been able to see this far down the path from where they found her in the garden. But she must have seen Juliet take the Cleveland Way southward, so if he did not find her at the lookout point, he would just keep walking south until he caught up with her.

  He must have counted incorrectly or measured his stride differently this time though, because he was not at the lookout point. He ran back a short way and then ahead, until eventually he found it. He crouched down and crawled through the gap, though this time it was harder, with the trees’ lowest branches whipping about him.

  The lookout point was empty. Before it, the sea was turning wild as the storm grew. Whatever had upset Juliet, Kit thought, it was the sort of day where the weather could only make you feel worse. He wished it had been sunny this morning, and that a bright summer’s day might have cheered her up. Bu
t then he remembered how mesmerized she had been by the stormy waters that day when they searched for fossils. She had loved the brooding clouds and crashing dark waves.

  He sighed, and was about to turn away when he noticed something on the edge of the cliff. There was a patch of ground that had given way recently. The mud around it was churned up, and when he looked more closely he could see the deep furrow of a stretched-out footprint there, as if someone had slipped forward and lost their footing. Gingerly he moved towards the edge of the cliff and peered over.

  The cliff face descended all the way to the shore below, but it dropped in sections. These ledges did not join up well enough to form a path along the coast, though perhaps an intrepid mountain goat could have navigated them. On the highest of these ledges, just a few metres below where Kit stood, a small figure sat huddled against the rock face. It was Juliet.

  “Jules!” Kit shouted into the wind, so loudly he felt as if the sound was grating all along the back of his throat. It worked, though. She looked up.

  “Kit!” she shouted back. “I’m stuck!”

  “What happened?”

  “I slipped. Don’t come too close to the edge; the ground’s not secure!”

  Kit did not want to fall, but neither did he want to back away so that he couldn’t see his sister any longer. He lay down on his front so that his legs and torso were on solid earth but his head craned over the edge of the cliff. Juliet’s hair was plastered to the sides of her face; her clothes were dark and waterlogged. She was pressed against the cliff face with her knees drawn up under her chin.

  “I’ll reach down,” Kit shouted. “Grab my hand and I’ll pull you up!”

  He wriggled so that his shoulder was over the edge of the cliff and extended an arm towards her. Juliet looked up at him and shook her head.

  “I can’t! If I move, I’ll fall. I only just managed to land on this ledge and not go any further down. And I hurt my leg when I slipped – I don’t think I can put any weight on it.”

  Kit hesitated, and then withdrew his hand. He needed to think of a different plan to save his sister. At the same time, confusion gripped him at everything the Fisher family had kept hidden from its youngest member, and this tipped into indignation that they had ended up in this place at all.

  “How did you even fall down there anyway?” he demanded. “What were you doing here?”

  He sounded like his mother, but he was cross with Juliet for springing this sudden change in behaviour on him. The roar of the wind was dropping enough to be able to ask questions without hurting his voice, but the rain and the waves continued to rage.

  “You told me about this place, remember? The first time we went out for a walk. You said it was a place you could forget… everything. That you could feel free for once.”

  It was true: he was the one who had raved about the lookout point to Juliet. But he hadn’t told her how he had thought that falling from the cliffs up here might feel like flying.

  “I was trying to see how far I could lean into the wind. I wanted that feeling you get, you know, when you tip forward and it holds you up. But I got too close to the edge, and it gave way. I thought I was going to fall all the way down, right into the sea!”

  Kit looked at the ledge. It wasn’t especially wide, and he could see why Juliet was still scared of how precarious her perch was. Still, there looked to be space for someone else down there.

  “Hold on. I’ll come down.”

  “No, Kit! You could fall and break your neck on those rocks down there.”

  “But it’s weird, talking to you from up here.”

  He crawled to the edge and lowered himself cautiously down. The rock scraped against his elbows, but he barely felt it. Below him, the sheer rocky cliff face dropped all the way down to the sea. His stomach jolted as he took in the distance between his feet and the water.

  Don’t look down, or you’ll be stuck here too.

  He sat down on the ledge and shuffled along until he was next to her. The ledge itself was not far from the top of the cliff. If Juliet wasn’t hurt, or paralysed by fear, it would be easy enough to help her back up to the cliff top.

  “See, it’s not so bad,” he said. But now that he was nearer, he could see that she probably wasn’t exaggerating. There was a large purple bruise spreading over her leg. She looked so utterly miserable that he put an arm around her shoulders in the safest equivalent of a hug he could manage right now. Juliet burst into tears.

  “I’m so sorry, Kit. It’s all my fault.”

  “Don’t be silly; it’s not like you fell on purpose,” Kit reassured her.

  “Not just this. I mean all of it. You having to leave your school and friends behind, moving up here, Dad being gone – it’s all because of me.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  Juliet nodded, so that her bird-shaped necklace jumped up and glinted at him.

  Like the albatross round the mariner’s neck, he realized.

  “It is though.”

  Kit thought about the shrill tone his mother had used; how she had let slip that she had hoped Kit would keep an eye on Juliet this summer and not leave her alone. He was starting to suspect there was an awful lot more that he had missed.

  “What’s high-fun… high-factoring…” he began, trying to remember what their mother had said to Bert.

  “High-functioning depression and anxiety?” Juliet gave a dark laugh through her tears. “Just some long words a counsellor told Mum she could use after a couple of sessions of talking to me. Mum likes them, because it means there’s a labelled box to put me in.”

  “But what do they mean?”

  “I don’t know, really. It’s a clever way of saying I’m drowning in the pressure to be perfect all the time. That I can remember every single mistake I’ve ever made and they’re all dancing around my head when I try to sleep at night. That you think I’ve turned boring, but I’m spending every moment trying to hide how terrified I am of each new situation and problem I’m supposed to handle maturely and gracefully.”

  Could this be the same Juliet who spoke to adults as though she was one of them; who was top of every class and surrounded by friends any time she left the house? It had all looked so effortless.

  “But I don’t think you’re boring. It was fun when we flew the kite, and when we learned how to skim stones that time by the lake.”

  She smiled and passed a hand across her face to sweep away strands of hair. “I liked those times too. I felt better then, like I could breathe again for a bit. But it’s no good. I’ve messed up so badly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought I could have it all. Most people in my class either wanted to be popular or clever, not both. I wanted to prove everyone wrong – that I was better than that. But you saw through them, didn’t you? You never liked Amy or Seb or any of my friends. I didn’t see it until the end of term party, when they made me look like such an idiot. And I thought, ‘It’s OK. I’ll meet new people at St Jude’s and at least I didn’t skip too many revision evenings to go out with them, so I’m sure to get the grades I need.’”

  “And did you?” Kit asked, but he already knew the answer.

  Juliet shook her head. “I was below my predicted marks in all the subjects I want to take next year.”

  A part of Kit wanted to tell her they were just grades, and it did not matter all that much, but he knew it might as well be the end of the world for Juliet. She had lost her friends and her position at the top of every class. Those were the things she was known for. And what happened at the end of term party? Hanging over the edge of a cliff, it didn’t feel like the right time to ask. He still could not see how any of it made their new home or their father’s absence her fault, but he could see that asking her about these things was only going to upset her further. If she continued in this state, she might well end up falling off the ledge. He needed to find a way to get her safely up onto the cliff top again. He wondered if he might be strong enough
to carry her. With her rain-soaked clothes clinging to her limbs, he could see how thin she had become in the last few months.

  “What if I lift you up to the top?” he suggested. The idea came so instinctively to him; it was what any of the heroes in his books would do in a single-handed rescue.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re eleven. You can’t carry me. We’d both end up falling off the cliff.”

  With a wrench, Kit realized she was right. He was not strong enough. He could not save Juliet alone, so he would have to find help. It needed someone older than him, and with a good head for heights.

  “OK, I’m going back to get help. Wait here and don’t move. I won’t be long.”

  “Believe me, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Kit shuffled his way along the ledge, then tentatively stood up and hoisted himself back to the top, scrabbling his way over the lip of the cliff. He rolled away from the edge, making sure not to look down until he was safely on solid ground. Then he crawled back under the trees and out onto the path.

  He ran all the way back to the house. Beth had been right all along. She had told him there might be someone close by who needed his help, and Kit had completely missed that it was Juliet. Between Beth’s illness, Bert’s search for the albatross, and Maddie’s tragic story, it had not occurred to him to look more closely at how strangely Juliet had been acting. But now that he thought about it, it had been right in front of him all along. He could not remember the last time he had seen her eat a full meal without pushing it around her plate as if she could not face the idea of food. He could not think of a time all summer when she had laughed, unless it was tinged with sarcasm. Now she was alone on that ledge, and it left him feeling sick. What if she slipped again, or the rock gave way beneath her?

  Out of his fear rose a fierce determination. He gritted his teeth as he ran against the pelting rain. I might have lost my dad this summer, but I won’t lose my sister too. He ran faster.

  As Kit arrived back at the guest house, so too did Bert and Maddie. Both had pulled their hoods up to protect themselves from the downpour.