One Thousand Stars and You

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘Max!’ Alice said urgently, shuffling up into a kneeling position and leaning over him. At first, she thought she must have knocked him clean out when she fell, because he wasn’t moving, but on closer inspection she found that he was shaking violently, almost convulsing. He’d wrapped himself up into a tight ball on the floor, his face hidden from view inside a twisted nest of arms and his knees pulled into the foetal position.

  ‘Max,’ she said again, more gently this time, awkwardly patting his hair, his shoulder, his tightly coiled forearm.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she soothed, even though she wasn’t sure it was. Braving a look, she was relieved to see that Kane Hila was backing away from the jeep at last, her trunk still swaying. All the women were crying, and a few of the men, too, and the driver looked ashen as he clambered back behind the wheel. A few seconds later, Alice felt the engine roar into life beneath her and they began to move rapidly away.

  Max was still silent, still shuddering, and Alice rubbed away tears of fear and relief.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, wrapping her arms around him as best she could in the cramped space. ‘She’s gone. It’s over now. You’re safe.’

  Unsure what to do, Alice simply repeated the same words over and over, feeling silly but knowing, somehow, that Max needed to hear them. She remembered an article she’d read once about PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder. Was this what she was witnessing now?

  ‘You’re safe,’ she told him again, her mouth close to his ear. ‘You’re in Pudumayaki National Park. An elephant charged into our jeep, but you’re OK. Everyone’s OK. It’s safe now.’

  Max didn’t move, and Alice felt tears begin to threaten again. She felt so stupid now for hankering after adventure, for chasing the illicit high that came from relieving her own anxiety. Not every experience was a good one, and Max had been through the very worst that a human could endure. She wished she could take all the hurt and fear and pain away from him, to have it for herself, even just for a single day, so that he could have a break from it all. It made no sense, she knew that, but it also wasn’t fair that Max should have to deal with it all by himself.

  She heard another commotion and froze in fear, but it wasn’t an elephant charging towards the jeep this time, it was Jamal.

  ‘Alice,’ he said, out of breath, his dark eyes serious as they took her in, saw her arms around Max. ‘Your nose …’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, meaning it. She had forgotten about her nose completely in her keenness to look after Max, but looking down now she saw that she’d bled all over her T-shirt.

  Jamal had climbed over the side of the jeep and was crouching beside her.

  ‘Can I?’ he asked, tipping his head towards the huddled shape of Max, and Alice moved slowly out of his way, her arms reluctant to let go.

  Jamal found Max’s wrist and pulled at the elastic band he always wore there, letting go so it snapped back hard against his skin.

  ‘Max,’ he said loudly. ‘You in there, mate?’

  Another snap.

  ‘Go to your place, mate. Just go there until you feel safe. I’m here. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  Alice felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to find Maureen, her eyes wet with recent tears and her face flushed. She didn’t say anything, but her concern was painted across her features. Alice smiled to reassure her, then glanced back just as Max finally began to uncurl. Jamal was on his haunches, talking to his friend softly and with authority, but Max was staring past him with unseeing eyes.

  Whatever horror he had relived in these past few moments, Alice knew with a sobering certainty that it was one she would never be able to comprehend – not fully. She might have scars of her own, both mental and physical ones, but they were nothing compared to what Max had endured. He was always so ready to play down the incident that had cost him his leg, and had talked about it so matter-of-factly that he’d almost had Alice convinced. Now, however, she knew better. Max was still hurting, he was still suffering, and to know it so unequivocally made her heart feel as if it had been torn in two.

  They had opened up to one another so much, the two of them, but so far, Alice had been able to kid herself that what drew her towards Max was simply the things they shared – the wounds they wore, the misplaced guilt they shouldered, and the drive they had to set themselves challenges to overcome. But what Alice was feeling now, as she stood with trembling legs and watched as the light slowly came back into Max’s eyes, was a lot more complicated than that.

  34

  Max

  If I should die,

  Let go of your sorrow,

  My life was but a gift,

  That I was lucky to borrow …

  Max knew that he was staring into the kind, dark eyes of his friend, but he still couldn’t see Jamal, not in the whole sense of seeing. He couldn’t feel him, or smell him, or hear him. It was as if his ears were full of water, as if the blast wave was back and ricocheting through his body, causing the tissue in his lungs to convulse and his eyeballs to bulge inside his head. He opened his mouth to speak, to tell Jamal that he was OK, but the words were buried beneath piles of dust, sand, grit and shrapnel – all the detritus that the IED had sucked in and spat back at them, covering Max and his fallen men with destruction and despair.

  The blackness was better, easier. Max closed his eyes and tried to dive down beneath the waves of darkness, to where it was safe. A muffled voice was telling him to move, to leave that place and find another, where he could sit bathed in sunshine, his brother by his side, the two of them just children, bare knees scuffed from fun, a shoelace unknotted and trailing, laughter and innocence warming the air. A stream trickling by below them, light dancing like merry jesters on its surface.

  Go there, he urged himself. Sit until the noise fades, until the pain recedes, until fear is chased away.

  He could hear the running water now, and the sound of his brother, Ant, laughing in his ear as he reached over and plucked a sandwich out of Max’s hand. Max tried to imagine how it would taste, how the bread would feel as it squeezed into the gaps between his teeth. He had a missing tooth. That was it. The tooth fairy had left a shiny pound coin under his pillow the night before. The memory of it made his shoulders relax, and the corners of his mouth twitch into a smile. It’s OK, he thought. Everything is going to be OK.

  Max opened his eyes.

  ‘You all right, mate?’ Jamal asked, placing his warm hands on either side of Max’s face.

  Max swallowed, aware as he did so that there was a stinging pain on the crown of his head. Reaching up a hand, he rubbed at the spot.

  ‘What happened?’ he croaked, looking past Jamal to where Alice and Maureen were sitting on the bench seat of the jeep, staring at him with wide eyes. He had seen those same expressions many times before, and recognised the pity in them.

  ‘Bloody elephant charged at the jeep,’ Jamal told him lightly. ‘Looked pretty hairy from where I was, so God knows how it felt for you lot.’

  ‘Horrible,’ Maureen said dryly, and Jamal braved a chuckle.

  ‘Bit bigger than a cow, eh, mate?’ he said, nudging Max. ‘Now, shall we get you up off the floor?’

  Max grimaced. ‘I can do it.’

  He hoisted himself back on to the seat using his hands and elbows as leverage, trying not to wince at the pain in his leg.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said, looking at each of his three friends in turn. ‘Sorry for freaking out.’

  Jamal opened his mouth to reply, but Alice got there first.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. It was bloody terrifying.’

  ‘Where’s our driver?’ Max wanted to know, and Jamal laughed.

  ‘Getting a rollicking from one of the rangers. And quite right, too – he basically drove you over that poor elephant’s feet.’

  ‘Poor elephant?’ Max managed a laugh that turned into a gaping yawn. ‘What about poor old crippled me?’

  ‘Playing the sympathy card
, are you? Nice,’ Jamal replied, catching Max’s eye and grinning. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough attention for one day?’

  ‘Dickhead,’ Max replied.

  ‘Knob,’ said Jamal happily.

  Max tried to see past his friend to Alice, realising now that he hadn’t even asked her and Maureen if they were all right. Fat lot of good he was in a crisis – he should have been the one protecting them, not curled up in a ball of fear on the floor. Max knew that these reactions were things he could not fully control, and logic told him that there was no blame to be laid, but that didn’t stop an ugly flush of humiliation spreading across his cheeks. He didn’t want Alice or Maureen to think of him as weak.

  ‘Is everyone else OK?’ he asked, and Alice nodded.

  ‘Everyone except Aurik here, whose shirt has been snotted all over by Maur,’ she joked, nodding in the direction of the hairy German man.

  ‘Shit!’ Max sat up straighter as he clocked the splatters of blood on Alice’s face and T-shirt. ‘You’re hurt!’

  Alice looked down at herself.

  ‘I banged my nose on your head when I fell over,’ she explained. ‘Sorry about that, by the way. It all happened so fast, and I was on the floor before I had time to react.’

  Max held up an unsteady hand. ‘Please, no apologies. My head is just fine. Is your nose OK – is it broken?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Maureen put in, sticking her head around Alice’s shoulder. ‘Nothing broken.’

  ‘Here.’ Jamal shuffled around to face Alice. ‘Let me have a look. I may only be a lowly physio, but I do know a smashed nose when I see one.’

  Max watched as Jamal examined her quickly and efficiently, peering up her nostrils and making her follow his finger with her eyes as he moved it from side to side.

  ‘You’re all right,’ he concluded. ‘That nose will live to headbutt Max another day.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to!’ protested Alice, her voice high as Jamal laughed openly.

  Max stifled another yawn. He felt exhausted, as if every last ounce of energy had been drained out of him. It was always the same when he experienced one of these episodes – the catastrophic upset to his mental balance left him reeling. Jamal, who had seen Max through many of these panic attacks now, would be fully aware of this, too. And, as Max had predicted, his friend was soon leaning over to talk to the rather shamefaced driver, telling him in that no-nonsense but polite way of his that they must head back as soon as possible. Under usual circumstances, Max would have stepped in and assured them all that he was fine, but he was too tired. He knew the only way to feel even halfway back to normal was to rest, and he’d learned long ago that there was no point fighting the need to completely switch off after suffering an episode.

  He wished Alice would sit down beside him so he could rest his head against her shoulder. He had a vague recollection of having her arms around him, and guessed that she must have tried to comfort him before Jamal reached the jeep. Whatever it was that he felt for her, Max could feel this complex tangle of emotions gaining weight. He was starting to feel as if the two of them were attached to one another with string, and the further away she was from him, the tighter it pulled around his heart.

  Max was not going to get his wish this time, however, because the other jeep carrying Steph had just pulled up alongside them, and Alice was clambering across to take Jamal’s place. Max stared at the back of her head, willing her to turn, and then, just as the vehicle’s engine roared into life and they bumped off across the park, she looked back at him and smiled.

  35

  Almost as soon as they had checked into the modest hotel in the centre of Tissamaharama, Max made his apologies to the girls and headed straight to his and Jamal’s room. Alice could see that he looked almost grey with fatigue beneath his tan, the episode in the jeep having stripped away his last vestiges of energy, and she hoped that he would be OK by himself. She could not deny that she was disappointed he wouldn’t be spending the evening with them, but equally she appreciated his need for rest. In fact, he was so befuddled that he didn’t even seem to register when she said a rushed goodnight – and that wasn’t like Max at all.

  They were only staying in the town for one night, before heading down to the south coast the following morning, but it was still Maureen’s birthday, and so another session on the tiles was non-negotiable. Alice privately wanted nothing more than an early night. It had been a long day, and the scene she had witnessed in Pudumayaki National Park – not to mention how she felt afterwards – had left her reeling. The elephant charging into their jeep had been terrifying, but what scared Alice more was her immediate reaction. Her automatic and overwhelming concern had not been for her own safety, or even for Maur’s – it was purely focused on Max. She was also struck by how little Richard had factored at that moment – or indeed after it. Surely her response to near-death-by-elephant should have been to call her boyfriend and tell him about it, reach out to the person she loved to let him know that she was still there. But Richard had not even crossed her mind until the point, hours after, when she was wondering why he hadn’t.

  The hotel was close enough to the town centre not to require a tuk-tuk ride, and Alice found that she and the others were all very content to stroll along the crowded streets past the edges of the reservoir, watching as spindly-legged birds picked their way daintily through the reeds. The vast white dome of the Raja Maha Vihara Buddhist Temple lay like a fallen moon in the distance, and Alice looked up to see a swarm of tiny bats burst out from the topmost branches of a nearby tree. The humid evening air was as thick as soup, but the weight of it was helping to temper the familiar fizz of uncertainty in Alice’s chest. She took a deep breath, then another, doing her best to ignore the urge she had to run until there was no room for thoughts.

  What was it about this place? Why had it begun by soothing her, but was now bringing her angsty side back to the surface?

  ‘Alice in Wonderlaaaand!’

  Steph was shouting back to her through the crowds of bustling locals.

  ‘Coming!’

  Every warning that Alice had read about avoiding restaurants with a buffet evaporated as soon as the four of them crossed the threshold of Ran Simhaya and smelled the food on offer. There was a barbecued meat area shrouded in deliciously fragrant smoke, vats of rice in various shades of red, yellow and green, and a more eclectic selection of desserts than Alice could ever have imagined existing.

  ‘Bang goes the diet,’ announced Maureen, her nose twitching with appreciation.

  ‘Diets are boring,’ Steph replied. ‘And anyway, it’s your birthday.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m thirty,’ Maur groaned, sitting down heavily on a wicker chair and thanking the waiter who had held it out for her.

  Alice opened her mouth to protest, but Maur cut across her. ‘And single!’

  There was nothing much she could say to that, so Alice picked up the drinks menu instead.

  ‘I wish they had Prosecco,’ sighed Steph, as Jamal ran a casual finger along her bare arm. ‘I don’t think I can drink beer again so soon – not after last night.’

  ‘What are you?’ Jamal said. ‘Woman or wimp?’

  ‘Oi!’ she grinned, before leaning across the table to kiss him.

  Maureen pulled her own menu up over her face.

  ‘Enough already!’ she muttered. ‘You two are making me feel even more single.’

  Steph reddened. ‘Sorry, Maur.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Maur waved a hand vaguely in her direction. ‘I just wish Max was here to style me out – it’s no fun being the only spinster at the table.’

  ‘You’re not a spinster!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘You’re just picky, that’s all.’

  ‘Like you are, you mean?’ Maur replied, and Alice smiled, although she wasn’t quite sure what her friend had meant by it.

  ‘I’m not at all picky,’ she said tentatively, testing the mood waters.

  ‘Only when it comes to me, then,’ Maur ret
orted. She sounded combative, and Alice reddened as she wondered if her friend was referring to her failed campaign to ensnare Max. Was Maur angry with her for spending time with him? Surely it could only be that.

  ‘I just want you to be happy,’ she said quietly, but Maur would not meet her gaze.

  They took it in turns to head over to the buffet and load up their plates, before ordering a round of rather dubious-looking bright-green cocktails and raising them in a toast to the birthday girl.

  ‘May all your wishes come true!’ said Jamal, clanging his glass against hers.

  ‘Fat chance of that,’ grumbled Maureen in reply, but necked half her cocktail anyway.

  They chatted about their plans for the next few days as they ate, Jamal confirming that he and Max had now altered their itinerary so it would match that of the girls. Steph reached under the table and put her hand on his knee, her smile of contentment matching the one that Alice was doing her best to subdue. She was thrilled that the two men were staying around for longer, but she didn’t want to make it too obvious – especially when Maureen was being so tetchy. Her friend had merely reacted to Jamal’s news with a non-committal ‘cool’, so clearly she, too, was dampening down her true feelings.

  Tomorrow, all five of them would drive down to Tangalle, before moving west along the coast and passing through Mirissa and Unawatuna, before finally ending their trip in the port town of Galle. All of them agreed that they were looking forward to some beach time, with Maureen, in particular, going into near ecstasies at the thought of how great her tan would soon become.

  ‘Is Max a beach fan?’ Steph asked Jamal, and he finished chewing his mouthful of vegetable rice before replying.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But rest is the best thing for him at the moment, what with this pain in his stump. He’s been pushing himself too hard since we’ve been here – that’s why I was so pissed off with him yesterday. Any pain at all, even a slight amount, can be a warning flag for something serious.’