One Thousand Stars and You

by Isabelle Broom

  Alice could not speak, so she nodded, closing her eyes again so that she could avoid seeing this kind woman’s pity.

  ‘Do you want to see him?’ the nurse asked, and her tone was so upbeat that Alice opened her eyes again in shock.

  ‘I don’t think that I …’ she began, then blinked, looking at the nurse properly for the first time.

  ‘What do you mean, see him?’

  ‘I mean, come and see him,’ she said cheerfully. ‘He’s doing well after his surgery yesterday, so we moved him down to a ward. I can take you there, if you like?’

  Alice waited, staring into the eyes of this woman, urging the pieces of herself that had splintered into smithereens to find their way back together and get her on her feet. She took a deep breath in, then another.

  ‘I would like that very much,’ she said.

  54

  The curtain had been pulled closed around Max’s bed at the far end of his ward, and Alice found that she could not move her hand to push it aside. She had been nervous up on the intensive care ward, but now she was petrified. She could hear voices coming from behind it – not his, but a woman’s, and another man whose tone was deeper than the one she had become so accustomed to hearing in Sri Lanka. She would have known Max’s voice anywhere.

  The blonde-haired nurse, who was standing right beside her, smiled encouragingly.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see you now that he’s feeling better,’ she told her quietly. Alice looked at her name badge. Lucy Dunmore, she read, repeating it silently in her head. She wanted to remember this woman – this kind soul who had picked her up off the floor, brought her back from the teetering edge of despair, and helped her wash the tears from her face.

  Alice gestured towards the cubicle beyond the curtain.

  ‘He’s obviously busy,’ she murmured back. ‘Maybe I should come back later?’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Lucy lifted her eyebrows at Alice. ‘You love him, right?’

  Alice nodded, still too dumbstruck by the whole situation to articulate her feelings. All the way to the hospital, she had pictured herself charging up to Max’s bedside and pouring her heart out, but now she felt as if all her words had abandoned her, and her feet were fastened to the floor.

  ‘Well, then,’ Lucy said. ‘That bumps you right up the queue.’

  Before Alice could say anything in reply or even turn to flee, the nurse had poked a quick head around the curtain and then pulled it to one side with a happy sort of flourish. Alice froze, colour rushing up to fill her cheeks as her eyes searched the faces of the four people who were now all staring at her. When she found the one she was looking for, the face she had been dreaming about, Alice let out a high, strangled sob and brought her hand up over her mouth.

  For a moment, nobody spoke, and then the woman sitting beside the bed stood up and smiled at her.

  ‘You must be Alice.’

  She felt Nurse Dunmore’s warm hand in the small of her back, urging her forwards, but Alice resisted. Max was there, right in front of her, close enough to touch if she could only make herself step across the space that divided them. But it was too much, the emotions were coursing through her again, tears building behind the dam of her eyes.

  ‘I need to …’ she said, and then she turned and hurried away.

  ‘Alice!’

  Someone was following her. Alice made it to the end of the ward before he caught up with her. She recognised him from Max’s Instagram posts. He looked like Max, only bigger and broader with coarser hair and more weathered skin.

  ‘Alice,’ he said again, and when she looked at him she saw nothing but delight in his expression.

  ‘I’m Ant.’ He held out a hand. ‘Max’s brother. I’m so glad you’re here, he’s talked about nothing else since he woke up. I was beginning to think about venturing out on to the London streets in search of you, just to shut him up.’

  Alice smiled. A laugh still felt like too much. Not ten minutes ago, she had been huddled on the floor in grief, believing Max to be dead.

  ‘Will you come back in?’ Ant asked. ‘Please say yes. Only, we’ve been here since before lunchtime and I’m bloody starving. Now that you’re here, Mum will finally agree to pop out for a few hours. Go on, you’d be doing us a huge favour.’

  Alice felt shy around this man, who was so large and confident and relaxed in his own skin. She remembered what Max had told her about his brother being the big tough guy, and how he had wanted to be just like him. She could understand why.

  ‘Chop-chop.’ Ant beckoned her with a hand, and Alice moved forwards, timidly at first, and the two of them headed back through the ward towards the end cubicle.

  ‘Come on, you lot,’ he bossed, going back around the curtain and leaving Alice on the other side. ‘We’re going for some grub and no arguments. Alice is going to keep an eye on Max, Mum, so don’t pull that face at me.’

  Alice cringed inwardly, staring down at herself and only now remembering how dreadful she looked, with Sri Lankan red dust all over her trainers and leggings, and spots of blood on her T-shirt. She didn’t know how they had got there, until she registered how swollen her lip was and realised she’d bitten through it on the hospital floor upstairs. No wonder Mrs Davis was reluctant to leave her son alone with such a wild-looking creature. Alice was surprised, then, when Max’s parents emerged and his mum – who was tall and willowy with striking grey eyes – pulled her into an unexpected hug.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, and Alice was again forced to bite her sore lip to stem the flow of tears. She felt as if she had been turned inside out and had all the energy wrung out of her body. The phone call with Richard, the long journey home, the showdown with her mum and the race to get here – it all felt like it had happened a lifetime ago, to someone else. There was a wonderful clarity in Alice’s mind now – she knew what to do next.

  She waited until Max’s family were out of sight, and then, wishing she could steady the pounding of her heart, Alice pushed aside the curtain.

  55

  Max

  For the first few moments, they simply stared at each other.

  Max was overwhelmed with an urge to get up off the bed and comfort her, but there was no arguing with the drip in his arm, or the heavy swaddle of bandages around his stump. Alice looked so small standing there in front of him, and so delicate. He was afraid that if he touched her, she would come apart in his hands, like a dandelion in the wind. He could see that she had been crying, and she was covered in dirt, too, as if she had crawled through a field to reach him. Her brown hair was tangled and a small rucksack hung limp in her hands, but when he looked again at her face, into the eyes that he had learned so effortlessly off by heart, he saw hope reflected back at him.

  ‘You’re alive,’ she said at last, and Max found his smile.

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘I thought you were …’ She stopped, unable to bring herself to say the final word. ‘Jamal told Steph that things weren’t looking good, and then I got here and went to the intensive care ward, and I found your empty room and I …’

  She stopped again. Max could almost taste her anguish, so raw that it pained him.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, needing to reassure her. ‘I’m definitely not dead, and I don’t plan on being dead any time soon.’

  She nodded, fighting yet more tears.

  ‘I gave Jamal quite a fright on the flight home,’ he told her lightly. ‘Passed out cold. I’ll spare you the gory details, but let’s just say it was touch and go for a while. My leg was infected, and the nasties got into my bloodstream, but it’s all been cleaned up now. I should never have ignored that pain I was having. I’m an idiot.’

  ‘That makes two of us, then,’ she said. She still hadn’t moved from her spot just inside the curtain, and Max heaved himself up into a better sitting position and patted the bed.

  ‘Come and sit with me,’ he offered, and then, when she hesitated, ‘Please.’

  Alice came
towards him, still gazing at him as if she could not quite believe he was there, that this was happening, that the two of them were together again. She looked down at the bandaged end of his stump, which was resting on top of the covers.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, her eyes solemn.

  ‘Probably,’ he allowed. ‘But I’m on far too many drugs to notice.’

  Alice smiled at that, and this time it felt like a genuine one. Max lifted his hand and touched her arm just once, very gently.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘I missed you.’

  Alice looked at his hand, swallowed.

  ‘I have missed you, too,’ she said. ‘So much. I was so worried after you left Sri Lanka, I just wanted the holiday to be over so I could come home, so I could find you and tell you that I …’

  Max waited, taking her in as she fumbled for the words she wanted to say. She was perched up on the bed now, facing him – so close that he could see the freckles on her cheeks and her Mickey Mouse earrings. He yearned to pull her down against him.

  ‘That you what?’ he prompted quietly, and Alice made herself look at him.

  ‘That I’m sorry. Sorry for what I said to you at the beach, sorry for being such a coward and a fool and sorry for letting you go believing that I didn’t care about you, when I did. I do. I really do.’

  Max let go of a breath that he had not known he was holding.

  ‘I got your poem,’ she said then, picking up her bag from where she had dropped it on the floor and unzipping the front pocket. Max recognised the piece of folded paper, and felt the heat in his cheeks.

  ‘Jamal must have found it,’ he said. ‘I wrote it right before I came to find you, that night on the beach in Tangalle. I guess I was just trying to make sense of what I was feeling, but I never planned on showing it to anyone – least of all you.’

  Alice smiled. ‘I’m very glad it found its way to me,’ she said.

  Max chuckled. ‘Bit late to worry about it now,’ he said. ‘By the time I’d got back to the room that night, I was out of it. The doctor who came gave me something that got me through the airport the next morning and on to the plane, but I don’t remember much after that. The next thing I knew, I was here, and my mum was here, telling me that I was going to be all right.’

  ‘It must have been awful,’ Alice said, and Max reached out the hand not attached to the drip to comfort her.

  ‘Not just for me,’ he said. ‘For you guys, too. I’m so sorry I scared you like that.’

  She smiled. ‘I think we both say sorry too much,’ she said, and Max laughed.

  ‘I think you might be right.’

  ‘I broke up with Richard.’

  She had blurted it out so quickly that at first Max thought he had misheard.

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘It’s over,’ she confirmed. ‘You were right. The truth is, I didn’t want to marry him. I realised that he could never make me happy, and I could never make him happy, either. The old Alice would have made it work, but she’s long gone now. I left her behind in Sri Lanka.’

  Max was forced to quell a huge smile. He was proud of her, he realised, but nervous, too. Just because she and Richard were no longer together didn’t mean she would automatically want to be with him.

  ‘Honestly,’ she went on, ‘I have been like a new person these past few days. I even stood up to my mum – me! And it was nowhere near as scary as I thought it would be. I think she might even change, although it’s going to take a while yet.’

  Max grunted in amusement. ‘You’ll have to give me some pointers,’ he said. ‘Once I’m back on my feet – my foot,’ he corrected, and Alice rolled her eyes in good humour. ‘Then me and my mum are going to have a proper chat. It’s time for me to move away from home now, and do something that makes me happy.’

  ‘I’ve just had to move back home!’ Alice exclaimed, and they looked at one another and laughed, relieved to be able to do so.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and she inclined her head, confusion on her face.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For making me realise that I was in danger of settling, and for helping me believe that I can have everything I want when it comes to being with someone – and I mean really being with them. Sri Lanka proved to me how much more I need from my life, and my work, but being there and meeting you was only a beginning. Now I know that I want to do all the things you want to, Alice. I want to go on adventures, and travel more, and I want to help people, too, people like me.’

  She was nodding again, tears welling in eyes that were full of understanding.

  ‘I don’t think I will ever be able to say thank you enough to you,’ she mumbled. ‘I feel like my whole life, from the time I fell off that roof to the moment I met you in Habarana, has been on pause, and that now, my life can begin again. My true adventure can begin – the one I was always supposed to go on.’

  ‘Oh, Alice,’ he said, so moved by her words that his voice cracked as he spoke. ‘You have always been on an adventure – you just didn’t realise it.’

  For a few seconds, they gazed at each other, and again Max felt the pull of a thread inside him – the same one that had fastened him to this woman, this wonderful, hopeful, daring and beautiful woman, the moment he first saw her, and which had never frayed. Lifting his hand, he reached across to stroke away the loose strands of hair from her face. Alice closed her eyes, pressing her cheek against his open palm, and smiled. For the first time since she had appeared in the hospital, like a tatty angel he had conjured from a dream, Alice looked at peace, and Max knew that this was it – the love he had been searching for. She was the future he had been waiting to find, while he was the adventure she had not even known existed.

  Alice opened her eyes, and dropped a kiss on his hand.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said, a smile dancing on her lips like light across water.

  Max dropped his hand to her shoulder.

  ‘As long as it’s an easy one.’

  ‘Well, let’s see,’ she replied, moving forwards until Max could almost feel the beating of her heart, and running a shy hand through his hair. Her fingers felt cool and soft against the back of his neck, and Max shivered beneath them.

  ‘It’s a yes or no answer.’

  He put his head on one side, his lips now a whisper from hers, and Alice leaned towards him, her eyes beginning to close. Max could feel the love between them, and it felt like coming home.

  ‘I think you already know my answer, Alice,’ he said.

  And then he kissed her.

  Acknowledgements

  It would not have been possible to write this book without a great amount of help, so I must begin with my thanks. First of all to Blesma, for putting me in touch with the brave and brilliant Matt Southwould, Linden Allen and Glynn McNary. It was an honour speaking to you all, and Max would not have become the darkly humorous and intricate soul he is without your incredible insight. Thank you for being so generous with your time and for answering all my no-doubt bizarre questions. I should say here that any errors concerning Max and his prosthetic limb, or any military terminology, are completely down to me.

  Heartfelt thanks to Maureen Stapleton, who very kindly bid to have a character named after her in this book as part of the Authors For Grenfell auction. I hope you enjoy the antics of your namesake, and agree that she is every bit as bold and wonderful as you. Thanks also to SJ, for being the auction runner-up and for generally being one of the best, loveliest and most amazing ladies I have ever met.

  I am so grateful to my wonderful friend Tamsin Carroll, who came out to Sri Lanka with me and also taught me the importance of a good pillow. Let us never forget bakery tuk-tuks, pelicans in trees, aftershave on cut knees and, of course, Captain Siri. Thanks also to Senura Dulanjith and friends, who gave up their seats on the Kandy to Hatton train for us and got us to Adam’s Peak in one piece. You are all LEGENDS. I must thank Graeme Dunn, too – when I brought back slightly more fr
om my Sri Lanka trip than elephant-dung notepaper and a tan, he was there in the hospital like a guardian angel. Never have I been so glad to see a friendly face (and a needle).

  To my wonderful agent, Hannah Ferguson, the team at Hardman & Swainson and all those at The Marsh Agency, thank you for being so flawlessly supportive and infinitely wise. To my truly masterful and mind-bogglingly smart Road-Running marvel of an editor, Matilda McDonald, what a mission this one was! Thank you for being so unfailingly kind, clever, patient, and funny, too. Laughing is very important during editing, don’t you know! To Sarah Harwood, Laura Nicol, Maxine Hitchcock, Maddy Marshall, Beatrix McIntyre, Sarah Bance and Jessica Hart and all the other p-p-p-perfect Penguins, THANK YOU for all you do and have done for me and for this book. It was a bold step forward for me, and I never felt anything but cheered on throughout the entire writing process. A huge round of applause must go to Eve Hall, who conjured up the incredible title of this book. When I saw it, I knew, just like Max and Alice did.

  To the Book Camp crew, thanks for all the advice, all the laughs and all the biscuit cake. I look forward to sharing a hot tub and a secret love of Andrew with you all again soon. The book world is full to bursting of amazing and inspirational people, and to list every one of them here would require another 400 pages. You already know who you are, you brilliant bunch. Massive love to all the book bloggers and reviewers who read so tirelessly and with so much enthusiasm – I have nothing but awe and admiration for you all.

  To Sadie Davies, Katie Marsh, Gemma Courage, Ranjit Dhillon, Sarah Beddingfield, Chad Higgins, Vicky Zimmerman, Ian Lawton, Carrie Wallder, Nina Pottell, Louise Candlish, Clare Frost, Fanny Blake, Alex Holbrook and Corrie Heale, thanks for being the best friends a Broom could ever wish for – and then some. I promise to work hard on my writing schedule next time around, so that you actually get to see me more often than once a year … between deadlines.

  I was a hopelessly clumsy child – much like Alice in this book, in fact, only worse. I managed to crack my head open, break my nose multiple times, fall off roller boots and horses, drive a moped through a fence and swing a doll around my head in circles until it kicked me in the face. Despite all this, my mum still encouraged me to be myself, to be proud of myself and to explore as much of the world as I could. She also encouraged me to write, which is why this book – and, indeed, all my books – belongs to her and to every single member of my amazing family. I love the lot of you – mad dogs and all.