The Space Between the Stars

by Anne Corlett

  “Yes. I don’t know why, but I like the feel of them, the patterns they make. They’re not for anything. Maybe that’s why I like them. They just are.” She stood up. “Let’s get back.”

  Finn began to scrape the pieces together.

  “Leave them here,” Jamie said. “The tide won’t come this high. We can come another time, bring a bag to take them home.”

  “The tide?”

  “It’s what the sea does.” Jamie wafted a vague hand toward the horizon. “It goes out, and then it comes back in again. Every few hours. That’s what brings the sea glass in. We can only collect it at low tide.”

  “Will it be . . .” He picked over the words carefully. “. . . low tide tomorrow?”

  “There’s a low tide every day,” Jamie said. “Not at the same time, though.”

  She felt as though she were shoveling information at him, but for some reason she wanted him to understand the rhythms of life here. She didn’t want to be the only one who knew how everything worked. If he could fit in here, then maybe it would be like belonging. Maybe it would be like living again, not just surviving.

  She brushed sand off her knees. “Come on.”

  • • •

  At the house, they found Jamie’s stepmother in the kitchen, leaning heavily on the counter as she stirred a pot on the old range cooker.

  “You still get gas for this?” Jamie said.

  “I had it converted to electricity a couple of years ago,” her stepmother said. “The gas was getting too unreliable. Can you put this out?”

  Jamie carried the heavy pot over to the table, then opened a cupboard to find the familiar crackle-glazed plates. She laid three places, then paused.

  “I better see if Callan wants to join us.”

  At the row of holiday cottages, the first door was locked, and the second, but the door of the final cottage opened when she pushed it. The lock was splintered, and the catch was loose.

  “Callan?”

  When Jamie stepped inside she saw his bag propped up on the sofa. She went to the foot of the spiral stairs.

  “Callan?”

  Perhaps he’d gone to look around the place. She went back outside, following the path down the side of the kilns. The sun was sinking toward the headland, and the beach was mottled with shadows and trimmed here and there with a thin line of sea foam. The indefinable smell of the ocean was muted by the rising scent of night. She’d been right, back on Soltaire. The dark smelled the same everywhere.

  There was no sign of Callan, and she turned back to the house.

  The others were already at the table, her stepmother in a high-backed Ercol chair, wedged in with cushions. She saw Jamie looking and gave a wry smile.

  “Trial and error,” she said. “I know this setup will let me get back on my feet again. Is your friend coming?”

  Friend. That took her back to her teenage years, when her stepmother couldn’t disguise her excitement on the rare occasions when Jamie passed through with a fellow youngster of the male persuasion.

  Does your friend want a drink?

  Can I get a snack for you and your friend?

  Those sort of euphemisms broke down when you grew up. Friends became friends. Lovers became lovers. In name, anyway. Even if you weren’t entirely sure they fit one of those narrow categories.

  She sat down. “He wasn’t there.”

  They didn’t talk much. Finn kept rubbing his eyes, his fork sagging in his other hand, and her stepmother wasn’t much better.

  “Sorry,” she said, after an unsuccessful attempt to hide her third yawn. “You must have so much to tell me, and here I am, barely able to keep my eyes open.”

  “It’s okay. Plenty of time.”

  Her stepmother smiled, sadly. “Probably not. But some time, certainly. Maybe we should call it a night. Do you want to go to bed, Finn?”

  He nodded and put his fork down, balancing it across his empty plate at a precise forty-five-degree angle.

  He followed Jamie upstairs, and she showed him the bathroom, leaving him to take himself off to bed, while she helped her stepmother up the stairs. The older woman was breathing hard, and Jamie could feel her trembling.

  “How have you managed so far?” Jamie asked, as they took a break on the landing.

  “I just did.” Her stepmother leaned against the wall. “Maybe what we can and can’t do changes to fit in with what we have to do. I can manage from here.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Are you turning in as well?”

  Jamie glanced out through the hall window. “I thought I might go down to the beach for a bit.”

  Her stepmother tilted her head. “You mean a swim.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I suppose there’s no point telling you to be careful, not to get too cold, and to make sure you don’t stay out too late?”

  Jamie smiled briefly. “Probably not.”

  “If you look in Bella’s old room, I think there are some swimsuits in the bottom drawer.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  As she walked over to the door of the room her younger half sister had once occupied, she felt a pang of something like guilt. She was here, and they were gone.

  “Jamie.”

  She turned.

  “Be careful,” her stepmother said. “Don’t get too cold and don’t stay out too late.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  Jamie walked down to the beach, wearing a cotton caftan over a navy swimsuit, her feet shoved into a pair of old flip-flops. At the edge of the waves she pulled off the cover-up and threw it back up onto the dry sand. Then she kicked off the flip-flops and walked into the shallows. The cold wrapped around her and she clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering. The chill had never bothered her before.

  Asbestos skin, her mother once said when Jamie was little.

  That’s for heat, not cold, her father had replied, and then they’d argued and her mother had stormed off home. They’d found her asleep on the sofa, an empty glass beside her.

  Jamie kept wading out until she was waist-deep. This was the tipping point, when you had to decide whether to turn back or take that final plunge. She breathed in hard, bent her knees, and kicked off. For a moment she hung weightless, her whole body in a vise of cold, and then a faded memory sharpened into focus, and her body remembered how to take that cold and turn it into a hard, physical pleasure. She kicked out toward the open sea, head down, snatching quick mouthfuls of air in the furrows between the waves. It was harder than it used to be, and her lungs and legs were aching after just a couple of minutes. But it would come back.

  After a few moments she stopped, tucking her legs underneath her and treading water. She was perhaps a hundred meters out. Past the harbor wall, past the sloping shallows, far past the invisible line that would have had parents scrambling to their feet to shout at their straying offspring, Not so far, you’re too far out.

  The tide was pushing at her, trying to shove her back toward the shore. Not so far. Too far out.

  I’m fine.

  And then she thought it might be true.

  She was a speck of life, tiny and out of place in the vast cold of the ocean. What she’d lost, what she’d thrown away, it was all part of a world that was gone. And that was how it always was. Yesterday turned into memory, and the world remade itself, and there was never a moment when you looked at it and knew you had it right. Tomorrow she’d wake up and this moment would be just a memory, the world reshaping itself around her doubt and uncertainty. But there’d be other distinct moments, here and there, sharp and acute among the fug and muddle of it all.

  To the north, the coast unfurled in a dark bulk, with the shoreline picked out in a shifting mixed-media of surf and moonlight. You used to be able to see the lights on Lindisfarne from out here. Tonight there
was nothing to indicate that this corner of the world was anything but empty.

  The curve of the current was carrying her back toward the harbor, and she could see a figure sitting on the end of the wall. She swam a few strokes and caught hold of the slippery stones.

  Callan looked down at her. “Bit cold for swimming.”

  “It’s fine when you’re in.”

  He looked out across the dark surface of the sea. “Why do I doubt that very much?”

  “Why don’t you join me and see for yourself?” His legs were hanging down, and she reached up to give his foot a shake. “Might need to take your boots off first.”

  He drew his legs out of reach. “Nice offer, but I’m fine up here. And besides, I never learned to swim.”

  “You can’t swim?”

  He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “Not much call for it in the inner city. Or on board ship.”

  “No. Sorry.” She turned in the water, still holding on to the wall. “I was trying to get far enough out to see down the coast. There’s a clear view for miles once you’re past the headland.”

  “You could take a boat out.” He nodded toward the harbor. “There are a couple tied up. You know how to sail?”

  She nodded. “You?”

  He gave her another hard look, and she raised a hand. “Sorry, sorry. No boats in St. Louis.”

  “And despite the name, spaceships and the other sort don’t have much in common.” He held his hand down. “Let’s go see what we can see.”

  She braced her feet against the wall and reached up so that he could grab her hand and haul her up. The air was warmer than the sea, but she started shivering almost immediately, the faint breeze pricking goose bumps from her skin. She was very aware of how little she was wearing.

  “Where’s your towel?” he asked.

  “I didn’t bring one. My cover-up’s on the beach.”

  “Wait here.”

  He jogged over to disappear along the path beside the kilns. Jamie followed more slowly, swinging her arms to keep the blood moving. She was almost to the gate when he reappeared with a towel. She rubbed herself as dry as she could, and then retrieved her caftan and flip-flops.

  “Better?” Callan said, as she rejoined him.

  “Much better. Do you still want to go out?”

  “If you do.” He looked at her. “Might be colder out there. Don’t you want to get dressed?”

  She shook her head. There was an urgency to her need to see what lay beyond that headland.

  “We’re not going far out,” she said. “And anyway, northerners are tough.”

  “They seem to be,” Callan replied. “A fair few of them have survived, anyway.” He looked out toward the horizon. “I wonder if it’s like this everywhere on Earth. Groups of survivors, I mean. If the ship weren’t grounded we could have gone looking.”

  “Do you think you can get it back in the air?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s got to be worth a shot. I went for a walk over to the hotel. They’ve got a working console. The network’s in a bit of a state, obviously, but I found some info on fuel dump locations. There are a couple not that far from our landing site.”

  Jamie had reached the first of the boats, a little blue coble with its name blazoned in perky gold script. Northern Cross. She bent down to loosen the painter, trying to keep her tone neutral. “So you’ll be heading off, then.”

  “Not just yet. We’ve been dashing from pillar to post since it happened.” He looked out through the harbor mouth. “I’ve been doing that for years now, come to think of it. A spell of staying put might be what I need.”

  Is there nothing else you need? she thought, but “Sit down” was all she said as she cast off and used an oar to steer out of the harbor. Once they were clear of the outer wall, she reached over the stern and shipped the rudder. Then she raised the little sail and eased them around before reaching up to turn on the battery-operated hurricane lamp hanging from the mast.

  “I’ve never quite understood sailing boats,” Callan said. “How does it work when you want to go the opposite way to the wind?”

  “You really want a lesson now?”

  He shook his head. “Plenty of time.”

  Everyone always said that. And not long ago, the universe had given them all an object lesson on just how untrue it could be.

  Once they were out beyond the headland, Jamie lowered the sail.

  “This should be far enough.”

  Callan slid over to join her, setting the little boat rocking. He didn’t say anything, but his knuckles whitened as he gripped the side.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’ll be life jackets in the locker.”

  “They’ll be useful,” he said, a little caustically. “If we capsize, remind me not to drown before I put one on.”

  “We’re not going to capsize,” she said. “Don’t be a baby. You made less fuss over crash-landing a spaceship.”

  As soon as the words were out, she regretted them, but he just shook his head at her. “I know how a spaceship works,” he said. “And space, it’s predictable. For the most part. No storms, no tidal waves, no great big beasts to take chunks out of you.”

  “This is the North Sea. Not Shark Bay. And I don’t think we’re in much danger of a tidal wave on the Northumberland coast.”

  “First time for everything.”

  The coastline was an unbroken stretch of emptiness. She’d expected nothing else, but as she stared at that great dark expanse, with all the familiar clusters and pinpricks of light extinguished, she felt something clench inside her.

  “Well.” She tried to keep her tone light. “I guess now we know.”

  As she turned away, reaching for the halyard, Callan leaned forward.

  “Wait,” he said. “What’s that?”

  She followed the line of his gaze, but she saw nothing.

  “Turn the light off.”

  She flicked the switch.

  “Keep looking,” he said. “Give your eyes time to adjust.”

  As she stared into the darkness something glinted faintly in the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look at it, it winked out, like a too-distant star. But there was another, a few thumb widths down the coast. And another—no two, three—right down there on the very edge of their line of sight. And those weren’t single lights. They were little patches of illumination in the dark sprawl of Tyneside.

  “Can you see them?” Callan said.

  Jamie nodded. It might not be people. Lights could have been left on, or there might be timers still running, like the last twitching nerves in the human race’s old, shed skin. But somehow those little pricks of light changed everything.

  She glanced at Callan and found him looking at her, his expression contemplative. Her breath caught in her chest. In an empty world, everything felt bigger. A glance. A touch. A silent sea beneath stars that were still just stars, despite it all.

  He reached for her hand, sliding his palm under hers where it rested on the side of the boat, wrapping his fingers around it.

  Just another moment.

  His thumb began to draw tiny circles on the back of her hand. She didn’t remember ever feeling so acutely here, in her skin, on this patch of Earth—or sea. Gravity felt stronger than it should. She could feel the weight of her own body, of his hand, of the night air, making it hard to think beyond the next heartbeat.

  Somewhere in the endlessness of the universe, another version of Jamie pulled her hand away and said, It’s late, let’s go back. Somewhere, another Jamie turned to another Callan and kissed him, bearing him down to the deck so that she could feel him moving on her, as the sea moved beneath her. Somewhere out there, for some other Jamie, the moment passed and did not come again.

  But it seemed to her, in that moment, that those other selves could ta
ke care of themselves, along with all the possible futures they carried. And so she left her hand in his, and the two of them sat there beneath the stars, as the sea grew night-still, and those lights on the shoreline flickered through the dark.

  • • •

  When she woke in the morning, the night’s events still felt immediate—from her sundown swim to the moment back on the harborside, when she gently untangled her fingers from Callan’s and stood on tiptoe to brush a good-night kiss just to the side of his mouth—but she couldn’t recapture that feeling of the world narrowing to a single moment, and all other choices falling away. Whatever emotion and circumstance and time and place had come together to create that certainty, it was gone now. She felt a flutter of something like panic that it might not come again. She knew what Lowry would say. He’d say the world wasn’t powered on memories. It was powered on moments. It was powered on now. But still her unease persisted.

  She got up and dressed in some old clothes one of her sisters must have left behind. Rifling through the drawers gave her a nip of pain, and she avoided the more distinctive items, sticking to a pair of cropped jeans and a plain white top. Her stepmother was still asleep when Jamie looked in. She was curled in on herself, the quilt clutched between her thin fingers, her face creased with lines of pain.

  When she went to check on Finn she found his room empty. He wasn’t downstairs or out in the garden, and the first flickers of anxiety made themselves felt. She walked to the end of the garden and looked over the edge. The tide had been in while she slept, leaving the stones bare and slippery with tangled nets of seaweed.

  “Finn.” It was a wide, still morning, with no sea breeze to throw her voice back to her. “Finn. Where are you?”

  A cormorant regarded her disapprovingly, while overhead the gulls stepped up their heckling.

  When she went around to the front of the house, the road was clear in both directions. Maybe he’d gone back up to the cove. That was probably it.

  But there was an image stark in her mind: an arm coming up out of the deep water to scrabble at the harbor wall.

  Her breath was growing short, her thoughts crushing up against one another.