A Sky Full of Stars

by Dani Atkins

  Like most people in their early thirties, I’d never given much thought to my own mortality until, eighteen months ago, a virus changed the path of my future. A virus; it sounded so trivial and innocuous. People got them all the time, shook them off and thought nothing of it. But this one had its own agenda and now my carefully mapped-out five-year plan was being rewritten by my own body.

  My family had always called me obstinate and they were probably right because I spent months quietly disregarding the doctors’ advice that it might now be time to give up work. It took a fallen child in the playground, with bloodied knees and a sprained wrist, a child who I couldn’t physically pick up, to make me finally realise the truth. The people who were suffering from my refusal to accept my limitations were the ones I cared about the most: the children.

  ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ With perfect timing my words coincided with the ringing of the school bell.

  Home time for a class of six-year-olds was usually a cross between a Colditz escape and the first day of the January sales. But surprisingly today no one was racing madly for the door. Instead, they formed an orderly line – something I’d never been able to make them do before. Every single child in my class patiently waited for their turn to hug me goodbye. No job reference on my CV would ever mean more to me than that. If this was to be my last moment as a primary school teacher, it was a pretty amazing one to go out on.

  *

  It had started with the boots. They were new. Gorgeous, butter-soft, caramel-coloured leather that hugged my calves like a glove. Every time I zipped them up, I conveniently managed to forget their horrendous price tag. They cheered me up. Low of heel but still stylish, they had been my go-to choice of footwear for work.

  But one morning the zip on the right leg had felt tight and sticky. I remember frowning as I tried to jiggle it up. Boots this expensive were meant to last a whole lot longer than just a couple of weeks. I eventually managed to persuade the zip to slide up, only to have the same thing happen with the other leg. I forgot all about it – at least for ten hours.

  I’d come home from work that evening and slumped against the front door as I shut it behind me, wracked by another cough. I caught a glimpse of my face in the hallway mirror. I looked dreadful and sounded even worse. Like someone who’d never read the warning sign on their packet of cigarettes – yet I’d never smoked in my life.

  It wasn’t surprising that I’d come down with a bug. Practically everyone I knew had something or other. Usually my immune system was pretty effective at shaking off the infections small children liked to spread with unthinking generosity, but this cough was proving impossible to shift. My ribs were starting to ache from the nightly hacking that was making it difficult to sleep. Lying flat made it worse, but even using the now redundant pillows on Tom’s side of the bed didn’t help.

  All I’d wanted to do was pull on my joggers and crash out on the sofa. Climbing the stairs felt like I was scaling a mountain, and although there were only thirteen treads, I still had to stop halfway up as I gave my lungs another good workout.

  I stepped out of my dress, leaving it in a pool on the bedroom carpet because I’d run out of energy to carry it to the laundry basket. Tom would not have approved, but for the last six months I hadn’t had to concern myself about that.

  I flopped down on the edge of the bed and bent to unzip the boots. They wouldn’t budge. The zips that had been reluctant to slide up that morning were even more resolute in their determination not to go back down. Five minutes of stubborn tugging and neither was more than halfway down my calves. The effort was not improving my cough, and by the time I straightened up, a thin film of perspiration was coating my forehead.

  I yanked at the zips with so much force, I was surprised they didn’t break. But the alternative would have been to cut the boots off. I wriggled my feet once they were free, stuck out both legs and examined them. All that pulling had made my ankles look puffy and kind of chubby. ‘Sorry,’ I apologised to my squishy-looking flesh, ‘I’ll wear flats tomorrow.’

  That was how it started – with the boots.

  By the following morning my ankles looked only marginally better and the cough was starting to make my chest feel tight every time I breathed in. The internet (which I’d consulted in the middle of the night, when sleep had been impossible) advised me that any cough that persisted beyond three weeks required a visit to the doctor. I looked at my reflection in the steamy bathroom mirror, aware I was leaning a little heavily on the basin for support. ‘One more week,’ I promised my washed-out reflection, ‘then we’ll nuke this cough with antibiotics.’ I had no idea when I spoke those words that the clock was already ticking.

  Before slipping my dressing gown back on I stepped onto the bathroom scales and then did a slightly horrified double-take at the numbers on the digital read-out. Seven pounds? I’d put on half a stone in less than a week? How was that even possible? I could practically feel a dark cloud of annoyance gathering above me as I headed back to the bedroom to get dressed. Admittedly since Tom had left I’d cooked from scratch far less than I’d once done, so, yes, the odd takeaway or two had now become a fairly regular fixture, but surely I hadn’t eaten so badly to warrant that much of a gain?

  On autopilot I reached for a couple of slices of bread to pop into the toaster before changing my mind and plucking some fruit and a yoghurt from the fridge instead. Not that I’d had much of an appetite over the last couple of weeks, which made my weight increase even more galling.

  A time-check on the radio reminded me I needed to get going. I gathered up my things, staring through the fine morning drizzle down the road. I hadn’t been able to snag a space near my house, so my car was parked several hundred yards away. The tote bag slung over my shoulder felt as though it was loaded with gold bullion. I had to stop twice; once to reposition the bag, the second time – worryingly – because I couldn’t catch my breath. By the time I reached my car I was forced to admit that something was very wrong. Every inhalation felt as though I was slowly drowning.

  With fingers that trembled as they dialled the numbers, I made two phone calls: one to the headteacher of Green Hills Primary School, the other to my GP surgery. Luck was with me on the second call. A patient had just telephoned to cancel their appointment; if I could get there in ten minutes, a doctor would be able to see me straight away. Perhaps I’ll still be able to go into work after my appointment, I thought as I wove through the early morning traffic.

  The doctor was new, Polish and very thorough. Her accent made it hard to decipher everything she said, but there was no mistaking her expression as I shuffled into her office like someone fifty years older than the screen in front of her indicated. After she’d completed her examination, she spoke slowly and carefully, which helped with the accent, but nothing about what she said was even remotely comprehensible.

  ‘I would like you to go to the hospital.’

  ‘Do you mean you’re referring me?’ I asked, wondering why she was shaking her head.

  ‘No. I mean today. Straight away. Is there anyone with you in the waiting room or someone who can take you?’

  My chest felt so tight I was surprised there was any room inside it to register fear, but somehow it still slithered in, like a determined snake.

  ‘No. I… I drove myself here. Can’t I just drive to the hospital?’

  She shook her head, already reaching for the telephone on her desk. ‘I’m afraid I don’t think that’s advisable, Miss Kendall – er… Molly. I think it’s best if I call an ambulance for you.’

  Probably pneumonia. It’s probably pneumonia. The GP’s words ran like a silent mantra in my head throughout the journey to the hospital. Pneumonia was bad, I acknowledged that, but I was young and healthy. With antibiotics and rest I should be able to get over it fairly quickly.

  They rushed me through triage, and I was still naive enough to think that was a good thing. It was only when the A & E doctor told me I was being admitted t
o the Acute Cardiac Unit that I began to realise I was in serious trouble. My thoughts were reeling; it felt like a horrible nightmare that surely I would wake up from at any moment. But it just kept getting worse. The truth of it didn’t fully sink in until I made that first terrified phone call to my mother.

  ‘Hey, Mum, it’s me.’

  ‘Molly?’ she queried, sounding incredulous. It wasn’t like she needed clarification – there was no one else in the world who called her ‘Mum’; it was just that I should have been teaching a classroom full of lively six-year-olds at that precise moment.

  A single tear ran down my cheek as I wondered when or even if I’d be able to do that again.

  ‘Mum, don’t panic, but I’m in the hospital.’

  I imagined the colour washing from her face and her hand gripping the receiver so tightly it was probably turning her fingers white.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘They say…’ I swallowed convulsively several times as the tang of salty tears trickled into my mouth. ‘They say I have heart failure.’

  *

  For the final time I tidied up the classroom. From tomorrow this room would belong to the supply teacher who was taking over for the rest of the term, and it was hard not to feel a tinge of jealousy that someone else would complete the journey I’d begun with these children seven months earlier.

  When everything was put away, I straightened slowly and breathed in the familiar smells of the classroom one last time, trying to bottle and capture them in my memory. One aroma I wasn’t going to miss was the one that lingered permanently in the back corner of the room.

  ‘I guess this is goodbye, for now,’ I solemnly told Gerald the gerbil. The class mascot looked up briefly from the never-ending marathon he was running on his wheel. In gerbil years, Gerald was definitely a senior citizen, and I’d spent far too much time worrying about how it would affect the class if he didn’t make it to the end of the year. The irony wasn’t lost on me that the lifespan I ought to have been worrying about wasn’t Gerald’s but mine.

  ‘Maybe you’ll still be here when I come back,’ I said, sliding a farewell carrot stick through the bars. ‘If I come back,’ I added softly.

  ‘Of course you’re coming back.’

  I smiled and turned to face the owner of the voice with the unmistakable Aussie twang.

  ‘This place wouldn’t be the same without you.’

  Kyra Davies, Class Six teacher, more friend than colleague, covered the distance of the classroom in considerably fewer strides than it would have taken me. With her long tousled hair and toned, sun-bronzed limbs, she looked like she ought to have been jogging along a beach somewhere with a surfboard tucked under her arm. Physically we were polar opposites: I was auburn to her blonde, shorter and curvier and with an English complexion that stubbornly refused to tan. But the major difference was that Kyra glowed with health.

  Without a word, she crossed to my desk, where two cardboard boxes packed to the brim with farewell gifts from staff and students were waiting. ‘Are these for your car?’ she asked, picking them up with the sort of ease I’d once taken for granted.

  I nodded gratefully as she balanced a box on each hip.

  I paused at the classroom doorway before switching off the overhead lights. Leaving, when I didn’t want to go, was turning out to be a great deal more painful than I’d expected.

  ‘You’ve made a difference,’ Kyra said softly. ‘These kids aren’t ever going to forget you.’

  I was about to refute her words, to say that wasn’t why I was sad, but the denial got stuck somewhere between my throat and my conscience. Because being forgotten, leaving no trace that I had ever been here, was the fear that gripped me tightly in the middle-of-the-night hours. It scared me far more than my heart condition ever could. I thought those fears were buried in a place my family and friends would never find. But it seemed those close to me could see them anyway.

  3

  Alex

  Alex and Lisa shared an office on the second floor of their modern, executive-style home. It was the fourth bedroom, earmarked for Baby Number Two, whenever that family member should decide to put in an appearance. The gap between Connor and a new arrival had, admittedly, grown larger than either of them had wanted.

  ‘Do you think perhaps it’s time we considered seeing someone?’ Lisa had asked, treading carefully as she tiptoed around Alex’s aversion to medical intervention. It was more than just a passing dislike of doctors, it was a real irrational white-coat phobia that by the age of thirty-five he should have long since outgrown or dealt with. But dealing with it would have meant admitting to some doctor that he had a problem, and being in that kind of environment was the very thing he was uncomfortable with. The source of his problem was a mystery, and one he couldn’t trace back to any incident in his childhood. ‘You’ve always been weird about hospitals,’ his older brother Todd said. ‘Even when you were a little kid.’ Perhaps, Alex acknowledged, it was finally time for him to address the issue.

  He checked his phone as he sat at his desk, waiting for the document he’d summoned to appear on his laptop screen. There was no message from Lisa, and it was too late now to try her again. She was sure to be busy at the exhibition, catching up with former colleagues and getting set up for her speech.

  He sent her a quick WhatsApp message instead, and then determinedly put his phone to one side and got lost in his own work. The PR company he’d set up eight years earlier was finally beginning to earn the kind of industry recognition he’d been dreaming of, and the pitch he was currently working on could be the contract that took them to an entirely different level.

  Two hours later the muscles at the back of his neck were bunched and complaining from his lack of movement. He pushed himself away from the desk, deciding a coffee break was most definitely in order. Lisa’s desk, in the opposite corner of the room, was far more cluttered than his, strewn with models of planets, framed photos of him and Connor, and a pile of papers that constantly teetered on the edge of becoming unmanageable. One good gust of wind and she’d have to spend weeks separating the next chapter of her book from printouts of downloaded recipes and a score of ancient to-do lists. He smiled because his wife was there in every haphazard item, from the half-eaten packet of jelly babies to the latest papier-mâché model she’d made with Connor.

  Alex ran down the wooden staircase, remembering to take his phone with him in case the school called, although he was hopeful that whatever had been troubling his son that morning had already passed. As he waited for the coffee to brew, he called the Italian restaurant and booked a table for that evening. It would be late for Connor on a school night, but this was an important day for the Stevens household, and it deserved to be marked as such.

  He watched the drip of the coffee, which for a moment looked uncomfortably like an IV as it plopped into the waiting jug. The house seemed uncommonly quiet without its two liveliest occupants and, more for a distraction than anything else, Alex reached for the TV remote. At this hour it would probably be yet another property programme or a commercial asking if he’d made adequate provision for his loved ones in his will. He grinned when he saw he’d guessed correctly; that was exactly what was being advertised during the break. He muted the sound, turned back to the worktop as the coffee machine buzzed, and filled his mug the way he always did, right up to the brim, making a spillage almost inevitable.

  He had his coffee in one hand and the TV remote in the other and was about to switch off the set when he caught sight of a red ‘Breaking News’ banner in the top right-hand corner of the screen. The kitchen was warm, the efficient underfloor heating saw to that, but Alex suddenly felt as though he’d fallen through the icy crust of a frozen lake. The picture on the screen was grainy, the footage taken from a helicopter perhaps, or maybe a drone. But it was still easy to make out the scene of devastation. The train tracks were surrounded by emergency vehicles of every description. Only two carriages remained upright; the
rest had been dislodged from the track and were lying on their sides in a confusion of twisted wreckage. It looked like a toy trainset that had been cast aside by the sweep of a gigantic hand.

  Alex’s fingers were slow and clumsy; he hit the wrong button three times before he finally found the one to un-mute the television. The crash could be anywhere in the country, he told himself as his eyes frantically flicked across the screen, trying to work out where the disaster had occurred. The sound from the TV blared into the kitchen as Alex read a tickertape update scrolling beneath the live images. He thought he might be physically sick. Authorities now confirm at least four fatalities. There was nothing on the screen for him to identify the location; all he could see were fields littered with train debris.

  His eyes were starting to sting, but he wouldn’t allow them to blink in case he missed a vital clue, something – anything – that would let him know this terrible tragedy had touched the lives of other families but not his. It was a selfish thought, he knew that, but he was helpless to stop it as his ears strained to hear the words of the announcer above the roaring rush of blood that was filling them.

  ‘Once again we are seeing the scene of this morning’s tragic train crash. As yet, details are sketchy, but we do know there are multiple injuries and that many passengers are still trapped in the wreckage. The 7.48 from Norwich was travelling towards—’

  The mug slipped from Alex’s fingers, shattering on the checkerboard tiles he’d cleaned of Connor’s spilt juice only hours earlier. His feet crunched over the broken shards, some piercing the rubber soles of his trainers, which he never even felt. He could hear a low keening moan, which at first he thought was coming from the news footage. It was harrowing to realise that actually he was the source of the sound.

  With his eyes still fixed on the screen, Alex snatched up his phone. His fingers jabbed at his list of contacts until Lisa’s mobile began to ring. Her voice gave him a brief moment of respite from the nightmare before he realised, for the second time that day, that it was just a recording.