A Sky Full of Stars

by Dani Atkins

  ‘I believe the record is actually thirty-four,’ Mac interrupted. He’d done his research. ‘I understand there are risks, Molly. But there are risks everywhere.’ His smile was sad. ‘Even something as innocent as getting on a train can be dangerous.’ His hands gently cupped my face. ‘The one thing all of this has taught me is that none of us can predict the future. But there is one thing I know for certain; I would rather have twenty-five years with you, than fifty or more with anyone else. If you’ll have me, that is.’

  There had never been a question so easy to answer. My heart was pounding, as though in approval, as I pulled him closer and kissed him.

  That same heart gave its customary little jolt as I saw him waiting patiently for me in the hallway, my jacket already in his hand.

  ‘You’re definitely going to need this,’ he said, holding it out for me.

  I opened the front door and saw instantly what he meant. It had been raining hard all morning, the kind of rain where you turned on every light in the house and it still felt gloomy. This was the storm the weather forecasters had been predicting all week, and it looked as though it might be even more ferocious than they’d expected.

  We ran to Mac’s car at the kerb as though dodging artillery in the trenches. The black fabric of his shirt was plastered to his back and shoulders by the time he jumped into the driver’s seat. I tried not to let the Colin Firth effect distract me as I turned my attention to the rain lashing the windscreen.

  ‘Do you think it’s okay to drive in this?’ I asked, very glad we’d decided to take his car rather than mine. As we watched, a neighbour’s dustbin left their front garden and scooted down onto the pavement as though swept along by a giant invisible hand.

  ‘Yes,’ Mac said reassuringly. ‘But I’m going to take it slow. If we’re late, we’re late. Alex will understand.’

  I was silent for most of the drive, allowing Mac to concentrate on the treacherous road conditions. Not surprisingly, my thoughts turned to the mysterious event we were going to.

  ‘I want to mark the fact it’s been a year now since… since everything happened,’ Alex had said when he’d called to invite me to this gathering of Lisa’s organ recipients. Although we were in regular contact with each other, this would be the first time we’d all been together since the night of the bonfire party. ‘I’ve something I want – no, need – to say to all of you.’ I tried pressing him for a clue, but he was deliberately cagey. ‘I’ll tell you all next week,’ was all I could get out of him.

  ‘Do you think you might be seeing Mac sometime before then to pass on the invitation?’ he added, his voice suddenly uncertain.

  As Mac was at that moment submerged in the jasmine-scented water of my bathtub, it was an easy assurance to give.

  ‘Why do you think Alex wants to see all of us together?’ I’d immediately asked Mac as I slipped back into the fragrant water to join him.

  ‘I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out next week,’ Mac replied evenly, confirming my suspicion that a lack of curiosity might actually be a male chromosome deficiency.

  40

  Alex

  ‘So, the quiche goes in first, then the sausage rolls, and then ten minutes later you can put in the tray of onion bhajis.’

  ‘Got it,’ Alex said, with the unearned confidence of a man who’d never burnt a single thing in his life.

  ‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’ he added.

  ‘No. Lots of people still serve quiche when they have guests coming round. It’s retro.’

  There were many things Alex felt he didn’t understand in the world, but why his brother had fallen in love with Dee wasn’t one of them.

  ‘You think the party is a bad idea,’ he pressed. ‘You think I’m just going to make everyone feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘It could happen,’ Dee said, suddenly sounding serious. ‘The potential is there for maximum awkwardness. I guess it’s a risk you have to be willing to run.’

  ‘I just feel it’s time now. It’s like everything has been on pause – even grieving properly,’ he admitted sadly. ‘All this time I’ve been waiting for something to happen – some big sign, or revelation, something that will finally make sense of the shitshow of the last twelve months.’

  ‘There was never going to be an easy way to get through this first year,’ Dee said.

  Or the rest of my life, Alex silently added. But something had shifted inside him as he’d sat on the damp grass beside Lisa’s grave on the anniversary of her death. The way he’d been behaving wasn’t helping either Connor or him to move forward. He saw the truth of that now, with a clarity he’d not had before.

  The love of his life had died in a tragic and senseless accident. The people her death had saved weren’t ‘chosen’ to come into his and Connor’s life for some higher mystical purpose. They weren’t ‘selected’ – except randomly, by virtue of having reached the right point on the NHS lists. They were right-place, right-time individuals, every bit as much as Lisa was wrong place, wrong time.

  He needed to apologise to all of them.

  ‘You do understand why I didn’t ask you and Todd to come today?’ he said worriedly.

  ‘Absolutely. Neither of us can stand quiche.’

  He hung up laughing, which was exactly what his sister-in-law had intended.

  41

  Molly

  Barbara and Jamie had diametrically opposite styles of greeting. Barbara rose from Alex’s couch with her lips and arms stretched wide. She enveloped first me and then Mac in the kind of hug that made breathing a challenge.

  Jamie was decidedly more laid back and cool, setting aside his phone to lift one arm in greeting, as though hailing me from a distance far greater than just the width of the lounge.

  ‘Yo, Mols,’ he called out.

  I smiled, unsure of the appropriate response but certain I was at least a decade too old to pull off a ‘yo’ in reply.

  ‘You’re looking way better than you did in the hospital – far less like a zombie now.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the backhanded compliment at face value.

  ‘I think you look beautiful,’ Barbara said, slipping her arm through mine and squeezing it gently. ‘Practically glowing, I’d say.’ Her eyes twinkled as they darted mischievously between Mac and me.

  I inwardly groaned. We’d only been here a matter of minutes, and our intention to keep the focus swivelled firmly away from our relationship was already in danger of failing. Luckily Alex was too busy hanging up our coats and getting us a drink to have overheard.

  He looked anxious and on edge as he passed me the soft drink I’d requested and Mac a bottle of beer. His own glass contained an amber-coloured liquid that he downed in one nervous gulp. He crossed the room to stand in front of the fireplace, his hand still fingering his now empty glass. It felt like a scene from an Agatha Christie film, where the detective (Alex) was about to confront the room full of suspects (us). I swirled the cola in my glass, suddenly regretting I hadn’t gone for something stronger.

  ‘I… er wasn’t going to do this straight off. I thought I’d leave what I had to say until later, after we’d eaten.’ He lifted his glass to his lips and seemed truly surprised to find it empty. ‘But as Connor is tucked away upstairs playing with Lunar’ – Barbara gave a Cheshire-cat smile – ‘it seems like a good time to get this off my chest.’

  His words triggered a worried glance that travelled the room like a virus.

  Alex cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think I’ve been this nervous since the speech I gave at our wedding.’ His eyes went to a beautiful silver-framed photo of him and Lisa on that day. The image seemed to calm him.

  ‘I wrote out what I wanted to say today – it ran to six pages.’

  All four of us tried to hide our dismay, with varying degrees of success.

  Alex laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I tore it up before you all got here. Because what I have to say can be condensed into just a few sentences.’

  I
was rather proud that no one actually sighed out loud in relief.

  ‘I want to start by apologising. I’ve not been a good enough friend to any of you. In fact, I’ve been downright disingenuous.’

  A chorus of denials filled the room.

  Alex shook his head sadly. ‘It’s true. I brought you into our lives – Connor’s and mine – but my motives have been… questionable, at best.’

  He shuffled uncomfortably, taking a sudden interest in his tan-coloured loafers. ‘I haven’t been as honest with you as I should have been. I was looking for Lisa; searching for her in every single one of you.’

  His words were directed to all four of us, but his eyes were on me. For a long moment it seemed as though we’d all stopped breathing. The house was that silent.

  ‘I’ve watched too closely, without ever seeing you properly. I’ve listened too acutely, without hearing what you were saying.’

  ‘No, no, Alex, dear,’ protested Barbara, looking genuinely upset. ‘You’ve given us all so much – and that has nothing to do with giving your consent to the transplants. I think each of our lives is better now than the one we had before. I know mine is. This kidney…’ – she gestured vaguely to her body – ‘I could have got it from anyone. But this family, that I now feel I’m a part of…’ She reached into the pocket of her cardigan and withdrew an embroidered handkerchief to delicately dab at her eyes. ‘This family is something only you could have given to me.’

  ‘Yeah, man. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Okay, so you’ve acted a bit freaky at times’ – I swallowed a gulp and saw Mac do the same – ‘but we understood. We got it. And we’re all cool with it, right?’ Jamie, our new self-appointed spokesman, turned to the people Lisa had helped, and all three of us nodded.

  There was no mistaking the glint of tears in Alex’s eyes now. ‘Thank you. All of you. You’re being kinder than I deserve. Even though I now accept the way we were brought together was entirely random, without any agenda, reason or purpose, I really hope we’ll stay in each other’s lives for a very long time to come.’

  *

  ‘I sounded like a right dick, didn’t I?’

  I grinned even while I was shaking my head. The timely interruption of the pinging oven had sent Alex hurrying to the kitchen, and I’d followed a moment or two later to see if he needed any help.

  ‘You sounded like a man who was healing and starting to move on. There’s absolutely nothing stupid about that.’

  Alex pulled a tray of food from the oven, and without waiting to be asked I went straight to a cupboard and got out a serving platter. Despite everything he’d just finished saying, Alex’s eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘I remembered it was there from when I made the gingerbread men,’ I explained.

  He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘It’s going to take a while to stop looking for signs where they clearly don’t exist,’ he admitted ruefully.

  ‘Hi. Sorry to interrupt.’

  We both turned to see a disembodied head peering round the door.

  ‘Is it okay if I go upstairs and see Connor? I downloaded a game for him on my phone that he’s going to love.’

  ‘Sure,’ Alex said. ‘You know the way.’

  He must have seen my surprised expression as Jamie left the room and thundered up the stairs.

  ‘Did Jamie not tell you he’s been doing some work for me?’

  This time it was my eyes that widened. ‘You needed a roadie, or a lifeguard?’

  Alex laughed quietly, remembering some of the more colourful claims Jamie had made in the past. ‘No. Actually he’s been helping out with some IT stuff for the office move. He’s spent quite a bit of time here over the last couple of weeks. Connor absolutely hero worships him.’

  There was a lot to be read between the lines of what Alex had said.

  ‘It was nice of you to give him a job.’

  We shared a look of understanding.

  ‘I had to be careful how I phrased it. I didn’t want to offend him. I told him I realised he didn’t need the money, but I had to pay him a wage for insurance purposes.’

  For just a moment I thought how much easier it would have been if Lisa’s heart had fallen in love with this man all over again. But then I thought about Mac, who was waiting patiently for me in the other room and realised everything had worked out exactly the way it was supposed to.

  Jamie’s tread was even heavier on the stairs when he raced back down them a minute later. He burst into the kitchen with enough force that the door was still swinging on its hinges as he declared, ‘Connor’s not there.’

  Alex was halfway through transferring a large quiche onto a serving plate. He paused and looked up, his brow furrowing. ‘You looked in the right room?’

  The question earned him a truly withering look from Jamie.

  ‘He’s probably in the bathroom,’ Alex said, although I noticed the quiche was still frozen in mid-air on its way to the dish.

  ‘That’s what I thought. “He’ll just be taking a whizz,” I reckoned. But I checked the bathroom and it’s empty. And when I called his name, he didn’t answer.’

  The quiche fell onto the platter with a squelching plop as Alex stopped trying to pretend he wasn’t concerned. He strode into the hall and long before he’d reached the foot of the stairs he’d called Connor’s name three times, loud enough for him to have heard wherever he was in the house. Through the open door of the lounge Mac looked up, a question clearly visible on his face. Is anything wrong? I gave a small shake of my head, because that was what I wanted to believe, despite the twisting in my gut that was playing origami with my internal organs.

  Alex took the stairs like a hurdler, his feet only connecting with every third tread. ‘Connor!’ he cried, dashing straight into his room.

  Jamie and I, only a few steps behind him, shared a worried look.

  Like a whirlwind, Alex spun around, pushing past us as he left his son’s empty room and began flinging open every other bedroom door.

  ‘Connor, come out now! This isn’t funny.’

  Somehow I already knew this was more serious than an innocent game of hide-and-seek taken one step too far.

  Alex emerged from the last of the upstairs rooms, twin sparks of panic blazing in his eyes.

  ‘Slow down. Let’s look again properly,’ I urged, laying my hand on his forearm. It was like placing my palm on a generator; his whole body was pulsating with tension.

  ‘I’ll go and check downstairs,’ Jamie said, already heading in that direction. ‘Maybe he snuck past us and we never noticed.’

  Mac was already waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a look on his face that said he’d grasped the seriousness of the situation. ‘I’ll check the garden,’ he announced.

  I stepped back into Connor’s room, dropped to my knees beside his bed as though in prayer, and slid onto my stomach. Beneath the bed I found several pieces of Lego, a rogue sock and half a dozen crayons, but no sign of a boy who’d taken a prank a little too far.

  Alex was at that stage of panic where you start looking in totally improbable places. Having checked all the wardrobes, he was now pulling open drawers as though his son might have learnt circus-level contortionist skills without telling anyone. I followed in his wake, searching each room more methodically in case Alex had missed the kneehole in Lisa’s old desk or the space behind the bathroom door. Both were empty.

  Alex must have run up and down the stairs three or four times, unable to believe Jamie when he reported that there was no sign of Connor on the ground floor either.

  ‘I checked outside, front and back, and looked inside the shed and in your car, but I can’t see him anywhere,’ Mac said, his shirt once again plastered to his body.

  I glanced worriedly through the window. The rain was still hitting the ground with the ferocity of a pressure washer. Surely Connor wouldn’t have ventured outside to play in weather like this? He didn’t; he’s not that sort of boy, confirmed a voice in my head that oddly didn’t
sound like me at all.

  As I stood in the doorway of Connor’s empty bedroom, I was aware that my movements were being followed by a pair of baleful, emerald eyes. I turned slowly to look at Connor’s beloved pet, who was curled up in a ball in the middle of his bed.

  ‘Where’s he gone, Lunar? Can’t you help us find him?’

  In a Lassie film, that request would probably have resulted in us being led to the nearest mineshaft. But this wasn’t a film, and cats don’t operate in the same way. And yet would Connor really have gone somewhere and abandoned Lunar? Didn’t Alex say he practically never left the cat’s side?

  Down on the ground floor, I could still hear Alex calling for his son. There was also the deep rumble of a voice I’d come to love, which appeared to be asking the kind of level-headed questions that we should all have been posing.

  ‘Let’s look at this calmly,’ said Mac. ‘He’s clearly not in the house, so where is he likely to have gone on his own?’

  ‘Nowhere. We never let him go out without one of us being with him.’ In his anxiety, Alex was referring to Lisa in the present tense again.

  ‘How about Todd and Dee’s? Do you think he might have tried to get himself there?’

  ‘It’s too far. He wouldn’t know how.’

  With infinite patience, Mac kept asking all the right questions. ‘Okay. Well, let’s think about closer to home, then. Is there a neighbour he likes? Or a schoolfriend who lives nearby? How about a park or a playground you take him to?’

  ‘No. He just wouldn’t do that,’ Alex shot back, panic indistinguishable from anger in his voice.

  From behind me the cat gave a long, plaintive miaow as though tired of the commotion that was disrupting her sleep. I was about to leave the bedroom when I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye that stopped me. I could feel myself holding my breath as I retraced my steps to the bed, my heart beating far too fast and erratically, as though trying to tell me something. There was definitely something on the bed; I could see the tiniest glimpse of it protruding from beneath Lunar’s coiled body. Very gently I nudged the cat to one side, to retrieve whatever it was she’d chosen to curl up on.