The Brightest Star in the Sky

by Marian Keyes

  A man appeared from nowhere, young, besuited. Fionn hadn’t noticed him until now.

  “Matt Geary,” he said.

  Once again Fionn thrust his hand forward, but once again it was ignored.

  “And—” Matt leaned much closer to Fionn and bellowed these next words—“this is MY WIFE.”

  “What’s your name?” Fionn breathed at the beauty. But she didn’t answer.

  Fionn turned to Matt, his radiant face eager for knowledge.

  Seconds ticked by, then Matt admitted with reluctance, “Maeve.”

  “Maeve,” Fionn said, with wonder. Maeve. What a beautiful name, possibly the most beautiful name he’d ever heard and entirely suitable because it belonged to the most beautiful woman alive. “Maeve, the warrior queen. I’m your new neighbor. I’m on the first floor, with Jemima Churchill. Do you know Jemima?” Frantically, he flapped his hand, urging Jemima to step forward. He looked over his shoulder and glared at her. “Come on,” he hissed. “Come and say hello to Maeve!”

  “I already know Matthew. And Maeve,” Jemima said politely.

  “I’ll be living here for a while.” Fionn addressed this solely to Maeve. “A couple of months or thereabouts.”

  The beeping of a car horn interrupted his reverie. “Fionn, would you come on!” It was Ogden, the driver. “Grainne’s going mental!”

  All of a sudden, Fionn was delighted to be making this television show. The horribly early starts and the stupid hair conditioner and the gay new T-shirts unexpectedly seemed worth it. It might impress Maeve. “I’m starring in my own gardening show,” he blurted eagerly. “Called Your Own Private Eden. Channel 8.” He half-noticed that Jemima had grasped his elbow and was determinedly leading him to the car. “Thursday nights,” he called over his shoulder to the vision, who remained rigid and mute. “Coming soon! Watch out for it!”

  Doors slammed shut, Ogden floored the accelerator and Fionn gazed in rapture out of the back window until they turned a corner and he could no longer see her.

  “Who was she?” he asked Jemima.

  “Leave her alone.” Jemima sounded uncharacteristically sharp.

  Fionn laughed happily. “You’ve nothing to be jealous of! I’ll always love you the best. What can you tell me?”

  Jemima’s lips tightened. She didn’t engage in scuttlebutt. Although she wished she did. During the course of her life she’d experienced many pleasures of the flesh: sixty-seven glasses of sweet sherry (one every Christmas from the age of twenty-one to the present day); she’d smoked two lungfuls of a cigarillo given to Giles by a client; at Fionn’s behest she’d tasted a toothsome confection called Death by Chocolate in a charming place called TGI Friday’s; and, obviously, she’d enjoyed sexual relations with her late husband. But nothing had hooked her the way that speculating on the lives of others had. She yearned to have what women’s magazines called “A Good Gossip.” To learn a secret gave her a pleasure rush that was almost alarming in its intensity and to pass it on was even more enjoyable. But she couldn’t indulge in tittle-tattle. Good-living people didn’t. However, there were times, she thought wistfully, when she wished she hadn’t been brought up as she had been, when she wished she wasn’t so good.

  Matt stared after the car ferrying Fionn away. He was almost sick with rage. “Who the fuck does that wanker think he is?”

  Maeve stared anxiously at him. “I’d better get going.”

  “Did you see him?” His voice was several octaves higher than usual. “Did you see the way he was blatantly—” He stopped. Of course she’d seen.

  “I’ll be home at the usual time,” she said.

  “Okay.” He kissed her but he was so angry he could hardly bear to touch her.

  He watched her cycle away, then found his car and drove past crowded bus stops, ignoring all the people he could have offered lifts to. What would be the point? They’d just accuse him of being an ax murderer.

  In the hallway of Edios, he bumped into Niamh, one of the brightest members of his team. She looked upset. And different in some way, a bad way.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious? My hair. I got it cut after work yesterday. It’s a disaster.”

  That was what was different about her.

  “I look like a transsexual,” she said.

  That was exactly what she looked like, Matt realized. Something about the short blunt cut turned her into a very mannish woman, a person who was halfway through the hormones and surgery transition. Here was Matt’s opportunity to get his act of kindness out of the way before 9 a.m. It would absolve him from the commuters he’d abandoned at the bus stops.

  “Nail on the head, as usual, Niamh.” She had a gift for cutting through the dross of any situation. “Go back to the salon. Get something else done. I don’t know what to suggest, hair isn’t my thing. But you can’t go round looking like this—”

  . . . The look in her eyes. She was staring at him, like a puppy he’d just kicked. She was shocked to her core. I thought you were lovely, her eyes said, confused and piteous. I thought you were one of the nicest men I’ d ever met. How could you be so cruel?

  He nodded curtly, itching to get away. Something had gone badly, heinously wrong.

  Before he’d moved ten paces, he saw his mistake. His act of kindness should have been to lie, not to be honest. All she’d wanted was some reassurance.

  “Niamh,” he called.

  She turned round.

  “Niamh, I’m sorry,” he said humbly. “I’ve had a chance to think. Your haircut. It’s nice. It just needs a bit of getting used to.”

  She nodded, her chin trembling. “Thanks.” Her lips were wobbling.

  “I’m really sorry if I upset you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t. She’d lost faith in him. She’d never trust him again.

  Deeply depressed, he made his way to his office. Fucking Acts of Kindness and Trios of Blessings and the whole fucking thing. Nothing worked. Nothing helped.

  Today could be the day he closed the sale to the Bank of British Columbia. They’d asked for yet another meeting and there was nothing else left to discuss. Nothing! Not even Wimbledon tickets. They weren’t getting any, because he couldn’t pour any more money into this without a result. Once, in the past—only once, mind—he’d got to this point with a client and they’d bailed. It had been a blow that had almost unmanned him. He’d put so much work into the wooing and spent so much of Edios’s entertaining budget that when he got the phone call delivering the bad news, a roaring noise had filled his ears, and his vision went tunnelly, then completely black. The colleagues at nearby desks had told him that he had fainted, but he hadn’t fainted. Of course he hadn’t fainted! He’d dropped the phone, his legs stopped supporting him for a moment or two and he’d gone temporarily blind, but he hadn’t fainted!

  It was possible that the Bank of British Columbia had called this morning’s meeting to tell him they weren’t buying the system. It was possible that they would extend the courtesy of letting him know in person, instead of a snippy two-line email. But perhaps they were going to make the purchase. And if they did, if he pulled this off . . .

  There would be commission. There would be kudos. And there would be something else—he didn’t exactly know how to put it, but it would sort of remind him of who he really was.

  First, though, he’d have to be enthusiastic. He’d have to be upbeat. Driving through the city, Salvatore, Cleo and Niamh crammed into the back of the car and Jackson in the front, he told himself: You’re a salesman. Be a salesman.

  But at the bank, as he led his team to the meeting room, where the fate of this deal would be decided, his confidence once again faltered and he paused.

  “Group hug?” Salvatore asked archly.

  “. . . No. Good luck, everyone. Here we go.” Pasting on the biggest smile he could manage—he couldn’t remember ever having to force himself to smile before, the smiles had always happened automa
tically—he burst into the room where the men were waiting and launched into growly, good-humored noises. “Yah-haaahh! How’s it going?”

  “Excellent, Matt, and you?”

  “Great. Eee-yahhh!” He was grabbing shoulders and giving them friendly shakes and doing gentle shoving and pushing. That was the way Matt did business. Mates, yes, everyone was mates. Best friends, plenty of body contact, none of this boundaries mullarky. Discussing hangovers. Discussing cars. Discussing sport. Ireland had done badly in the rugby. “Ouff! Not our finest hour.”

  “Ouff, indeed!”

  “But we’ll be back to fight another day! Yah-haaaghh!”

  “Yah-hahh!”

  Day 53 . . .

  “Eden is everywhere.” Fionn smiled warmly into the lens. “Even in a small city-center flat like this.” He waved his arm to indicate the space and the camera panned around to show a cramped mini-kitchen.

  “Good, Fionn,” Grainne said. “Just a bit more enthusiasm. Eden is EVERYWHERE. Like, how amazing is that?”

  “Eden is EVERYWHERE.” Fionn smiled warmly into the lens. “Even in a small city-center flat like this.” He waved his arm to indicate the space and the camera panned around to show a cramped mini-kitchen.

  “Good, Fionn. Just a bit more amazement. EVEN in a small—actually, let’s say tiny, tiny is better.” Grainne adjusted her script. “Even in a TINY city-center flat like this.”

  “Eden is EVERYWHERE.” Fionn smiled warmly into the lens. “EVEN in a TINY city-center flat like this.” He waved his arm to indicate the space and the camera panned around to show a cramped mini-kitchen.

  “Getting there. Go again.”

  Oh dear, Grudge thought, smiling spitefully to himself. Fionn wasn’t very good at this, was he? How many times had he done this little pantomime already? Frankly, so many that Grudge had lost count.

  “Fionn, I just want to let you know that there’s nothing unusual in doing this many takes,” Grainne said. “It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.”

  Oh dear, dear, Grudge thought, studying his nails and hiding another smirk. They were patronizing him now, they were actually pitying him. It could only be a short while before Excellent Little Productions realized what a terrible mistake they’d made and Fionn Purdue would find himself back on the Monaghan Meteorite and on his way home to Pokey and shameful ignominy, never to return.

  Not that the idiot seemed to have any idea what a disaster he was. He was saying his lines and waving his arms on demand, but he was thinking about that Maeve girl. Loved up, Grudge thought with distaste. Between takes, Fionn lapsed into a moronic state, a languid half-smile on his face, repeating the word Maeve over and over again in his head. Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve, Maeve. Grudge could hear it quite clearly even if no one else could.

  “Okay, Fionn, go again,” Grainne said.

  “Eden is EVERYWHERE.” Fionn smiled warmly into the lens. “EVEN in a TINY city-center flat like this.” He waved his arm to indicate the space and the camera panned around to show a cramped mini-kitchen.

  Grainne shook her head. “Sorry, Fionn. It wasn’t you that time.”

  For once, Grudge thought, with savage pleasure.

  “Picking up something on the sound.” A muttered conversation ensued between Grainne and the soundman, who had supersensitive headphones. “Bus down in the street, going over a manhole.”

  “Can we ask them to stop?”

  “We can try.”

  The runner, a young pierced creature called Darleen, was ordered downstairs with instructions to divert all buses until further notice.

  “That’s impossible,” she said.

  “In your interview you told me you wanted to work in television,” Grainne said. “You said you were prepared to do whatever it took.” She shrugged. “This is what it takes.”

  A tough nut, that Grainne, Grudge thought, with reluctant admiration.

  Darleen must have accomplished something down in the street because after two more takes Grainne was satisfied with Fionn’s delivery, the sound, the light and all the rest of it.

  In the next scene, the camera followed Fionn as he moved toward the kitchen wall, wrenched open a window and smiled at the camera. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Access to Eden.” Tenderly, he laid his dirty hand on the outside ledge. “Otherwise known as a windowsill.” He smiled again, as if sharing a secret with the viewers, and Grudge swallowed anxiously. Fionn had looked a bit like a star there. Just for a moment. Quickly, he looked at Jemima. Had she noticed?

  But Jemima had spent the entire morning gazing at Fionn like he was Daniel Day Lewis giving an Oscar-worthy performance. She had no discretion when it came to Fionn, Grudge acknowledged. She thought every single little thing he did was astonishingly wonderful. In fairness, she extended the same generosity to himself, Grudge. But he was different.

  At the end of the day, Grainne Butcher was quite pleased. For someone who’d never done this sort of thing before, Fionn Purdue really wasn’t bad. And he looked great—the face, the body, the hair, the hands. The dirty, loving hands. They’d got lots of lingering close-ups as he tamped down earth into window boxes and tenderly repotted sprigs and gently rubbed leaves between thumb and finger.

  Grainne, who was never keen to give credit unless she really had to, was forced to acknowledge that Fionn was as patient as he was handsome. She didn’t think she’d ever worked with someone so good-humored about the constant retakes. Obviously, Fionn Purdue wasn’t overburdened with ego.

  She wondered how long that would last. The first time they saw their photo in the paper was when the diva behavior tended to kick off. And Fionn was going to get plenty of attention; she’d already had four interview requests for him and it was only a day since the press release had been sent out.

  Of course, there was a small chance that Fionn might stay humble. Mind you, he’d further to come, ego-wise, having been sequestered in the bleak back-arse-of-beyond of Pokey, with no ambitions whatsoever, beyond keeping the desperate housewives weed-free.

  “We’ll call it a day,” Grainne said. “Good work, Fionn. See you in the morning. Will, ah . . . will Jemima and Grudge be coming tomorrow?” It was a strange thing to say but she felt that the dog had an attitude problem.

  “I don’t know yet,” Fionn said. “What if I invited someone else instead? Would that be okay?”

  “Sure, grand, who is it?”

  But Fionn didn’t seem to hear her. He had gone way inside himself. Artists! Fey! It was the characteristic that exasperated her the most. She could take people being bent out of shape by all kinds of demons from rage to stinginess to pathological jealousy, but, as a master pragmatist herself, feyness (if that was the word) drove her wild. Fionn’s eyes refocused as he re-emerged from wherever he’d been. “Grainne,” he said, “what’s the name of that emotion where you can’t stop thinking about a particular person?”

  “. . . Erm . . . Obsession?”

  Fionn clicked his fingers in gratitude. “Obsession! Bang on!”

  Day 53 . . .

  Matt left work ten minutes early. The morning meeting with the Bank of British Columbia hadn’t brought about any conclusion. They’d been friendly and had asked more questions and said they’d be in touch, and his head was downright melted from it. Back in the office, he had a manic moment when he considered picking up the phone and ringing them, telling them that he was refusing to sell them the system, just to put an end to the agony of waiting.

  He spent his lunch hour alone in the office, reading Top Gear. When he’d finished that—and it seemed to end far too soon—he found himself grabbing Cleo’s paper and, in a kind of frenzy, doing the three sudokus, one after the other. But the very second he’d filled in the last number and laid down his pen, guilt overwhelmed him. Doing another person’s sudokus was very wrong. It was stealing. The same as eating a slice of cake that someone had been saving in the fridg
e.

  He’d just have to come clean and offer to buy her another paper. He refolded the pages, to hide his crime from himself and, as he did, he noticed a short paragraph about the random lumps of ice falling from the sky. Just a roundup of what he already knew, but it was still enjoyable to spend time on. He narrowed his eyes as he realized that the locations where the ice had landed were all capital cities. Had any of the experts clocked that? What did it mean? Was it the start of an apocalyptic meltdown in which capital cities around the globe were targeted? He could already hear CNN. “Gigantic hailstones are battering Buenos Aires . . . breaking news from Washington, D.C. . . . panic in the streets of Tokyo . . .” Like a good movie.

  What were the chances of one of these ice boulders landing in Dublin? And if so, where would it land? Whose car would it squash or whose roof would it damage or—daring thought—whose life would it end? For a moment, the image was so delicious that he closed his eyes, to savor it even more.

  But resentment curdled this glowing vision. It would never happen. There was no justice. None. None at all.

  He couldn’t pull himself out of the slump. Nothing, not even Cleo cheerfully absolving him from the sudoku theft, could hoist him out of the pit and back to his normal self. He was unable to do any work. He should be tracking down new business, pestering more companies to buy Edios’s software, but right now he had no heart for it.

  He was having a bad day, everyone had them sometimes. Maybe tomorrow would be different, but he might as well give up on today.

  “Gotta go. Dentist appointment,” he said casually.

  Noises and sympathy and surprise followed him as he left. Brave Matt, knowing all day that he had a dentist appointment hanging over him and not even mentioning it. What a great guy he was. Even Niamh (who’d gone out at lunchtime and had another, healing haircut) wondered if she should reassess her opinion of him.

  Matt got in his car and shot out of the parking lot—but he didn’t drive toward home. I followed his route, trying to make sense of it. For a moment I wondered if the dentist story had been true and not just a pretext to spring him from the office early. Then I noticed that he was headed for the docklands. Did this mean what I thought it meant?