The Brightest Star in the Sky

by Marian Keyes

  . . . It did.

  In the same side street where Maeve had parked her bike four days earlier, Matt parked his car. He put enough money in the meter for two hours, then stood directly opposite the main doors of No Brainer Technology—brazenly, not hidden like Maeve had been—and watched the people leaving, just like Maeve had.

  And here came the bloke, loose shirt tails and missing buttons and long, uncombed hair, a satchel with a fraying strap stretched across his long torso. When he saw Matt, fear pulsed from his ashen face but almost immediately his equilibrium was restored and he laughed—laughed—at Matt. The chuckling sound floated across the road, and rage roared from Matt’s center, pushing and swelling into every cell in his body. Lanky-boy ambled away with exaggerated insouciance and Matt wanted to punch a wall.

  He got back into his car and pummeled himself five times in the gut and felt a bit better: his anger had reduced and he had hurt himself. Which was appropriate, because this was all his fault.

  . . . There’s no point asking me, I’m all at sea.

  Day 53 . . .

  “ What am I to wear?” Conall asked, when he called from Helsinki. He checked in most nights before Katie went to sleep.

  “Your Tom Ford suit and that shirt I bought you.”

  “The pink one?”

  “It’s not pink, it’s lavender. Very pale lavender. Almost white.” Not really; it was full-on girlie lavender, which paradoxically made him look extra manly. But there was no point trying to explain that; there were times when it was better to simply insist on something. “And I’ve left out the tie I want you to wear. It’s on your bed.”

  “And I’m to pick you up at one?”

  “That’s my flat at thirteen-hundred hours, just so we’re clear. Is your car clean?”

  She detected a slight hesitation. “It will be. We could always go in yours.”

  No, they couldn’t. Her car was nice but not impressive. Not like his Lexus. Call her shallow but this was her ex-boyfriend’s wedding they were attending. She was happy that Jason was happy and all that blah but nevertheless . . . she didn’t want to look like it was hurting.

  “And your flight?” she asked. “Finnair, is it? Gets in at ten-fifteen on Saturday morning?” She knew this already, every single detail, but there could be no room for misunderstandings. This was very, very important.

  “Ten-fifteen.”

  “You couldn’t come on Friday night, just to make sure you’ll be here?” She’d asked this several times before but she was so anxious she couldn’t stop herself from asking again.

  “I will be there.”

  “Okay.”

  “I promise.”

  A moment of silence.

  “I promise. I will not let you down on this.”

  I will not let you down on this. What more could he do to convince her, she asked herself. And at least he wasn’t in Manila or Saigon, like he sometimes was, with so many more possibilities for flights to be delayed and connections to be missed. Helsinki was a direct flight, only a couple of hours away. It would all be grand.

  Very obviously changing the subject, Conall asked, “Now, what’s the thought for today?”

  “Hold on.” Katie reached for the diary Danno and the others had given her for her birthday. She flicked to the right page. “Today’s uplifting phrase is, ‘Love your body exactly as it is. You think it’s imperfect and you’re right, but it’s only going to get worse.’ ”

  “Your body is perfect,” Conall said softly.

  Katie snorted, but he’d got her . . .

  After she’d hung up she wondered if he’d know which shoes to wear. Should she ring him back? Maybe not. He was unreliable but he was well dressed and perhaps she’d hounded him enough about this wedding.

  Instead, she decided to put her trash out.

  Day 53 . . .

  Fionn stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Jemima asked sharply.

  “. . . Ah . . . nowhere.” He resumed sitting on the antimacassar-covered armchair and directed an expression of fake concentration at Jemima’s small, very old television.

  In silence they drank their tea, then Fionn clattered his cup into his saucer to signal a change of activity. Getting to his feet, he said casually, “I think I’ll stretch my legs.”

  “They’re long enough already. Sit down.”

  “I need to get out, Jemima. A country lad like me, I’m no good cooped up in a small flat. I need a stroll.”

  “It’s ten o’clock at night. The streets will be littered with scofflaws and stumblebums.”

  “So what?”

  “You may not be able to hold your own,” she said archly. “A simple country lad like you.”

  “Just for a few minutes . . .” He was already at the door.

  “She’s married,” Jemima said, in ringing tones.

  “Who?”

  “You know who. Maeve.”

  She didn’t feel married, Fionn thought.

  “As I understood it, you’ve heretofore given married ladies the widest possible berth.”

  He had, of course he had, any decent person would. But Maeve was different. He didn’t know how, he couldn’t say in what way, all he knew was that she was.

  “You were brought up to respect married women.” Jemima was trying to shame him into forgetting about Maeve, but he would not. He could not! He was stunned by the intensity of his feelings for her. She’d been in his head all day, an unbroken background hum. It was the first time a woman had affected him in this way and, if he was to be really honest, he didn’t care that she was spoken for. He wanted her and he was going to get her.

  “I feel . . . how can I put it? That she’s not really married.” He shook his head, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “That Mark character—”

  “His name is Matthew!”

  “—something’s wrong there, it’s like he’s keeping her prisoner.”

  “Have you taken leave of your senses?” Jemima inquired, her eyes bright as a bird’s. “I beseech you to listen to yourself.”

  “I’m telling you, Jemima, something’s not right.”

  “This is balderdash! You’re simply trying to absolve yourself from a terrible thing. Which I will not permit you to do.”

  “How’re you gonna stop me?” Suddenly, all a-swagger, he was fifteen again.

  “I forbid you to leave.”

  She glared at him. He’d forgotten about the power of her glare. The irresistible force, he and Giles used to call it. It pinioned him like a laser beam and he found himself being moved bodily across the room and shoved back into his armchair, where he slumped, spent and limp.

  Jemima fixed him with a polite smile. “More tea, dear?”

  You can stick your tea up your bony Protestant hole.

  “Okay,” he mumbled.

  “Do tell me,” Jemima said tartly, as she lifted the teapot. “What were you planning to do? Knock on her door and ask her out, with her husband sitting two feet away?”

  “I thought I’d invite them along to the set,” Fionn said, with icy dignity. “Both of them. People seem to like that sort of thing.”

  “I think they’ll manage quite well without a trip to a television studio, thank you verrrry much!”

  Day 53 . . .

  Less than ten feet below Fionn, Matt and Maeve were at their usual lark, twisted around each other on the couch, watching some home-improvement program. They were very much creatures of routine. Every day they awoke at 7:30 and sat down to a civilized breakfast of porridge and honey and a vitamin pill. At 8:30 they left for work and returned at 6:30. Every evening they cooked a robust dinner, anchored by potatoes, and this was always followed by something sweet—they were fond of refined sugar, baked goods, Cornettos, apple turnovers and similar. When they’d eaten their fill, they twined around each other on the couch and watched television, regardless of what was on, and snacked further on confectionery. When the clock struck 11, they put on several layers of clothing, went to bed and
wrote their Trio of Blessings in their notebooks.

  They were made for each other, Matt and Maeve.

  The irony was that even though David—like Maeve—was a Galwegian and Matt was, to quote David, nothing but “a suit,” Maeve had far more in common with Matt than she’d ever had with David. She laughed with Matt, she laughed a lot. Something that hadn’t happened much with David, who found the world so outrageously unjust that laughter seemed like the act of an insensitive and frivolous person.

  But even though she and Matt were made for each other, she was eaten up with guilt about David. All he had ever done was love her and be good to her, and she was appalled and ashamed by how publicly she’d humiliated him. From the perspective of her new relationship, she could see what had been wrong with herself and David, a lot more than she’d acknowledged when she’d been with him. She’d been so flattered by David choosing her above all the other girls in Goliath—David so clever and passionate and charismatic—that she’d never really stopped to ask herself if David was the person she wanted.

  She was desperate to explain things to him, to somehow take away his hurt, but David wouldn’t permit Maeve to “explain” anything. Mind you, Maeve acknowledged, she’d have her work cut out. She hadn’t a clue how it had happened. One minute David was her boyfriend and she’d been vaguely fond of Matt and the next she was violently in love with Matt and David had been relegated to a bit player.

  She tried to get David to meet for some sort of talk, but it was impossible. He hung up on her phone calls, bounced back all her emails and, with melodramatic dignity, took to crossing the road when he saw Maeve coming. In inter-team meetings he made murky references to how other staff members couldn’t be trusted, and once, when she accidentally brushed by him in the games room, he hissed, “Don’t touch me.”

  Matt’s innate optimism insisted that David would get over Maeve and soon move on to someone new, but Maeve wasn’t so sure. David felt things deeply, and the traits she had once so admired about him, like his passionate objection to all injustices, suddenly seemed like impediments. David still held a grudge against Henry Kissinger for orchestrating the coup in Chile that overthrew Allende, even though David hadn’t actually been born at the time.

  Natalie was a different story. With admirable pragmatism, she accepted the new Matt’n’Maeve configuration almost overnight. “You guys—” she waved a smooth brown hand at them—“just look at you, you’re the real deal, you’re meant to be together. I didn’t like it at first, but what could I do?”

  “What should we do about David?” Maeve asked Natalie.

  But Natalie was from the same optimistic school as Matt. Airily, she advised, “Just give him time.”

  So a month passed, then two months, but David remained cut up and Maeve remained riddled with guilt, and all in all, it made work a little awkward. And, indeed, their leisure time also. Matt was keen to be with Maeve at all times, he was happy to fall in with her usual pursuits, to eat falafels in the rain, to be jostled and splashed with beer at Gogol Bordello or to repeatedly fall off a surfboard and into the freezing Atlantic. But Maeve couldn’t do it to David. She’d hurt him so much, it was only fair that he get custody of their friends and their social life.

  Hopefully, it wouldn’t be forever and, in the meantime, she and Matt forged a new path, finding a middle ground between their two different lifestyles. She made him read a Barbara Kingsolver book and he persuaded her to spend a weekend in a hotel with a spa, even to partake of a couples massage. And although she’d been sure she’d feel guilty about the demeaning work the poor masseuse had to do, she found that giving a hefty tip went a long way to clearing her conscience.

  In fact, she had to admit that she found the whole weekend delightful. As Matt did the Barbara Kingsolver. But then again, they found everything about each other delightful, so it was hard to be sure.

  Day 53 . . .

  Fionn shifted in the little armchair and thought, aha! Yes, aha! Jemima would have to go to bed at some point. He would bide his time. She was a powerful woman and at times a terrifying one, but everyone had to sleep. So he drank his tea and watched the silly little television and at eleven o’clock, when Jemima announced she was turning in, he did a big stretch and faked a long yowly yawn and agreed that it was time for bed. He kissed her goodnight at her bedroom door, then waited and waited until he heard regular little whistling sounds coming from her bedroom, and even though he forced himself to wait another fifteen minutes, when he opened the front door he was sincerely afraid that she would appear before him like an avenging angel and order him, shamefaced, to return to bed. But it went off without incident. She must be losing her touch.

  He tiptoed down the stairs and slipped a note under Maeve’s door. Nothing controversial, nothing controversial at all. At all. Addressed to both of them, inviting them along to the set. At your convenience. His mobile number. Jemima’s mobile. Jemima’s landline. All very casual.

  Katie, dressed in pajamas and high heels, was returning from putting out her trash. The ability to do everything in life in four-inch heels was a gift similar to having a beautiful singing voice, a gift that had to be respected, that had to be kept oiled and toned. In the same way that singers worked their voices every day, doing scales and whatnot, Katie too was diligent in her practice. If she lost her gift, if she began to tilt forward and go over on her ankle and complain about the balls of her feet killing her, she’d feel like she’d lost a part of herself.

  She was running up the stairs and had almost reached Lydia’s flat, when she heard Jemima’s door open below her.

  Curses! Like any normal person, she lived in dread of having to speak to her neighbors, but she was too near to Jemima’s flat to escape. With huge misgivings she turned, bracing herself for a few minutes of polite nocturnal chat with the old woman. But, to her great surprise, it was not Jemima who emerged into the hallway, but the most stunning-looking man. A golden god, with long hair and perfect bone structure and a jaw set with purpose. A phrase of her mother’s spoke in her head: His beauty would take the sight from your eyes.

  Who was he?

  Though she was frozen to the spot and openly gaping, he didn’t see her—proof that she’d become invisible now that she was forty. Fascinated, she leaned over the banister and followed his glowing progress as he tiptoed furtively downstairs and slipped a note under Matt and Maeve’s door.

  What was the story there?

  Then, assailed by a mild reeling in her head—the heels, the heels—she realized she’d topple over the rail and down a flight of stairs if she wasn’t careful. She pushed herself back into a vertical position and continued upward.

  Day 52

  Matt was stumbling and yawning along the hall on his way to make the coffee—he always got up before Maeve—and was doing a quick recce, just to check that it was safe to be alive, when he noticed the piece of paper lying on the floor. It was immediately obvious it wasn’t a flyer; it was a handwritten note and it had to be from one of the neighbors. He was mildly curious. What had they done? Had their telly on too loud? Then he read it, and even as a boiling rage lit up his every cell, he stepped into the kitchen and closed the door to protect Maeve from the strength of his feelings.

  The dazzling morning light poured through the kitchen window and hurt his eyes, and the blood was pounding at such a rate through his body that his ears felt hot and sore. He leaned his hands on the kitchen counter and bowed his head. Such disrespect!

  Would he tell Maeve? Like fuck he would! He thrust the note into the compost bin, where it belonged, where it would rot with vegetable peelings and discarded food.

  When he brought Maeve her coffee, she was still in bed, lying flat on her back and looking particularly leaden. “Matt . . .?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I feel . . . like someone is watching me.”

  For the second time in ten minutes, Matt was assailed by emotion. A dense lump of doom hurtled into him and at high velocity pulled him towa
rd the center of the earth. He was appalled at his own recklessness: that detour he’d made yesterday, what had he been thinking? He should have left well alone. He’d stirred stuff up; he’d drawn your man on them. Unless it was that Fionn bloke . . .?

  “Watching you how?” he managed to ask. “Through the windows?”

  “No, not like that.”

  “Watching you at work?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Waiting outside work for you?”

  “No, more like . . . this sounds mad, watching me through the walls.”

  “Through the walls?” Through the walls?

  “I don’t know, Matt. I’m sorry. I just feel it.”

  They had their showers, prepared their porridge and poured their honey but Matt couldn’t eat. His throat was so closed he could barely force down his vitamin pill.

  Eventually, they leave for work, but I stay in the flat. I’m looking for something. But what? Nothing awry with their tea bags; their underwear drawer holds no secrets, just jockey shorts and knickers that are long past their prime; and in the bathroom, an unopened cellophane-wrapped box of Coco Chanel body lotion is covered with a thin coating of dust, which strikes me as sad but not exactly revelatory. Then I return to the kitchen cupboards and see what I’m supposed to see, and entre nous I’m actually quite ashamed. I’ve been watching Maeve and Matt for over a week and it’s taken me until now to notice that their daily vitamin pill is not, in fact, a vitamin pill. It’s an antidepressant.

  Day 51

  Upward, upward, she was meant to rub it in upward. She’d put it on downwards so, in an attempt to cancel out the damage, Katie slapped on more night cream, this time rubbing it in the right direction—against gravity. Suddenly she felt a presence and seized up with fear. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted and goosebumps puckered her arms.