The Brightest Star in the Sky

by Marian Keyes

  “Get the bus. Get a taxi.”

  “You won’t wait for me?”

  “No.”

  Lydia pulled over to the curb. “Outttttt,” she ordered.

  “But we’re not there yet,” the fare, a young man, said.

  “I told you. I warned you. If you didn’t stop singing Neil Diamond songs I’d make you get out. You didn’t stop, so get out. Ttttteeee.”

  Muttering about mad bitches, he nonetheless obeyed her and she shot away in a squeal of rubber. Better switch the old light off for a while. Not the best time to chance another fare. Not feeling too full of sweetness and light.

  The neck of Hathaway. Obviously, he was still mad about the governess. Good luck to him, and all that. They were the right age for each other, both totally ancient, and Lydia didn’t care, she’d never really been into him; it had only been a bit of a laugh. It was just, like, the neck of him . . .

  She was talking to herself. That wasn’t so good. She peered out at her surrounds; where exactly was she? She’d lost track of things around “Sweet Caroline.” Right, she was in Parkgate Street. Close enough to Eugene’s. She’d stop in, get a sugar fix and rant about her customers to anyone who’d listen.

  “Doughnuts?” she asked Eugene. “Any custard ones?”

  “ ’ Deed I have.”

  “Start me off with two. And I might be back for more.”

  She looked around for a seat and—

  Hold on a minute, all might not be lost because—

  —there, across the steam-filled café, was none other than Poor Fucker, aka Gilbert.

  He probably wouldn’t be my first choice but, at this stage in the game, I’m not left with many options.

  They locked eyes and he began threading his way between the people, making for her. And there he was. Those eyelashes. The cool clothes. That voice.

  “Hey, Lydia.”

  “Hey, Gilbert.”

  “How have you been?” He looked a little sheepish.

  “Keeping good. You?” She presumed she was looking a little sheepish herself.

  “Yes. Excellent.”

  “Haven’t seen you for a while.” Since I cheated on you.

  “No.” And not since I fessed up to cheating on you.

  “How are all the guys?”

  “Good.”

  “Still killing each other over the Little Trees?”

  “What? Oh? Not so much lately.”

  “Really?” They’d argued so passionately about them. It had been such an important part of their lives. Well, she realized, everything moves on. “Tell them I said hello.”

  “Will do. Business good?”

  “Grand. You?”

  “Grand also.” A little pause opened up. “So Lydia . . .” He opened his eyes wide and spread his arms, looking surprised that there seemed to be nothing more to say. “Take care of yourself.”

  “You too.”

  He backed gracefully away from her, but, before he disappeared for ever, she called, “C’mere, Gilbert, I want to ask you something.”

  He looked a little alarmed. “What?”

  “Do you have a wife and six kids back in Lagos?”

  He laughed hard, his teeth flashing super-white. “Me? Wife? Kids? Noooo, Lydia.”

  “Poppy will be disappointed.” Quickly, she threw at him. “Are you allergic to eggs?”

  It was too fast. He didn’t have time to prepare a smooth response. “. . . Ah . . . no.”

  “So why did you say you were, you mope?”

  He went inside his head to have a think. He shrugged. “Sometimes life, by itself, is not enough. If the truth isn’t interesting, I have to . . . you know?”

  “Couldn’t you have come up with something better than eggs? How about you’re the son of a Nigerian chieftain, oil reserves on your land, government troops, houses torched, that sort of thing?” He was impressed with that, she could see. “You’re going to use that line, aren’t you?” On your next girlfriend?

  “Maybe. Yeah. Thanks.”

  Suddenly, she spotted a table being vacated by four men. “That’s mine! Bye.” She shot across the café and threw her bag on one chair, her hoodie on another and herself on a third, in the hope of discouraging some random person from asking, “Is this seat free?”

  “Eugene,” she yelled in the direction of the counter. “I’m over here. Anytime you like with the doughnuts.” And then all was good with the world: she was sitting down, sugar was on its way, no one was singing Neil Diamond songs. She didn’t see the door opening and closing as Gilbert left. A good-looking man, in a mildly ridiculous jacket, who’d once been her boyfriend.

  She’d already forgotten him.

  “A moment, dear heart!” Jemima managed to apprehend Maeve as she stalked from behind the red curtain shielding Matt and headed for the exit. “Are you leaving?”

  “Yip.”

  “Without Matthew?”

  “Matthew tried to kill himself. Matthew has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be with me.”

  Sarcasm didn’t become her, Jemima reflected. She was too sweet to pull it off with true aplomb. Bluster and swagger, but no genuine conviction.

  “It is imperative that we speak, Maeve. You are mired in anger and betrayal, but it’s vital that you are apprised of some facts. To wit: with men, the most common method of suicide is hanging. In other words, it’s almost certain that Matthew wanted to be found.”

  Maeve stared stonily into the middle distance. “I’ll never forgive him.”

  “Really, dear heart, such melodrama. When one thinks about it, he had to do something. How many more years were you going to spend lying on your sofa, watching the wretched goggle-box and eating cake?”

  Maeve’s face became luminous with shock.

  “Yes. The truth is painful, Maeve. But face facts. You were stuck. Something needed to happen. And don’t tell me that the notion of ending it all didn’t occur to you also.”

  “But! How do you . . .?”

  “You were in despair,” Jemima said airily. “It’s what happens to human beings in despair, when all doors are locked and escape seems impossible.”

  With curiosity, Maeve asked, “Have you felt suicidal?”

  “Me? Oh no, dear. Sadly, I’m not built that way. Genetics, I can only surmise. And I’ve certainly had my sorrows in my time. Giles and I longed for babies of our own but they were gifts that we were never granted. Despair would have been an appropriate response, but no, I just soldiered on. Made soup for the deserving poor, that sort of thing.” She fell into a short reverie, before snapping back to the present and clapping her hands together. “Now, you and Matthew! You must have a baby.”

  After a long, almost hostile stare, Maeve asked, “Why?”

  “Any number of reasons. Relations between you would have to be rekindled. You would feel the power of your body instead of its lamentable vulnerability. You would have someone to love, apart from each other. A baby will reclaim the innocence that was stolen from you both.”

  Maeve took a while to answer. “And that’ll, like . . . exorcize everything that happened?”

  Young people? Wherever did they get the notion that life operated in such absolutes?

  In a gentler tone, Jemima said, “What has happened has happened. It can’t unhappen. You are different, Matthew is different, but you must simply get on with it.”

  Maeve had a think. “So, a baby? Is that what you see for me? See it, like Sissy said?”

  Oh dear. These young girls and their faith in mystic this and psychic that and no faith at all in their own autonomy. Well, if that was what it took . . . “That’s what I see for you. You have a choice here, Maeve. You can go under or you can come out fighting—” A sudden spasm of pain in the region of Jemima’s liver sent her eyes rolling into the back of her head.

  “Cripes!” Maeve exclaimed. “What’s up? Are you okay?”

  “Perfectly fine. A tummy ache. Probably all the excitement.”

  “D’you
want to sit down?”

  “No, thank you, you are kind. I must go home now. But I beseech you to wait for Matthew. It’s four-thirty and he’ll be permitted to leave in two and a half hours. Can’t you wait that long?”

  Maeve bit her lip. She didn’t want to do anything for Matt ever again, but Jemima having that pain in her stomach had shifted the moral high ground in Jemima’s favor.

  “I assure you,” Jemima said, her breath emerging as a pant as another spasm of pain took a grip. “I assure you, Maeve, that one day you will be happy again. Your life will get better.”

  “Back to the way it used to be?”

  Jemima sighed. “One can never go back. You know that.”

  “So what am I to do?”

  And where did they get the idea that Jemima had the answer to everything? “. . . Perhaps you could . . . try going forward?”

  4 hours

  A river of blood and he was wading his way through it. It was swirling around his legs and he was trying to push his way against it, but the current was too strong and—Conall awoke with a gasp. He’d been in the middle of a terrible dream, all that blood and . . . He was awake now. His heart was pounding into his throat, but he was in his own bed, it was okay. His clock said it was 4:45 a.m., so he could go back to sleep for a few hours. And then he thought: The bath.

  It was still full of Matt’s blood. When he and that prick Fionn had gingerly hoisted Matt’s slippery body out, neither of them had been enough of a hero to plunge his arm into the bloody water and pull the plug. Maeve couldn’t come home to that. She might be home already but, just in case it wasn’t too late, Conall had to go there. The thought of going back into that terrible little room made all his muscles clench, but it had to be done.

  Wearily, almost miserably, he clapped his hands and the room lit up, and he made a sudden fierce promise to himself that he was going to sort out that bloody light and go back to an ordinary switch. Even when he was totally alone, doing the clapping made him feel ridiculous. He yanked open the wardrobe and pulled on the first pair of jeans he found, and then he had a quick scout around, looking for some sort of shirt or T-shirt that wouldn’t matter if he got blood on it. But everything he owned was expensive, and what did it matter anyway?

  Katie awoke with a terrible bump, her mind racing like a speeded-up film through the atrocities of the previous evening: the key still in the lock; the door splintering and breaking; Conall disappearing into the hall; him calling her name and—the most terrible part of all—her first sight of Matt floating lifelessly in the red water. Although it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, it felt as though she’d stood in the doorway for hours, trying to make sense of the macabre scene before her. Matt? Matt? Young, cheery, smiley Matt, that Matt? What was he doing, drained of all color and life, bobbing in a bathful of his own blood . . . The bath, she realized, with a bang to her heart. That’s what had woken her.

  Was the bath water still in it? If so, it had to be emptied and cleaned, and the bloodied towels that had been abandoned on the floor needed to be washed before Maeve got home. She swung her feet on to the floor—and then it hit her: Fionn wasn’t here. He’d gone out and obviously he hadn’t come back. After he’d stomped off, she’d been reluctant—almost scared—to get into bed. She had curled up on the couch, watching crap stuff on telly, waiting for him to come back. If he was home before she went to bed, then everything was fine. By 2 a.m., she’d been so cold and odd-feeling that she had crept between the covers, promising herself that she wouldn’t go to sleep. She’d had a superstitious conviction that it would be a disaster if she slept. But she’d obviously dozed off and here it was, 5 a.m., and he still wasn’t home. There was a chance that he might be downstairs in Jemima’s but even that would be a bit of a death knell; he hadn’t slept there for weeks.

  Real life had finally caught up with them, that’s what had happened. For weeks they’d led it an effervescent dance, skipping and laughing, gleefully outpacing it, having a blast. But, all along, she’d been preparing herself for something like this. She’d predicted that his show would be a success and it would go to his head, or his show wouldn’t fly and he’d go back to Pokey. Things hadn’t played out exactly as she’d said; the success hadn’t occurred, but it had still gone to his head. And all it had taken was one unpleasant event to reveal how little comfort they were to each other.

  She couldn’t wipe away the memory of Fionn’s disregard for Jemima or his lack of empathy for Maeve, but, still, she couldn’t dislike him either—at least she didn’t at this very moment, who knew how she’d feel in an hour or a day or a week? Too much had happened to him too quickly. You’d have to have a rock-solid sense of self to remain unaltered in the face of all the attention he’d recently been showered with.

  And, to be honest, she was knackered. She was worn fecking well out from all the late-night shenanigans and drinking and sex. Her skin was in flitters, the laundry hadn’t been done in weeks and her laziness at work had been nothing short of outrageous.

  Speaking of work, she didn’t like the insidious way she’d started treating Fionn like one of her artistes. Promising him everything would be okay, patronizing him.

  She was hit with a strange thought—certainly strange for a woman with her relationship with food—that being with Fionn was like eating chocolate all the time: glorious in theory, but now and again you’d like some proper food.

  A hoodie was lying on her chair and she pulled it on over her pajamas and slipped into a pair of her mid-height heels—she was feeling a little too fragile for the full five-inchers. From the cupboard under the sink, she gathered bathroom cleaner, rubber gloves and a couple of sponges, then slipped downstairs to the ground floor. In the light cast by the street lamps, she saw that a temporary door of raw plywood had been fitted to Matt and Maeve’s flat. A brand-new, super-shiny lock sat in a frame of splinters and there were two equally super-shiny keys on the hall table.

  All she had to do was pick one up and let herself in, but suddenly she was reluctant. Then the oddest impulse came over her. She decided to open the front door, the one to the street, because Conall Hathaway would be waiting outside.

  She turned the knob, she swung the door and standing on the step was . . . “Conall?”

  “Katie?”

  So many weird things are happening, she thought. I can’t keep up with them all.

  “It’s five in the morning,” she said.

  “Quarter past.” He checked his watch, then fixed his eyes on her in utter astonishment. “I was just going to buzz your flat to let me in. Look.” He demonstrated his hand. “I was just about to touch the thing that says your name. And you just . . . materialized.”

  “I must have heard your car or something,” Katie said, faintly. “Are you looking for Lydia?”

  “Out working.” Well, she might be; her car was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t getting into the breakup stuff with Katie. “I woke up, like, half an hour ago, just bolt upright, and my first thought was, the bath.”

  “Me too.” Katie indicated her cleaning stuff. “I didn’t want Maeve—”

  “—coming home to that horror—”

  “—so I thought I’d come down and—”

  “—empty the bath and—”

  “—clean up a bit.”

  They chanced a wobbly smile at each other. “I like your shoes,” he said.

  “Standards must be maintained. And what’s that you’re wearing?” She touched the tips of her fingers to his black sweater. “Cashmere? To clean up blood?”

  “I haven’t a clue what it is,” he said. “I needed to wear something and who cares if blood gets splashed on it?”

  She nodded somberly. “I know what you mean. Kind of puts things in perspective, all right. But he’s going to be okay. Fionn says they’ve given him four liters of blood and he’ll be getting out in the morning.”

  Conall nodded. “Did you know him? Matt?”

  “Only to say hello to. Did you?”
>
  “Only to see.”

  “All the same.”

  “Yeah . . . I thought Maeve might be home already,” Conall said.

  “Fionn said she was still at the ER at midnight—”

  “—and the keys are out here—”

  “—so I suppose it’s safe to go in—”

  They let themselves into the silent flat and made their way down the short hallway to the bathroom. Conall pushed the door with his fingertips and it swung open and there it was, the bathful of blood. Redder and even more shocking than he remembered.

  Conall swallowed noisily. “Better pull the plug.”

  They exchanged a look.

  “I’ll do it,” Katie said.

  “No, I’ll—”

  Two steps from Katie, the plunge of an arm, an efficient hoist and immediate gurgly draining noises. “There.” She tried to smile. “Done.”

  “. . . Ah . . . thanks. Christ, you’re magnificent.” He handed her a towel to dry her arm.

  She shrugged, half-embarrassed. “Nothing to it.”

  “I didn’t want to do it.”

  “Don’t suppose anyone would actually want to do it.”

  “I thought he was dead,” Conall said, his voice husky. “When I first came in. It was horrible. I’ll never forget it.”

  “The weird thing was that I didn’t know what I was looking at,” Katie said. “I couldn’t make sense of it.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Like, why was the water so red?”

  “Yeah, and why did he look so . . . you know? Nothing prepares you for something like that.”

  “Nothing.” She was emphatic. “It was the worst thing I ever saw. God . . .” Noiseless tears began to slide down her face.

  “Don’t cry!” Tentatively, Conall put a hand on her shoulder and, when she continued to cry, he gathered her awkwardly to him. “He’s going to be okay.”

  “But it’s so sad.” She allowed herself to fall against him, just for a moment, against the softness of his sweater. It was such a comfort to let go. “What must they have gone through? To get to that point?”