A Map of the Sky

by Claire Wong

  They walked north along the cliffs and the coast. Kit thought he had waited a reasonable length of time before asking his mother if he could have one of the chocolate bars they had brought, but her reaction suggested he had not been patient enough. He broke off squares for Maddie and Bert, since they did not appear to have brought their own supplies of sweets.

  “Are you feeling happier now, Maddie? If you’re finishing your pilgrimage, I mean.”

  He had meant it as a simple enough question, but she took as long to answer as if he had asked her the meaning of life. While she considered it, she turned her face upward to soak it in sunlight, perhaps looking to the sky for an answer. Kit knew not to rush her; he counted his remaining squares of chocolate in silence.

  “I am feeling better, thank you, Kit. I’ve had lots of time to think about it – about what happened. I’ve decided that however much it hurt, however much it felt like the wrong thing for the children too, Elsie probably never meant to do anything other than what she believed was best.

  “You know, when I started the pilgrimage, I think a part of me still hoped someone would turn up to fix everything. Maybe not Elsie, but I liked the thought that the people who employed her might say they were sorry for putting me through so much pain. Does that sound silly?” Kit shook his head as Maddie took a deep breath. She was calm. “I’ve accepted it’s not going to happen. And agonizing about it has been exhausting. So I think it’s time I forgave her – for my own sake more than anything – moved on, and thought about something else.”

  Kit offered Maddie the last of his chocolate, which she broke in half for them to share, so that for a while as they walked side by side the only sound was of chewing. Then the travellers rearranged themselves, so that Kit and Juliet walked with Bert, while Catherine spoke to Maddie. Bert did what Kit had come to realize was the only thing he could do in this situation, and acted as though the last couple of days had not happened as he cheerily pointed out cornflowers, harebells and a patch of musk mallow to Juliet, who stopped to admire the fragrant purple flowers at her feet.

  Up ahead, Catherine and Maddie were talking in low voices and Kit soon realized why.

  “There was a build-up, yes, of little things over the year. I should have spotted the signs sooner, but it wasn’t until she went out with her friends after the exams finished.”

  They were talking about Juliet. After months of secrecy, Kit was glad to hear his mum finally discussing what had happened, even if he would have preferred her to be telling him instead. He checked that Juliet was distracted enough not to notice she was the topic of conversation, but she was preoccupied quizzing Bert about the entry requirements for an undergraduate degree in biology.

  “One of the group must have had a fake ID. I’ll bet it was that Sebastian – he walks around with such a smirk on his face, like he’s too clever to follow rules. Anyway, they all had a lot to drink, but Juliet wasn’t used to it. We don’t let the children have alcohol, apart from the occasional sip of champagne at special occasions.”

  “Do you think it was peer pressure that made her join in?” Maddie asked.

  “Probably, but it was still her own choice. That much I could hold Juliet responsible for, but it’s what happened afterwards, when she was being sick and unsure where she was. Her so-called friends found it funny, would you believe? And they took photos of her in that state.”

  “Ah. And I take it these photos made their way quickly online?”

  Catherine nodded, and her face was grim. “We didn’t know straight away. It was another student’s mother who told us. Some of the comments… I didn’t know teenagers could be so cruel! And we’ve done everything we can to get them all taken down, so future employers or universities won’t see them. But truthfully I think they’ve done enough damage already. She’s been humiliated by friends she trusted. And the stress of it has had a knock-on effect on her schoolwork.”

  Maddie sighed. “I don’t envy today’s youth. They have to deal with things that were never a problem for us. But Juliet seems a sensible girl. A few mistakes won’t spell an end to good opportunities for her.”

  “I just hope she stops blaming herself.”

  Kit watched his sister, who had stopped weighing up degree options with Bert and was pointing out to sea.

  “Kit, look! Dolphins!”

  Their round backs were silver with reflected sunlight: three bottlenose dolphins swimming northwards. It wasn’t your fault, Kit thought as he turned back to Juliet. Well, maybe you could have chosen better friends, but it wasn’t your fault that they were horrible to you. If he thought it hard enough, maybe she would hear it, and know it to be true.

  Maddie stopped abruptly, and the whole group stopped with her.

  “What is it?”

  She pointed up ahead to a shape on the skyline, distant yet rising taller than any of the other buildings visible.

  “That’s it. That’s Whitby Abbey.” She stood still and stared at it for a long time as if in disbelief.

  “You’re nearly there,” Kit encouraged her. Maddie nodded, and took a step forward. Juliet seemed also to have picked up on the enormity of this stage in the pilgrimage, because she asked Maddie to tell her about the abbey’s history. Maddie’s face lit up as she dived into a description of the first monks and nuns who came to this spot by the grey North Sea. All those years of working with children must have brought out the storyteller in Maddie, because it was easy to picture robed figures emerging from the mists over a place they gave the magical-sounding name Streoneshalh. As she talked, the pace picked up again, and Juliet listened with eager interest.

  “You know, it was a woman who actually founded the monastery here.”

  “Really? I didn’t think women in history got to do anything interesting.”

  “Don’t you ever believe that! Her name was Hild; she was from a noble family, and she was so well regarded that the kings of the time went to her for advice. She was made a saint in the end, because of what she did.”

  As they drew closer, the abbey became clearer. Kit could see the dark shapes carved out by the Gothic arches. “It’s a shame it’s a ruin now. Was it Vikings that did it?”

  Maddie laughed. “Vikings probably did raid it at one point, and others too, over the centuries. But it’s been rebuilt since then. There will have been storms and years of neglect and all sorts to bring it to this point. But it is still very striking, as a ruin. Things can be, you know.”

  “Can be what?”

  “Beautiful, even if they aren’t as they used to be.”

  Juliet gave the kind of sigh and smile that would once have followed reading one of her favourite books. Kit thought of Beth’s map, incomplete and yet still full of memories and future adventures. Then he thought of his own family. He had spent almost a whole summer trying to rebuild them into what they had been before, with his father here, his sister happy and relaxed, his mother the unshakeable source of stability for them all. But perhaps they too had changed into something different now – not a ruin, or anything as desolate, but another shape that he could accept and love rather than work to change.

  “I think I hear a marsh warbler!” Bert declared, wandering off the road to investigate and then returning with a shrug a couple of minutes later.

  The road became a narrow path, and the dry stone walls gave way to an open space and a body of water, like a moat except that it did not encircle the buildings. They came to the end of the path, and there was only a stretch of grass between them and the abbey.

  “You did it!” Kit cried. The abbey loomed high above them, the summer sky visible through its empty arches.

  “I did.” Maddie turned round to face the others. “Thank you for coming with me. This has been an important and difficult journey. Do you mind if I… if you don’t –”

  “If we let you go in by yourself?” Kit’s mother supplied. “Of course. We understand.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kit did not understand, but everyone
else seemed to agree this was the right decision, and it felt too important a moment to demand an explanation. Maddie walked on to the ruins alone, while the others explored the rest of the grounds and buildings. There was a grand house beside the abbey, and in the courtyard before it stood a statue of a man reaching forward, with a sword in his right hand.

  “What will Maddie do, now her pilgrimage is over?” Kit asked Bert, while trying to imitate the statue’s pose. He managed to hold the stance for a few seconds before wobbling and falling over.

  “I don’t know if she knows the answer to that yet. I suppose the main thing is that she has finally finished it, so she can at least go and do something else now.”

  “What about you? Are you going back to your university when the summer’s over?”

  “I’ll have to go and face everyone if I want to keep my job. Besides, I’ve got some new research ideas to explore. It’s been nice to get away for a while though. I’ll miss this place.”

  “You should come back next summer. I’ll find some good birds in the meantime, and then you can write about them.”

  “Maybe. Let’s see how things turn out.”

  “I hope you can come back.” It was as close as Kit could come to finding the words to express that he would miss his birdwatcher friend. Bert smiled, so perhaps he understood what Kit was trying to say.

  Kit’s mum had brought a picnic rug with her and spread it out on the grass outside the abbey. She now produced a flask of tea (you never knew how long it was going to be before you found a café, she explained) and poured it into plastic cups for herself, Juliet, and Bert. Kit did not like hot drinks as a rule, so she handed him a bottle of lemonade instead. Bert was appreciative of the tea, but explained that he was too old to be sitting down on the ground for fear of never being able to get back up again. He took his cup to drink while wandering towards the coast.

  “I think I did see a café over there,” said Juliet. “Can I go and check?”

  “Of course, love. Take some money, and if they have any good cakes to take outside, bring something nice back for us, won’t you?”

  Juliet ran off to investigate. Kit and his mum sat together on the picnic rug.

  “Kit,” his mum said, the way she began important conversations, “last night, Juliet and I had a good long talk, about how we can make things easier for her. I know the last few days have probably been quite scary for you, but I want you to know that it is going to be OK.”

  “I know. Juliet’s going to get better, isn’t she?”

  Catherine paused to sweep her hair out of her eyes. “That’s right. But we are going to have to start doing some things differently. This whole move – it was meant to be a fresh start, for Juliet and for all of us. A clean break from the people and places that led to this point. I hadn’t really thought through everything though. Somehow I found it easier to uproot us all to a new place than to make any of the small day-to-day changes that needed to go with it. I’m going to stop acting like we’re still in our old lives in London. But if it’s going to work, there will be changes for us to make – and you can help too.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You can help us spend more time being a family. We need to do things together, get away from our phones and our work and our thoughts, and actually talk to one another. We won’t know how to help one another unless we spend time together and listen to each other. I know you’ve put more work than the rest of us into learning what there is to do round here. So I’d like you to help with some ideas of things we can do. That’s what your map has been about, hasn’t it? Juliet told me a bit more about it.

  “And I want you to know you can come and talk to me about… anything, really. I know this move has affected you – I hadn’t realized before just how much you worry about things, but you do, don’t you? We didn’t tell you about Juliet before, because I thought it was better you didn’t have to think about it. Since you know everything now, you’re allowed to ask me any questions you like.”

  It had not occurred to Kit that he might be the sort of person to worry any more than was normal. He was, after all, a hero modelled after Camelot’s finest knights. Still, the memories of how he had jumped to a few worst-case-scenario conclusions over the summer made him squirm.

  “You don’t need to fret about things in silence,” Catherine continued. There was that word again, fret, that meant fog and fear all at once. “I know that I’ve not always been good at praising you two for things other than your school achievements. But I want you to know, Kit, that I am extremely proud of who you are too. I’m going to try to remember to say that more often. It’s never been about what grades you get or how many useful things you do for the rest of us – that’s not how families work. They love each other no matter what happens.

  “And there’s one more thing, which will be another change for us. I spoke to Dad last night, after our long talk. Juliet spoke to him too. And we’ve agreed it’s time for him to come up and join us.”

  “Dad’s coming here? You mean you’re not getting a divorce?”

  “Is that what you thought? No, of course we aren’t. If I’d known that was what you thought… He’ll be here very soon. His boss has agreed to let him work from home, so we’ll get the study set up properly as an office for him.”

  Kit did not know what to say. He felt as though he had only just accepted his father’s absence and suddenly they were to be reunited! But then he reminded himself of what had run through his mind earlier – that even with his father back, the family had grown and altered; that his quest was not to fix a ruin back into a functioning abbey, but to figure out what this new shape of things would be. And there was another mystery that still needed explaining.

  “Juliet said something – when she was on that ledge. She said it was her fault Dad wasn’t here. Why would she think that? Dad loves Juliet, doesn’t he?”

  Tears brimmed in Catherine’s eyes. “Of course he does. But he has found all this business very difficult. You know Dad. He’s an optimist, and he never believed things would get too bad with Juliet. He thought she was being a normal teenager and just rebelling a little bit, and that if we gave her enough space she’d be fine without any help. And then something happened –”

  “The photos?”

  Catherine looked surprised that Kit knew about this. But since she had said he was allowed to ask anything and receive an answer, she continued. “That’s right. You were in school that day, so you didn’t see how upset she was. We were a bit shocked. Both that her friends could be so unkind, and that she was so distraught. We thought she might do something… something serious, so we spoke to a professional counsellor and it emerged she’d been depressed for months, but masking it by focusing on school work and keeping distracted with her so-called friends. Dad didn’t know what to do to help. He blamed himself. Well, I may have encouraged the view that it wouldn’t have happened if he had taken things more seriously earlier in the year, back when the stress of revision was already taking its toll on her. Remember you asked me once what he was scared of? He’s scared that he – and I – pushed Juliet to this point and that he doesn’t know how to fix it. That’s why he didn’t come to Askfeld with us. He thought that he couldn’t come here until he could be sure he wouldn’t make matters worse.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Kit. How could his dad possibly make things worse, even by accident? Just having him present would have surely helped.

  “It’s complicated, I know. But Dad’s way is to make jokes and hope for the best, isn’t it? We all like his optimism. But there are times when people need to be taken seriously. Dad thought he might have upset Juliet by making light of her problems. I wish I’d known she felt that way – that she thought she had driven him away. I could have told her sooner that none of it was her fault. Dad knows now everything that has happened this summer. And he knows that we are going to work together to be OK again.”

  And just like that, the mysteries of the summer all m
ade sense: the sudden move north to give Juliet a change of scene from the world of her cruel friends, even if she had still brought along her reading list and her belief that she was only as good as her achievements. And their dad had never forgotten them or wanted to abandon them. He and Kit were alike in that way: they both wanted to do the right thing and had made enormous mistakes in their efforts.

  “When will he get here?”

  “Soon. Hopefully a week next Friday.”

  Kit counted up the time in his head: eleven days. It was strange to think of his father being scared of anything. Adults were more complicated than they liked you to know.

  Juliet returned with some shortbread wrapped in white paper napkins and shared out the pieces with them. The three Fishers ate in silence. It made a pleasant change, Kit thought, not to have his mum muttering to herself as she composed emails, or Juliet worrying over vocab lists. For once, he too was content to lie on the grass and watch the clouds drifting past.

  After a while, Maddie returned. Her face glowed and her arms swung breezily as she strolled across the grass to them.

  “You look like you’ve just woken up from a good long sleep,” Bert remarked. Then they all went into the abbey together and stood in the cool of the main nave, between the centuries-old stones.

  “I had no idea anywhere could be so peaceful,” said Catherine, and she stood completely still for several minutes under one of the arches. It wasn’t somewhere you had to do anything, Kit thought; it was enough just to be here. Beth would have liked it.