Christmas Under the Stars

by Karen Swan

  ‘Copy that . . . Please accept my sincere condolences, Miss Saunders—’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quickly, inadvertently speaking over him, his formality an echo of the official sentiments of the Search and Rescue team that had found Mitch, the coroner, the town . . . But they were words she didn’t want to hear, words that only ever came with a fixed reality she didn’t want to face . . .

  ‘. . . see the storm from here. I knew it looked bad, over.’

  She paused. He had seen the storm? From the safety of space, how small, how insignificant must her life-death emergency have seemed, her and Mitch scurrying like ants, invisible beneath the clouds? ‘What, what did it look like from up there? Over.’

  She could hear his intake of breath from Earth.

  ‘I’m afraid it was large. Strong. Very severe. I was worried for you, over.’

  She swallowed, her eyes dropping to the desk. If it had looked that bad all the way where he was . . . ‘Do you think he stood a chance?’

  Static peaked, some remote voices interfering at the fringes of the frequency, and it seemed an age before his voice beamed back down. ‘No. I don’t think he did. I’m sorry . . .’ He didn’t say ‘over’ but he didn’t talk either. ‘Have you got people looking after you, over?’

  She paused, feeling the velvety smoothness of Badger’s head beneath her fingers. ‘I’ve got my dog.’ Her words sounded hard, even to her ear.

  The static spiked again and for a moment she thought she’d lost him. His voice became robotic and pixelated.

  ‘. . . est companion. I miss mine. He’s called Yuri, over.’

  Meg frowned. It sounded Russian. ‘Don’t tell me. Named after an astronaut? Over.’

  The sound of his laughter was surprising. ‘. . . ou are right. Yuri Malenchenko, the first cosmonaut to . . .’ His voice broke up again.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, when he didn’t come back again after the customary pause. ‘Commander, are you still there? Can you hear me?’ Damn, what was the call sign he kept using? ‘Hello?’

  ‘. . . copy? This is November Alpha One . . .’ But his voice was indistinct now, other voices, closer ones, familiar accents, criss-crossing the airwaves and tuning him out.

  She looked out of the window, her eyes searching the overarching blackness above.

  But the star was no longer winking; the night was perfectly still.

  Jonas stared down at the North American continent, heading towards the dawn in Europe. It had been several minutes and thousands of miles since he had lost contact with the woman but her thin, brittle voice still reverberated in his head – ‘He didn’t make it. He died. He’s dead’ – saying the same thing in numerous different ways, as though that would make it more real, more believable.

  The truth was, he had feared as much. Ever since he’d picked up her Mayday call thirty-two days ago now, the incident had stayed with him. He hadn’t been able to forget it, to stop wondering about the man lost in that super-storm, the woman left behind and who was now lost without him.

  For Jonas, it was her smallness that had haunted him. Every day he orbited his own planet, looking down on it from the view of the gods. Its scale and beauty were humbling, but even so, it was reduced to just a blue dot as he looked past it into the fathomless black beyond, humanity becoming microscopic, mere dust particles in the cosmos. When the Grand Canyon was nothing more than a pothole, the Great Wall of China but a yellow thread, it became almost easy to look back down and see the futility of mankind’s ambitions – the merciless destruction of the rainforests, the steady pollution of the oceans, the relentless scourge of mineral resources, and all for what? On the individual scale, what did it bring? A bigger house? A designer wardrobe? A fast car? A new iPad?

  But that lone voice calling out, carrying into space, had pierced the endless vastness of which he was now a part and anchored him back to his own planet again. Every pass they made of Canada, whenever work permitted he went to the viewing capsule and tried to look down, making futile attempts to see what he had only heard. But the mountains were no bigger than the ripples on his knuckles and he was denied the detail that could answer his questions. Who were they? Where were they? How exactly had things panned out that night?

  Was there anything more he could have done from here? His relay of the SOS to his flight director had been almost instantaneous and they would have alerted Alberta Search and Rescue within moments. There probably wasn’t anything anyone could have done, not down there, much less from up here – the guy could have been dead within five minutes of setting out; Jonas had orbited Earth sixteen times a day for fifty-three days now and he hadn’t seen a weather system like that anywhere else, either before or since.

  But that was scant consolation – he was the one who’d intercepted the call; he was the one who’d seen the almighty odds they were battling down there – and the echoes of her voice haunted him in the pervasive silence. He was an astronaut, a man of exceptional capabilities with an IQ of 157 and trained to deal with every possible technical, engineering, medical and meteorological possibility that space could throw at him. But as the world continued to turn outside his window, Jonas Solberg knew this frightened woman had done the one thing the European Space Agency had spent years trying to make impossible – she had made him feel helpless.

  Chapter Eight

  Friday 12 May 2017

  The bell blared as the puck hit the back of the net, people cheering and drumming their feet on the bleachers as the display on the board changed from Visitors 5 - Home 1, to Visitors 5 - Home 2.

  Tuck sucked on his teeth, seeing that there were three minutes left on the clock. ‘Goddammit, they’re playing tight,’ he said to no one in particular and punching his fist into his gloved hand. ‘What the hell’s Tremblay playing at? It’s clear they need to bring on Anderson and go wide . . .’

  ‘Nacho?’ Lucy offered, holding out the open bag towards him. Salt was her drug of choice right now. She couldn’t get enough of it – a clear sign, her mother had told her, that she was deficient and would suffer bad cramps if she didn’t improve her sodium levels quickly.

  Tuck shook his head, looking irritated that she’d even asked, the expression on his face as she shrugged and helped herself to another telling her quite clearly that he didn’t think she should be having them either.

  Meg came back with the drinks, her fingers splayed wide around them as she shuffled sideways past the other spectators, apologizing as she trod on toes. Lucy watched her, feeling bad for being jealous of her friend’s newly skinny figure; the heartbreak diet wasn’t one that she’d recommend to anyone and it was perfectly clear that Meg wasn’t controlling – wasn’t even aware of – what she was eating at the moment. She was living at a subsistence level, her pallor wan, energy levels low; she spoke without tone, smiled without it ever reaching her eyes. Tomorrow, Mitch would have been buried for six weeks and although Meg never complained, never rang to talk in the middle of the night, never even cried, it was as though she was underground with him. She was alive but not living, conscious but not awake. Life was routine, every day the same – she got up, went to work in the rental store, went home and slept.

  Lucy missed her friend almost as much as she missed Mitch. No one seemed to notice that she was heartbroken herself. She had known Mitch since fourth grade – albeit only from afar in those early years but in theory, he’d been in her life almost as long as he’d been in Tuck’s. But her grief didn’t count somehow; or at least, it couldn’t compete with Meg and Tuck’s – she was just the fiancé’s best friend or the best friend’s wife, always a step removed from the man himself.

  A few times she had wondered how it would have been if it had been Tuck who’d died that night – she the widow, Mitch the bereft friend, Meg the coper keeping all the balls in the air and ballooning like a galleon in full sail. The same cast of characters playing different parts in the same play – would Mitch have hit the bottle to blank out the memories? Would she, Lucy, b
e drifting through her own life like a wraith? Would Meg be able to keep the secret that was burning her from the inside out?

  ‘Here you go.’ Meg handed over the beer to Tuck, the Fanta to her.

  Lucy took a long slurp through the straw, grateful for the sugar hit. She was craving sugar too. ‘You were gone a while. I was beginning to get worried.’

  ‘Queues back to the hot-dog stand. What’s the score?’

  Lucy knew Meg didn’t give a damn about the score one way or the other, even though a victory for the Calgary Flames tonight would send them through to the semis for the Stanley Cup. ‘There’s only three in it now. Oh, wait—’ She caught sight of the scoreboard and realized she’d missed another goal, so absorbed was she in her own thoughts. That was another surprising thing about the pregnancy – not just the bodybuilder’s gargantuan appetite, but the curious blankness that settled over her like a fog without warning, robbing her of the second part of a sentence or the punchline of a joke, or even why she’d walked into a particular room. It was one thing to be losing her waistline, but her mind too?

  There were ninety seconds left on the clock; Tuck was sitting hunched forward on his seat, practically chewing on his knuckles. Lucy’s eyes kept straying to the empty seat to his left. The tickets had been bought months ago, the four of them having always followed the League with messianic zeal. Not to have come tonight was unthinkable to Tuck. For him, coming here tonight was a way of honouring his friend’s memory. ‘It’s what he would’ve wanted,’ Tuck had said as the girls stared at him, unconvinced.

  Lucy felt a frisson of dread as the Maple Leafs – Toronto’s finest – made another break, the winger dummying a quick one-two that put the keeper on the wrong foot, before swirling round the back of the goal and slicing the puck in neatly, nearside.

  Dammit: 6–2. They were pulling away again.

  She bit her lip, watching anxiously as the Flames tried to fight back but, for reasons that she missed, the game descended into a fracas between the Maple Leafs’ enforcer and the Flames’ power forward. The crowd roared as fists flew, the flash of blades ominous on the ice. Lucy hid her face, refusing to watch. She could never stomach the fights that broke out, she didn’t find it ‘entertaining’ or part of the spectacle.

  Twenty seconds later it was all over anyway, as the horn sounded and the Maple Leafs threw their sticks jubilantly in the air, the visiting fans on their feet. Lucy, Tuck and Meg didn’t move as people got up from their seats; Lucy wasn’t sure Meg was even aware the game was over. She was staring dead ahead, her drink clasped loosely and untouched between her laced fingers; she didn’t even flinch when Tuck, in a sudden fury, threw his plastic cup against the back of the chair in front, sneering, ‘Well, thank God he wasn’t here to witness that fuck-up.’

  Lucy touched her on the arm and Meg jumped, startled, falling back into her act as soon as she realized she’d been caught. ‘Oh, hey, are we done?’ She stopped short of asking the score. Tuck’s black expression was all she needed to see to know they’d lost.

  They filed out slowly in a line, one after the other, Lucy protectively keeping her arms bent at her waist, ready to keep at bay a stray elbow or stumbling drunk or anything else that might harm the baby as they pushed through the crowds. She was still at the stage where her bump was more of a lump, and it made her nervous that people couldn’t see how fragile she really was. Then again, everyone had always mistaken her solidity for toughness.

  They walked through the car park in a single line, Tuck leading them through the rows of pickups and jeeps. A few people were having tailgate parties, cracking open a few beers and letting the queues ease before heading out themselves. Two young couples were laughing about something as their forlorn trio trooped by, looking for the car. One of the girls, the prettier one, caught sight of Tuck and her eyes followed him.

  Lucy, trailing behind him, was used to it – this always happened. It was the big downside of marrying a man who was more beautiful than she; he really could have been a model if he’d wanted. She hoped her swollen belly looked more like a baby bump in profile and she stretched her arm out, trying to take hold of his hand. It was her subtle way of signalling to these girls that he was taken, he was hers.

  But Tuck, startled by the unexpected gesture, pulled his hand away instead with a bad-tempered sneer and a frown. His team had lost and he just wanted to get out of here. He wanted another beer – or ten – but it was a two-hour journey back to Banff.

  Feeling stupid, stung by the rejection, Lucy glanced back at the girl to find her smirking. She had seen the failed attempt at ‘ownership’; she could see that dumpy, pale Lucy had punched way above her weight landing a man like him. The girl didn’t say a word, nor did she have to – the look in her eyes told Lucy it was open season; a man like that was up for grabs if a girl like her wanted him to be.

  ‘Have I lost my waist?’ Lucy asked, turning her back to Meg, who was sitting – gone again – at the table. ‘From behind, I mean? You know how those skinny girls get when they’re pregnant? No one can tell they’re pregnant from behind ’cause they keep their waists. What about me? Be honest.’ She lifted her shirt.

  Meg had the decency to squint and at least try to look as though she was searching for her friend’s lost waist. ‘I think you look great.’

  ‘That means yes,’ Lucy scowled, planting her hands on her hips and looking down. Her feet were still visible – but she had big feet. ‘Jeez, I’m only eleven weeks and it’s all going to my ass. No wonder Tuck looks at me like I’m the Blob. Mom reckons I’m going to carry like her, “wide and low”, she keeps saying, like I’m some sort of artic vehicle.’

  Meg smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.

  ‘So – that coffee I promised.’ Lucy turned and busied herself with making their hot drinks. Meg was staying at the bungalow tonight; it was too late to go up to the cabin. She had wanted to go straight to bed – it was almost midnight by the time they’d parked up – but Lucy had managed to persuade her into having a ‘nightcap’. ‘It’s not often you stay over these days,’ she’d said with a beseeching smile, and Meg had relented. That was the thing about her – she was too generous.

  Tuck hadn’t hung around; his mood had barely improved from when they’d been leaving the stadium, and listening to them ‘baby talk’, as he’d put it, wasn’t the thing to remedy it.

  From her kitchen window, as the kettle boiled, she could see that almost all the lights were off in the bedrooms across the courtyard; their guests already asleep in preparation for the next day’s activities. Her eyes rose to the sky. The moon was hanging low above the mountains tonight, as though it had snagged on a ridge and was tethered there, dark puffy clouds like floating bruises drifting past on a windy tide. But the nights were growing shorter already, the days longer. She had noticed mountain bluebells down by the meadow the other day; some of their guests had reported that Lake Louise was fully thawed again and the rivers were in full spate as the last of the mountain meltwater rushed through the valley in torrents, the mountains above soggy and bleached from a lightless season under the snow. All of it was beautiful; all of it was painful, proof that life was moving on, leaving their friend behind.

  She set down the coffee mugs and sat opposite Meg, who immediately began warming her hands. For such old friends who’d never known a moment’s silence between them, conversation had become sparse and strained these past weeks. Meg was doing her best but she was merely play-acting the person she used to be. The light had gone out and nothing caught her interest, not really.

  ‘So, Tuck says he’s getting loads of calls about the boards.’ When Meg looked at her blankly, she continued: ‘You know, ever since Brett Williams won bronze at Aspen.’

  ‘Aspen . . .’ Meg echoed.

  ‘Yeah, you know, the X Games in January? Williams took third place on the “Slayer” Titch.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Meg nodded. ‘Well, that’s great.’

  Lucy sipped her coffee, watching her a
nd feeling unnerved; it was obvious Meg didn’t remember that night, or how monumental that win had been. It had put Titch Boards on the map and the four of them had celebrated all night. The crazy, dumb-ass sideline they’d set up in high school had become that rarest of phenomena: a hobby that had struck gold. They had come a long way from the days when the boys had sawed their own boards in half to see how they’d been put together, planing the rough edges and assembling their own, modified versions. And it had been a group collaboration – Lucy had come up with the name (a blend of the boys’ but also a witty nod to their USP, the scaled-down size ideal for tricks) and Meg (who had turned down a place at art school to be with Mitch, much to the chagrin of her father, Ronnie and Dolores) had designed the graphics, pioneering the use of digital photography in a field that had hitherto followed the graffiti aesthetics of skateboarding or the Hawaiian influence of surf culture; the very small production runs meant they had quickly acquired collectible status.

  But that wasn’t to say it had been an overnight success story. Ten years in and they were only just beginning to reap the dividends, with Lucy and Meg both having to work – for Barbara and Dolores respectively – to cover the shortfall of their mutual monthly outgoings. But Williams taking a bronze medal whilst riding their board in one of the biggest snowboard events in the world had been the break they’d needed: online demand had quintupled overnight and they had boutiques all over the continent calling them up.

  Mitch had been in his element, talking about setting up meetings with a manufacturer in Idaho who could deliver orders as quickly as they could place them. They already entered their own short snowboarding films annually to the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, with a view to making the cut for the worldwide tour that travelled to over forty countries globally, effectively marketing their product to their target audience with minimal financial outlay from them, but now he’d started talking about getting involved as sponsors at other smaller competitions as well.