Christmas Under the Stars

by Karen Swan

  ‘Yes. OK. Good plan,’ Meg nodded, shooting Jonas another look before darting from the room.

  She grabbed the clothes she’d left lying on the bed earlier and dressed in record time – Ronnie’s black jeans and a slim-fit cream jumper, pulling her hair down and brushing it through quickly. There didn’t seem to be much point in putting make-up on, not now he’d arrived and had already seen her; besides, she could hear them all laughing next door and she wanted to get back out there. She took one quick look in the mirror – did she look OK? She didn’t want to dress up – everyone was in jeans and jumpers and socks – but then again, she’d invited him over for dinner; he’d brought wine. She had to make some effort. She wanted to look good for him.

  Jonas straightened up with a knowing look as she came to the door and smiled in.

  ‘That was quick!’ Jack exclaimed, before looking over at Ronnie. ‘Learn from your big sister.’

  Ronnie stuck out her tongue at him and Jonas laughed. ‘Meg does that too.’

  ‘Does she?’ Ronnie asked, but with a particular note in her voice, an eyebrow hitched again as she looked across at Meg. ‘You are a very observant man, Jonas Solberg.’

  ‘Oh, shit! The pudding!’ Meg gasped suddenly, running through to the kitchen and resuming her panic of a few minutes earlier. Grabbing the cobbler topping from the fridge and squeezing a lemon into a bowl of water, she began peeling and slicing the apples, dunking them in the lemon water before they could brown. The kitchen bar where she was working looked back into the main room, so she could still see and hear everything, but she felt cut off in her separate quarter and like an eavesdropper as she listened to Jack continue to grill Jonas – as he had at every encounter – about astronaut life.

  ‘So, stream of consciousness, OK? I want one-word answers. What was the single best thing about being in space?’ Jack was asking.

  Jonas glanced over at her in bemusement. ‘The view.’

  ‘And the single best thing about being back on Earth?’

  ‘The weather – wind, rain, sun, snow. It all feels incredible.’ Badger had gone to sit by him, conveniently positioning his head just under Jonas’s hand, and Jonas fondled his ears.

  Meg smiled, as Jack continued his interrogations. With the apples all cored, peeled and sliced, she arranged them in the buttered dish, sprinkled over the topping and set it aside. Then, pouring water into a pan and grabbing the peeler again, she began de-skinning the potatoes at speed.

  ‘I just realized you don’t have a drink,’ Jonas said, wandering over a few minutes later. ‘Where are the glasses?’

  She pointed with the knife. ‘Thank you. It’s thirsty work, all this chopping.’

  ‘Can I help?’ Jonas asked, pouring her some wine and placing the glass down in front of her, his hand sliding down her bottom and squeezing lightly.

  ‘Oh, no, please, sit, relax,’ she said loudly again, in case Ronnie was listening. ‘Enjoy. This’ll only take a—’

  ‘I know, but if they say a problem shared is a problem halved –’ he said, opening the drawer and pulling out a small paring knife – ‘I reckon the same must be true of potatoes.’

  She stepped along so that he had room to join her and they stood side by side, peeling the potatoes together, facing back into the main room. Jack and Ronnie were huddled together on the sofa, looking at something in a magazine, Badger stretched out and snoring in front of the fire. Snow dashed past the windows, lit up by the outdoor light, and the blue-hued cold was in contrast to the rich honeyed light of the cabin. The fire was at full roar now and the rich textures and tones of the reindeer-skin rugs, sheepskins thrown over the chairs and the ruby-red curtains, embroidered with white pin dots, rendered the little home to its fullest glory. The smell of pie wafting from the oven wasn’t bad either. Meg couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this happy.

  ‘I love this place,’ Jonas said, dropping each potato into the saucepan in front of them. ‘I totally see why you wouldn’t want to leave here.’

  ‘Thank you. Although you might not think that when I tell you there’s no Wi-Fi and the TV reception is dodgy.’

  He looked back at her, that look on his face again. ‘Well, there are other things to do.’

  Her stomach flipped; she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get through dinner.

  Ronnie glanced over, curious at their quiet industry, and Jonas cleared his throat. ‘Do you ever worry about the wildlife getting too close?’ he asked, in a louder voice.

  ‘Not really. We’ve got locks on the bins and we keep a gun loaded, just in case.’ She bit her lip as she realized she’d use the plural ‘we’. As though Mitch was still here.

  If Jonas noticed, he didn’t show it. ‘But what if you’re outside, or on the snowmobile?’

  ‘There’s a gun that fires blanks in the seat compartment and I never go anywhere without pepper spray. Especially after what happened in July.’

  He put down his knife and squeezed her hand in silence. She’d seen from his expression how horrified he’d been when she’d told him in detail about the bear attack, earlier in the week.

  ‘Good. Take no chances.’ He winked at her, making her stomach do flips again. ‘We’ve got a universe on our tail, remember.’

  ‘Would it be wrong to have thirds?’ Ronnie asked, but she was already pushing her bowl back towards Meg. ‘When did you learn to cook like that?’

  ‘Oh, you know, when I wasn’t at med school,’ Meg replied with a wink.

  ‘Ouch!’ Jack grinned as Ronnie laughingly stuck out her tongue.

  ‘Yeah, well, if I had to choose between being able to do a laparotomy and that cobbler I’d definitely choose—’

  ‘The cobbler!’ Jack finished for her.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ronnie chuckled. ‘Gimme more.’

  Jonas watched as Meg spooned out another round of extra helpings, even though they’d all had seconds. She looked enquiringly at him but he shook his head lightly.

  Forty-eight hours from now, he was going to be at a dinner in a hotel in DC with an elite bunch of scientists, and this night was going to feel more distant to him than he’d ever felt in space. The banter, the fire, the food, her laugh, this tiny cabin . . . this tiny cabin where it had all begun . . . The golden light almost made him feel he could dip the night in gold and preserve it for ever.

  Part of him wished now he’d never come. It would have been best to leave things as they were – the silence that she had begun between them just spinning out into eternity, like the very space that had brought them together. Because how was this supposed to work? Her life was here. Her life was this. How could he ask her to give it up – these roots, this home – for the life of a nomad, trailing from country to country to space to country . . . ?

  But it was already too late. When Jack had asked him those questions earlier, wanting stream-of-conscious responses, he had had to work to ensure he gave him nothing of the sort.

  ‘What was the best thing about being in space?’ Her. ‘The view.’

  ‘What’s the best thing about being back on Earth?’ Her. ‘The weather.’

  Jonas sighed lightly and reached forward for his drink, seeing how Meg’s gaze kept fluttering over to him and then away again like a butterfly that couldn’t be caught, checking he was OK, that he was having a good time . . . He watched her as she listened to the others, seeing how she blushed whenever he caught her gaze.

  He knew that he was screwed.

  ‘Well, if the graphic design’s not going to work out, you could always go into catering,’ Ronnie was saying.

  Jonas tuned back in. ‘I think it’ll work out.’

  ‘Do you?’ Meg asked, looking both surprised and touched by his certainty.

  Ronnie leaned in to the table and reached for the bottle of wine – their third. ‘Well, not if Lucy has anything to do with it. She has an incredible knack for stuffing things up for my sister.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t,’ Meg said warningly.

&nb
sp; But Ronnie wasn’t deterred. Wine had made her fearless. ‘Have you met Lucy yet?’

  Jonas’s eyes slide over to Meg. ‘Just the once.’

  ‘And what were your impressions of her? Be honest.’

  ‘Well, as I said, I only met her the once and that was briefly,’ he replied tactfully.

  ‘I know. But your gut response.’

  He sighed. ‘Unhappy. Insecure. Angry.’

  ‘Thank you! My assessment exactly,’ Ronnie said triumphantly.

  ‘Ron,’ Jack murmured, catching sight of Meg’s expression.

  ‘Well, if she is all those things, it’s because that’s how Tuck makes her feel,’ Meg replied with defiance.

  ‘Tuck?’ Ronnie repeated. ‘Lucy’s behaviour is Tuck’s fault?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a terrible husband and an even worse father. She worships the ground he walks on but it was the biggest mistake of her life marrying that man.’

  ‘Because . . . ?’ Jonas asked.

  Meg looked at him in astonishment, as though his question implied scepticism of her words. ‘Because he cheats on her. Yes, he does,’ she said quickly as Ronnie’s mouth dropped open too. ‘There, I’ve said it. He’s always been a player and marriage hasn’t slowed him down. Everyone knows it but no one will talk about it. Poor Lucy’s always treading on eggshells, freaking out every time he’s late home. She’s a nervous wreck and it’s all his fault.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Jonas. ‘It isn’t the impression I had of him at all.’

  Meg frowned, looking baffled by his comments. ‘You’ve barely met him.’

  ‘Well, I know but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘We did the workshop and had lunch together the other day.’

  Meg looked gobsmacked. ‘So because you had lunch that makes you an expert on him, does it? Even though I’ve known him eleven years?’

  ‘Not at all. Look, I admit I barely know the guy, but sometimes we can be too close to people to see them objectively, that’s all.’

  Meg’s mouth opened further and Jonas could tell he’d said too much – been too frank when everyone had had too much to drink. ‘So now you’re saying you think I’m blind to my oldest and best friends’ characters?’

  Jonas paused, hating that they were seemingly now on opposing sides of an argument. He shook his head. ‘No, I . . . No.’

  ‘No, you’re not saying that?’ Meg persisted, refusing to let it drop.

  He smiled, trying to defuse the situation and wondering how this had escalated so quickly. Was this assassination of Tuck’s character just her being protective of Lucy, or was there more to it? He remembered Tuck’s own comments about Meg hating him – although he’d refused to be drawn on why, he was clearly right. Otherwise why would Jonas’s own defence of the guy have upset her so much? ‘Look, does it really matter what I think?’

  ‘Yes! It matters hugely,’ she blustered, her cheeks hot but she couldn’t meet his eyes as she fiddled with a napkin instead. ‘I want to know why you would take his side over mine.’

  ‘But I don’t.’

  ‘Clearly you do,’ she argued, her eyes bright, her colour rising.

  Jonas looked for a moment, his own arm slung over the table in front of him, hers on the other side. Her hand was trembling, he noticed, and all he wanted to do was reach out and take it in his. But he couldn’t. Not in front of the others. They’d all had far too much wine.

  ‘Look, when I was in training at the ESA, we were taught to see what was really there, not what we assumed would be there. It’s like that sentence: “The cat sat on the the mat.” Eighty-two per cent of people don’t pick up on the second “the” because they expect there to be only one, so the brain rejects what is anomalous and processes the information according to what is expected to be there.’

  She frowned. ‘Meaning . . . ?’

  ‘Meaning, that if Tuck or Lucy don’t behave in a way that corresponds to your perceptions of them, then you process only what does correspond and reject any evidence to the contrary.’

  There was a long silence, Meg looking back at him with a look of having been betrayed that physically pained him. ‘But that’s just theoretic—’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly, looking down at the table and beginning to stack everyone’s bowls. ‘If this is what the ESA is teaching then it must be right. It’s scientific fact. I’m sure Tuck would be over the moon to know what a cheerleader he’s got in you.’

  Jonas watched as she got up from the table and placed the dirty dishes in the sink, her back rigid, her shoulders too high to her ears.

  He slumped back in his seat as across the table, Ronnie – looking sheepish now – mouthed, ‘Sorry.’ But the damage had already been done.

  They’d just had their first fight.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Saturday 18 November 2017

  It was a pale dawn, as though the sun was sleepy too. Meg shivered in her favourite chair on the porch, the sheepskins and blankets tucked tightly around her, and Badger – oversized though he was – curled across her feet. It was a rare treat but on such a cold morning as this . . .

  The snow had stopped falling sometime around five and the landscape was more beautiful than ever, the mountains’ sharp crests softened into rounded hillocks, the valley floor tucked tight and white like a sheet; streaks of red were painting a sky which had billowed upwards and stayed there; trees had become monuments – decorated frosted pillars with the interplay of snow and leaf like the fretwork of an intricate lace . . . Meg stared into the void, the moon still visible, a fingernail in the sky.

  Twenty-four hours and he’d be gone.

  A week ago everything had been fine. She’d been fine – finer than she’d been for a long time. He’d been a voice in the dark, a page on a screen, an idea of a person, and now he’d ruined it. Ruined her. Because in that week, it was as though her world had shifted, so that although she had the same life, the same view – this view – she had a new perspective. He had reminded her what it was like to have a friend, a lover, someone to talk to, confide in, laugh with . . . even fight with.

  She dropped her gaze as she remembered last night again, how awkward she’d made it for him when he was leaving – her smile fake, her body stiff as she waved him off. She’d seen the confusion in his eyes, known he hadn’t understood what had just happened, oblivious to the fact that he’d just walked through a minefield. Of course, he couldn’t know what Tuck really was or what he’d done. Infidelity to her friend was the very least of it.

  But that wasn’t Jonas’s fault—

  A creak made her jump.

  Ronnie, wrapped in about ten layers of Jack’s clothes, it seemed, crept onto the porch and gave an apologetic smile. Another one. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’ Her voice was short and she looked away again.

  ‘Room for a little one?’ Ronnie asked, walking to the side of the swing chair and sliding herself next to her sister. She carefully shuffled her feet beneath Badger’s slumbering body. ‘Oooh, he’s warm.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  Ronnie snuck a sideways glance at her. ‘Meg . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But I really am.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I never should have started on that topic.’

  ‘I know,’ Meg said pointedly, shooting her a stern look, before looking back out to sky again.

  They sat in silence for a bit.

  ‘Listen, Meg, I just want to say . . .’ Ronnie began, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant.

  ‘It’s better if you don’t.’

  ‘No. I wasn’t meaning about last night.’

  Meg arched an eyebrow. ‘What then?’

  ‘I was going to say, don’t put any store by those things Lucy said – about Hap, I mean. I’m not having a go at her,’ she said quickly, defensively. ‘But she’s got no right to make you feel guilty for wanting to be happy again.’

  ‘You’ve told me that before.’

  ‘I know! Because it’s true, e
specially . . .’ She hesitated again.

  ‘Yes?’ Meg asked impatiently.

  ‘Especially because, I do feel – and so does Jack – we both think it . . . that Jonas makes you happy— Wait!’ she said, seeing how Meg instinctively turned away.

  ‘Ron,’ Meg said, stopping her. ‘I appreciate you saying this. Really I do. But he’s going to be gone from here this time tomorrow – he’s flying to DC and then on to New York and then after that, back to the ESA headquarters in Cologne, and then God knows where, before he will finally go back to Norway for Christmas. And I . . . I will still be here. OK?’ She shook her head. ‘I know what you’re saying but there’s no point in it; there’s no way forward from this. Pen pals is as good as we’re gonna get.’

  Ronnie slumped under the dead weight of her words. ‘There’s always a way if you want there to be.’

  Meg snorted. ‘Since when did you get to be such an optimist?’

  ‘Since I fell in love, that’s when. You’re only living half a life if you’re living without love.’

  Meg felt suddenly exhausted by her little sister’s impassioned conviction. Talk about the zeal of the converted . . . From the moment she’d put her relationship with Mitch before art college, she had had nothing but grief for choosing love over a career, but now that Ronnie had bitten from the apple, love was the answer? ‘Look, I’ve had my love, Ron. I’ve been where you are. I was a week from getting married and then he died. I’m sorry that I can’t just move on from that.’

  ‘I know how much you loved Mitch. He was a great guy, and you were a brilliant couple. But just do me a favour, OK? Don’t idolize the man. Don’t turn him in death into something he never was in life.’ Meg’s mouth parted but Ronnie carried on. ‘He wasn’t perfect, because no one is. But try to remember that as well as all the good times – and there were loads, I know – you guys also used to argue a lot. He drove you mad when he’d stay in town with Tuck and not tell you till he was too drunk to stand, or when he drank the juice from the carton – and he could be a right grumpy bugger.’ She blinked, looking both fierce and frightened at the same time. ‘All I’m saying is, just keep the balance, OK? Because if you hold him up as this shining beacon of perfect love, no one else will ever be able to compete. And that would be a real shame because Jonas is brilliant.’