Bright Stars

by Sophie Duffy

  ‘Who can forget?’ Bex breaks the silence.

  ‘I’ve forgotten a lot.’ Christie’s voice is soft; we can only just hear it above the rustle of the trees. She takes off her prosthetic and lies it on the ground in front of us like a macabre peace offering.

  We all stare at it, the lifeless leg.

  I shut my eyes, see a flash of white lights, hear my own voice urging Swing over! Swing over! A splash of vomit as it hits the road. Someone standing over me, asking if I’m all right. A man in the hospital, offering me money, telling me to say I was driving. I wasn’t driving. Tommo was driving. I’m so confused now, I’m beginning to question my own memory. But I remember saying, Yes, I’d do it, I’d take the blame. They said it would work out. I’d get off. But it didn’t work. I didn’t get off. There was the breathalyser. The grim policeman hovering like Death. They said I’d have my licence taken away. A fine. So I pleaded guilty, did as I was told, knowing there would be a reward. But most of all, I knew I was doing it for Bex, who couldn’t live without Tommo. And I could step in and take his place. Even after everything Tommo had done, after everything Bex had done, I loved her. I love her still, I think, though I’m not sure why love should make me feel this way. But I do know it is pointless. It has to stop.

  ‘I’m going for a slash,’ Tommo says, before disappearing into the bushes.

  I wait for him to be out of sight, then I say: ‘I haven’t forgotten either. I remember finding Bex on the bathroom floor. I thought she was dying. Then there’s this woman, she walks in and calls an ambulance. And soon they arrive and they’re putting her on a stretcher thing and carrying her down the corridor. And I remember you, Christie, looking more annoyed than concerned. I remember you telling Tommo not to go with Bex, urging him to stay and do their act. To let me go instead. That she’d be fine with me.’

  ‘You said what?’ Bex sits upright, turns to Christie. ‘You told Tommo to stay?’

  ‘Easy, Bex,’ Christie fires back. ‘We knew you were going to be okay. I guessed you’d taken something, and you know what? That was your decision.’

  ‘Yes, it was my decision,’ Bex counters. ‘But it was a stupid one. My boyfriend gave me the cocaine as I’d had some difficult news that day. I was really down. He wanted me to be all right.’

  ‘He wanted you to be all right so he could go on stage,’ I tell Bex.

  ‘You know nothing about Tommo, Cameron. Nothing. You’ve always warned me off him, but he has a good side. He cares about stuff. About me.’

  ‘I think I know him pretty well,’ Christie says.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Bex is on her feet now, fuming.

  I look at Christie, wondering what she’s going to do.

  ‘He was ambitious,’ she says. ‘He would have made it big time had he gone on that show.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Bex says. ‘No one knows that. You were the ambitious one, pushing him to let me go to hospital without him, right when I needed him most.’

  ‘Sheesh, Bex. I thought you were a strong independent woman. Why the hell would you need him to come? Cameron would’ve been there for you. It didn’t have to be your man.’

  ‘Yes, Christie, my man. You were after him. You were a man-eater.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Christie runs a manicured finger over her sleek eyebrow, exaggerating the gesture for effect. Like she’s Mae West. Someone strong and scary and brave. ‘So much for the sisterhood.’

  ‘Screw the sisterhood.’ And with that Bex bends down and scoops up Christie’s leg. She grips it in her hands like it’s a cricket bat, a baseball bat, and I actually think she is going to whack Christie around the head. But she doesn’t. She walks down the gentle slope towards the water and she hurls the dismembered fake limb into the air where it quivers for one beautiful, glorious nanosecond before falling with style into the lake with a resounding plop.

  ‘Who’s the man-eater?’ Tommo has emerged from the bushes, struggling to do up his flies. ‘And what was that splash?’ He looks at each of us in turn, utterly confused.

  Then Christie pushes herself up from the bench and hops to the edge of the water, watches helplessly as her $25,000 hand-crafted prosthetic disappears into the darkness of the water. Then, miraculously, it bobs up again, caught in a floating branch.

  ‘My leg! I can see it! It’s right there!’ She swings from relief to anger in a flash, lurches towards Bex: ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ As she says these words her remaining leg gives way but I am there, Superkiltman, at her side, supporting her, the fury boiling in her body. She lets me hold her as she shouts at Bex. ‘Have you any idea how much that costs!’

  ‘Claim it on your insurance.’ Bex slumps back onto the bench, keeping her distance, arms crossed like a grumpy child.

  ‘It’s not a freaking accessory,’ Christie shouts. ‘It’s a leg. It takes forever to get one of those made. You can’t just go to Walmart and buy one. I need it for walking, seeing as I lost one of my actual legs in a car crash caused by you guys.’

  Wow. She said it. All this time and we finally hear her say – well, shout – those words that have chased us down the years.

  ‘What do you mean?’ This is Bex. ‘Don’t you turn this around on me. If you weren’t so pushy we would never have been in London.’

  ‘So it’s my fault for trying to make a success of that crappy band?’

  ‘Hey,’ says Tommo. ‘We were not crappy.’ Self-absorbed piece of jobbie.

  ‘And what about you?’ She turns her head to meet my gaze. ‘What have you got to say?’

  ‘I have plenty to say. In time.’

  ‘I don’t have time right now. I need my leg. One of you has to go get it.’

  She waits. Another siren yowls in the distance. Then quiet.

  Tommo is standing beside her now. ‘I’ll get it.’ He takes hold of her left arm while she reclaims her right one from me, then he helps her hobble back to the bench where she sits down as far away from Bex as she can.

  ‘You can swim, right?’

  ‘Course I can swim,’ Tommo says. ‘They don’t call me Johnny Weissmuller for nothing.’

  ‘Johnny Weissmuller is dead.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Tommo coughs. Phlegm thrashes around inside his lungs. He wrestles off his leather jacket and chucks it over the back of the bench where it hangs like a corpse. He slowly heads down the slope, tentatively, into the water, his hair shining black in the dark.

  But then I find myself wading in after him. ‘I’ll get it! You’ve got a cold Tommo, let me!’ Let me, like I’m teacher’s pet. Like I’m back in the JCR the night before the hunt. Me! Me! Please choose me!

  ‘Hey, you two!’ We stop, up to our thighs in icy water, Tommo’s legs skinny as hell, my kilt floating like a girl’s skirt. ‘Whoever gets my leg, gets a reward. 25,000 bucks. That’s Canadian bucks, if you’re wondering. What d’ya say?’

  She is not unaware that she sounds like a medieval princess. Throwing down her handkerchief. The gauntlet. Whatever it is she throws down, we launch ourselves into the water. The deathly cold water. Water that is far colder than I expected it to be and I had expected it to be cold. But I have a mighty warmth radiating inside me, lighting me up. It gives me strength. It gives me super powers. I strike out into the dark waters, towards the glow of the leg in the moonlight, or is it lamp light, we’re in the centre of London, after all, in the Serpentine, Tommo and I fighting for a leg.

  I’m so close now. Waist-deep. Inches away.

  I lurch with all my might and the leg is in my grasp. I have it. I have won. I am the victor.

  I should head back to the bank, hand it over to Christie, keep my eyes on the prize. But I don’t. I whack Tommo with it, not as hard as I would like to, just a blow across his shoulders, but it’s the sentiment that counts. ‘This is for Culloden!’ In a flash, Tommo makes a lunge and grapples it back. Whacks me harder than I whacked him. ‘This is for the Kra
nkies!’ he grunts. Then he whacks me again. ‘And the Bay City Rollers!’ My strength explodes. I jump up, pushing down on Tommo’s shoulders, dunking him under the water, his hair in my hands like seaweed. There is a tussle. Limbs splashing about in desperation. But I am determined. I grope for Christie’s leg, find it, grab it, yank it, finally grip it in my hand, raising it aloft like it’s Wallace’s sword. I paddle towards the shore, kilt ballooning around me while Tommo coughs, behind me now, the enemy, sputtering and swearing but still coming after me. I have a foot on the bed of the lake, and another, and I’m stumbling towards the edge, the shore, dry land, when something rushes up to hit me in the face. Smack! I have been rugby tackled, thrown forward into the cold, hard-as-glass water, my breath snatched and swum away with. I have no sense of where I am or what I am doing. My body takes over, floats for what could be ten seconds, ten minutes. I have no sense of time. Then finally, I come up for air, my face stinging, eyes smarting, my mouth full of muck, my kilt weighing me down. It is only when I’ve struggled to get up, to stand up, that I realise I no longer have the leg. I am empty-handed. I am the runner-up. I am the loser. And yet again, Tommo is triumphant.

  Bex and Christie stare with disbelief at the farcical sight of Tommo emerging from the freezing water looking nothing like Daniel Craig, especially with a prosthetic limb in his hand. He is breathing heavily, panting like a dog. Like Myrtle after her daily postman mania.

  He hands over the leg to Christie who is sitting demurely on the bench like Diana herself. The vision in red outside the Taj Mahal. The vision in blue by the Peter Pan fountain. With a leg missing. He hands it over in an absurd, gallant style. She inclines her head, accepts it, holds it at arms’ length as it drips filthy water onto the path. Tommo takes off his shirt, unbuttoning it with cold fingers, peeling it off his wet skin, a Nirvana tattoo inked across his chest – Nirvana, really – using the shirt like a handkerchief to wipe away at the slime that has gathered during the leg’s brief adventure, shivering and shaking, muttering like a nutter to himself, to no one, coughing and barking and spitting gunge onto the path, centre stage again, and I think of him at the Sugarhouse in the dry ice, strumming his guitar, singing out loud with that voice that couldn’t hold a long note but that had something special and I think of the trip to London, the BBC, that letter folded up in the pocket of Bex’s old man cardigan, the letter I picked up and read, that could’ve blown away on that cold frosty night on the A6. I think of her convulsing on the floor of the toilets at the BBC, holding her head. I think of Tommo’s face: the flutter of anguish, the anxiety of making a choice.

  He chose Bex.

  And Bex reaches out to him now, puts her hand on his bare, boyish chest. ‘I think we’d better go back. You know, check on the kids. And get you dry and warm. Why the bloody hell did you take off your shirt? On a night like this? You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘I can’t feel the cold.’ He smiles at her and takes her hand. He is eighteen years old again, messing about and being cool, an irresistible force. I want to scream at her: Did you know he blamed you? He blamed you for messing up his precious career as a pop star. Did you know? But this chance is taken away from me. Tommo slumps to the ground and the skies open.

  I’m the one who looks after him while we wait for the ambulance. I thought it was a joke at first, Tommo being an arse, but then Bex freaked out, saying his name over and over, her hair dripping, her clothes soaking.

  She’s calmed a wee bit, stroking his hand, whispering things I can’t hear, not even sure if Tommo can hear them, his head in her lap.

  They appear from nowhere, sorting Tommo out, lifting him onto a stretcher where he lies coughing and retching and it sounds pretty bad and Christie looks horrified and Bex is saying sorry again and again and again.

  He’s taken away, a mask over his face, Bex beside him, still clutching his hand. He lifts his other hand, the non-smoking one, like he is waving to Christie and me but I don’t know if he is beckoning or saying goodbye.

  Christie has attached her prosthetic.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Not really. I’ll be okay. We’ll get a cab when we make it to the road.’ She holds onto me as we follow behind the others, like mourners in a funeral procession.

  ‘I feel awful,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t.’ I am firm. ‘Don’t feel bad. This is what you might call karma.’

  ‘Do you believe in that stuff?’

  ‘Aye. Your past comes back to haunt you.’

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  ‘I do. I do believe in ghosts. But look, Christie, there’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘No.’ She stops, stands still, closes her eyes, swaying a wee bit so I hold on to her gently. I am soaking wet, frozen through to the bones but I stand with her, mirroring her, except I keep my eyes open.

  ‘A white flash of light,’ she says. ‘The screech of rubber tires.’ Her breathing quickens and I hold her closer. I believe I can feel her heart beating against mine. Boom boom. ‘I’m hurled upwards, banging my skull against metal, then I’m tumbling, my ribs breaking, my collar bone snapping, my spleen ruptured, my leg trapped, crushed, darkness.’

  ‘Christie…’

  ‘No,’ she says again, firmly, eyes still closed. ‘I dreamt of home. I saw my mom and dad. He was out on the estate, inspecting the vines, she was in the office, bossing people around. I felt the hot Ontario sun on my skin and heard the Niagara River as it fell over the rock. Then it was like I was in a barrel, like the old school teacher who went over the Falls. I was a leaf on the wind, a snowflake in a blizzard, plunged deep into the waters. I was beaten up and drowning. Then I seemed to get through it. I thought I’d take a nap. Sleep it off. Then I’d be okay. I’d make it home. That’s when everything went quiet and I thought I was dead.’

  ‘Christie…’

  ‘I heard voices. Felt vibrations rumble through me. Someone held my hand and squeezed it. They said they’d get me out of there. I didn’t know where “there” was. My mind was empty. I remembered nothing. But now I see black hair. I see a leather jacket. I see Tommo.’ She opens her eyes, shudders like a ghost has walked over the grave she was very nearly lowered into all those years ago. ‘I know what you’re going to tell me,’ she says. ‘Tommo was driving, wasn’t he?’

  I nod, solemn as an undertaker.

  A beat.

  ‘You went to prison for God’s sake? Why would you cover for Tommo?’

  ‘He was drunk and I’d only had two drinks. His dad came to the hospital and asked me if I’d do it. If I’d swap places. And Bex was distraught. She knew Tommo would never survive prison. They said I’d get a suspended sentence.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Tommo’s dad. Tommo’s rich dad with the sacks of gold. He gave you money if you’d take Tommo’s place?’

  ‘He was over the limit.’

  ‘So were you.’

  ‘I’d only had two drinks.’

  ‘But the breathalyser said otherwise.’

  ‘I know it did. But I truly believed I’d only had two drinks.’

  She stops, takes this in, carries on walking, striding fast. I have to hurry to catch up with her so I don’t get left behind. ‘It seemed too late to go back and change my mind,’ I tell her. ‘And my family needed the money. And there was Bex. I did it for Bex.’

  She stops again, stares at me intently so I can’t look away as much as I want to because the shame is too much.

  ‘Shut the hell up. I can’t believe I never questioned this. I could never get a hold of it, that night. It was slippery, fluid, always changing but always the same black hair. I should’ve known.’

  ‘We tried to make the best of a terrible, terrible situation.’

  ‘And Bex went along with it?’

  I nod.

  ‘The weak, pathetic, love-struck bimbo.’

  She was weak, pathetic and love-struck, but not a bimbo.

  ‘And you took his place, over the
limit?’

  ‘They said it wouldn’t be as big a deal for me as it would be for Tommo who was wrecked. Who’d already been hauled up on a drug’s charge, remember.’

  ‘The bastard,’ she hisses. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t say that when he’s so sick, but what the hell?’

  ‘We all willingly got in that car.’

  ‘I wanted out of there. Richard was being creepy. The trip to London sucked. I don’t remember thinking anything but that.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘But when I came round and they questioned me, explained to me what had happened, I told Dad I just wanted to go home. I persuaded him to drop any idea of pursuing you through the courts.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘When I knew you’d been charged, I was shocked, but I didn’t question it. And when I heard you’d gone to prison I knew that was retribution enough. You didn’t need my dad chasing you to the gates of hell.’

  ‘The gates of hell?’

  ‘My dad’s a dramatic person. It’s the sort of thing he’d do.’

  ‘I thought I’d only had two drinks,’ I say, another of those Lost Boys.

  We carry on walking along the path, one foot in front of the other.

  Thatcher changed the political landscape of British politics, transforming even the Labour party. Her rise from a grocer’s shop to death at the Ritz is a story that still divides opinion today.

  June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography,

  (Routledge, 2002)

  St. Mary’s Hospital, Sunday Morning

  Corridor

  The last time I was in London I was in a hospital looking after Bex. This time she is looking after Tommo.

  Christie and I got a cab back to the hotel to check on the twins. They were very quiet, even Loulou. They wanted to go straight to the hospital but Christie persuaded them to stay put, to get some sleep, they could see their dad in the morning.

  I don’t know if this was for the best. When my mum went to hospital she didn’t come back. All my life I’ve been unable to shake off this feeling that had I gone with her she might have been okay, which I know is stupid.