A Sky Full of Stars

by Dani Atkins

  This time it was my turn to sigh. ‘Me neither.’

  ‘I’m glad I went though. I’m glad I’ve finally met Alex. Although I can’t help wondering if he feels the same way now he’s met all of us. I hope it’s given him whatever he needs to allow him and his little boy to move on now.’

  Something twisted inside me, like a knife in my gut, when he mentioned the boy with the bowed shoulders and the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. For some people it’s puppies and kittens, but for me it had only ever been children. It had made my choice of career an absolute no-brainer.

  ‘And I’m also glad to have met you – and Barbara and Jamie, of course,’ Mac added hastily, hammering home that there was nothing remotely inappropriate in his remark.

  To be honest, I’d been out of the game for so long, I doubted I’d have even recognised ‘flirty’ any more, much less remembered how to respond to it. Even so, it seemed safer to stare out through the windscreen rather than at his face, and when I did I saw with surprise that Google Maps had already led us to my road.

  ‘That’s mine just up ahead. The one by the streetlight.’

  Mac pulled up directly outside, the engine idling as he appraised my house. It always looked a lot better in dim light than it did in the daytime.

  ‘Nice place,’ he commented, his architect’s eye running approvingly over the contours of the building. ‘You don’t come across many of that age that still have a lot of the original features. You were lucky to find this one.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ I said, bending down and retrieving my still dripping umbrella from the footwell. ‘My boyfriend was the one who spotted it on Rightmove and insisted we buy it.’

  ‘Ahh.’ Mac smiled stiffly, paused, and then seemed to relax in a way he hadn’t before in my company. He had the look of a man whose very painful tooth had just been extracted. All at once I wanted nothing more than to hurry back into the home I no longer shared with Tom.

  I was wondering if we’d once again shake hands or if I should just say goodnight and get out of his car, which in hindsight would have been preferable to what did happen. Mac leant across and towards me, and I met him halfway and pressed a kiss on his cheek, which to be fair was right there in front of me. All of which would have been fine, if I hadn’t realised too late that he’d actually been leaning over to courteously open the door for me.

  I scrabbled out of the car so fast, you’d have thought my seat had been electrified. In the amber glow of the streetlight it was impossible to tell if Mac was smiling, but I suspected that he was. I can’t recall whether my manners held out long enough for me to thank him for the lift home, as, quite honestly, the seconds between exiting the car and collapsing in an embarrassed heap against my front door were rather a blur.

  *

  ‘So, on a scale of one to ten, how boring was the last speaker?’ Kyra asked as we shuffled like sheep towards the school canteen and the promise of coffee.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you slept through it,’ I said, only half joking. I’d thought her bent head had meant she was deep in thought. Who would have known that behind that curtain of long blonde hair my friend had actually been snoozing?

  ‘I’m pleading the fifth,’ she said, with mischief dancing in her eyes. ‘Much as I believe you’ve been doing about last night.’

  ‘There really isn’t anything more to tell. I went to the planetarium, I met Alex and his family, and then spent most of the evening chatting with the three other transplant recipients. They seemed like nice people. I think you’d particularly like Mac.’

  We were almost at the head of the queue for the coffee urns, and I grabbed two mugs off the stacked pile.

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘Well, he’s tall – like you.’

  Kyra gave a snort of laughter. ‘Are you so desperate to find me an English boyfriend that all we need to have in common now is our height?’

  ‘I just don’t want you to go disappearing back to Australia any time soon. That’s all.’ From out of nowhere I felt unexpectedly emotional. ‘I’d miss you too much.’

  Kyra pulled a silly face, but I could see my words had touched her. ‘Well, seeing as you love me so much, how about buying me one of those cakes to go with our coffees. I’ve left my bag back in the hall.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, handing her my mug as I delved into my large tote bag for my purse. My fingers groped around among the usual detritus, passing over something unfamiliar and then hesitantly returning to it.

  I drew it from my handbag like a surprised magician.

  ‘Who are you phoning?’ Kyra asked.

  I was still looking at the slim device in the palm of my hand like I’d never seen one of its kind before.

  ‘No one. It’s not my phone.’

  ‘Then what’s it doing in your handbag?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  17

  Alex

  He looked in all the logical places first, before moving on to the downright ridiculous ones. Having checked the pockets of his shirt and trousers and come up empty, Alex padded barefoot down the stairs through the empty house and frisked his coat, which was still draped over the banister post where he’d thrown it. Nothing.

  He stood in the hallway, rewinding his movements of earlier in the evening. He could remember speaking to Mac on his phone and then switching it off so that it wouldn’t ring during his speech. But when he tried to visualise slipping it back into his pocket, his mind was a complete blank.

  He plucked up his car keys and with a grimace ran through the rain to where he’d parked on the drive. His mood was growing as dark as the night sky as he crouched beside the driver’s door and groped beneath the seats while the rain plastered his shirt against his back. The gravel chips were digging painfully into the sensitive skin of his bare soles. Why the hell hadn’t he stopped to at least pull on some shoes?

  His thoughts had been chasing themselves like a dog after its tail ever since he’d left the planetarium. He’d gone ahead with the party to celebrate the day Lisa had entered the world as though it might act as an antidote to the last occasion when everyone had gathered, to mark her exit. But had he been lying to everyone, including himself? Had it all just been an excuse to invite four total strangers who shared a closer connection to him and Connor than anyone else in the world? What kind of fucked-up logic was that?

  With a grunt, Alex got to his feet, giving up his hunt for the missing phone, at least for now. He shut the front door a few degrees short of a slam, as though that might stop his troublesome thoughts from entering, but they knew all the cracks in the frame and squeezed through anyway.

  Tonight was meant to have been a one-off; that was what he’d promised himself. It was only natural that he’d been curious about the people Lisa had helped, but once he’d met them, seen they were well – thriving, even – he believed he’d finally find the closure everyone had told him would come.

  But meeting them in person hadn’t closed that door in the way he’d thought it would; instead, it had blown it off its hinges. Who were they, these people? There were over six thousand patients in the UK on the transplant waiting list – he knew, because he’d looked it up. Why had these four been chosen to receive Lisa’s organs over all the others? Why them?

  Alex climbed the stairs wearily, as though he’d aged twenty years in a single night. His feet stopped automatically outside Connor’s room. The curtains were open and a beam of moonlight illuminated the empty bed, with its smoothly plumped pillow. It was a house full of empty beds, and suddenly Alex regretted having Connor spend the night with Todd, Dee and Maisie. He instinctively reached into his pocket for his phone, wondering if it was too late to go round and bring him home. His laugh sounded unnatural when he remembered his phone was every bit as absent as his son.

  To confirm he really had looked everywhere, Alex dropped to a crouch beside his own bed and peered beneath the wooden frame. There were a few prairie-sized dust bunnies that would never have
been there six months ago, and also something else glinting in the dark, something small and shiny. There was no reason for his fingers to tremble as he grazed them against the floorboards trying to reach the elusive object, and yet they did. It’ll just be a coin that’s fallen from my pocket, he told himself, not believing the lie as his fingers fastened over it and drew it out.

  It was strange how a delicate twist of silver could bring a six-foot-two-inch man to his knees. But it did. Alex gently blew the dust off the solitary earring from the pair he’d bought Lisa for their ninth anniversary – their last anniversary, as it turned out. He stared at it in the palm of his hand for a long time. Had Lisa known it was missing and been too scared to tell him she’d lost it? The stupid things you worry about, he thought, when you are blissfully ignorant that there’s so much worse that can happen than losing a piece of jewellery.

  For the first time he understood why some people moved house so soon after a bereavement. Your home became a minefield of memories, and sometimes it was just too damn hard to walk through it without injury. It had taken months before he’d stopped finding strands of long blonde hair everywhere. And the realisation that one day he would unknowingly vacuum up the last one had left him with an aching sense of loss.

  When he got to his feet, the dust bunny skittered across the floor as though it really was alive. Maybe he should be more bothered about the state of the floor beneath their bed, he thought; about what Lisa would have said if she could see it.

  He fell asleep on top of the covers, as he often did these days. You needed a peaceful mind to achieve a good night’s sleep, and Alex could no longer remember what one of those felt like.

  *

  ‘Did you try ringing it?’

  Alex gave his sister-in-law a Homer-Simpson-worthy ‘Doh!’ look.

  Dee laughed. ‘Yes, of course you did. Sorry, stupid question.’

  Alex shrugged and reached for the mug of coffee that she was sliding across the breakfast bar towards him. ‘It was a waste of time anyway, because I definitely remember switching it off yesterday evening.’

  ‘Oh, so that “Find My Phone” thingy won’t work either, will it? Maybe one of the planetarium staff will find it today.’

  ‘They didn’t sound hopeful earlier, as it hasn’t been handed in.’

  Alex stared morosely into the swirling brown Americano in his mug. ‘There were photos on there I hadn’t backed up anywhere else.’

  Dee nodded sympathetically. There was no need for her to ask who was in those photos.

  ‘So, was Connor okay staying here last night?’

  He saw Dee hesitate as though torn between which might hurt him more, the truth or a lie. She went for the truth. ‘He woke up in the night, calling out for Lisa.’

  It felt like a punch to the pit of his stomach, and the mouthful of coffee Alex had just swallowed gurgled unpleasantly in protest.

  ‘Damn. He’s not done that for a couple of months. I’d hoped we’d got past that.’

  ‘To be fair, he was more asleep than awake, and he settled back down very quickly. I just stroked his hair for a while until he dropped back off—’ Her voice was hoarse and Alex’s head shot up to see that a single tear was trickling down Dee’s cheek. ‘He thought I was her.’

  Alex bit down so hard, he could taste blood on his tongue. He would not cry here, in his sister-in-law’s cheery kitchen, with its bright red fridge and matching oven. He simply wouldn’t.

  The click of the front door opening had them both wiping their hands beneath their eyes. Todd strode into the room, his cheeks bright red from the cold.

  ‘How was the park?’ asked his wife in an overly jolly voice.

  Todd’s eyes flashed between the two people he loved, but wisely he didn’t ask what he’d just interrupted. ‘It’s real brass-monkey weather out there, but at least the kids had the swings to themselves.’

  Alex made a move to climb off his stool and follow the elephantine footsteps that had just pounded up the stairs, but Dee’s hand reached out to stop him. ‘Hang on. I’ve just remembered something. I think I know where your phone is.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I think Connor might have taken it. Last night, when I was tucking him in, he slipped something under his pillow. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, and it was too dark to see properly, but now I think about it, it did look like a phone.’

  Alex’s smile was sad as he shook his head. ‘It is a phone. But it’s not mine. It’s Lisa’s. I gave it to him.’

  Todd turned around from the sink, where he was filling the kettle, a look of surprise on his face. ‘Isn’t seven a bit young to have an iPhone?’

  Alex briefly bristled at the implied criticism, then realised his brother was probably only worrying that Maisie would want one too, if she knew.

  ‘The phone’s locked, and he only has it for one reason.’

  The tears Dee had successfully stopped looked in danger of returning as she nodded slowly in understanding. ‘He uses it to speak to Lisa, doesn’t he?’

  Alex nodded, and Todd’s face went red again, and this time it was nothing to do with the cold.

  Dee left a long enough pause for them all to recalibrate before saying, ‘Connor was telling me the two of you have big plans for Saturday.’

  ‘We do?’

  ‘He said you were doing something with ginger men.’

  Like a character in a sitcom, Alex slapped his forehead in dismay. ‘Shit. I forgot about that. Bugger it.’

  Two pairs of raised eyebrows waited expectantly for an explanation.

  ‘It’s for the school fete. Each kid is meant to bring in something homemade to sell for charity. We’ve been told to make two dozen gingerbread men.’ There was a look of genuine despair in his eyes.

  Dee laughed. ‘Ah, that makes more sense. I thought the two of you were off to an Ed Sheeran concert or something.’

  Todd was still laughing as he crossed the kitchen and lovingly squeezed his wife’s shoulder. For a moment Alex felt excluded. He missed those small moments of intimacy – the silly ones, the ones that reminded you why you’d fallen in love with the person you’d married. Why you still loved them all these years later.

  ‘So you’re doing a Paul Hollywood, are you? That I’d pay good money to see. Why don’t you just fake it and buy them?’

  Alex clenched his jaw. ‘Because all the other kids are going to be bringing in stuff they’ve helped to bake at home, and Connor doesn’t need another reason to not fit in with the rest of them.’

  Dee once again reached across the breakfast bar, this time to capture his hand and press it gently. ‘You don’t have to do this, Alex.’

  ‘Yeah, I do. The fete is next—’

  ‘I’m not talking about the bloody biscuits.’ The profanity had the desired effect. It was one of only a few times that Alex had ever heard his sister-in-law swear. She drew in a deep breath as though to clear her palate of the dirty word. ‘I’m going to say something now you probably don’t want to hear.’

  Alex briefly considered interjecting with a ‘Don’t say it then,’ but he could tell by Dee’s face that she meant business.

  ‘This is what they call tough love, Alex. And you have to understand that it comes straight from the heart. Because you know how much Todd and I love you, don’t you?’

  Something hard and uncomfortable had lodged in Alex’s throat, making any type of verbal response suddenly impossible. He nodded.

  Dee took another breath, glanced at her husband as though for approval, and then dived in. ‘Your whole life has been torpedoed, and the ship you were happily sailing in went down. But it’s been six months now, and it’s time for you to stop flailing about in the water and swim back to the shore. Do you get what I’m saying here?’

  ‘That I’m slowly drowning?’

  He’d meant it to sound jocular, but from the sadness in Dee’s eyes he realised that was exactly what she’d meant.

  ‘You’re never going to be able to b
e a mother to that wonderful little boy of yours. The shoes you’re trying to fill are simply too big. The harder you try, the more it’s just going to keep hurting both of you. And it’s breaking our hearts watching it happen. There’s nothing you can do, Alex, to give Connor his mummy back.’ Dee bit her lip and then delivered what Alex had to admit was a powerful closing argument. ‘But you can give him his daddy back.’

  It was almost a relief when the herd of elephants chose that moment to descend the stairs again. Maisie barrelled into the kitchen like a Chinese acrobat, with Connor a few sedate steps behind her.

  Dee reverted seamlessly to their former topic as though they hadn’t just been swimming in waters too deep and dark to navigate. ‘Would you like me to bake those gingerbread men for you? I could drop them round sometime tomorrow.’

  Alex could feel Connor’s eyes on him, as though he was waiting for his father to let him down again. How many times had he done that since Lisa had been taken from them? And how bad was it that Alex didn’t know the answer to that question?

  ‘No. We’re good. Connor and I will figure it out together. How hard can it be to bake a batch of gingerbread men anyway?’

  18

  Molly

  Before the start of the afternoon session, I asked the organisers to make an announcement about the mysterious mobile. This prompted a flurry of delving into handbags and pockets, but no one claimed it. And though I taped up my contact details in the hall on my way out, I was no longer convinced the phone belonged to a fellow teacher after all.

  When I got home I set the phone down on my kitchen table, where my glance kept returning to it as I chopped the vegetables for a healthy stir-fry dinner. This was my antidote to a day of mindless snacking, which Kyra had solemnly declared was ‘the only way to survive a CPD day’.

  As my dinner sizzled in the pan, I picked up the phone, turning it over in my palm as though the answer to how it had come to be in my bag was at the end of a thread I had to unravel. The sensation came so unexpectedly, I thought it was an electric shock. It almost made me drop the phone on the quarry-tiled floor, which would have rendered the question of returning it a moot point. I didn’t believe in psychometry, or anything remotely ‘woo-woo’, as Tom used to laughingly call it, and yet when I’d held the phone there’d been… something. Something I couldn’t explain. It was a feeling of connection or familiarity, for want of a better word.