The Brightest Star in the Sky

by Marian Keyes

  “One chance. The day you suggested. We go to that town in Meath, I clean a dirty kitchen, talk to your mother and put the frighteners on your brother.”

  “But I don’t want you to come.”

  “We’ll go in my car. I’ll drive you.”

  She wasn’t happy but it was the offer to drive that swung it in his favor. His consummate skill was in finding a weak spot and he’d assessed, correctly, that she was sick to the back teeth of being behind a wheel.

  I’m Conall Hathaway and I always get what I want.

  Day 31 . . .

  Danno missed nothing. Katie hadn’t even opened the office door fully before his eyes locked with hers. “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He unfolded himself from his chair. She watched his snake-hips cross the office floor and she was powerless to stop him.

  “Go back to your desk, Danno. Do what you’re paid to do.”

  “It’s okay about Mr. Alpha’s car,” he said quietly. “I sorted another one.”

  She swallowed. So much had already happened this morning, she’d almost forgotten how she’d disgraced herself last night.

  “What’s Slasher done now? Did he hurt you?”

  It was Danno’s concern that broke her.

  “I think . . .” She shouldn’t be telling Danno. She was his boss and he already did everything in his power to ignore hierarchy. “I think Conall is seeing the girl who lives in the flat below me.”

  George gave a theatrical gasp and placed his hand on his chest. “That’s a bit close to home.”

  “What makes you think that, babe?” Danno asked.

  Without inflection, Katie related Friday’s events with the flowers, then finding Conall waiting in his car outside the house this morning.

  “It could be just a coincidence.” Audrey had crept closer to Katie’s desk. They all had, like little woodland creatures emerging from their hidey holes.

  “No coincidences in Slasher Hathaway’s life,” Danno said. “Nothing happens by accident. You!” He pointed at George. “She’s had a shock, go out and get her a bun.”

  “So you think he’s seeing her to hurt you?” Danno asked.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” Tamsin said

  “No,” Lila-May said.

  “But how would he know she’d see him this morning?”

  “Because she goes to work every day!”

  “Okay, how did he know she’d meet the flower-delivery man?”

  “Maybe he told him to deliver them at the time she leaves for work.”

  They squabbled with quite vicious acrimony among themselves for a while but no conclusion was reached.

  “But something else happened?” Danno said.

  Katie hadn’t been expecting that. “How do you know?”

  “Because you look so . . . something.”

  “I met a man.” Even to her own ears, she sounded faint and strange.

  “Ooooh.” She had the rapt attention of all her staff, something that didn’t happen often.

  “No, not like that. Not like, I met a man.” Their faces were baffled. Kindly, but baffled. “I don’t mean, like a potential boyfriend.”

  “No, no, bit old for that now.” Danno chortled. Then he rounded on George. “Are you still here? Didn’t I tell you to go out and get her a bun?”

  “I bumped into him,” Katie said, unable to stop herself from talking about Fionn. “I actually literally bumped in to him. I was backing away from Conall’s car and smacked into him and he was so nice—” She stopped. The expression on Lila-May’s face said, Pathetic, so she definitely couldn’t splurge how she really felt: that Fionn had healed her pain. The shock of seeing Conall waiting for another girl, the agony of her jealousy, the aching, gaping sense of loss—it was as if she’d been in red-hot torment with a toothache and suddenly, with Fionn smiling and speaking, the pain was wiped clean and she was flooded with its absence, like it was a force in itself.

  “He must live near you if you bumped into him,” George said. “Maybe on the same road.”

  “Same road? He lives in the same house as me. Two flats below.”

  “What? ”

  “What’s going on in that house?” Lila-May asked sharply.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something’s happening. Something weird. That’s too much of a coincidence. Slasher’s new girl, your new man.”

  “You read too much Stephen King,” Danno said.

  Suddenly, Katie remembered the terror she’d felt one night recently, maybe a couple of weeks ago, the absolute certainty that some person or presence was in the room with her, existing like a single note held on a violin. She had almost been able to feel it breathing and she didn’t think she’d ever been so frightened. But what did it have to do with Conall or Fionn? Nothing probably.

  “He’ll only be living there for a couple of months. He says he’s making some gardening program.”

  “It’s not that guy?” George widened his eyes. “Finn something.”

  “Fionn Purdue.”

  “Yes! Google him!” George stood up. He was actually shrieking. “Google him. Google him. I saw him in the paper. Google him!”

  They clustered around Katie’s screen and watched in awe as Fionn’s picture appeared, pixel by pixel.

  “Is he that beautiful in real life?” Tamsin asked. “Or has he been Photoshopped?”

  Katie swallowed. “You probably won’t believe me, but this isn’t a great picture of him.”

  “Christ!”

  “He kissed my hand.”

  “Lucky hand!”

  They studied Fionn’s square jaw line and golden glow, trying to decide what, if any, color he had in his hair when a twinkle of light sprang from the screen and the five of them reared back.

  “Did he just . . . wink?” Danno asked, faintly.

  No one spoke.

  “Power surge or something.”

  “Yeah. Power surge.” A little bit rattled now, the exodus back to their desks began. They needed to put some distance between themselves and Katie’s freaky goings-on.

  “He said he’s coming to see me tonight.”

  “What the hell . . .” Lila-May furrowed her forehead. “Why you?”

  “I honestly have no idea.”

  Day 31 . . .

  Maeve was sitting on the steps of the Central Bank, eating her sandwich, alert for AOK opportunities. It was the bag she noticed first, a colorful embroidered mini-rucksack that she’d have loved. It was attached to a girl, a slight little thing, with short black hair, ordinary-looking in every way except for the air of isolation that surrounded her. She was alone, very alone, glowing her way darkly through the aimless shoals of shiny people, and the rigid immobile cast to her face was one that Maeve recognized. Though she wasn’t close enough to see the girl’s eyes, she knew what she’d find if she looked in there. This was today’s act and Maeve so didn’t want to do it. She’d rather lug twenty buggies up twenty flights of stairs than this. But what choice had she? Suddenly aware of Maeve’s scrutiny, the girl twisted her head, and when their gazes met Maeve forced herself to smile. Really smile, right from the heart. The girl looked puzzled—she was wondering if she knew Maeve because why would a total stranger be smiling at her with such warmth? Maeve kept smiling, kept sending out love, but the girl looked at her in alarm, almost fear. Keep smiling, keep smiling. Then Maeve’s mouth began to wobble and she had to look away. When she looked back again, the girl had gone, and Maeve felt worse than she would have thought possible. Acts of Kindness were meant to make her feel better, not plunge her into despair. What was the point of doing them? The panic attacks were back, she’d had another one this morning.

  She might stop the Acts of Kindness and Trios of Blessings, she decided. They weren’t working. But how would she break it to Matt?

  Day 31 . . .

  Conall pulled in outside 74 Star Street, an impressively adjacent parking spot for number 66. How did he manage it,
Lydia wondered. How did people like him always get what they wanted?

  “Today went quite well,” Conall said.

  She already had her seat belt off and her handle on the door but she paused. “I hate the way you do that. Always assessing things and putting values on them.”

  “So what’ll we do for our next date?”

  “Bye.”

  “Describe your perfect night.”

  “Have you gone deaf ?”

  “Go on. Your perfect night.”

  “You’re unbelievable. You only hear what you want to hear.”

  “Describe it. Everything you’ve always wanted.”

  “There you are, doing it again.”

  He shrugged.

  “Arrgh!” She put her head in her heads. “You’re one of those people who use silence like a . . .”

  Still he didn’t speak and eventually she said, “I don’t know how you do it. I’ll describe it if you swear that I won’t have to do it.”

  “Your perfect night. You don’t want to do it?”

  “Not with you.”

  “I hear you.”

  “You don’t. Okay, I’d love to go—”

  “Hold on a moment, just before you get started, describe a night that’s humanly achievable. There’s no point saying you’d like to go to the moon—”

  “I won’t,” she said shortly. Who’d want to go to the moon? “I’d like to go to Float. It’s this club with a swimming pool on the roof and—”

  “I know it.”

  “But you have to be a member—”

  “I’m a member.”

  “Mr. Hathaway! Are you really? Savage!” Her face was transformed with a luminous smile.

  “We can go there, no problem.” He looked happy to have pleased her.

  “With Poppy, Shoane and Sissy.”

  “Who are they?”

  “My friends.”

  His face hardened. “So . . . what? I come too? And pay for everything?”

  “Thanks very much, Conall. We like pink champagne.”

  He watched her, without comment.

  “Oh.” She furrowed her forehead and shook her head sadly. “Mr. Hathaway no happy?”

  He certainly didn’t look happy.

  “You asked me what my ideal night was,” she said. “I told you. Simple as.”

  He shrugged and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Are you sulking? At your age? You wanted my perfect night to be something you wanted to do too. But I’m different from you, Hathaway. You can’t make people want the same stuff as you.”

  Something in her words . . . Suddenly, he was hearing echoes from the past, from the day he’d taken Katie to Glyndebourne. What she’d said to him then. I think you’re slightly insane.

  Adapt! Adapt in order to survive! “Okay. Bring your friends. When do you want to go? Tonight?”

  “God, no. We need to get our hair blow-dried. We need time to look forward to it. It’s all right for you, going to fabulous places every night of the week, but it’s a big deal for us.”

  “Saturday, then?”

  “Saturday!” Such scorn. “Every gobshite goes out on Saturday. We’ll go on Monday, that’s when the cool people go out.”

  Monday wasn’t ideal. He was meant to be going to Milan on Tuesday. Maybe he could change that to Wednesday. “Right, Monday.”

  “And Conall?” she said softly.

  He looked at her, ready to accept her gratitude.

  “You’ll be the oldest of us by about sixty years. Just so long as you’re cool with that?”

  Three years ago

  Matt and Maeve’s wedding had been the full traditional job—a white Rolls-Royce, a sit-down meal for a hundred and fifty, the usual arguments about which cousins to invite. They themselves weren’t that bothered about having a big shindig, but both sets of parents had lobbied hard so they went along with the plan to keep the peace.

  “I don’t care how we do it so long as we do it,” Matt said.

  “To be honest, I could do without the whole song and dance,” Maeve admitted. “Fecking photographers and bridesmaids’ dresses and all. But Mam and Dad . . .”

  “Yes,” Matt was in firm agreement. “Make your peace with it. Reenee and Stevie Deegan’s only child—that’s you, by the way—is getting a massive white wedding whether she likes it or not.”

  “I don’t like it,” Maeve said gloomily, then, almost instantly, she brightened. “Sure, what the hell, it’ll be a great party.”

  Naturally, organizing a big wedding in six months was not without its challenges. Hilary and Walter Geary claimed to find Maeve’s parents’ accents impenetrable. Meanwhile, Reenee and Stevie Deegan, solid country people, who’d been putting money aside for this event almost since the day Maeve was born, were unimpressed with sophisticated Hilary and Walter.

  Tricky as things were when the in-laws weren’t meshing, they became a lot trickier when, unexpectedly, Hilary and Reenee formed an unholy alliance whereby Hilary dripped notions into Reenee’s ear and Reenee, who was absolutely awash with cash, received them eagerly.

  Suddenly, Reenee Deegan was insisting that Maeve have a makeup artist, a wedding hair-specialist, acrylic nails and a dress from Harrods.

  “Harrods?” Maeve said helplessly.

  “Yes, Harrods,” Stevie Deegan said, planting his feet firmly on the floor to deliver his piece. “We’re all going to fly to London. Nothing’s too good for our Maeve.”

  “But Harrods is a . . . a . . . joke,” Maeve exclaimed.

  “It’s the most exclusive shop in the world,” Reenee said.

  “It isn’t.”

  “Hilary says it is.”

  “And so does Walter,” Stevie threw in.

  “And you’re to have fake tan,” Reenee said. “We’re all getting it. Hilary knows a woman who’ll come and spray us. She brings a little pop-up tent so the bathroom doesn’t get destroyed.”

  “No,” Maeve said, with rising panic. “Not fake tan. I wouldn’t feel like me.”

  “Don’t shame us, Maeve,” Stevie said. “Hilary knows her onions. She says there isn’t a bride in Ireland who doesn’t get fake tan these days. She knows what’s what and we’re blessed to have her.”

  But dresses from Harrods and her mum getting sprayed with Sun FX weren’t Maeve’s only worries. There was David. His displays of wounded emotion weren’t as dramatic as they’d been in the early days, but he still wouldn’t talk to either Maeve or Matt. Sometimes, at work, Maeve would find him staring sadly at her, but he’d look away hastily as soon as she noticed him.

  “Should we invite David?” Maeve asked Matt, holding a pen and a list of possible invitees in her hand.

  “Sod him,” Matt said cheerfully.

  “Oh Matt.”

  “He’s not my friend. He’s not your friend.”

  “But we hurt him so badly.”

  “It’s been nearly a year now. Time he got over it.”

  “Don’t be so mean.” Maeve put a tick beside David’s name. “We’ll invite him.”

  “He won’t come.’

  ‘He might.”

  Maeve wasn’t sure which would be worse—if he came or if he didn’t and she had no idea which way it was going to go because, just like he had with the engagement party, David ignored the invitation, not bothering to reply one way or the other.

  The wedding itself was beautiful and Maeve found herself enjoying it even more than she’d expected she would, especially as she’d got her own way on the fake tan and the dress from Harrods. But beneath her joy ran a tiny hum of dread, so faint that she was barely aware of it. Throughout the happy day—and it really was happy—she was waiting for something.

  Her dread reached its zenith during the part of the ceremony when the priest asked if anyone knew any reason why she and Matt should not be joined together. David, she thought, and had a sudden, horrible vision of him storming into the church, waving placards and shouting about Matt having colonized Maeve. He might fling pai
nt or cry or . . . or . . .

  But the moment passed without incident and Maeve began to breathe again.

  And then it was all done. The vows had been said, the rings had been exchanged, and she and Matt were walking back down the aisle, through a sea of smiling faces, while triumphant chords swelled from the organ. Just for a moment, a thought took her away from the present: when she got back from honeymoon she would start looking for another job. It wasn’t fair to David, to have his nose rubbed in things, day in, day out.

  The decision was made and suddenly Maeve’s happiness burst into full flower.

  Day 31 . . .

  Katie knew how these things worked. Television: they did long hours. Fionn hadn’t said what time he’d visit her but it could be as late as nine. Maybe even later, depending on where they were shooting.

  She dressed in casual, hey-just-hanging-out stuff. It took several attempts before she got the right combination and even then she worried about her feet. She couldn’t wear her gold sandals because who wore four-inch heels at home? But when she put on her flip-flops, she had to take them off immediately, appalled at how stumpy they made her legs look.

  The lovely pedicure she’d had for Jason’s wedding had worn off and the hard skin on her soles had crept back, but she’d done nothing about it. Just let it happen!

  By the time I’ve scrubbed my feet raw with my diamond foot-smoother, he’ll be here.

  She knew Fionn would come. She was certain. There had been something strong and sure between them that she couldn’t explain.

  “You can depend on me,” he’d said, when they’d had their first conversation this morning. “You can depend on me for your life.” And although it was a frankly ridiculous thing for one stranger to say to another, she knew it was true.

  The balls of her feet were pretty smooth but he still hadn’t arrived, so she scrubbed a bit longer, then she stopped. She wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow if she continued eroding her soles like this.

  She was too agitated to eat. She paced between the living room and the bathroom, checking her makeup, checking it again, standing on the loo-seat and holding the hand mirror up high, because that was where the best light in her flat was. Pleased, but also frightened, she saw a largish not-rubbed-in patch of foundation on her right jaw. What if she hadn’t spotted it? What if she’d just relied on the light from the ordinary down-low mirror? And did that mean that most days she was walking around with the kind of makeup that made other people nudge and snigger? Should she ask Danno? Or perhaps Lila-May was a better bet: she was horribly honest. Seized with panic, she raced to the bedroom and changed her top. It was wrong, all wrong. What was she thinking?