The Brightest Star in the Sky

by Marian Keyes

  He rested his chin on her head and she cried into his sweater. When the worst of the tears had passed, she pulled herself away. “I’m all right now.”

  “Sure?”

  “Grand. Thanks.” But being held by him had felt good and right and she had the unexpected thought that maybe herself and Conall would be friends after this.

  “Let’s get cleaning.”

  “Okay.” Conall began gathering up bloody towels from the floor. “What’ll I do with these?”

  “Stick them in the machine and—Oh, you probably haven’t a clue how to put on a wash.”

  “Course I have.”

  “So let’s see you.”

  “Come on!” Carrying his bundle of towels, he strode down the hall until he found the utility room, chucked the lot into the machine and slammed the door shut.

  “Got to switch it on,” Katie said. “Got to find the right program.”

  “I know.” He twisted a couple of dials—how hard could it be?—and waited for stuff to start happening.

  “Powder,” Katie said, handing him a box of detergent.

  “Oh yeah, nearly forgot.” He yanked the door open again and was about to sling in half the box when Katie stopped him.

  “No. No. Not in there.” She was laughing. She’d gone quite giddy. It must be delayed shock. “You haven’t a clue, have you?”

  He looked at her. He never admitted to not knowing something.

  “This machine, it must be different to the model I have.”

  Steadily, she held his gaze, her eyes dancing, until he dropped the look and admitted, “Okay, I haven’t a clue.”

  “Lovely,” Katie said, almost cheerily. “That’s all I wanted to hear.” She added the powder, found the right program and, when the swishing started, they went back to the bathroom and together they scrubbed the bath and the floor and washed away the red splashes that decorated the walls and tiles, erasing all evidence. They worked in silence until the task was completed. “That’s it, I think. All done.” With a final flourish of her sponge, Katie wiped away the last smear, then sank to the floor, leaning her back against the bath. “God, that was hard.” She used the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe the sweat from her face.

  “Satisfying, though.” Conall joined her on the floor, propping himself against the opposite wall.

  “That too.”

  Buoyed up by the strange, almost celebratory mood, Katie decided to take a chance. “Come here, Conall. Can I ask you a question? Something I’ve been dying to know.”

  “Work away.”

  “Can you speak Portuguese?”

  “Ah, you know. Enough to get by.”

  “Really? Honest to God for real?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did Jason know about it?”

  “. . . Let’s see.” Conall drummed his fingers on his lips as he thought. “Oh yeah! I met him at some yoke for the Portuguese Trade Board. His fiancée, wife now, I suppose, is Portuguese—sure you know that.”

  “Nice to know that you didn’t lie about absolutely everything.”

  He turned, looking aghast at her.

  “Oh come on! Don’t give me that look!”

  With great urgency, he said, “Katie, I’m different now.”

  “Lucky Lydia. Didn’t I always tell you it would be the girl after me who reaped the benefits of my hard work?”

  “Yes, but Katie—”

  “I thought I heard voices.”

  Conall and Katie jerked their heads round. Jemima, looking every one of her eighty-eight years, was standing in the bathroom doorway.

  “I was anxious that evidence of Matthew’s foolhardiness be cleared away before Maeve brings him home. But I see you pair of ministering angels have beaten me to it.”

  2 hours

  Jemima, having persuaded Maeve to wait at the hospital until 7 a.m. to accompany Matt home, had one last good deed to do and, really, this charming setup here, with Katie and Conall having toiled side by side, simply couldn’t be better. Life was all about timing. As indeed was death.

  She placed the back of her hand against her forehead and permitted herself a neat little collapse, folding herself up like an accordion.

  “Christ!” Conall leaped to his feet and caught her before her knees hit the floor. “Are you all right?”

  Well, hardly, dear. I’ve just done a picture-perfect swoon.

  “ I think you’d better lie down.” He looked for confirmation to Katie, who nodded.

  “Jemima, if Conall carries you, can you make it upstairs to your place?” Katie asked.

  “I think so,” Jemima said faintly. What a sensible creature Katie was.

  It would be a very unpleasant homecoming indeed for Matthew and Maeve to discover a sick old woman prone on their sofa. And Jemima had plans of her own, which she would prefer to carry to fruition without interruption.

  Conall insisted on carrying Jemima in his arms up to her own flat, where he expertly negotiated all the heavy furniture crowded into the front room and gently arranged her on the divan. Grudge skittered around anxiously, like a fussy old woman.

  “I do apologize,” Jemima murmured. “So much drama.”

  “We’re all a bit wobbly since last night,” Katie said.

  “What can we get you?” Conall asked. “A glass of water? Are there tablets?”

  “Goodness me, no,” Jemima said. “I don’t need a single thing. Except . . .”

  “Except?” Katie said. “You’d like Fionn?” Concern passed over her face, her expression saying, But I don’t know where he is.

  “No need for Fionn, wherever he is.” Much as Jemima loved him, she had other fish to fry. “But could both you and Conall bear to sit a while with me? It won’t be for long, I assure you.”

  “Of course we will,” Katie said.

  “Sure.” Conall chimed in.

  Katie was such a sweet girl, Jemima thought. She’d known that she would stay. And naturally Conall would do whatever would please Katie.

  So it was definite: Fionn hadn’t stayed the night in Jemima’s, Katie thought. Which meant he had stayed somewhere else—which conjured up all kinds of possibilities, none of them nice. He met a girl, he slept with her. But no! She wouldn’t think about it! Not now. Some other time, when she was able for it. Because the thing was, it was going to hurt, a lot. Not just the jealousy of whatever he’d got up to during his missing hours, not just the grief of the demise of herself and Fionn—because it was looking like it had run its course—but there was so much other pain that Fionn had killed for her. He’d numbed out all her sadness about Conall, polished up the humdrum into a sparkling gem and shown her that there was life, plenty of it, after forty. Gone now, she acknowledged. All used up.

  What she was dreading most of all was re-feeling that awful loss when she’d discovered that Conall was seeing Lydia. That had been utter agony and she didn’t think she had the strength to go through it again. Some masochistic impulse couldn’t resist having a little probe now, just to see how excruciating it was . . . and maybe she wasn’t poking hard enough, because she felt surprisingly okay.

  Maybe she was better! Could that have been Fionn’s purpose? To come along and heal her? And then do a legger when she was fixed?

  After all, she’d had a drink with Conall and his girlfriend. And she and Conall had cleaned a bathroom in an atmosphere of friendliness and cooperation. And look at them now, taking care of an old lady.

  Or maybe she had the Fionn situation completely wrong. Maybe all that had happened was that she and Fionn had just had their first serious row. Maybe he’d spent the night with Grainne and Mervyn and any minute now he’d burst through the door, wild with remorse and bursting with love, and they’d fall into each other’s arms and cry and say how sorry they were and they’d be all the stronger for it? It could happen!

  Jemima pulled some hairpins out of her bun. “Digging into my skull,” she explained. “I’ve endured daily discomfort for at least eighty years and I find I’ve
had enough.”

  “You’re letting your hair down,” Conall said.

  “Precisely, dear!”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “Hold that thought, Conall, as they say in those American shows. Now . . .” Jemima settled herself back on the divan, looking small and wan, the effort of yanking out the hairpins having taken its toll.

  Katie knelt by the divan, a heavy, carved mahogany table behind her and an elaborately floral armchair at her side. “Would you like me to hold your hand?” She felt that Jemima needed some sort of comfort, but you never knew with posh Protestants. They could be gravely offended at any offers of affection.

  “Would you, dear heart? That would be such a consolation.” Her face creased into a grateful smile and she extended a veiny, bony hand.

  “I could hold your other one,” Conall offered.

  “Conall!” Jemima said. “That would be entirely delightful.”

  Surprised, Katie looked at him. Since when had he started going round being kind to old ladies? He gave a shrug that said, Why the hell not?

  Why the hell not, indeed.

  Grudge took up the middle spot, between Katie and Conall, his woolly head on Jemima’s lap, and all Katie could think about was how very, very weird it all was. Her! And Conall Hathaway! In Jemima’s apartment, holding her hand! How had they ended up in such a bizarre triangle?

  None of them spoke, all tired out probably, Katie realized, after all the events of the past twelve hours. After a while, an anxious little voice in her head began to wonder how long Jemima was expecting them to stay. Was she well enough to be left on her own yet? But it seemed like bad manners to ask and, anyway, any minute now Conall was bound to have to run off to catch a plane or to take over the world, and in the meantime she couldn’t deny that sitting on Jemima’s carpet and holding her hand was unexpectedly peaceful. All she could hear was the sound of their breath, Conall’s and Jemima’s and her own. And the dog’s, of course.

  “Might I . . .” Jemima said tentatively, “might I . . . that is, would you think badly of me if I asked a small favor?”

  “Anything,” Conall said.

  “Could you tell me, you see I’ve always wanted to know, an item of gossip.”

  1 hour

  Raw, bare plywood. Maeve was angered at the sight of their new door.

  “Look,” she said to Matt. “See what you did.”

  “God.” He stared at the bare wood, working out what must have happened. He looked sick.

  “I suppose these must be the keys.” Maeve snatched a set from the hall table and Matt held out his hand, expecting she’d give them to him, but she was already slotting one into a lock.

  She was furious again. Jemima’s lecture had calmed her, she’d felt bizarrely hopeful for a short while, but now the rage was back and all her senses were lit up with it—her skin felt thick, her hands clumsy, her eyeballs hot, her tongue swollen. It was so long since she’d felt anything and everything had come rushing at her all at once; her body was struggling to contain it.

  It took her trembling fingers a while to get the hang of the new lock. “Fucking thing,” she muttered. She rarely swore so using that word felt very satisfying. When the lock finally clicked, she gave the door a good, hard, enjoyable shove. The first thing she noticed was the clean, fresh smell in the flat. One of the neighbors must have come in and disappeared away the evidence of Matt’s . . . Matt’s . . . she didn’t know how to describe what he’d done.

  It was decent of whoever had come in. Probably Katie, she decided. But her rage couldn’t help leaking out, even at that act of neighborly goodness. It would have done Matt no harm to see more evidence of what he’d done.

  “Do you want tea or something?” she asked ungraciously.

  “I’d love a cup.”

  She put the kettle on, then went into the bedroom and wrenched the big suitcase out from under their bed. The last time it had been used was on their honeymoon; a Malaysian Air baggage tag still fluttered from it. She took the case in her arms and hurled it with force on to the bed, where it bounced a few times, then she clunked the lock and, sweeping her arms wide, flung it open.

  She’d start with his shoes. There they were, lined together neatly on the floor of their wardrobe, and she began picking them up and lobbing them one by one toward the bed. Sometimes they landed in the case and sometimes they didn’t, bouncing on the bed, clanging off the radiator, clattering against the window.

  It was almost like a game, actually quite enjoyable, and she was sorry when she ran out of shoes.

  The kettle was probably boiled by now anyway, so she went into the kitchen and made tea. Matt was sitting on the sofa in the front room, looking small and ashamed. “Tea.” She thrust the mug at him. “I’ve started packing your things.”

  His face spasmed.

  “Oh?” she asked. “You didn’t think I meant it. But I do. It’s real. It’s happening.”

  “How will you live on your own?”

  “You weren’t thinking of that when you ran yourself that bath yesterday, were you?”

  He hung his head. “I shouldn’t have done it.” His voice choked. “I wish I could take it back.”

  “I’ll manage on my own. It’ll be better than living with you and waiting for you to try to top yourself again.” While she’d been sitting beside his trolley in the ER, she’d thought it all through. Kicking Matt out of the flat was just for show, an attempt to hurt him for the way he’d hurt her, because she was going back to live with Mam and Dad. Her life was over anyway, it had ended three years ago, and living in the back of beyond couldn’t make it any more over. And if the screaming despair down on the farm got too terrible, well, she could always hang herself in a barn or mess around on the edge of a slurry pit or get too close to a combine harvester. Spoiled for choice. When you thought about it, it was an absolute miracle that any farm worker managed to live long enough to see their twenty-first birthday.

  She’d been thinking about being dead for so long, she was very comfortable with the notion. Admittedly, she hadn’t quite got to where Matt had got to, but she didn’t want to go on living. She hadn’t been exactly sure how to die. But she’d have got there.

  30 minutes

  Lydia was so shattered she felt sick. The high jinks of last night had taken their toll and she was fit for nothing. Not even sleep. Was that possible, she wondered. To be too tired to be able to sleep? But she was too tired to think about it. Telly, that’s what she needed. She flung herself full-length on the couch and pawed around for the remote. Thank God it was Saturday and she didn’t have to endure the usual weekday, early morning shite: fatso makeovers and diets and cookery. First she found a program about Botswana, then she found one on Cuba. She luxuriated in her indolence, half awake, half asleep, dreaming of foreign lands. God, this was great. She could drift off right here without fear of disturbance from grumpy Poles. It was fabulous living on her own.

  When the doorbell rang, rudely interrupting her paradise, she was outraged. No! Nohhhhh! I’m not bloody well going.

  It rang again.

  No, still not going.

  It rang again.

  You can ring a million times, she told it. I’m still not going.

  It rang again.

  Love of God! Stomach-first, she vaulted from the couch, like a high-jumper clearing the bar, stomped noisily into the hall and pressed the buzzer. Ten seconds later someone knocked on her door and she wrenched it open. “What? ”

  Standing there was a man with dark eyes and longish hair, a touch of wildness to him. Selling mops, she assumed. But, to her horror, she saw that he had some sort of musical instrument in a case under his oxter. A door-to-door busker? When did that lark start? God Almighty, do they torment us even in our own homes?

  She said, “I’ll give you money if you promise not to sing.”

  He looked confused. “I em Oleksander. Oleksander Shevchenko.”

  “Who? Oh! The person who was here before m
e.” Not a roving entertainer! Her face lit up with relief.

  “And you?” he said. “You are new tenant? You live now in little room?”

  “Yes, yes. You’re here for your letters? I suppose you’d better come in.”

  “. . . And no one in your family had any idea about Charlie’s secret love-child?” Jemima was incredulous.

  “Not a clue,” Conall said, with some smugness, glad to be able to contribute such a juicy item of gossip to Jemima. “Only Katie. Only because I knew, and it was pure chance that I found out.” Conall had come by the information when he’d been “rationalizing” a company and a young woman had thrown herself on his mercy and begged to keep her job because she had a child to support and wasn’t receiving a penny from the dad—who’d transpired to be Charlie Richmond, younger brother of Katie.

  “But why would your brother neglect to tell your parents?” Jemima was struggling to understand. “Surely they would be delighted to discover they had a grandchild?”

  “Because Katie’s mother is a—” Conall paused and looked at Katie.

  “What?” Katie asked.

  Choosing his words with evident care, Conall said, “She’s a . . . an unfulfilled woman who, ah, undermines all her children.”

  Katie dropped her eyes and smiled to herself. “You never said.”

  Conall’s eyes lit with indignation. “As if, Katie. I made a lot of mistakes with you, way too many, but I wasn’t a total idiot.”

  “I must say,” Jemima said happily. “That really is a choice morsel of gossip. Well worth waiting a lifetime for.” She shifted herself beneath the weight of Grudge’s head. “Not there, my darling hound. Too painful.”

  “Oh?” Katie asked, just as Jemima had intended she would.

  “I had cancer four years ago.” With an airy wave, Jemima dismissed it as being barely worse than a stubbed toe. “The wretched thing has returned.”

  Katie and Conall exchanged a look.

  “How do you know?” Katie asked cautiously. “Have you had tests?”

  “No need. I can feel them. Tumors. One on my liver. Quite large. I can no longer button my skirt. Most vexing.” She smiled. “When one’s skirt no longer fits, it’s time to go.”