Call Me Star Girl

by Louise Beech

  ‘You okay?’ I asked. He was still staring.

  He shook his head, said, ‘Yes, sorry. Fine. Long night.’ Then he went into the bathroom, pulled off his sweater and jeans. I wondered if he would discard them by the sink like he usually did but he hung them on the back of the door. My heart sank. He returned to the room in his shorts and climbed into bed. Without even a kiss, he turned the other way, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ I asked, my heart hammering.

  ‘No,’ he said, sounding sleepy. ‘I’m really tired, that’s all. Sorry. Did you want to talk?’

  ‘No. Not particularly. It’s just you…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you never just go to sleep.’

  ‘I thought you liked it when I didn’t do what you expected?’

  What could I say to that?

  ‘Goodnight then,’ I said softly.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said.

  I sat for a long time, listening to his gentle snoring. I could no longer see the words in my book. I put it aside and turned off the lamp. I didn’t know then that he’d spoken to the police. But I did wonder if he had been to work that night. I wondered, and it killed me. But if not, where the hell had he been? Was I just worrying because of the change in his behaviour? Or because of mine?

  I should never have played dead.

  This came to me hard as I sank back into the darkness. I had given Tom too much. I had given him everything. And when you give someone that, what else is left? I had used real glass, not stunt sugar glass.

  I only had one thing left. One thing that would show him no one would ever love him more.

  Perry purred by my ear, as though she knew my torment.

  ‘You’re supposed to be Tom’s cat,’ I whispered, stroking her. ‘Go sleep on him.’ But she stayed at my side all night.

  All I could think was, He lost our special key and I have lost him.

  Did you ever really have him, Stella?

  The words came up in the rustle of bedclothes as I turned over.

  Yes, I did. He’s mine.

  But I was so scared I’d lost him.

  27

  ELIZABETH

  THEN

  Vicky and I loved meeting on our bench in West Park. It became our place, I suppose. We watched the world go by there. We saw spring turn into summer. Saw the snowdrops die, and the carnations and roses blossom. Vicky blossomed too. I saw her pale cheeks turn as pink as the flowers we enjoyed. Her tummy slowly swelled too. I guess I acted like a surrogate mother to her, even though her real mum was alive and well and loved her very much. I also found that I enjoyed her pregnancy. I hadn’t enjoyed mine. It had felt like a hindrance. Something to be done with as quickly as possible.

  That made me feel bad now.

  I tried to be everything to Vicky that I never had been to Stella. I went along to scan appointments. I went to all the midwife check-ups and to see various doctors with her. Vicky was monitored more closely than the average woman due to her underactive thyroid. She had been taking levothyroxine since she was diagnosed at twelve years old, and the condition meant she had to have regular blood tests during her pregnancy to adjust the dose accordingly. She never showed any discouragement though. She just shrugged it off. Said there were many worse off – women who had lost babies or couldn’t get pregnant.

  I wondered many times why Vicky had even requested a doula. To me, she seemed to be coping incredibly well. The absolute antithesis of me, who twenty-six and a half years ago had been angry that I had found out I was pregnant too late to have any choice about it. Vicky seemed to have been put on earth to be a mother.

  At least it seemed that way at the start.

  I suppose we all act like we’re fine.

  Until we’re not.

  In the hospital once, while waiting to see her baby on a scan monitor, she said she didn’t want to find out the sex of her child when the opportunity arose. She said she wanted a surprise when he or she was born. Vicky turned to me then, with those emerald-green eyes, and said I should be the one who told her. That I should look to see whether she had a son or a daughter and tell her.

  I didn’t deserve to be that person.

  I remembered how blasé I’d been when the midwife told me I had a daughter. I’d actually wanted a boy. Felt a boy would be easier to love. And that’s how I’d known that fate would give me a female.

  Vicky grabbed my hand then, in the middle of the hospital waiting room, and said excitedly that she had planned to do it that way with the father – to let him find out the sex. Then she stopped. That simple word drained her of all colour; father. She must have realised the enormity of the thing she was asking me to do, and who it really should have been.

  Are you okay? I asked.

  Vicky nodded but didn’t speak.

  I asked if she wanted to talk about the father of her child.

  But Vicky didn’t want to talk about him then, and not for a good while after. She was, however, endlessly fascinated by my story. By how I had ended up as a single mum. Questions spilled out of her. Who was Stella’s dad and why hadn’t he been a part of her life? Where was he? Had he ever seen her? What happened?

  Until then, I had never been able to talk about him to anyone. Since I’d come back to Hull, I’d had to carry him around secretly inside me. Back when we first met, and later, after what then happened, I could hardly tell anyone either. He just wasn’t the kind of man anyone would understand.

  There have been times since I met Stella again when I have longed for her to ask me who he was. Yes I’ve dreaded telling her, but I’ve also yearned for the opportunity to speak about him – say his name; explain; excuse. Remember. I dropped hints. Oh, I dropped hints.

  When she didn’t, I found that I loved how hungry Vicky was for my story. If I was her doula, she became my listener. My counsellor. I can’t lie. I preferred when it was about me. Always have. I could feel compassion for Vicky, I really could, but when she turned those green eyes on me, craving my story, I blossomed. When she teared up over her own sadness, it affected me less than when her tears spilled for mine.

  Of course, I could not be fully truthful about Stella’s father. I could not tell Vicky all of it. How I’d abandoned Stella to go back to him. What kind of doula would that have made me? Vicky would never have seen me again. But I told her how we met, when I was just nineteen and he was thirty-five. I told her the things I could.

  About our love.

  We were not on our West Park bench the day I first told her about him. Rain fell heavily and even the trees didn’t protect us. It was the end of April and I’d been seeing Vicky for five weeks. It felt like longer. She was such an amicable and easy-to-like girl. She was always early when we met. She always mentioned some new top or item of make-up she’d bought recently, and showed me it, as excited as a small child. She incited motherly affection in me. It surprised me. It was not unlike the feeling I once had when men looked my way.

  The sad thing was that she provoked that feeling in me more than anyone else ever had – even my own daughter. And what made it even worse was that Vicky was about to learn more about Stella’s dad than Stella knew.

  Could I forgive myself?

  On this rainy April afternoon, we found a café – not mine and Stella’s favourite – and we sat opposite one another in a booth. Soaked customers crowded in after us. A tub by the door was full of dripping umbrellas. I knew what Vicky would pick from the menu; not eggs, never eggs, not prawns, never prawns, but plain cheese sandwiches. She said that she must have needed the dairy as she craved milk and cheese all the time.

  When our food came she studied me.

  She said, Tell me about Stella’s dad.

  She insisted that if it was still a difficult subject, I didn’t have to tell her, but she just thought it would help her cope with being alone too.

  I shook my head and admitted that it would feel good to talk about him. I confessed that he had not been the kind of man l
ikely to make a great father, and so Stella had never known him.

  In the privacy of that booth with Vicky I went back in time. When I told her how we had met, I could no longer hear the clatter of teacup in saucer, or the door banging shut after new customers.

  It had been raining the night we met so the smell of damp coats only brought the memory more vividly to life. I was free as a bird then, unattached and happily so. Cutting hair during the day and partying at night. I didn’t want any more than that. I never felt so alive as when I had men’s adoring eyes on me in the pubs and clubs. Such a simple thing to crave. Such an easy thing to achieve. The moment I had them though, I no longer wanted them.

  I’d had a sense he was coming, I admitted to Vicky.

  Of course, she wanted to know what I meant.

  I’d visited a psychic with my friends. Each of us egged the other on at Hull Fair, where colourful, ornate caravans lined the street – home to many a fortune-teller. We’d all crowded into one, but the gold-adorned, wrinkle-faced woman had immediately targeted me. Said he was coming. We’d all giggled of course at the rudeness of the phrase.

  She said my twin flame was on the way.

  What the hell’s one of those? I’d asked.

  The fortune-teller explained that, unlike a soul mate – which is our perfect match – a twin flame is our perfect mirror. Relationships with them tend to be on-again-off-again, often painful, always intense. They ultimately serve to show us who we truly are. She said mine was close. That I would know him when we met. And that we had known each other many times in previous lives.

  I laughed and said bullshit, and we all flounced out of the caravan. But her words stayed with me.

  And now I know she was right.

  A week later I had a bad experience on a date. It’s not even fair to call it a date. It was simply an evening in a pub with a man I’d known for an hour. A man whose initial attention I’d liked, but whose insistence that I have sex in the toilets with him irritated me. I’m no prude. I’d done this before. But I got a bad vibe from him.

  Vicky interrupted here to ask why I put myself in so much danger.

  I didn’t have an answer. I sipped my coffee and admitted it was all about the conquest. I’d collected men the way others might collect stamps or coins or oddly shaped stones.

  Go on, she said.

  I did. I told Vicky how I’d staggered from the pub, with this man’s vile words following me. Outside, it was raining so heavily that my hair stuck to my face in minutes. I needed to get home. Vanity meant I could not be seen by anyone looking such a wreck. This was long before we had mobile phones, so I looked up the street for a taxi. As though hailed from heaven, one arrived. I opened the door and asked if he was free, but he said he had a pick-up. He must have seen how miserable I was and he promised that if his passenger didn’t arrive in five minutes, he’d take me home, and I could wait in the car until then.

  Vicky interrupted my nostalgia with a big smile, and asked if it was him, the taxi driver.

  I laughed, said, No, though he was memorable.

  I could still recall the name in capitals on his dashboard: BOB FRACKLEHURST. I mentioned to him how unusual it was, and asked if he knew its history. He said he believed there was a very old house on the North Yorkshire moors called The Fracklehurst, and that his great-great grandfather had owned it. He was just explaining how the place was said to be haunted by a little blind girl when the car door opened.

  He got in.

  My twin flame.

  I knew.

  I didn’t really take in what he looked like. That came later when I’d got my thoughts in order. That was the only way to describe it; he messed up my thoughts. Disabled my ability to think straight. It was like when a famous person arrives on stage and you know well before because of the way the audience screams. Except it was my heart that screamed.

  He opened his mouth to ask what the hell I was doing in his cab – I knew that was going to be the question even though he didn’t say a word – and I saw the same scramble occur in his eyes. Saw that he too felt it. He held my gaze. It could have lasted a minute, could have been a second; but it felt like an hour.

  I heard Vicky say wow, bringing me back to earth.

  I wished she hadn’t.

  For that brief moment, I was there. Back with him.

  So what happened? she asked.

  I closed my eyes. Tried to feel it again. Recall how he nourished me, simply by being close by. That first time we met, he said to Bob Fracklehurst – without tearing his eyes from mine – that we should take me home first. For the entire journey, we drank one another in. I was vaguely aware of Bob saying he was sure he knew him from somewhere. Asking if he’d been on TV or something? I thought then that it must have just been his aura. That this man’s hypnotising presence must have been felt by others too. Made them think he was a somebody.

  I didn’t ask his name, though. Not that night.

  And he didn’t ask mine.

  My breathing slowed, merged with his. It was then that I took in the slick black hair, thick and powerful around his face. His heavy face – one that someone else might say almost crossed the line between formidable and ugly. I studied his dark eyes, the fine lines at their corners, the large nose, as though I knew I’d have to rely on just my memory of him one day.

  When we got to my house, he paid Bob Fracklehurst and got out with me. I hadn’t asked him. Bob looked worried. His concern was natural. He knew we’d just met. That we’d sat in the back of his car without uttering a word. And now this man was coming into my house.

  I leaned in through the car window. Said Bob didn’t need to worry about me. This was my twin flame. The two words came out before I could think about it. Bob must have been an open-minded kind of guy. He didn’t even blink. Gently, he said he had only been driving cabs for three years, but he already got a strong sense about people. And he whispered to me that this man was bad news.

  I didn’t listen.

  I watched Bob drive away, and went inside with the man, having still not exchanged a single word.

  So what happened that night? asked Vicky.

  I opened my eyes. Snapped back to our booth in the café. The rest of my coffee was cold. Vicky had finished her sandwiches. I shook my head. Some things are sacred. Not to be shared with another. How can you describe, without resorting to clichés, a night so violently passionate, that you felt the next day you had been in a car crash?

  I told Vicky simply that from then on, I was obsessed.

  So what happened? Vicky wanted to know.

  I asked if she meant when I got pregnant, and she nodded.

  That part of our story I didn’t want to explore. Because it was the moment I lost him the first time. Let him go. I’d found out I was pregnant too far along to do anything other than go ahead with it. I decided I’d rather keep the memory of what we’d had than share his love with our child. A needy kid might dilute what he felt for me.

  I didn’t care that Bob Fracklehurst had been right.

  My twin flame was bad news.

  But someone who is wrong for the world can be perfectly right for you.

  Vicky said she would have to go soon. Her mum was taking her shopping in Mothercare. I looked at the café’s clock and was shocked to see that we’d been there for two hours. What kind of doula was I to unburden my issues on this young woman? She seemed buoyed by my words though. As we put our coats on she said I had given her courage. Made her see. She said she would tell me about her child’s father. When she was ready.

  Soon, she promised.

  And she admitted that, once the child had arrived, and when she was up to it, she was going to do absolutely everything to get him back. That she thought he was her twin flame too.

  I smiled. I said I would help her.

  That I understood love like that more than anyone.

  28

  STELLA

  NOW

  As we head towards the news at 2am, I’m temp
ted for a brief moment to leave the studio; the radio station; the whole town. I imagine lining up enough songs to take listeners into Gilly Morgan’s prerecorded show at three; imagine saying my final goodbyes and turning out the lights and going.

  No. I must speak to the listeners. But my throat is parched. The song dies; Lionel Ritchie’s hello becomes goodbye. I remember Tom saying earlier on the phone how final my goodbye sounded. Despite his strange behaviour recently, his new habit of falling asleep early, he was clingy when we hung up. Afraid I wouldn’t come home. The weird thing is that, although I feel like my world will collapse if he deserts me, I could quite happily be the one to go.

  I slide up the fader.

  ‘We’re heading for the news on the hour,’ I say. The reheated news, I want to say. Same old shit; all the stuff you’ve already heard. ‘And after that, I bet you lovers who are still awake want some peace. Some time together without me interrupting. So I’m going to give you that. We’ll have seven love songs, one after another, chosen by you. Thanks for all the requests. See you on the other side.’

  One more song will get us to the news. I barely look at what I select. And I’ve all but forgotten to keep to the secrets theme. Now there are too many in my real life. I’m going to find out who my real father is. Did I select such a theme for my final show because I knew this was going to happen?

  Was it a gut feeling I missed?

  Do I really want to know? What if knowing who my father is leads to regret? Is it better to fantasise about a mystical figure, as I often did when small? Am I heading for the greatest disappointment of my life?

  Something crashes outside. I leap to my slither of window. It’s cloudy again so I can’t see a thing. Do I want to? But it could be Maeve. What if she’s out there and in some sort of trouble? I turn, approach the shadowy corridor. Feel for the light switch. Flick it. Nothing. Shit. Now what?

  I feel my way along the passage and into the foyer, praying the light in there will come on when I flick the switch. It does. I exhale hard.