Chapter 6
Thea, to her frustration, didn’t sleep well on Wednesday night.
It felt daft to be quite so nervous about starting a temporary, part-time job, but she couldn’t help it.
She might have joked about Tristan being a perfectionist, but she had a bit of a streak of it herself, and she didn’t want to let Nick down.
What if she really couldn’t hack being behind the shop counter again?
She was a bit worried that she really was an old dog, about to learn, well, if not exactly new, then long-forgotten tricks.
And would working full time for the next few weeks just knacker her out before Christmas, so that she wouldn’t have the energy to make the festive period as lovely as she wanted to for Cora and Dylan?
In the cold light of day, these worries felt ridiculous: plenty of parents worked full-time jobs, or more than one job, and they managed somehow.
She was always at her best when she was busy, and it wasn’t as though the children were babies any more.
It was a short-term situation, and she’d deal with it, as she had dealt with everything life had thrown her way over the years.
Resilience was in her DNA, after the loss she’d suffered as a young child, and she’d been coping with things ever since.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t hard, though.
She often wondered what it would have been like if her parents had been alive to meet their grandchildren.
She hoped they’d have been close. Lorelai was a wonderful great-grandmother to Cora and Dylan, but there was no escaping the fact that she was getting older and wouldn’t be around forever.
Thea was grateful for every day they had together, and all the time she’d spent with Lorelai as she’d grown up.
The thought that she and Tristan might have ended up away from Lower Brambleton, or worse, split up to go to different families and different lives, still filled her with a retrospective horror.
All things considered, they’d both been very lucky that Lorelai had been there to take care of them, but that didn’t mean she didn’t wonder what things might have been like had her parents not been taken so suddenly and dreadfully.
The Observatory Field housing development had been built on the site of its namesake, the Lower Brambleton Observatory, after the site of special astronomical interest had closed and fallen into disrepair some years ago.
The site had been in Thea’s family, jointly inherited by Lorelai and her brother, Phillip, after their father had died but had only recently been demolished and redeveloped.
Tristan had overseen the development for Flowerdew Homes, a company that had promised a sustainable and sympathetic development of houses to help to bring new life to the ever-sleepier hamlet of Lower Brambleton.
Thea had never been wealthy. When her parents had died, the proceeds from their estate had been held in trust for both herself and Tristan until they were eighteen.
The inheritance was substantial, and both she and Tristan had used some of the money to put themselves through university.
Then, wisely, Tristan had put his share into property and now owned his house outright, having bought a decrepit townhouse on the outskirts of Taunton’s city centre and renovated it.
Sadly, Thea’s fortunes hadn’t been so lucky.
Even now, the sting of what she’d had, and what she’d lost, stayed with her and tainted every decision she made.
She’d fallen in love with a charming man, who’d swept her off her feet and had promised to give her the security that she’d craved in the wake of her parents’ death.
She’d fallen hard for Ed and had been blind to his gambling problem that eventually became an addiction which inevitably caused tensions, a rift, and, eventually, a separation.
Unfortunately for Thea and her two children, by the time she’d realised what was happening, Ed had left her and what was left of her inheritance was sunk into a house that was more mortgage than mortar.
That the Observatory Field site held painful memories for her, there was no doubt, but the development was a stone’s throw from her grandmother’s cottage, and she couldn’t bear to pass up the opportunity to own her own home.
It was funny, she thought, how she and Tristan had felt so differently about Observatory Field.
Tristan had headed up the development as a kind of catharsis: it allowed him to control the destiny and future of the site and finally see the building that had been so much a part of the family’s life, and their tragedy, razed to the ground.
In Tristan’s eyes, it was just what the place deserved: the final piece in the long, painful puzzle of the Lower Brambleton Observatory’s history.
Taking charge of that last step was Tristan’s way of gaining closure after a lifetime of living with the traumatic memories the place evoked.
Thea glanced up at the sky, which was still dotted with bright stars, even though dawn would start greying the velvety blackness over the next couple of hours.
Her parents had loved being here, in this space, and had spent many hours observing the night sky through the great telescope inside the dome of the observatory.
They’d even discovered something hitherto unseen; an eclipsing binary, a pair of orbiting stars that moved in perfect harmony on the tip of the Volucris constellation.
Although that discovery had been lost to time for thirty years, due to the bitterness and frustration of Lorelai’s brother, here had been a posthumous accolade for her parents, and while this would always be bittersweet, she was delighted that it had happened.
But Thea would never stop missing them. Even though they were blurred memories in her mind, she was still brought up short by the scent of Yardley’s Lily of the Valley if she happened to smell it or had to blink away sudden tears if she saw a copy of Better Than Life , her father’s favourite science fiction novel, on a charity shop bookshelf.
Something that always made her smile, though, was whenever Chesney Hawkes’ ‘I Am the One and Only’ came on the radio.
She had a faded memory of her mother bopping along in the kitchen to the catchy pop song, and she could never be sure if she actually did remember her rather more serious father rolling his eyes whenever she did, or if it was just her own childish mind filling in the gaps.
Her gentle, pre-dawn meandering had taken her to a familiar spot.
When the housing development had been conceived, a late addition had been made that had necessitated the adjustment of the plans for one part of the land.
Inset into a small, paved area where the observatory itself had once stood was a burnished bronze plaque with a by now very familiar inscription:
This plaque is dedicated to the tireless efforts and passion for discovery of the members of the Lower Brambleton Astronomical Society.
In 1994, Laura and Martin Ashcombe, esteemed members of LBAS, made the remarkable discovery of an eclipsing binary star, expanding our understanding of the cosmos. Their dedication and contribution to the field of astronomy continue to inspire future generations of stargazers and scholars.
‘Per Aspera ad Astra’
Through hardships to the stars.
‘I miss you,’ Thea murmured as her eyes traced over the memorial plaque. She ran a tired hand over her face. ‘I wish you were here.’
Thea didn’t often feel lonely, although the loss she’d suffered was always with her.
Children, both her own and those for whom she was responsible in her classroom, stopped her from feeling that emotion, and she knew that Tristan would always be there for her, come what may.
And Lorelai, too, for as long as she was still around.
But in the darkness of what felt like yet another morning of an unending winter, loneliness hit her like a smack to the stomach.
The gap that her parents had left in her life had translated itself to a longing for love that, in turn, had led her to her relationship with Ed.
He’d sensed that longing, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough for him.
His own, addictive desires had been too great.
Ed had burned her and made her more cautious than she should have been about entering into new relationships, so, for a long time she’d steered herself away from anyone who might be interested in getting involved with her.
But there was no getting away from it. She missed the feeling of arms around her.
She missed being able to laugh with someone over the antics of the children, and she missed being able to call someone up and make plans for a shared evening, day or weekend together.
As she glanced at her watch, and wearily contemplated the beginning of another long day, she touched her fingers to her lips and then placed them in the centre of the memorial plaque.
It felt cold under her touch. Then, straightening herself back up, she headed back to the house, where, in about an hour’s time, she’d be back into the familiar routines of getting the kids up and out of the door for school.
She wouldn’t be thinking about how lonely she was, then.
It was only when things were quiet, in these early hours, that it seemed to creep up on her.
She’d be busy at Saints’ Farm, too – the learning curve was going to be steep for a few days, and she hoped she wouldn’t have time for gloomy thoughts.
Letting herself back into the house, she closed the front door quietly and went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea before the day really got going.