Catch a Falling Star

Prologue

LYRA

That Night

Seven Years Ago

‘You’re here!’ my best friend, Cami, bellows across the sound of hundreds of drunk undergrads.

It’s standing room only in the music venue in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where we go to uni. She reaches out a hand and drags me through the crowd to the spot she’s got us at the very front and centre of the stage.

We’re waiting for the main act – rock band, my favourite band, The Hand Me Downs. We’ve had tickets for nearly a year and in that time, the band has sky-rocketed. Their next tour won’t be two-thousand capacity venues; it will be arenas and stadiums.

‘So?’ Cami says, looking to the ceiling. ‘Did you do it?’

I bite my lip from a combination of nervousness and excitement. Once I say it out loud, it will be real. ‘You are no longer looking at a third-year med student but a budding documentary photographer. I quit.’

‘Oh my God, Lyra, this is huge! You finally made a decision about your own life!’

I don’t get to tell her that the decision will be severely life shortening, since my parents are going to kill me when they find out, because the lights dim to near darkness.

There’s movement on the stage.

Jay, the drummer, comes out first and my own scream is drowned out by the many others in the space.

Once he’s settled on his stool and making himself look busy checking his kit, Trev, one of the guitarists, comes out, waving like he’s too cool for school (he kind of is) and sets up next to a bass guitar and an electric guitar.

I deafen my own ears when brothers Guy and Scott come onto the stage together.

Scott walks up to the standing microphone and as the stage lights turn on, he speaks to the crowd. ‘Alreet, Newcastle! It’s good to be home.’

But I don’t watch him because I’m too focused on Guy, the songwriter, with the most distinct voice I’ve heard.

He comes to stand behind a microphone right in front of me and slips the strap of an acoustic six-string around his neck.

He sets about checking the tuning of his guitar as my entire limbic system tunes into him.

And right after Scott has introduced the first song, it’s Guy who leans into his microphone and counts, ‘One, two, three, four.’ I swear my heart beats to his rhythm.

The atmosphere is electric. The air heavy with sweat. The floor vibrating in time to the low frequency of the bass guitar, booming out of the amplifier.

As Scott’s youthful yet rocky voice sings out, ‘I’m addicted to you…’ I let my head fall back, my arms swish around uncoordinatedly, my hips twist and turn. Free.

If I let myself, I could be terrified. Terrified of telling my parents that all the money they’ve spent on private education and extra tuition has been for nothing. I won’t be following in their footsteps.

But for one night, I’m going to enjoy the not knowing, the excitement of having no clue what comes next, the relief of the unrelenting pressure to be someone I’m not disappearing.

I dance through the first set and two beers, occasionally getting shoved by fellow groovers but not caring about any of it, until I’m pulled from my reverie by the Geordie accent of Guy Walker.

‘We’re gonna bring down the tempo with this next one. It’s called “You and Me”.’

I brace myself for my favourite of the band’s songs. One of the few Guy performs.

His pitch is low, his voice gravelly in the sexiest of ways.

I watch his fingers move over the strings of his guitar, the rest of the band silent.

His eyes are closed when that first note comes.

It hits my ears then travels the rest of my body like a surge of energy.

My heart beats faster, my skin ignites, the way I knew it would hearing him in person, this close.

What I’m not prepared for is when he opens his eyes, he isn’t looking into the distance, across the crowd of people here to listen to him.

He’s looking right at me, stilling me, stealing the air from my chest. It’s like the only person he can see beyond the blinding stage lights is me.

As if the words he sings and the chords he strums are meant for my ears.

‘There’s just you and me,

Forget all these people.

Because it makes no sense,

But I can’t tear my eyes,

Away from you.’

As the beat picks up, his strumming becomes fiercer, the drums kick in, then the entire band is playing the chorus of the song he wrote. It’s as if the faint curve at one side of his mouth is an inside message between us, like it’s the start of a smile, of something. A promise.

The song moves into another, and another, the band members stopping between tracks to drink from bottles of beer on the stage and accept towels from surreptitious stage staff.

I take my camera out of my bag and snap a few shots of the night.

Then as I get back to dancing, the most bizarre thing happens.

A man emerges from backstage and approaches me.

‘Guy wants to know if you’ll join him backstage once the lads’re finished.

’ He’s a big man, huge. Neck and arms tattooed and bulging beneath his black t-shirt kind of big.

He has the trademark accent of someone who was born and raised in the deepest, darkest Toon.

As for the tone of his voice, it’s completely disinterested, as if he’s asked this question of many girls, many times before.

But this is Guy from The Hand Me Downs so, rightly, I’m flattered. On a Lyra-favourable interpretation, technically, he did just sing to me, too.

Regardless, I am of course going to say, ‘N?—’

‘She’ll be there,’ Cami tells the big dude, leaning across me to be heard.

‘I— Cami, no.’

‘Relax, it’s not like you’re committing to having his babies,’ Cami yells, making me eye the stage as if Guy can actually hear her over the sound of his band rocking out.

‘What’re ya saying, yes or no?’ the Hulk presses.

As he does, Guy’s lips curve into that knicker-melting lopsided grin again and I nod. Not to the big guy, or Cami, or myself, but to Guy.

And half an hour later, after the band has played their last song and thanked the crowd, my cardiovascular system might explode.

This is it. I’m going to meet the man of my dreams.

‘Ha way then, Flower.’ The Hulk is back, and he’s created a path in the crowd to get me to the backstage door.

I feel sick. Please God, don’t let me throw up on Guy Walker.

‘Enjoyyyyyyy,’ Cami sings as I give her the wide-eyed look of a deer caught in headlights, because that is exactly how I feel.

I follow along a corridor that’s buzzing with activity – bodies shifting around with earpieces in, some people who look like press holding cameras and microphones. I feel as if everyone in the corridor can see in my pink cheeks that I’m a fangirl and I’m about to meet my crush.

The big man leads me to a dressing room that actually has The Hand Me Downs written on a plaque on the door, with a giant gold star above it.

‘Give ’em a minute, they’re still changing,’ he tells me. I wonder how he knows, until he taps the small black bud in his ear.

Feeling too awkward to make conversation with this man, who clearly isn’t interested in what I have to say, and not daring to look up to the other eyes in the corridor that might be mocking me, I take my phone from my bag.

‘Nee pictures unless the lads say it’s alreet,’ the big man tells me.

‘Oh, no, I wasn’t—’ I’m saved from myself by my sister’s name lighting up the screen of my phone.

Olivia? At this time?

‘Hey, is everything okay?’ I ask instinctively, speaking into my handset whilst holding my free hand to my opposite ear.

‘No, Lyra. I— I don’t know how to say this…’

I know, as my stomach falls into the floor, that it’s bad. Bad news is the only kind that can’t wait at this time of night. Bad news is what happens when my parents are on call and their pagers go off.

As my sister tells me, ‘It’s Dad,’ I’m already backing away from The Hand Me Downs’ dressing room, and right before I turn to leave, I see the man of my dreams open the door.

Suddenly, nothing seems real.

‘Wait, I don’t even know your name,’ a voice I could pick out of a packed concert hall says. His words fall on my back as I run. To where, into what, I’ve no idea.

But my sister is begging me down the line, ‘Please come.’