Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Benedict Redman approached the lectern. Evidently, the professor was late so the caretaker was about to announce that the lecture had been postponed due to the professor being ill-disposed on account of his leather elbow patches needing to be reinforced or something.
‘Good evening, everyone,’ he said, pushing up his threadbare jumper to reveal tanned and sinewy arms. ‘Thank you all for coming this evening and for welcoming a stranger into your midst.’ Polite laughter rippled around the room. ‘For those who don’t know me, I’m Benedict Redman, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of... well, no need to remind you all.’
At this point, he beamed at Stella, who was busy shrinking down in the back row, appalled that she’d mistaken the astronomy professor for the planetarium caretaker. She thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t tried to find out his birthday.
A large screen lit up behind Professor Redman and he proceeded to expound his latest theories on Saturn’s vanishing rings. It was mind-boggling to think of these vast bands extending into space. Her father had tried to teach her the scale of the rings by imagining Earth as a tiny blue and green car driving round a circular motorway surrounding Saturn. If memory served, he’d calculated that it would take a year-and-a-half of non-stop driving at the national speed limit to complete a single lap of the smallest ring. Although hundreds of thousands of miles wide, the rings were only a few feet deep and every dozen or so years, thanks to a weird optical illusion, they appeared to slip out of view. Since Saturn affected society as much as the individual, Stella had a pet theory that the apparent fading of Saturn’s own boundaries coincided with the periodic loosening of social rules and mores. Beyond this regular vanishing trick, Professor Redman went on to mention that the rings, which were mainly ice particles, were also being pulled into the planet so they would truly disappear altogether in a hundred million years or so.
Stella wondered what this prospect would mean for human beings in terms of rules and regulations, but also the physical aspects ruled by Saturn: skin, for one, and bones and teeth for another. Perhaps humans (assuming they were still a thing by then) would evolve to no longer need skin, bones and teeth and instead become stationary blobs with no need to move about. Perturbed by the idea, she shook these idle notions away and tried to concentrate on the talk instead.
Professor Redman was now showing a slide covered with complicated equations. While these squiggles meant nothing to Stella, they did seem to excite the other members of the room to an inordinate degree. She had hoped to spend the evening immersed in her favourite subject, surrounded by people who knew more about the stars than she ever would, but this was turning into a very dry talk, and if anyone here felt any real passion for the planets, rather than equations, it was not immediately obvious to her.
Of course, her own interest in the planets came from her parents, who were very different people to those in this room. When Stella was born, her parents had seen a shooting star as they held their baby girl up to the window, and that inspired them to call her after a star. They’d pored over books listing odd-sounding names for stars and some with just numbers, which had struck them as a dreadful waste of an opportunity, until they settled on Stella, the Latin word for star.
From being an infant, one or other of her parents had held her up to the open garret window, wrapped in a snug blanket to soak up the rays of the stars in the cool night air. On crisp winter nights, when the skies were black and punctured with silver holes, she would snuggle in her parents’ arms as they pointed out the stars and taught her their names.
From being tiny, Stella could name the major constellations and the phases of the moon. She loved the stars for their mystery and their beauty, disappearing in the morning light and appearing magically in the night sky. When she got older, Stella’s father told her that the universe was getting bigger all the time, that more and more stars kept appearing. When Stella wanted to know why, her father, perhaps at a loss for a scientific explanation, told her that they were new souls. Whenever someone on earth died and went to heaven, their soul became a new star. Stella found this both sad and beautiful, and wondered whether all the stars she could see nearest to earth were recently departed souls.
Not long before she turned twelve, the McElhone family had left Durham and moved to Wiltshire to be closer to Stonehenge. On her twelfth birthday, her parents gave her a telescope and she looked forward to autumn and the dark nights so she could spend longer with her beloved skies before being parcelled off to bed. Not that she minded early nights because she loved her new bedroom with its brass bedstead and patchwork quilt. After living for so long in a city flat, it was luxurious having a whole house to themselves, with a garden they could use whenever they liked. She loved to sit in her window seat, with the stars above shining down on her, keeping her and her family safe. Only, things had not quite worked out that way.
Before she could get too maudlin, Benedict’s voice rose, pulling her out of her reverie.
‘...and as Saturn’s rings start to vanish before our eyes, let’s hope the same thing doesn’t happen to our research grants.’
Relieved the lecture was finally over, Stella joined in the applause that signalled the end of the talk. The woman in the wool dress (still complete with tightly wound scarf) took to the lectern, thanked Professor Redman for his presentation and asked the guests to stay behind for further socialising. Now was the time for Stella to slip away. She couldn’t possibly hold her own in a conversation with any of these people, who’d want to talk about particle physics, quantum theory and who knew what else besides. They’d not be remotely interested in discussing the magic worked by the planets as they shone down on earth and its inhabitants.
She gathered her jumper and her bag, aiming to leave quietly, and was trying to stuff her arms into her sleeves without much luck. Cursing herself for not realising they were inside out, she reversed out, ready to start the procedure again when a hand plucked the jumper from her, shook it and held it out for her. A bolt of lightning shot up her arm and she reddened as she looked up into the crinkled, good-natured eyes of Benedict Redman.
‘Can’t leave you to struggle by yourself, can we?’
‘Thank you.’ She grimaced, mortified that she’d been bested by her own knitwear. ‘Your talk was…’ What word to use without causing offence? Amazing would sound sarcastic, as would fantastic . ‘Your talk was really… eye-opening. Why didn’t you tell me you were giving the lecture?’ No need to mention that she’d mistaken him for the caretaker.
‘I assumed you’d seen my name on your ticket.’
Or the banner over the door, or in fact, any of the several posters plastered around the place that she now noticed. How embarrassing.
‘Oh, I never read tickets. I mean, who does?’ Stella organised herself into her jumper and gazed up at him through her eyelashes. ‘Sorry, but I have to leave. I’ve… got to be up very early in the morning.’ Yes, because astrologers were famous for needing the morning light to do their work. Her first readings were typically never before midday.
‘What a shame, I was hoping to get to know you better over the paint-stripper. It’s not that often I get to spend time in such delightful company. And it’s not often that I get to spend time with anyone not dressed in tweed.’
He almost whispered this last part in her ear. Stella snorted, and not just because her blonde rival was dressed in a monochrome tweed skirt suit. Couture tweed that probably cost more than the average astrologer earned in six months, but tweed nonetheless. He didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder at the woman, who was quite openly giving Stella daggers.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘if it’s not too short notice, I’ll be here again on Saturday morning, faffing about with one of the telescopes. But afterwards, if it’s fine, we could take a walk in the park and then grab some lunch, if you fancy?’
Stella fancied it very much but couldn’t just blurt that out. She turned herself slightly so the blonde woman was no longer in her field of vision. That woman mustn’t be his wife or he wouldn’t be so blatantly chatting up a virtual stranger, let alone asking her out. She slid her eyes down to his ring finger. Bare. And no sign of any pale skin suggesting he’d just taken his ring off. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d fallen for that one. But if there ever had been a ring, and he’d taken it off, he’d taken it off a long time ago. Due diligence carried out, she was satisfied he was not married and that the blonde woman was probably just another astronomer or someone on the Saturn Committee, so she accepted.
‘That would be fine,’ she said, but her happiness was short-lived as the blonde woman was now bearing down on them.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Benedict–’
The professor snorted. ‘Yet you manage to look far from sorry, Miranda.’
Miranda frowned. Despite having only seen her briefly this evening, Stella had already witnessed at least four different frowns. Perhaps she practised them at home in front of a mirror.
‘Don’t be exasperating, Benedict. There are people who need to discuss important matters with you – think of your next research grant.’
She lowered her voice at the end of the sentence and it was clear that this Miranda was so posh that she found it vulgar to talk about money. Well, Stella didn’t want stand in the way of important grant-related discussions and would shove off, but not before securing the proffered date.
‘It was lovely meeting you, Professor Redman.’
‘And you, Stella. I’ll see you here on Saturday. Does eleven suit?’
‘Eleven’s fine. See you then. And in the meantime, best of luck with the expansion – both universal and financial.’
He didn’t reply and merely raised a hand, which struck her as rather dismissive. Perhaps she’d just dropped a clanger without realising it. Was the universe still expanding? Might it even be contracting? Too late to worry now. Stella eased her way past people talking solemnly and sipping wine. Quite a few of them even managed not to cringe while doing so. At least those stiff upper lips were good for something.
Outside, it had grown dark and Stella booked an Uber driver to come and collect her. While waiting, she paused to search for the stars. Because Greenwich was so near to central London, there was too much glare to do any real stargazing, but there was a certain beauty in the imitation stars provided by the bright lights spread in a twinkling wall across the other side of the River Thames. Her phone pinged to advise that the car was approaching. As it drew to a halt, she checked that the licence plate matched the one shown on the app, then climbed gratefully into the back seat.
‘Been star-spotting?’ asked the driver.
‘Kind of…’
‘Do you mind if I listen to the radio?’
‘Not at all.’
It was a cricket match but even that was preferable to thirty minutes of debating the vagaries of the London weather when she could while away the time processing some of the memories that had come to the surface during the planetarium show.
Stella and her parents had barely been in Wiltshire for a month when she came home one afternoon to find their lovely new house locked and empty. A cold feeling enveloped her, but as she didn’t really know anyone in the area, or what to do or where to go, she sat on the step and waited.
When a police car drove up the road, all the blood drained from her limbs, leaving her glued to the cold step. A police officer bent down and patted her shoulder, speaking softly to her. But Stella didn’t want to hear – wouldn’t hear. She put her hands over her ears and screamed, something deep inside telling her that if she didn’t hear it, then it couldn’t be true.
A nice lady with the police officer drew her into a car and took her away from home. Of course, it wasn’t really home. She still thought of Durham as home. They’d barely settled in to the south-west and she’d yet to make any friends at school where most of the kids laughed at the new girl’s accent.
The lady drove her miles away to a children’s home. When she’d been put to bed in a room with two other girls, a doctor arrived and gave her an injection. She still remembered the cold, sharp feeling in her arm, and then she remembered nothing – not the ensuing days and weeks, and not even her parents’ funeral. Their house was rented and they had nothing to leave and no will, so they’d been given a council cremation. It was many months before Stella was well enough to ask about their ashes. She was given forms to fill out, but to no avail. Her parents’ ashes were nowhere to be found, so she’d never had a chance to say goodbye to them in life or after their death.
Stella would sit quietly all day and then spend all night looking out of the window at the night sky. Unbeknownst to the carers at the children’s home, Stella was searching for the new stars that were her mother and father. She searched for their souls, certain that they were somehow looking down on her and looking after her. Eventually, a box of her belongings turned up, and she pulled out her telescope, hugging it to her chest. One of the carers put a small table in Stella’s room near to the window.
‘It’s going to be a long journey back to daylight for you, Stella, but this might be a start.’
Within a matter of weeks, her telescope had been stolen from her, and that was the very least of the bad things that began happening to her. The newly orphaned girl had no family, and it soon became clear that no other family wanted her. Everyone wanted babies and toddlers: a blank slate on which to project themselves.
At eighteen, she’d been pushed out of care to fend for herself. With no clue about where to turn, she’d gone to the council offices where an officious woman told her in no uncertain terms that there was no chance of her qualifying for accommodation, but she had at least pointed her in the direction of a flat-sitting service.
‘Course, they won’t want you, on account of your age and lack of references, to say nothing of your background, but you’ll have to make the best of a bad job.’
Armed only with a half-hearted reference from college and one from the manager at the children’s home, Stella had embarked on an unsteady flat-sitting career. She’d not done very well at school and had to resit her GCSEs at college. If she was honest, she had very little use for academic learning. In particular, maths had been a total waste of time, and the only use she’d ever found for logarithms was in calculating planetary positions for an exact time of birth.
Her early days of flat-sitting had been hardest as she did odd days here and there, earning what she could by selling birth charts online and interpreting them for clients willing to pay – clients who weren’t too worried that their consulting astrologer was often sitting on a coach, or in a coach station, with purple crescent moons beneath her eyes. She filled the days between flat-sitting assignments by travelling on long-distance coaches and sleeping as best she could, her life’s belongings taking up no more than a rucksack.
It was little wonder she was rootless. Her sun and moon were conjunct in the fourth house, right on the nadir of her birth chart. The fast-moving moon led to restlessness, and the close presence of the sun amplified its effects. Forever on the move, with no home to call her own, she was hollow with loneliness, but within less than a decade, she’d built up a good collection of references and had many repeat customers, which made it easier to find longer flat-sitting contracts that allowed her to feel a little more settled. She seldom met the homeowners though and hers was an isolated existence, with no one to greet her when she came home or to wish her well when she went out.
In all these years, she’d failed to come to terms with the fact that she had no family, that her parents had died andthat with a sudden, cruel stroke of fate, she was orphaned and alone, with no one between her and the precipice that was the rest of the world. Safe in the heart of her family, she’d never had cause to think about sadness, horror or loneliness. Now all three were ever-present. She’d grown up in the care of people who were paid to take care of her. Some of them were kind and some of them less so. None of them ever stayed in post long, so her life was never constant and she’d carried this pattern into adulthood. Now, she was truly alone in the vast universe, and being in a city as large as London only made it seem more so.
The driver coughed to get her attention and she was surprised to see they’d pulled up outside her apartment block. With its red-brick mansion flats, embellished with cupolas, wrought-iron balconies and bay windows piped in white plaster, the building resembled a tall gingerbread house.
‘Here we go. NW8.’ The cabbie whistled. ‘You must be well-to-do, living here, or your folks are, at any rate.’
‘No, not me, and not my folks either. I’m just flat-sitting for a few months. So, your tip won’t be enough to retire on, I’m sorry to say.’ She got her phone out, ready to add a tip.
‘All right by me, love. You take care now.’
She smiled at this unexpected kindness. The driver was a total stranger, and she knew it was just a turn of phrase, but he’d sounded genuine. So rarely did anyone show her any affection that when they did, she was like a dog at broth. She let herself into the main door of the building and walked into the lobby, pleased to see that Ernie was on duty behind the desk in his cubby-hole near the lift. The elderly porter always had a kind word to say when she was coming and going, which was something she’d sorely missed in her life. Ernie was busy pouring hot chocolate from his flask, and on seeing her, raised his tin mug in a toast and enquired after her evening.
While she stood chatting to Ernie, the sweet perfume of his drink set off a craving for hot chocolate and once upstairs she made herself a mugful. Out on her small balcony, she looked down at the dark, tree-lined street below her. Although the night was still warm, she shivered, glad of her warm and comforting drink, but even that didn’t stop her being alone in a strange city and all alone in the world.
At times like these, she often thought about visiting her birthplace in Durham. She’d been putting it off for so many years but now that her Saturn return was approaching, perhaps it was the right time to look to her roots and start to come to terms with all that she’d lost. Deep down, she knew it would be impossible to move on with her life until she did so.
She’d lost touch with her old school-friends in Durham and she had no extended family there. Even so, visiting some of her old haunts might bring her closer to her past. The staff at the children’s home had always discouraged her from visiting her birthplace, and she’d not pressed the matter with them. There was no one holding her back now, but did she possess the strength to go and stand outside her family home, and was she strong enough to face it alone?