As Far as the Stars. Virginia Macgregor
than he’s ever owed me.
For a beat, the guy keeps staring at me, and then he says:
‘Don’t you think you should stay?’ He shifts nervously from foot to foot. ‘I mean, there could be more information. We’ve been told to wait.’ He blushes like saying even these few words to me is painful. ‘It’s better to stay together at times like this,’ he adds.
‘At times like this?’
‘Yeah.’
He makes it sound like this is the kind of situation that people find themselves in more than once in their lives. And like he’s some kind of expert.
‘I’ll keep checking my phone,’ I say – because I can’t tell him the truth: that I don’t need to stay because that bit of metal floating in the sea has nothing to do with my brother.
I feel bad for leaving him. He looks like he could do with having someone stay with him, but I’ve got to get on the road.
15.48 EST
Except, when I get to the car, it’s not there.
Blake’s car.
The mustard yellow 1973 Buick convertible that he loves like it’s a living thing.
The car which has my rehearsal dinner dress in it, and my bridesmaid’s dress and Blake’s suit and Leda’s food.
The car Dad was going to drive Jude and Stephen to the airport in after the wedding, to catch the flight to Florence for their honeymoon.
The car that was my one chance of getting to the wedding on time.
Leda barks at the empty space where I parked it, like she’s seeing a ghost.
My head spins.
I look around and then spot a parking notice taped to a post next to where I left the Buick.
I peel it off but I already know what’s happened.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
It’s been impounded. Obviously, it’s been impounded – it’s what happens when you leave a car illegally parked in the pick-up zone for close to three hours. I’ve given Blake this lecture before. Blake who parks anywhere, anyhow, thinking he’ll get away with it because he’s Blake Shaw and that somehow makes him untouchable.
I put Leda down. She pees against the post where the parking notice was taped and then starts whimpering.
I feel like screaming. At the sky and the sun and all the planes flying overhead. At whoever it is who decided to land me in this shit storm of a situation.
I think of Blake’s car on the back of some horrible truck being carted to an impounding lot miles and miles from here.
I think about how much money it will cost to get it back – money I don’t have.
And I think about how long all this is going to take.
But instead of screaming, I take my telescope off my back and sit down on the sidewalk. I slump my shoulders and all the oxygen goes out of my body.
Leda lies down beside me and rests her head on my lap.
I stroke the spot she likes to have rubbed behind her ears: a soft, silky bit, the colour of gold, amongst all the rough, straggly fur.
‘What are we going to do?’ I ask her.
She looks up at me with her dark, glassy eyes like she’s asking me the exact same question.
I wrap my arms around her and close my eyes.
16.14 EST
I don’t know how long I sit there on the sidewalk, staring at the tarmac, willing my brain to work out some kind of plan to make all of this okay. But by the time I look up again, the sun’s so low, it blinds me.
Which is why I don’t notice him, not at first.
I put my hand over my brow to block out the sun, which lights up his hair – the tangled strands look like comets.
The sun reflects off his glasses too, so hard that I can’t see his eyes.
Leda gets up and runs around him, which makes him look nervous so I pat the space beside me to get her to sit down again.
For a second, I let myself believe that the fact that he’s standing there – the fact that he’s coming out of the airport – means that they’ve released new information. That the plane made it after all.
‘Is there any news?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘I needed to get out of there for a bit.’
My heart slumps.
‘I thought you were leaving?’ he says.
‘So did I.’
‘You changed your mind?’
I shake my head, too tired to explain. And too pissed about the car.
He sits down beside me but keeps a space between us like he’s scared to get too close. But then he holds out his hand, which feels weirdly formal, but I take it anyway. His skin’s cool. It feels nice.
‘I’m Christopher,’ he says. ‘As in Columbus. I can’t believe that I just said that.’
‘As in Columbus?’ I laugh and, for a second, it feels like a bit of my body comes back to life.
‘My dad has a thing about explorers.’
With his tangled blond hair and his pale skin and his rosy cheeks, he looks more like Christopher Robin out of Winnie The Pooh than the rugged coloniser of the New World.
‘Parents dump you with a whole load of shit when they give you a name, hey?’
He blushes. Maybe I offended him. Maybe he likes being associated with Christopher Columbus.
‘I’m Air. As in, Ariadne.’
It’s Blake who nicknamed me Air – as soon as I was born. Because he thought it was a totally cool name. As opposed to the totally nerdy name Dad picked out for me. For my baptism, when I was seven, Blake even wrote a song for me, using all these clever metaphors about breath and air and being in the world.
He looks up at me. ‘Ariadne. The goddess of mazes and labyrinths.’
‘You know?’
Nobody knows. Nobody except my geeky parents who fell in love over Greek myths at Oxford. My geeky parents who were totally pissed at Blake for changing my name basically as soon as they’d given it to me.
‘Home-schooled,’ he says.
‘Sorry?’
‘I was home-schooled until I was sixteen. Dad made me study all the old stuff. Latin, Greek, the myths. He got tutors for me. And when he had the time, he took me to museums. Anyway, that’s how I know.’
‘You were home-schooled in England?’
‘Not really in England. Not really at home, either.’
‘You weren’t home-schooled at home? How does that work?’
He blushes again, which makes his pale grey eyes stand out even more.
‘My dad travels so much that it was either take me with him or put me in a boarding school. I’m in a boarding school now, but I was home-schooled until last year.’ He pauses. ‘Well, away-schooled – I had some tutoring whenever we were in London but most of the time Dad taught me when we were travelling.’ The corners of his mouth