Page 42 of See the Stars

Her phone rang, to disapproving looks from her fellow travellers. She looked at the screen. It was Hugo.

‘It’s Hugo,’ said Berti, helpfully, peering at the display. ‘You’ll have to answer it to stop it ringing. Or hang up or switch it to silent if you don’t want to talk to him.’

‘Of course I want to talk to him,’ said Alice, answering the call. ‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

‘Miss you,’ replied Hugo. ‘I’m just checking which train you’re getting on Sunday so I can come meet you at the station.’

Alice hesitated. There was a train announcement, impossible to decipher.

‘Where are you?’ Hugo asked.

‘On a train,’ she said.

‘Oh, thank goodness! Were you going to surprise me? I do think the earlier you’re back the better, it will give you time to acclimatise over the weekend. What time do you arrive? I can meet you at the station.’

Alice felt terrible. ‘I’m not on my way to London,’ she said. ‘I’m going to Edinburgh.’

‘Edinburgh?’ Hugo seemed to choke on the word. ‘What?’

She took a breath. ‘Well, we’re so close to spotting the comet, but I’m worried we’ll miss it unless we use a stronger telescope, and the one there is so good, and I think my old professor will let me use it tonight . . . ’

‘Listen, Alice, you can’t be gallivanting around in Scotland! You need to take care of yourself. It’s Friday! Work starts again on Monday.’

‘I know,’ said Alice. She looked out of the window at a field of cows happily grazing in the rain. ‘I should be back by then.’

‘ Should be?’

‘Yes.’ She glanced at Berti. ‘We should have spotted it by then.’

‘We? Is Matt with you?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Is he?’

‘No,’ said Alice. ‘Berti is.’

‘So you have a teenage chaperone and that makes it all right? Listen, I know I wanted you to take the leave,’ Hugo continued.

‘But you’re apparently well enough to be travelling the country.

And if you don’t go back now, there probably won’t be a job to go back to.

I’m thinking about you, Alice,’ he added.

‘Think how much more stressful it will be trying to find a new job, especially with the economy where it is. We can’t afford that lovely flat on my salary. ’

‘We’re going into a tunnel,’ said Alice.

She hung up.

Berti looked at her. ‘There’s no tunnel,’ he said.

Alice reached out and rubbed his hair. He cringed at the contact. ‘Hugo doesn’t need to know that,’ she said. ‘Maybe have a nap,’ she added. ‘We might have an exciting night ahead of us.’

‘Ah, Miss Thorington. Good of you to come.’ Alice shivered at the use of her surname, feeling as patronised now as she had all those years ago. ‘And you’ve brought your . . . ’ Boxley fished around. ‘Son?’

‘Assistant astrophysicist,’ corrected Berti.

‘That’s just perfect,’ said Boxley with a smile.

‘Good of you to see us again,’ said Alice, ignoring his look of amusement. She wanted to get to the point before she ended up angry and potentially rude. ‘What did you make of the logbooks?’

‘Well, I don’t know whether you got your auburn hair from your grandfather,’ said Boxley. ‘But you certainly got your meticulousness from him.’

Alice ignored the first part of the sentence and smiled.

‘The quality does rather deteriorate by the end, though,’ he went on.

‘Grandpa wasn’t always well,’ said Alice.

‘Dementia is a sad thing,’ said Boxley. ‘I have to say, by the last sighting it was hard to decipher anything.’

‘I could read it fine,’ announced Berti loyally. ‘It was me that spotted the pattern. I saw that the comet would return.’

‘Impressive,’ said Boxley. ‘For a child.’

‘So,’ began Alice, ‘can we use the telescope? As you’ll have seen from the notes, the comet could already be within range of earth.’

Boxley didn’t reply. Instead, he looked at Berti. ‘You’re good at spotting things, are you?’

‘Excellent,’ replied Berti.

‘And do you want to be an astrophysicist when you grow up?’

‘Of course,’ said Berti. ‘Not an astronaut, though. I don’t want to lose body mass, or indeed, be incinerated as I re-enter the earth’s atmosphere.’

‘You know, you need to be good at maths to be an astrophysicist,’ Boxley told him. ‘What’s this date?’ He put his finger on the log.

‘The twelfth of November,’ said Berti. ‘Of course. That’s hardly maths.’

‘That’s what the numbers say,’ said Boxley, looking smug. ‘But if you work backwards . . . ’ He pointed again, further up the page.

Alice leaned over, wondering where he was going with this. Then she took a sharp in-breath. Boxley looked at her, clearly enjoying the moment. It only took a second for Berti to catch up.

‘The numbers are the wrong way round,’ he said, already almost in tears. ‘The date should be twenty-one, not twelve.’

‘Bingo,’ said Boxley. He looked at them both.

‘Of course, I would have let you use the telescope. You’re just such a charming pair.

Unfortunately, there’d be no point. Your calculations are based on the wrong date.

A simple enough mistake, especially for a man suffering from dementia. But a mistake nonetheless.’

‘The comet has already passed.’ Alice hated saying the words. They’d been looking every night, but the telescope hadn’t been strong enough. They’d missed it.

‘Never mind,’ said Boxley. ‘You only have nine years to wait. That’s unless the comet has disintegrated by then, or been flung into interstellar space.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe see you in 2034?’

Alice and Berti sat in silence on the train back. ‘At least you didn’t pre-pay for the hotel room,’ said Berti eventually.

‘There is that,’ said Alice. She watched the sky cloud over through the window. ‘And I still have my job.’

‘You’re not going back to London?’ said Berti.

‘I am.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I know you don’t understand, but it’s my life. It’s what I’ve chosen.’

‘Well why don’t you just change your mind? You can stay here with me. There will be other comets. And we’ll find them.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Alice. ‘I have rent, and a job, and a fiancé.’

‘And a wedding to plan,’ added Berti.

‘Exactly.’ She looked at him. ‘You’ll come?’

‘If it’s not a school day,’ said Berti. ‘There will be cake, right?’

‘I expect so,’ said Alice. ‘You’ll come if there is?’

‘Of course,’ said Berti. ‘I love cake.’ He paused. ‘You can change your mind on all those things, you know.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t.’

They drifted into silence again. Alice looked out at the grey sky. A light drizzle had begun, the raindrops flinging themselves against the train window, momentum dragging them across the glass in diagonal lines.

‘I can’t believe we missed it,’ she said.

‘Only this time,’ said Berti. He smiled at her. ‘Next time we’ll be ready. Like that professor said, it’s only nine years to wait. Thank goodness for Jupiter’s gravity. Otherwise, it could be decades.’

Alice tried to smile back. Nine more years of her life.

Back to normal. For a moment, she pictured the next nine years.

Nine years of yield curves and client meetings.

She did some quick calculations in her head, projecting out from how her life had been.

That would be 12,775 coffees, 12,250 Zoom calls, 25,550 cigarettes.

No. She’d quit smoking, cut back on caffeine. She was going to live better, cleaner. She was going to keep the changes she’d made to her lifestyle. She took a deep breath, trying not to feel exhausted at the life ahead of her. She could do this. She had to.

Alice stood in her room, clothes covering the bed. She hadn’t brought that much with her, but packing it up still seemed a big job. She’d leave her old clothes here. Her mum could take them to a charity shop. She wasn’t going to come and stay again.

‘Hey.’ She turned around to see Matt standing in the doorway. ‘You’re off then?’ he asked.

‘There’s no point waiting here for nine years,’ said Alice.

‘Isn’t there?’

She looked at him, then turned back to the assortment of odd socks on the bed. ‘The comet’s gone,’ she said. ‘We missed it. It could have been right there, right where we were looking, but out of range.’

‘It could have,’ agreed Matt. He came into the room. ‘Do you mind if I sit?’ he asked her. ‘The stairs weren’t my friend.’

‘Of course,’ said Alice, hurriedly moving out of the way. ‘Sorry.’ She tried to slide her pants under the pillow, suddenly strangely self-conscious about him seeing her crumpled underwear.

‘It won’t be the same here without you,’ he said.

‘Is that you saying you’ll miss me, Matthew Stanton?’ she asked. ‘Yes.’ He picked up a sock and turned it the right way out before putting it back down on the bed and smoothing it flat. ‘But you’ve got your life to get back to.’ He looked up at her. ‘A wedding to plan.’

‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘A wedding.’ She picked up the same sock and scanned the bed for its partner. Nowhere to be seen. ‘You’ll come?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Matt. ‘I don’t think I will.’

‘Oh,’ said Alice.

‘You’ll be busy,’ he added. ‘You won’t want me limping around putting a dampener on things.’

‘You’re never a dampener. Quite the opposite.’

‘A drier?’ asked Matt with a smile.

‘Exactly,’ she laughed. She sat on the bed too, and started messily folding T-shirts. Matt watched her.

‘I don’t blame you, you know,’ he said suddenly.

‘For missing the comet?’ asked Alice.

‘No,’ said Matt. ‘For pulling away. I don’t have much to offer, not any more.’

Alice put down the T-shirt she was holding.

‘You have plenty,’ she said. ‘But I’m engaged.’

‘I’m aware,’ said Matt.

They sat in silence. Eventually he picked up a jumper and laid it flat on the bed, folding it in the expert way only a trained army officer could.

Alice took a breath and picked up the T-shirt again, just for something to do with her hands. ‘He’s a good guy,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t deserve someone cheating on him.’

‘I hope he makes you happy,’ said Matt. He took the crumpled T-shirt from Alice’s hands and refolded it. ‘You deserve to be happy.’ He put the perfectly folded garment back on the bed. ‘You owe that to yourself.’

Alice nodded, but she wasn’t sure she agreed.