Chapter Ten

Phinn sat behind the table in front of his third Coke and felt the hot, tight sensation of embarrassment close itself around him.

Molly had stood him up. All right, he could live with that. After all it wasn’t as if he’d even asked her out himself, she might have said yes just to get Link to shut up and leave them both alone – yep, he knew exactly how that went. No, it wasn’t the humiliation of having his third party arranged date not turn up, so much the fact that it seemed that the entire pub knew that he was supposed to be meeting Molly and were giving him little matey grins and encouraging smiles every time the door opened and didn’t reveal Molly standing there.

‘You want another in there?’ The barman nodded towards the nearly-empty glass. ‘Or are you going on to the hard stuff?’

‘No, it’s okay. I’ll just finish this …’ Phinn looked at his watch, unnecessarily because there was a huge clock behind the bar but he wanted to look as though he was an active participant in his own downfall. ‘Then I’ll get on back.’ Besides, the hard stuff hasn’t solved any problems yet.

‘Ah, you can give her another ten minutes. Moll’s usually pretty prompt. There must be something keeping her for her to be this late.’ The barman polished a glass, seemingly unaware of the discomfort his apparently even knowing the time that they were supposed to meet was causing Phinn.

‘Probably one of them horses,’ said an old man, raising his pint. ‘She’s a devil for mucking around with those things.’

There was a general chorus of ‘thass reet’ and Phinn sunk his head lower towards his chest in an attempt to become invisible. It wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, if he could have lost himself in alcohol. Blurred the edges a bit, taken the razor blade of awkwardness which he could feel scraping along his nerve-endings and blunted it down to an ignorable ache. He glanced up at the display of bottles behind the barman’s shoulder, let his eyes travel over them looking for a favourite; something, anything that would let him slide back into the haze that had sustained him for the past few months.

His fingers tightened around the glass in his hand and the thick brown liquid within it slopped in protest. No. Come on, Baxter, it’s not the answer, you know that. It just makes the question look more interesting. He took another mouthful of fizz and swallowed it quickly, feeling the last lonely ice cube bump against his teeth. He’d finish this and then he’d go. Perhaps he could pretend that he’d misunderstood the date, that they were supposed to be meeting tomorrow night …

But the cheer that went up when the door swung back to show Molly, a flustered vision in a red dress, stopped that thought dead.

‘We thought you wasn’t coming!’ The barman put a wine glass on the bar and filled it without consultation. ‘Your young man theer, he’s been proper bothered, you’re a bad lass to keep him waiting. Horses, was it?’

‘Mmmm.’ Molly stepped down into the bar and Phinn could see that she was wearing heels that made her legs look fantastic. Heels, sheer black – oh Lord, were those stockings? – on her legs and a short red dress that showed off her neat figure to perfection. His libido gave a little moan.

When she picked up her glass and came over to the corner where he was sitting, he got a puff of some musky perfume which made him wish that his stomach wasn’t so full of coke bubbles. ‘Sorry, Phinn. Caro had a breakout. Stan is such a little sod, he managed to unbolt his door and then went round the yard letting the others out. We’ve been hoiking them out of the hay barn all afternoon and then I had to have a shower and get changed and … are you all right?’

Phinn’s inner cynic, the one that had spent the last year telling him that all women were only after him for one thing and that he’d better figure out what that thing was before he ever touched another one with anything other than a laser-pointer, was struck dumb. ‘You look … legs,’ he muttered.

‘Not seen you in a frock before, lass,’ commented one of the older men. ‘Thought you was just having a quick meal, like, and here’s you done up like Frank’s donkey! Very nice, though.’

‘Thank you, Dave.’ Molly turned to give the whole pub the full value of the outfit, and curtsied. ‘It makes a nice change.’ Then she muttered over her shoulder to Phinn, ‘For God’s sake let’s go through to the restaurant, before they start doing my colours.’

She turned back to him and Phinn got another whiff of that smoky scent she was wearing, knocked his glass with his elbow and managed to splatter himself with the remainder of his Coke. He struggled to his feet amid much inner cursing, aware that his decent white shirt now looked as though he’d been sick down himself and followed Molly’s rapid steps out of the bar and into a much quieter back room, where a few tables were laid up for dinner.

‘Wherever you like, we’re not busy.’ The barman, now with a cloth over one arm, clearly doubling up as tonight’s waiter, waved an arm. ‘Over by the window’s favourite, not such a draught, and you can’t smell the bog house.’

‘Thanks.’ She slid into her seat, leaving Phinn standing awkwardly, not sure whether he should have pulled out her chair for her, and whether now was too late. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Phinn? You do look quite peculiar. But really, really good. Well, better than you did this morning, anyway.’

He finally felt the tension break as she grinned widely at him and pumped her eyebrows up and down. Just a meal to say thank you. That’s all this was. He looked down at his white shirt and black jeans. ‘I thought violet might be a bit much for tonight. But I’ll let you have it back tomorrow, if you’re desperate.’

‘No, no, keep it. Actually, no, burn it.’ Molly settled herself in her seat and consulted the menu. ‘And then bury the ashes.’

They ordered their food and Phinn felt, with something like relief, the creeping return of normality between them. It was lust he’d felt, seeing her there in her tight dress and lovely long legs. That was all. Lust. Hormones. Look but don’t touch, Bax. Like a nice painting, good to look at but it’s only pheromones, only biology making your tongue hang out and your cock twitch.

‘I shouldn’t be out late tonight, I’ve got to make a start on reading about the local folklore tomorrow for this article,’ she said, her matter-of-fact tone reinforcing the return of his clear head.

‘Article?’

And then she was explaining about her column and her editor, Mike, and Phinn felt a faint idea beginning to crystallize around the back of his brain.

‘I don’t suppose … I know this is a long shot but is there any chance that he might want a column on stars?’

‘Stars?’ Molly looked taken aback. ‘What, like celebrity interviews?’

Phinn sighed. ‘Black hole singularities rarely get drunk and fall out of bars.’

The first course arrived, set on the table by a grinning barman, who’d slipped a black coat on over his shirtsleeves and seemed to be attempting to turn into a waiter by degrees.

Molly sipped at her soup. ‘I’m not sure. He might, I suppose. Actually, yes, Mike’s a bit of a frustrated scientist, he keeps trying to get me to do things about local geology, and I can just about tell a lump of chalk from – actually, the chalk had better be the only thing on the table or I’m lost. Even chalk might be pushing it, science was never my thing at school. And to think Mum spent all those hours trying to get me to learn the periodic table.’ She concentrated on her soup very hard for a moment. ‘Why did you become an astrophysicist, Phinn?’

Ow. Phinn felt the impact of the personal question in the centre of his chest and buttered a piece of toast to cover his uncertainty. ‘I … my parents … it all seemed like a good idea at the time.’ He layered pâté and a gherkin with immaculate precision on top of the toast but found that his appetite had largely gone. I could tell her about my mother’s expression when I was five and told her I wanted to be a fireman …

‘You must be really intelligent.’ He could see her eyes through the soup steam, blue and innocent, making a simple observation with no intent to flatter him. And suddenly he hated himself yet again.

‘Yeah, I’m clever.’ He knew his voice sounded bitter and welcomed it. ‘A levels at twelve, degree at fourteen. I’m the youngest PhD in Astrophysics that my university ever turned out. And, do you know something, Molly?’ He leaned forward across the table, surprised when she leaned too, bringing their heads almost into contact. ‘The whole thing is a crock of shit. Being clever, what does it get you? No kind of life at all.’

He waited for her condemnation or her anger. But instead all he got was a sigh. ‘Yes. Sometimes it does seem that being pretty and blonde and giggling a lot is the secret road to happiness, doesn’t it?’ Through that leek-and-potato scented steam, blue eyes met his and it seemed to him that they held an iota of understanding.

‘Conforming. Yes.’

‘So we are clearly doomed, you and me. Pass the salt please. Barry is one hell of a cook but he can’t condiment to save his life – now, what were you saying about asking Mike if you can write an article?’

Phinn slid the salt cellar across the table to give his mind time to unwind this triple-conversational loop. ‘Er.’ It was no good, every time he tried to let the cynicism out she just cut right through him and caged it away again. ‘I just wondered. Cash is a bit tight at the moment.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll go Dutch.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ He found he was still leaning in, as though trying to compensate for the rollercoaster twists that the conversation was taking. ‘I’ve taken a year off to write a book, y’see. I’ve written stuff before and I’ve done a bit of popular astronomy with some of my students, that’s kind of where I’m aiming. Writing something for your magazine, if he’d have me … it might be good practice.’

‘I don’t know. Mike tends to hire freelancers who’ve got a track record. It’s not really an amateur kind of production.’

‘No, I understand that.’ Phinn bit his toast and shrapnel flew from his mouth to land in dusty fall out all over the tabletop. ‘I’m not exactly an amateur. I’ve published papers, research documents, some articles in New Scientist. If it helps, you can send your editor a YouTube link of me doing a talk last year; some of my students filmed it.’ He gave a kind of modesty-cough. ‘Went a bit viral, actually. Well, among what I’m aware is a fairly limited and, now I come to think of it, not all that impressive, bunch of dark matter theory undergraduates, anyway. They seem to think it’s rather good, it might just convince him that I’m worth taking a chance on.’

And you could take a look at it, see me doing what I do best. Maybe wipe out the impression that you always seem to be getting of me as a complete idiot, and usually a naked idiot at that.

Molly paused with her soup spoon halfway to her lips. ‘It’s not fantastic money,’ she said warily. ‘You’d be better paid if you went house to house selling dishcloths.’

‘But I’m not qualified to sell dishcloths. I am qualified to write about the sky and stars and plasma fields and brane theories. Which, I realise, might be pushing things for readers of a magazine about walking, but … do you think he’d give me a shot?’

Phinn realised he was actually being serious about this. If he sold some articles, it might mean that the book he was rather afraid he was going to have to actually write now could be based around them. That he wouldn’t have to write a bloody physics handbook for future generations of people like him, he could write something lighter. Maybe even entertaining?

‘I can ask,’ Molly said. ‘One of his writers has broken his leg, hence me being promoted up from writing about footpaths and badgers, so he might go for it.’ She stopped spooning soup and looked at him, twisting her mouth slightly. ‘You’re always very serious, Phinn, aren’t you?’

No, he wanted to shout. No! This isn’t me! The man you’re seeing, the man you’re talking to, he’s not the real Phinn Baxter, he’s an imposter wearing my face. A man who’s had all the joy and fun knocked out of him, beaten down by lies and loss. In here somewhere is the real me, can you see me waving?

Instead he just shrugged.

‘Depression isn’t something to be ashamed of, you know.’ She had her head down, sipping soup again, delivering the statement as unweighted as water. ‘It’s perfectly okay not to be able to cope with stuff every now and again.’ Now she looked up. Met his eye. And he knew, just knew, that she had seen a glimmer of the real man underneath the heavy grey shroud he wore, that she could see the shadow behind his eyes that was his old self jumping up and down to try and get her attention. The him he’d once been, the man who sometimes managed to rise to the surface and escape for a moment; a laugh, a sentence.

‘Your wife must have hurt you very badly.’ Molly went on and for one flicker of a second Phinn thought he’d spoken his inner thoughts aloud. Maybe it was time to tell her.

‘Molly …’

But she was standing up now, looking over his shoulder out into the night. ‘Phinn,’ she said, her voice tight and odd. ‘The lights are back. They just went right over the village.’

* * *

The weird atmosphere that had enveloped us almost from the time I’d walked into the pub was gone in a second. Phinn was on his feet too, swivelling to look out of the dark window into the night that stretched over the dale. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ I fumbled in my bag, dropped a twenty pound note on the table and grabbed my jacket from the back of my chair. ‘Come on.’

Phinn looked down. ‘Isn’t that rather a lot? We only had starters …’

‘I’ll pick up the change tomorrow! Come on!’

And almost before I realised it we were running, out of the pub and across the road, defying the honked horns of two cars, weaving our way out into the night. Above our heads the lights swung and flickered, almost as though they were leading us on.

‘They’re following the river.’ I stopped to take off my shoes, the heels made it impossible to run fast enough. ‘If we head up this trackway we’ll come out onto the old railway line and be able to follow them along that.’

He gave me a quick look but didn’t speak, just came along behind me as I led the way between two of the oldest houses in the village, squelching in mud that was a welcome change from the hard tarmac of the road, and burst out onto open moorland. Still above us the lights seemed celebratory, dancing a kaleidoscopic pattern in the sky.

We raced over peat soft as melting butter, running, running, trying to keep the lights in sight. I was sweating under my jacket, feeling my hair sticking to my forehead even as my feet froze on a ground frosted into rucks and puckers. The lights drifted, seemingly wind-blown, tracing the line of the distant river, glowing like burning metal against the velvet night. And then, suddenly, they stopped. Hung as though nailed to the sky.

‘Phinn, what are they?’

‘No idea.’ He leaned forward, hands on thighs, trying to catch his breath. ‘I’m going through everything I can think of, but nothing fits.’ He straightened again and looked at me. The faint moonlight made him look sculpted, it highlighted his bones, shaded the hollows and flattened any emotion out of his face. ‘Are you frightened?’

‘I don’t know.’ And I didn’t. There was a curious elation which came with the lights, a pounding of pulse and a quickening of blood, but also a feeling of standing on the edge of something. Something which might tip me over at any moment. Into what, though?

‘Yeah. Weird. That’s the feeling I had when I tried to catch them, half terrified and half not.’

‘The other day, when you …’

‘… tore off all my clothes and begged to be abducted, yes.’ He took half a step forward and, as though triggered by his movement the lights took off again and, with one final swoop like a cheery farewell, dropped down beyond the horizon and were gone, leaving the skies empty except for the distant chilly stars.

‘Chinese lanterns?’ I tried.

‘You think?’ He tipped his head back and stared directly upwards. ‘Yeah, maybe. Party lanterns that make us feel they’re putting on a show just for us. You get that? That feeling that this is all somehow because we’re watching?’

My feet hurt and had gone through my tights, leaving me barelegged up to mid calf and the remnants tattering around my knees like frill-edged bloomers. ‘I don’t know. You’re the expert on this aren’t you? UFOs?’

‘Not expert.’ He stopped looking at the sky but, oddly, when he looked at me I could still see stars reflected in his eyes. ‘I talk to some groups, take an interest, that’s all. It’s amazing how much UAPs intersect with my theories of plasma fields – missing time, electrics cutting out, people falling unconscious – all reported side effects of close encounters with UAPs and, coincidentally or not, of contact with massive magnetic forces.’

‘I’ll bet Stephen Hawking is keeping an eye on you.’

Phinn gave me a quirked-mouth smile. ‘He reads over my research, yes.’

‘Are you showing off?’

A broader smile now. ‘Maybe.’

‘All right, clever clogs. What do we do now? Do we file official reports or something? And then sit back and wait for the “Men In Black” to come round?’

Phinn looked back up at the sky. ‘It’s freezing. I think we go home. Where are your shoes?’

‘I’m all right,’ I lied. The adrenaline that had resulted from our mad dash up the hill was gone, leaving me chilled and flat and rather in awe of Phinn’s self-possession and capability.

He moved closer. ‘Are you sure? You look a bit shaky.’

I just shook my head. Tears were pressing behind my eyes, reaction or shock or plain ordinary cold, I didn’t know. I did know, however, that I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I kept my face immobile in the hope that I could freeze the tears in place.

‘All right. Come on then.’ He held out a hand, frowning when I hesitated. ‘I’m only going to help you walk down, not propose.’

‘I can manage,’ I said stiffly.

Then Phinn surprised me. ‘He must have hurt you very badly,’ he said softly, echoing my words to him, was it really only a few minutes ago? ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to pry, Molly, but I know there has to be something behind the way you’ve buried yourself here. I read some of your articles, did you know? Well, I’d hardly offer to write for a magazine I’d never even looked at, would I, and you are good, Molly Gilchrist, I can tell that much. But that house, all those things that aren’t yours … you don’t look like a woman who’d have seahorse pictures on the bathroom wall. Severed fingers maybe, but not those cutesy little show home prints.’

My arms went rigid down by my sides. ‘Bloody hell, I thought you were an astrophysicist not a PI. Have you been going through my things? When you broke in this morning, did you have a quick rummage through my knicker drawer too?’

‘I just thought I’d mention it.’ Phinn’s voice was still soft, but relentless. ‘Maybe … maybe it’s something to do with why we can see the lights when Link can’t. Perhaps no one else can see them either, maybe it’s just us. Did you think of that?’

My throat felt as though it had swallowed a house. ‘Yes,’ I said, and my voice sounded distorted, spacey.

‘Yes?’ The breeze moved Phinn’s hair, swept it aside like a lover to expose his throat. I couldn’t take my eyes away. The cold gnawed my bones but I was only aware of that in a hollow, plastic sort of way.

‘That it might be something to do with us. A deserted husband too many drinks in and depressed to the bone … and a runaway fiancée who can’t look her family in the face again. Would that make some alien race come looking for us, Phinn? What the hell are they, from the planet Jeremy Kyle?’

Slowly Phinn took his glasses off. He stared at them, dangling from his fingers, for a second, then polished them on the part of his shirt that didn’t have stains down it.

‘This has, I think you’ll agree, been a completely rubbish evening, hasn’t it?’ he said, at pretty much the same moment that I realised that my tears had escaped from their stasis and were scalding their way down my cheeks. ‘Let’s not do it again some time.’ Then he held out his hand again. ‘Come on. Let us, as Link would say, get the hell outta here.’

This time I took the offered hand. ‘I am not pathetic,’ I said. Or rather, I sobbed it, sounding about as pathetic as possible without being a kitten in the snow. With an injured paw.

‘At this moment, Molly, I think we are both pretty pathetic. C’mon, I’ll take you home.’ He pulled me forwards for a few strides and then stopped. ‘Actually, I have no idea where we are, so you might need to take us home. But I’ll help.’

So with me leading the way, sobbing and occasionally snorting and with Phinn holding my hand like a blind man holding the harness of his guide dog, we made our way down off the moor, intercepting my posh shoes at the top of the lane as we went.

‘This will be all round the village in the morning.’ I gave a half-hysterical laugh. ‘The lads in the pub will have it that I was blind drunk and got shagged by some incomer and had to be carried home.’

‘Better to be talked about than not talked about,’ Phinn said, with a flash of a smile. ‘Next thing you know you’ll be notorious.’ He stopped to let me slip my shoes back on. ‘But I don’t think you want people to talk about you, do you?’

‘If you invent invisibility in your next round of quantum-whatever, then please let me try it out first,’ I muttered as we processed down the street, my shoes clopping and sliding on my bare and muddy feet and the remnants of my tights fluttering behind me like leg shadows.

‘And yet you let me walk around in that horrible trouser suit.’ We reached my front door and stopped. I was very aware of his hand still holding mine, of his fingers cupped into my palm. ‘Molly …’

‘Thankyouforalovelyeveningmustdashgoodnight,’ I blurted out, dropping his hand as if it was made of dog pooh and hurling myself at the door, both shoes slipping from my feet as I went. I landed headlong, barefoot and shivering uncontrollably, shoved the door closed with a trailing leg and lay still on the chilly lino, letting the quiet familiarity of the little cottage wash over me.

* * *

Phinn sat for a while in the weedy front garden with her discarded shoes on his lap. Part of him wanted to knock on the door or call through the letterbox, just to let her know she wasn’t alone but he didn’t think she’d want that. Didn’t think, more to the point, that she’d want him.

God knew, he didn’t even want himself much right now. He glanced down at her pretty red shoes sitting so pertly on his knee and imagined her putting them on earlier that evening. Getting dressed up for a meal out. And now she was the other side of the door, probably, if his own feelings were anything to go by, wondering what the hell had just happened while he sat, only a couple of inches of plywood away from her. Hell, he could probably kick the door in if he put his mind to it. Kick it in and … what? Have the two of them stare at one another, share a couple of embarrassed grins, make his apologies and go? Leaving a flapping front door and not much dignity on either hand?

Oh, sod it. Why does everything have to be so complicated? I like her. She’s … yes, cute. Smart. Kind. Nothing like … yeah, nothing like Suze. But. Oh yeah, so many buts.

Suze had bewitched him with her pretty face, her broad ready smile. He’d thought they could make it, hadn’t realised that she didn’t want to make it, or at least, not with him. That she’d married him for an upwardly mobile lifestyle he had no intention of getting; his mind was the key to dimensions, to M-theory, not to owning a Lamborghini and living in Monaco. Hell, he didn’t even have a car and had only a notional idea of where Monaco was.

Phinn sighed. It wasn’t as if he and Molly were … what was it? She was just someone who had come to his rescue a few times. No obligation. And tonight, the strange atmosphere out there on the moorland after they’d chased the lights, that would be down to the sheer oddness of the situation, the uncertainty of what they were seeing.

The lights. Ah, that’s better. Something solid to worry about. Never mind all this angst and high emotion, what about those crazy, semi-invisible lights?

Feeling a little more secure now that he had something concrete to concern himself with, Phinn stood up, juggling the high heels from hand to hand. Maybe he should leave them on the step? Only, they looked expensive, if it rained they’d be ruined, and the way things were going he’d probably get the blame for that. Only other thing to do was to take them home with him, like a fetishistic Prince Charming, and bring them back tomorrow. Or possibly the next day. Anyway, he’d bring them back as soon as he could be sure of being received without his and Molly’s joint humiliation causing some kind of rift in the space-time continuum.

He wondered about saying something, telling her he was off, but then it would mean her finding out that he’d been hanging around outside all this time. Would she think it was gentlemanly or would she, as he thought more probably, think that it was creepy and possibly even stalkerish behaviour?

He was hovering with his hand on the gate when he saw Link bouncing towards him on the balls of his feet, like a man who is very pleased with himself.

‘Man, I was coming to look for you,’ Link announced in a stage whisper. ‘Not too hard though, don’t worry. I was prepared for you to be doing the earth-moving thing, in which case I was just going to walk on by.’ And then he saw the shoes, Phinn’s general air of dishevelment and the fact that the front door was closed. ‘Oh, what? Why have you got those? Going for the full outfit, are you? Only red with lilac won’t work, not even with your colouring.’

Phinn opened his mouth to tell Link about his evening, and then realised that there wasn’t one part of it that didn’t sound completely off-the-planet weird. Escaped horses, semi-invisible lights in the sky, bare feet, weird atmospheres – it all sounded like the kind of oddness that would make Dali want to go for a long rest. ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me get totally wasted tonight, would you?’

Link pulled a face and shook his head. ‘Can do you a cup of tea though.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Phinn looked over his shoulder at the firmly closed door. ‘Best offer I’m going to get.’

And ignoring Link’s raised eyebrows, he climbed over the garden gate and led the way back to Howe End.