I try not to think about Huw. I reckon if I go and find Danny it’ll take my mind off things. Usually, I like walking through the campsite in the evening. Everyone’s cooking outside their tents, or sitting around chatting, and all the little kids race around playing games and it feels really relaxed. Once I’ve worked out Huw’s not around, I begin to chill too.
I find Danny washing up at the outside sinks; I hang around with him while he finishes and help him carry bowls and stuff back to his tent, which means I get to meet his family. They are really friendly and easy and kind, so that makes a change from the rest of my day up till now. I end up staying ages. His dad makes me hot chocolate on their camping stove. Danny’s little sister Hattie bullies me into reading a million stories. (Actually, I like reading stories.) We read this big book of fairy stories, all in rhyme, and Hattie knows most of the words by heart. It’s cosy sitting on a camping chair with Hattie leaning against me, all warm and ready for bed in her pink fleecy pyjamas, both of us sipping hot chocolate.
‘Football now?’ Danny asks. ‘Coming?’
‘One more story, Freya?’ Hattie wheedles.
‘Bedtime for you, Hattie,’ her dad says, scooping her up and kissing her tummy till she squeals.
Danny and I walk together without saying much. I’ve cheered up a bit, though, and it’s a relief to just lark about and run on the field. Neither Huw nor Matt are there. Izzy says they’re helping Dave with some boat trip, at Bryluen. She’s on the other team so we don’t get to talk much. She asks me how Gramps is, but that’s all.
We play out till it’s too dark to see the ball. The younger kids drift back to the campsite. I sit in a circle with Danny, Izzy and the others, chatting about not very much. Maddie and Lisa decide to go to the pub. Izzy doesn’t want to go. In the end it’s just Danny, Izzy and me left.
‘Let’s lie down and look at the stars,’ Izzy says.
‘Why?’ Danny says.
‘Just do it and see.’
So we lie down. The grass is slightly damp. Above us, the sky is clear and studded with stars. The more you look the more you see. After a while it seems as if the sky is pressing down, heavy with a million trillion stars each of which is a tiny pinprick but together making a whitewash of light. The sky seems to curve, pulled down to earth at its edges. You can see how the earth is actually round. I’ve never noticed that before.
We point out the constellations we know: the Great Bear and the Plough, Orion the Hunter and Sirius, the Dog Star.
‘Wish we had a telescope,’ Danny says.
‘Why? You can see everything like this. You’re more part of it. Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Yes,’ I whisper. It’s mind-blowing. Extraordinary.
Danny keeps fidgeting.
‘Sshh! Listen,’ Izzy says. ‘They make a sound.’
‘What do?’
‘The stars.’
‘How come? That’s impossible,’ Danny says.
‘Just listen.’
There is a sound. A very faint, high-pitched fizzing, like static. My head starts to spin.
‘The music of the spheres. Zinging down to earth, to us.’ Izzy’s voice comes out all breathy and awesome.
Danny sits up. ‘Ugh! This grass is sopping wet!’ He stands up and stares back down at me and Izzy. ‘You are almost the same colour as the field.’ He walks a few paces away. ‘From here you are invisible. Someone could walk right over you.’
Izzy laughs.
My head swims. I’m drunk with starlight. I feel tiny, under this vast sky. So many stars, and some of them aren’t even there any more, already burned up, even though their light is still travelling towards us, to this moment. It’s taken that long: light years. Out loud I say the word firmament, not because I’m religious or anything, but because it’s such a lovely word, and it feels like this sky needs an amazing word.
‘What?’ Izzy says.
‘Firmament. The sky.’
Izzy says it too.
‘Hey, Matt’s coming this way,’ Danny says. ‘Stay quiet and see if he notices you.’
But Izzy giggles. ‘Hi, Matt. All finished, then? Boat sorted?’
Matt looks slightly bemused, staring down at Izzy. ‘Coming for a drink? Huw and Luke are there already.’
‘Not tonight. You can.’
‘Not bothered. I’ll go back with you.’
‘We’re not going back. Not yet. Lie down and watch stars with us.’
‘I’m off,’ Danny says. ‘Coming, Freya?’
‘Don’t go yet!’ Izzy holds on to my sleeve.
So I don’t. I do what she wants, because I want it too. That’s the effect Izzy has.
Danny looks a bit fed up. He doesn’t say bye or anything. We watch him disappear into the dark.
‘Ahh!’ Izzy says. ‘He really likes you, you know?’
‘Shut up!’ I push Izzy away lightly and she laughs.
Matt comes and joins us. He lies down in the space between Izzy and me. I feel tingly and weird being so close. I can sense his body like heat, even though he’s not actually touching me. Above my face the air feels cold now.
His clothes rustle as he turns towards Izzy to kiss her. I know that’s what’s happening without seeing any of it. I seem to feel it, almost. The brushing of fingertips. Lips.
I’m totally still, silent, bathed in starlight.
‘Shooting star!’ Izzy says. ‘There!’
‘A comet, more like,’ Matt says.
‘No, shooting star: rock, hurtling through space towards earth. One day there will be a huge one, big enough to obliterate Earth completely.’
‘Cheerful, aren’t you, Izz?’ Matt says.
‘It’s the truth. Everybody knows it.’
‘But right now, scientists round the world are busy working out ways to deflect it, change its course or blow it up before it gets here.’
‘That’s what they like to think,’ Izzy says. ‘Some people like to think they can control everything. It terrifies them if they’re not in control. What do you think, Freya?’
‘I don’t know. It’s complicated. I guess no one likes to think about all this ending – this planet, I mean. But we all do have to end, sometime. Like, individually. We’re all going to die one day, whether we like it or not.’
‘Not,’ Matt says. ‘Not yet, not for a long, long time.’
‘You don’t know,’ I say. ‘No one does.’
We’re all quiet for a bit. I imagine Izzy nudging Matt in the ribs, to shut him up.
‘What if we die, but it’s not the end? What if we just change?’
‘Into what?’
‘I’m not sure. Not ghosts, exactly. More, like, a spirit you, which doesn’t need a body.’
‘Your soul?’
‘Yes. Something like that.’
‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Everyone’s made of stardust, did you know that?’ Matt says. ‘All matter originally comes from the stars. So you, and me, and Freya, we’re all made of stars really.’
Stardust. I like that.
That dust to dust stuff comes from the funeral service. They make you think about it, in the church, and afterwards too, for the burial. I swallow hard, blink back the tears that come like an automatic reaction when I remember back to that horrible day. Sometimes I wish it had been at the little island churchyard rather than the bleak town cemetery back home. Joe’s friends, sixteen-year-old kids from school, in tears, standing around awkwardly.
Izzy stands up, starts walking away across to the edge of the field. For a few precious minutes it’s just Matt and me lying on the wet grass, side by side. I hardly dare breathe. I keep totally still and stare at the stars. Matt moves his hand, ever so slightly, towards mine. Touching mine, even. Although afterwards I can’t really be sure. In any case, it was just by accident. It didn’t mean anything.
So why do I keep thinking about it, as the three of us walk slowly back to the campsite? And when I get home, and climb into bed, why do I put my other hand on the place he touched, as if he’s left a mark there? Why do I hold it all night?
I lie under the faded quilt, my body burning with new feelings, aching with longing for something I can’t have . . .
Was it like that for you, Joe? With Samphire?