Astarte wakes feeling confused and lies still for a while, waiting for the fog in her brain to clear. She can hear movement in the house. For a few seconds the past weeks seem like a dream, and she is convinced that Steve is downstairs making breakfast. Her mouth waters in anticipation until she rolls over and registers the narrow single bed. Full wakefulness takes over and she rises, throws on her silky peach-coloured robe, and goes into the bathroom to splash cold water over her face. Her stomach growls with hunger and she realises guiltily that she did not offer her parents a meal last night. A swift mental inventory of her food stocks assuages her discomfort. Rainbow and Leaf would be horrified at packs of frozen ready meals.
Her parents are in the kitchen. Clouds of incense billow upwards from one of the work surfaces, mingling with the drifting cardamom fragrance of Chai tea. Rainbow pours some into a mug and hands it to her as she gingerly sits at the table. Astarte sips gratefully and wonders what to do about breakfast.
Throughout her childhood they insistently proclaimed the benefits of eating raw foods, asserting that cooking destroyed the goodness, the vitamins, and the life-force, and created bad karma. Astarte can remember crying over a carrot at the age of three, when Rainbow told her that by eating it she was taking its life into her body. She fasted all that day, hating the thought that she was killing something. The best meal in her parent’s opinion, firmly and repeatedly voiced, was freshly gathered from hedgerows and orchards. There are none of those around here, but she could go to the corner shop for bread and honey, or buy some fruit and dried muesli.
She casts her mind back to the last time they visited, two years ago. It was a brief, tense collision of cultures. They had offered Steve a toke on their joint, and assured him that he had been Astarte’s son in a previous life. This did not go down well with him. Astarte now suppresses a smirk at how angry he had been, but at the time she was mortified and furious and had asked them to leave. She looks at them now, sitting side by side, as always, trading tender glances at each other, and feels a pricking behind her eyelids. However much they irritate her, they have always been happy together.
A procession of images parades through Astarte’s mind; of herself as a child, constantly chastising them, insisting that she could parent herself more effectively than they ever could. It makes her feel small and mean, and she blanks it out instantly. ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asks. They exchange a look.
‘Well,’ Rainbow’s soft voice is hesitant. ‘We couldn’t sleep. Your house is very nice, Astarte,’ she adds quickly, ‘and the bed is very comfortable. But it felt so closed in that we decided to go and sleep in the garden.’
Astarte rises to look out of the back window. The garden is empty of all but grass and flowers. ‘So where’s your tepee?’ she asks.
Leaf’s traces a finger along the tabletop, not looking at her. ‘We just slept on the grass,’ he mumbles.
‘I don’t believe it! Oh my God, the neighbours probably thought you were vagrants. I’m amazed the police haven’t been here …’ Astarte stops, silenced by the contrite looks on their faces. ‘Look, it’s fine.’ She lowers her voice. ‘Honestly. If you’d rather sleep on damp grass and risk pneumonia, that’s entirely up to you.’ Despite her irritation she can’t help grinning as she pours out more Chai. ‘You two really take the biscuit. The whole bloody bakery, in fact.’
The house seems quiet and empty after they have left. A thick haze of smoke creates blue-grey bands in the air, and Astarte throws all of the windows open to let in the scent of summer flowers. Their fragrance is overlaid with the olfactory signature of the city. Smoke, car fumes, cooking aromas; the distinctive, pervasive smell that signals many people living in small, closed spaces, boxed together. Astarte considers how long she has lived on this street, and realises that the only person she knows by name is Mrs Hargreaves next door.
What strange lives we lead, cut off from each other and from the natural world, she thinks. How many of her neighbours have watched swans fly overhead, and heard the night scuttlings of wild creatures? Astarte knows that the city can be the loneliest place of all, and she holds an image in her mind of the cottage and the lake that will soon be her home. Warmth spreads through her at the prospect of becoming part of a community, and this leads her thoughts back towards Rainbow and Leaf, and the group of people they have travelled with for many years. Her parents have friends in every corner of the world, and it suddenly strikes her how happy they are with their lives, and how little they want or need; fuel for their van, a bush to plunder, a clear view of the sky.
Astarte is quite rattled to find herself viewing Rainbow and Leaf from a different perspective. For once she doesn’t feel frustrated or angry. To inject some realism she reminds herself of her childhood. Of her constant horror at the lack of personal hygiene; the infestations of head lice that tormented and humiliated her; the drugs; the lack of roots; the yearning to be like the people who lived in houses and went to school, and who despised her for being a traveller.
It makes her feel better to create a balance, to not get carried away by a momentary lapse of good sense. She can place this new-found tolerance (which after all, is similar to finding someone’s kitten rather sweet, but not wanting to have a cat) on one side of a set of mental scales, then pile up her age-old resentments on the other side and watch the scales tip and sink. Astarte Weaver may be feeling a little unsettled and confused, but she has no intention of allowing that to cloud her judgement.
The telephone rings. As she answers it, Astarte notices that the answer-phone is winking. Six messages. It is David Horton, the estate agent.
‘I’ve been trying to reach you for two days,’ he says. ‘Did you get my messages?’
‘I’ve been away. I thought I’d told you I would be in Ireland.’ Astarte puts on her most assertive voice. She doesn’t like being placed in the wrong, and the man sounds quite aggrieved. ‘I’ve only just noticed there are messages.’
‘Oh.’ He sounds less confrontational. ‘Well, Miss Weaver, I have a buyer for your house.’
Astarte sits down quickly before her legs can buckle under her. ‘Already?’ she squeaks.
‘It’s a very desirable residence.’ His tone really is quite pompous, and Astarte suppresses the urge to giggle. To her, a pile of stones (formerly a cottage, and awaiting its next incarnation) is desirable. This house, that she was once so proud of, no longer fits that description as far as she is concerned. She can’t wait to leave here. But David Horton would consider her to be crazy if she said so.
Astarte realises that she has tuned him out, and asks him to repeat his last sentence, making the excuse that she was so surprised by his speed and efficiency that she missed what he was saying. He preens audibly.
When she replaces the receiver she stands still for a moment and then leaps into the air, both fists raised in triumph. She picks up the phone, automatically beginning to dial Marianne’s number, then realises what she is doing and drops the receiver as if it has burned her fingers. She has good news, and not one friend here to share it with. Briefly she feels sad, and then she grits her teeth, fishes out her address book and dials the number for John and Siobhan in County Clare. She can hardly believe that her life has changed so swiftly.
Rainbow, of course, would say that it is fate; that the universe in its awesome benevolence has conspired to bring her just what she most desires.