The autumn I turned fifteen, we gathered on the beach and held hands as we stared at the screen by the sheer cliff face.
Liam had rigged the projector up.
I sat beside Felix as we watched Saviour 8 launch from the desert in Kazakhstan.
We didn’t speak, not one of us, but we all felt it, that this was the one.
Morales had sold it.
The newspapers ran it daily in the boldest print.
Our planet will be saved.
I looked to the right and saw tears in Abi’s eyes. And to the left, tears in Hunter Silver’s.
The craft had been detailed on the television, in the newspapers, drawn on the whiteboard by Mr Starling. It would land on Selena and blast rockets from the surface. The angles would be altered, she would miss Earth by two million miles.
We shared out popcorn.
Liam and Hugo set off fireworks.
A small crowd formed on the clifftop and watched.
It was cold but we stripped off and held hands and ran into the water.
We shrieked and cried and splashed till we could no longer feel our bones.
We ran back up to the beach and huddled beneath our towels.
‘Tell me about today,’ Stella said.
‘It came and it went.’
‘Was Abi’s body laid out? Did people go up and look at her dead face?’
‘No.’
‘Did you go to Mum and Dad’s funeral?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was in the hospital because I was too small.’
‘Yes.’
Mae remembered the night too clearly. Sitting in the hospital waiting room as dusk caved to dawn in a breath held till it hurt. People came and went, more pain and more fear, more crime, more casualties. The room in half-dark as she watched the large television screen, the sounds muffled by what she had seen, so tired the colours blurred. Nurses gathered beside a doctor in scrubs, a cluster of drunks too dizzy to focus. Together they watched as Russian rockets ripped the atmosphere over Rio, a million on the streets, bold colours, carnival sounds and dancing as they cheered on a united world. The nurses held hands, one dipped her head in prayer, then crossed herself when she was done.
‘After the truck hit us they cut me from her,’ Stella said. ‘But I wasn’t ready to come out. That’s why I’m blind.’
‘Yes.’
Stella had lived in a tank her first month, a creature too fragile to breathe the fleeting air. Three buses to reach her each day, Mae rode them alone and numb.
Their mother did not wake to meet her second child.
‘Do you know about fate?’ Stella said.
‘What about it?’
‘Is it real?’
At five weeks Stella was strong enough to emerge, to lie in her sister’s arms as Mae gently rocked her and told her nothing of the world outside. Mae’s had been the first finger Stella gripped, the first chest she pressed to.
You will be loved.
You will be loved.
You will be loved.
‘We don’t have control over Selena. So our destiny is to die soon.’
When she fell and cried, Mae picked her up, dusted her down. At four, Mae taught her sister to swim. Sometimes Stella said Mae was too tough. Mae knew that was okay. Sometimes Stella did not get her way and she screamed and told Mae she hated her. And Mae knew that was okay too.
The shadow in the sky was growing. They had to be tough. Mae had kept Selena from their lives until the day before Stella started school. They sat on the beach and had that conversation. No emotion, just the coldest of facts. Stella took the news with an evenness that told Mae she could not possibly understand.
‘Will it hurt?’ Stella said, sleepily.
‘No, it won’t hurt.’
‘Will you read me a story?’
‘You could read one to me,’ Mae said. ‘I love to watch you read.’
‘I’ve read all the braille books at the library. We don’t have money to buy new ones.’
Stella curled into Mae, something she did when she was worried.
‘Will you tell me about Saviour 1?’
‘I will. One day I will.’
Mae stayed with her till she slept.
Then she pulled on dark jeans and a black hoodie.
Mae stood across the street from the Manton house and watched. For a while she tried to imagine what it must have been like for Abi, all of a sudden thrust into the kind of life they used to laugh at. Shiny cars and plastic smiles.
She climbed the wall, stayed low and moved down the side of the house.
In the back garden she saw the large glass doors open, and inside the glow of the television lit Luke Manton’s sleeping form. Slumped to the side, mirroring the empty bottle in front of him.
She entered silently and threaded her way past a tower of beer cans. Luke had commandeered the living room, the rest of the house was immaculate.
Mae climbed the stairs with care, saw one bedroom door closed and guessed Lydia Manton was on the other side of it, dead to the world, the only peace coming when she swallowed a couple of sleeping pills and escaped into her dreams.
She tried a couple of rooms before she found Abi’s.
It was cold and clinical. Grey walls and carpet, the kind of achingly cool more at home in a magazine than real life.
The first thing she noticed was the artwork. Sweeping scenes on large canvases hung on each wall. Abi’s initials in the bottom corner. Each showed the beach, some by day and others moonlit.
Mae recognised them at once.
In every picture there were two shapes on the beach, more shadow than anything else but Mae knew exactly what she was looking at. That perfect September day when they’d stood in front of each other and sworn their Forevers.
She sat at Abi’s desk and flipped through a notebook, then tried each drawer and found nothing more interesting than paints and brushes.
It should’ve been taped off. The room should have been sealed till people in paper boiler suits had combed and dusted it. There should have been police all over town. A girl was dead.
In Abi’s wardrobe, dresses hung with the labels still attached, the prices so eye-watering Mae could not imagine such waste.
Whatever she’d been hoping to find wasn’t there. The room was ordered and immaculate.
Abi’s old room had been yellow and filled to bursting. She collected everything from feathers to stones, driftwood to cheap paperweights.
Mae walked over to the bookcase and scanned the shelves, from Anna Karenina to Lord of the Flies, Faulkner to Steinbeck. Nothing stood out, until she reached the bottom. Something about the early edition of Lolita made her stop. Mae remembered Abi reading it on the beach, the old vicar telling her it was the devil’s work.
She picked it up, started to flip the pages, when she saw it had been crudely hollowed out. Inside Mae traced a finger along the pack. Microgynon. Abi was on the pill.
She thought of Theodore Sandford, the purity rings they both wore. Maybe it really was nobody’s business, or maybe the lie had come too easily to him.
Mae crept back through the house, staying silent but there was no need. Luke Manton’s heavy snores drowned her footsteps.
Back out on the empty street she heard noise.
She spun, saw no one but her heart rate began to climb. She turned and walked, then heard it again.
Footsteps.
Behind her.
Mae picked up her pace but still they followed.
The shape was dark, and coming at her from the shadows.
She broke into a sprint.
He was on her fast, a sharp push sent her sprawling into a bin store. She rolled and aimed a kick that caught him hard. He stumbled and Mae moved to the side. She scrambled around wildly as he fell heavily on top of her, knocking the air from her lungs. She couldn’t see his face, just a red hoodie pulled tight, the darkness swallowing his features.
And then she felt his hands moving up her thighs, stopping at her pockets as he pressed. She wished she had her knife. She’d cut him. She knew that about herself.
He grabbed her bag and began tossing the contents from it.
Her fingers brushed something cool.
Glass.
She clenched her teeth as she gripped the bottle and brought it hard against his head. It shattered in her hand, she felt the blood hot on her as he fell backwards.
Mae climbed to her feet and set off again.
This time she cut across and climbed the steep wall in front of the Prince house.
Their garden was a mess of machinery, scaffolding and tools. She looked back, stunned as the figure dropped over after her.
At the end of the garden Mae jumped down onto the track behind.
The cliff face was severe but she knew the best route down. She moved down the rocks, they evened out and eventually she came to the beach.
A fire burned in the distance and she headed towards it, then screamed when she slammed hard into someone.
‘Mae.’
‘Sail,’ she panted, her chest on fire.
She dropped to her knees and he fell with her, keeping her level as she pressed her cheek to his chest.
‘What’s wrong?’ He gripped her shoulders tightly.
She pointed, barely able to speak. ‘Nothing. I handled it.’
The fire crackled, the smoke rose and the water broke in arcs. A large group of kids was sitting around it, still wearing their funeral clothes.
Sail read her, and then ran back the way she had come, disappearing into the darkness.