She took what she knew to the beach.
And she joined them in her daze, and was soon flanked by Matilda and Betty, who stood either side and took her hands in theirs.
She watched them wade into the dark water and float on their backs.
And then she noticed the small clusters of girls who stood waist deep, passing bottles of hair-dye as the sea took the silver away. Maybe they were showing affiliation, or maybe they’d just tired of looking up to Hunter.
‘Hey.’
Mae was surprised to see him, sat down on the sand and leaned heavily, her head on his shoulder.
‘Are you okay, Mae?’
She did not know where to begin, so much death already, so much more would come. ‘I’m tired, Felix.’
Around were a hundred Forevers, they lay in groups, the fire crackled and music played softly.
‘Did you do this?’ he said.
‘They did.’
He passed her the bottle of communion wine and she drank and passed it back.
‘Anything with Abi?’ he said.
‘I thought maybe yes, but then everything … it just changed. And now I don’t know anything, Felix. I don’t who I am, and I don’t know who these people are. I want it to go back, you know, just to before, not even before we knew, because I don’t even remember that time.’
‘Hey,’ he said, and wiped her tears with his thumbs. ‘You don’t cry. You’re Mae Cassidy and you’re the toughest person I know. And you’ve been through more than any one of us here.’ She cursed and he told her it was okay but she didn’t feel okay then.
‘Stella,’ she said.
He nodded, and she saw tears of his own forming.
‘It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for her. I never had siblings, never needed them because I had you and I had Stella. And I know I joke with her and I’ve messed up her dance but I …’
‘I know.’
He took a moment to calm and she let him.
‘Wait. What was that about her dance?’ she said.
He climbed to his feet quickly but the rumble almost knocked him down again. This time it was savage, so deep, like West was about to split in two.
The hundred climbed to their feet and stood together.
And they gasped as the town behind was plunged into darkness.
So total it was like it no longer existed.
There were murmurs, calls to go get help.
But they stayed there and looked back, and then out to sea.
And then, finally, someone looked up.
‘Up there.’
Mae wasn’t sure who the voice belonged to, but she looked up too, and she felt Felix press close to her as they saw it too.
‘Shit,’ he said, quiet. ‘Oh shit, Mae.’
It was the brightest light in their sky.
It was bigger than they could have imagined.
Maybe it had been the light pollution, or maybe it was that exact moment when it became visible to them, truly visible.
Selena set alight the sky over the town of West.
Mae ran from the beach and down the darkened streets, saw people at their doors carrying candles, all struck dumb by the wonder above their town.
She saw Sergeant Walters by the station, talking into his radio, calling for calm from the growing numbers gathered at the foot of the high street.
It’s just a power cut.
She found Stella asleep in her bed.
Instead of waking her and sending her back to her own room, Mae grabbed Abi Manton’s file and climbed out of the window, lay back on the flat roof and began to read through each page.
So tired her eyes burned.
The light from the bedroom was just enough to read the words and see the photographs. Sergeant Walters had done his best, photographed the scene from every angle, but Mae only had to close her eyes to see it again.
There was a close-up of Abi’s face, and she forced herself to look at it.
‘Mae.’
She turned to see Stella at the window behind her.
‘Are you ready?’
Mae nodded.
Stella changed into her white pyjamas while Mae moved through the kitchen and found the popcorn she’d been saving.
As the microwave whirred she looked out the front window and saw lights blink on in every house on the street. Behind she saw the slow wake of West, hours before dawn.
Stella put on her space helmet and stood close to the TV.
Morales was sanguine.
This is it.
I know you’ve all read about it. I know you’ve seen dozens of TV programmes.
You can pray.
You can believe.
Stella cried when the rocket launched.
Mae held onto her tightly.
The popcorn sat on the table, untouched.
‘Will it work, Mae?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know.’
‘What colour is the rocket. Paint it for me.’
Mae stared at the screen. ‘It’s every colour in our world. The darkest blue to the brightest yellow. It’s beautiful, Stell.’
They sat on the sofa as the experts talked, charts were wheeled out, computer graphics loaded up.
Mae looked over at Stella fast asleep. She took a blanket and covered her sister, then watched the break of dawn in the garden, the dog beside her.
Mae sat in the crisp air and turned the last pages of Abi’s file. And then she came to an interview with Mr Silver. She skimmed it, knew she’d find nothing, chalk up another failure, another dead end.
Sergeant Walters: Mr Silver, thanks for coming in.
Edward Silver: Of course. And please, call me Edward.
Walters: Seems kind of wrong. In my day the headmaster was all formality. But I guess I’ve seen you so much over the past months I can call you a friend.
Silver: Well, in that case, my friends call me Teddy.
Mae skipped ahead, past the small talk, the school talk.
Walters: Tell me about Abi Manton.
Silver: She was friends with my daughter. Most of the girls are, actually.
Walters: And your daughter, I hear she’s popular. Head girl. Someone the younger children look up to.
Silver: Going back to the Manton girl …
Mae skipped past Mr Silver detailing Abi’s achievements, her talent for music and art.
Walters: Abi’s suicide, it doesn’t make sense to me.
Silver: And James and Melissa, that did?
Walters: That’s why you have a school counsellor.
Silver: Jane. We brought her in months before we had to. We try to pre-empt these … situations.
Walters: You have Abi Manton, popular, lots of friends. No problems at home. She’s doing well at school, likely to head to Cambridge.
Silver: Actually she … she had problems in that department.
Walters: Oh? Her parents didn’t say.
Silver: We try to give students a chance before we involve the parents. Abi was struggling. Her grades had fallen sharply. I spoke to her about it, informally, just to see if she was okay.
Walters: And was she okay?
Silver: She was having trouble concentrating. She said her mind was all over the place. It was the noise, she said she couldn’t shut out the noise from the outside world. It was deafening.
Walters: What did you tell her?
Silver: I arranged another session with Jane.
Walters: And how did that go?
Silver: She didn’t turn up. I was due to follow up with her but then this …
Walters: I’ll have to tell her parents about this. It won’t bring them comfort, that Abi didn’t go to them to say she was struggling.
Silver: They rarely do. The parents are always the last to know.
Walters: Of course you have experience in this. Gemma Dune. At Goldings. To us though, in West, three students.
Silver: It’s devasting. Devasting.
Mae watched light shatter the night sky, breaking through in thin strips of gold. She thought of Abi, her world falling apart. No doubt finding out she was pregnant had taken a toll on her grades.
But as Mae glanced at the moon, holding in place, stubborn, she thought about what Mr Starling had said. How Abi maintained her grades. How strong she was.
Her mind swam before she reached the only conclusions.
One of them had it wrong …
Or one of them was lying.