The Comet Seekers: A Novel (25 page)

They’ve worked together on a few projects over the years, searching for clues that planets might exist further away than can be seen. It’s funny; when she lived there she imagined herself to be so far away from Ireland, but now, they’re like neighbouring villages when compared to a flight over the Atlantic. She can’t shake a feeling that she left something behind in Bayeux. Perhaps, she thinks, she was in too much of a hurry to leave.

SEVERINE TAKES FLOWERS TO HER
mama’s grave every weekend, the colours changing with the seasons. Sometimes she leaves cakes or pastries too, and occasionally a bottle of Calvados brandy or amaretto. She hasn’t seen her since she died, but she is waiting
patiently and she thinks today’s the day – this comet is special, she knows it: this one is a sungrazer.

You do know this is very cruel, her mama says, appearing at last and standing beside her. I can’t even drink that.

But you remember the taste?

Her face lights up. Maybe some biscuits next week?

I’ll see what I can do.

Her granny’s shaking her head, her arm linked through her mama’s – they seem closer now than they ever did when they were alive – and Severine joins them, linking her arm through her mama’s and kissing her cheek before resting her head on her shoulder. Welcome home, she says.

Severine?

She turns, surprised by the voice; she had forgotten François was going to be coming today.

She tries to brush away the voices as if she were swatting flies away from her face. Then she stops.

I was wrong, you know, her mama says, that time in the kitchen. I understand now. You don’t lose people by listening. And you don’t lose people by speaking, either.

So, standing at her mama’s graveside with her mama’s arm linked in her own, Severine tells François, adult to adult, that there are two ghosts standing beside her.

Back in his own flat, François opens bottles of beer for himself and Hélène. She’s looking out of the window, watching the snow.

It’s the coldest December on record, she says.

He looks out at the snow as well; sees its beauty, and thinks of ice. It makes him long for something he can’t describe.

He hasn’t told her about that conversation with his mama yet – he doesn’t know what to make of it, the voices returning again after years of silence. He doesn’t want to think about what it might mean.

He misses his grand-mère; perhaps he could have spoken to her about this. Although she wasn’t one to put up with any nonsense.

Hélène’s hand on his shoulder is startling, the warmth of her leg next to his helps bring him back to earth. Her lips do the rest.

He wakes again, startlingly early. It is getting to be a habit. He gets up without waking Hélène, creeps to the kitchen to stand at the window. The snow has settled during the night; the world has turned to a perfect untouched white. He breathes out.

Hélène wakes and knows that François is up again, looking out of the window, probably, but she doesn’t follow him there. She’s tried that before, and it doesn’t make him any more likely to sleep through the night.

The NASA website says this comet will be difficult to see; it is bright, very bright, but it is too close to the sun. It is going to fly through the blazing heat of the sun’s corona and it may not survive. Even if it does survive it may never come back, they say, and Severine guesses that the damage sustained would make it unpredictable.

Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . shouts Antoine to Severine’s mother – they are both acting like children today, playing hide-and-seek – and there’s Great-Grandpa Paul-François crawling into the cupboard under the stairs.

Her granny presses her fingers to her lips.

Severine shakes her head, looks at her calendar with a smile that fades. She may not have very long, if this comet is heading towards death.

The view on her calendar is an iceberg floating in a clear sea.

She hasn’t heard from François since she told him about the ghosts.

In the restaurant, François’s hand slips. He curses; he is a fool – his mind was elsewhere.

He wraps a blue plaster around the cut. So unlike him, to let a knife slip.

It was the heat, he says to himself. He is no longer enjoying the heat.

For a second, a fraction of a second, he thinks about walking out. He could leave this job, travel the world, see temples and oceans, cook fishcakes and snake curry in places he has only seen on TV. But there are customers waiting and there are people in his life he cannot leave.

He needs to be more careful with his knife, that’s all.

He carries on cooking.

At home, Hélène says she will kiss him better.

Then we could go out? she says. Sophie and Marc are in Le Baromètre. A few drinks?

Yes, he says, you’re right. Let’s go out.

Into the snow, she smiles.

He reaches for her hat on the side table, pulls it down over her eyes as she giggles.

Tall white candles twinkle in old-fashioned iron holders. The lights are low and warm, the voices around them animated. A dog stands by the fire, shakes his coat dry as snowflakes melt to water and scatter into drops of rain. It is busy, so François and Hélène share a chair, their arms around one another as they chat to their friends, telling stories of the restaurant and the troublesome customers, the manager whose face is redder by the day, the waitress having an affair with the head chef and how they are all pretending they have no idea it’s going on.

You can’t hide
passion
, laughs Hélène, her voice dipping playfully at the end of her sentence, squeezing François’s arm. And for
the evening he forgets to worry about his mama and he forgets the claustrophobia of the kitchen. There are just his friends and Hélène and the heat of the bistro and the frosted glass and the falling snow outside. How perfect, he thinks, to live in a frozen white world.

On the way home he starts saying something he hadn’t meant to say; he’s not sure that he’s ready to share it but the drinks have relaxed him and he feels so close to Hélène tonight.

Do you believe in ghosts? he says.

It is just the beginning of a conversation, for him, a way to start, but her reaction makes it the end of the conversation as well.

Don’t be silly, she laughs – and she has a nice laugh, a young laugh, and it echoes between the tall buildings either side of the street. Are you feeling OK, chouchou? she says, still giggling, as she puts her hand on his forehead and he knows that he’s not going to tell her about his mama.

Severine is trying not to sleep. Brigitte doesn’t come in the day very often but she’ll come in the night, Severine knows that.

You’re looking for a way to help her? her granny says.

I’m trying . . .

You’re a kind girl, you always were, says her granny. But how do you find someone when you don’t even know their name?

The father?

Her granny shakes her head. There is no record of him having a son, even though he remarried.

What?

His first wife died, he remarried. We found her name in the parish records, your great-grandpa Paul-François and I. She had a strange-sounding name.

Yes?

I wrote it down, I think. I kept all my notes in the shed – they might still be there.

Why didn’t you just tell me?

The answer’s not there, Severine. I’m so sorry, I know what it’s like – and I know she can’t let it go – but you should. Brigitte’s son is gone. And I think perhaps you should be thinking about François instead.

In the night the worry creeps up on Severine, not about the ghosts but about the living: that look on François’s face. Was she wrong to tell him? Perhaps there are still some things that a mother should hide from her child. But she doesn’t want to hide. She is a daughter, and a granddaughter, and many generations beyond that too; why should she have to choose, between her ghosts and her son? Just because the women in her family have a history of losing their children, doesn’t mean it will happen to her.

She tries phoning him, of course, but she gets no answer and she doesn’t leave a message. He will come for Sunday lunch, she thinks, like he always has. She will give him time, and gradually he will come to understand about the ghosts.

THE WEDDING IS ON THE
Sunday afternoon. They have sun, a glittering frost, a slight breeze, bouquets of bluebells and a photo that each of them will frame to remember: Adele and Neil, Conall and Róisín, in silver and dark blue. A second wedding for them both, there are no white dresses or confetti here; it is stars and comets, it is calm, and it is family.

Only an overheard phrase can obscure the beautiful night sky: He never even leaves the farm.

Did Liam reply to the invitation? Róisín asks her mum in a quiet moment, her arm slipping comfortably around her shoulder.

She shakes her head, just slightly, sadly. These days he stays away. We haven’t seen him since last year. Should I have insisted?

Of course not. Róisín kisses her mum’s head – she is a few inches taller than her mum now, she doesn’t remember when that became the case.

I could phone?

No, don’t worry. It was his choice to make.

I suppose so.

He was always stubborn, Róisín thinks. The last time she saw him he was leaving the village shop a few days before Christmas, three years ago. She was out with her mum – she started walking towards him to say hello but he turned away. It’s been much longer than three years since she heard his voice.

She catches up with Keira; they wander over to the village green and sit on the bench, hands wrapped around their takeaway coffees for warmth. Keira has brought her some walnut cake. Róisín has a gift too, a small print, which she hands over with an embarrassed laugh.

Sorry it’s not a full poster, she says. It was all I could fit in my case . . .

Keira unwraps it, claps her hands and grins, wide-eyed.

It’s just a photo of the Horsehead Nebula, smiles Róisín.

It’s beautiful!

I’m glad you like it.

And although Róisín doesn’t ask, Keira mentions, in among the village gossip and news of the new cinema that might open in the next town, that no one has seen Liam for quite a while. After a moment of understanding, the conversation moves on to other things, and Róisín is grateful for that.

At dusk they stroll back through the village, arm in arm.

Driving out to the mountains, she spends a day walking with her mum, telling her about the people she knows in New York, the way the sun turns the windows of skyscrapers golden, the energy of the crowds that fill the streets with character. They pick early wild flowers to take home, arranging them in delicate glass vases along the windowsill when they return in the evening.

She helps Neil outside in the garden – they sand and varnish an old wooden bench and picnic table, ready for the spring – and she plays computer games like when she and Conall were young, not minding when she loses every level; winning and losing was never really the point.

She lies in bed, windows open to let in the cold, a hint of dew in the air, and thinks that perhaps she should go to the farm, but she doesn’t think she would be welcome there. She reaches for her phone instead, dials the number that she still has, and waits as it rings out and clicks over to an answerphone without a message. She would have liked to hear his voice, she realises as she hangs up the phone, but he has made it clear that he doesn’t want to see her. She tries to get to sleep; tomorrow she is going to Bayeux.

Liam counts seven days on his calendar, seven days since he last drove to the supermarket that has opened outside the town and exchanged some words with the teenager working the till. Hello. Thank you. That’s OK, I can manage on my own.

He can still see something in the way people look at him, as if they’ve heard the stories and want to know if they are true. Sometimes he wants to tell them that he did nothing wrong. Most of the time he just doesn’t want to be reminded at all.

He counts the tins in his cupboard, the plates in his sink. He washes them carefully and puts them away.

The world is busy, he thinks. That is all.

It has been a long time since anyone else was in his home.