We Are All Made of Stars (20 page)

The woods are completely empty, except for Ben and me, and these empty children's chairs.

The background noise of London presses in, and Ben leans forward a little, and it seems to me that he is shouldering the intrusion away.

‘I know you want to know why I kissed you and why I hoped you'd forget that I kissed you,' Ben says at last. ‘I kissed you because you are very kissable, and I was very drunk – drunk enough to forget that you aren't on the list of people that it's OK to make a pass at.'

I open my mouth, but Ben gets there first.

‘It felt like an out-of-body experience: I could see myself, but I couldn't hear myself telling me not to be a dick. And you were there, so beautiful and sad looking, and I wanted …'

‘To comfort me? Pity snog?'

‘No, I didn't want to do anything,' Ben corrects himself. ‘I just wanted. I wanted you. So I kissed you. And I am so sorry. I'm sorry because I know it was wrong. It was a moment that risks all the millions of other moments that mean so much to you and me. It was my loins talking; lust overtook me for a second or two. But then you pushed me off and the only thing I could think was, oh God, what have I done? Have I ruined everything?'

‘It is very hard to know how to process this information,' I tell him, bowing my head.

‘And then you got really sick and nearly died. Hope, you always think it's
you
who follows
me
, that I'm always the leader, but what you never understand is how much I need you. I need you here, in this world, alive, my friend, because … If it was me, if I made you sick, if I'd killed you, I'd never have forgiven myself. And I need you. Without you I'm just some twat who works in a phone shop.'

We don't talk for a minute or so. There's a breeze in the treetops and a siren, signalling some faraway tragedy, wailing in the distance. Somewhere a wind chime clangs.

‘It might not have been you that made me sick,' I say. ‘And, even if it was, what does it matter? It's not like it isn't a game of Russian roulette every time I stick my head out of the front door, is it? I got ill, and Death tried it on, and I told it to fuck off, actually. I thought about secretly blaming you for a bit, because you know how I like to get all doomy. But I don't blame you; I don't blame anyone for anything any more. I think I've kind of got it, the meaning of life … I think the whole point is that the only person who can make my life any better is me. And, you know, medical science, and charities and doctors and that, but mainly me. Because I can't cure myself, but I can choose to be happy. Like you can choose not to be some twat who works in a phone shop.'

‘Bit profound, and also not totally sure it's true – after all, I have only got four GCSEs, and one of them is in theatre studies.'

‘Look, let's just be us again,' I say. ‘Ben and Hope, losers in it together. Because you might need me, but I need you too. So, we take the whole kiss debacle off the table. We acknowledged it and now … we forget about it. We are young and alive, right now. We should be doing young person's stuff; that's what Issy told me to do. She said, do it all, do it all for me. And you know, I am hopeless at doing anything on my own, so you need to help me do it all for her. We get back to normal, and we never speak of the kiss again.'

‘OK.' Ben nods. ‘Speak of what?'

I laugh, and we wait for the moment to reset itself to a normality that we recognise.

‘Well, we are going to rule open mic night,' Ben says finally. ‘That should make your friend Issy proud.'

‘Are we, though? There's a big difference between doing this, in a forest where no one can hear, and doing it in front of a load of other people who think they rule at open mic night.'

‘So, what are you worried about? Making a fool of yourself?'

‘No, I'm worried about …' My mouth is full of words, so many troubles waiting to pour out, but I do what I always do and swallow them. ‘Aren't you afraid of making a fool of yourself in a room full of hipsters?'

‘Hmm.' Ben makes the noise, soft and low, but I still hear it.

‘What does
that
mean?' I ask him.

‘It doesn't exactly reflect your newfound philosophy of living life to the full,' he says. ‘Remember when we were little kids? You stomped all over bullies to protect me. And I don't mean figuratively. You stood up to kids twice your size, this fury in your eyes, like a demon!' He chuckles, picturing that little girl. ‘Nothing scared you. It was your idea, remember, when we were at primary school, to sneak out of the back garden and go for a picnic in Regent's Park with two packets of Wotsits and a can of Fanta. And it was you who did stand up at the school talent contest and told a series of terrible jokes. You got booed and hissed at, but you kept going so long that everyone started laughing anyway. What happened to that kid?'

‘I realised what it means to be dead,' I say, my voice suddenly very small. ‘I realised what it means to gone, to be nothing. To be dust. I started to see other people like me drop off the planet, to stop being present and start being past tense. I stopped thinking of CF as just this thing I had, and started thinking of it as the thing that had me. When you suddenly become aware of the clock ticking, it's the only thing you can hear. Honestly, I'm afraid of being nothing one day. I'm afraid of being ash and mud … I'm afraid of going out of my front door. I'm afraid of everything … except you.'

I look up to find his eyes, two tiny points of reflected candlelight, focused on me. ‘Look up,' he says. ‘Look up.' He repeats it once again, and I comply. ‘Keep looking for a moment, and wait, wait until your eyes adjust. The longer you look, the more you'll see the stars. If we had all night, and we were in the middle of the countryside, without any light pollution, we might be able to count about five thousand stars – if we were really good at not counting the same one twice. We don't know, of course, but experts think there are about seventy thousand million, million, million stars in the universe. That's a fuck of a lot of stars, little suns blazing away out there. When you feel afraid, go outside at night and look up, because when you do that, and you think about all those other stars out there, nothing on this earth is frightening any more. Nothing.'

‘How do you know that stuff?' I ask him.

‘Discovery Channel,' he says, smiling slightly. ‘And, you know, my mum has had a steady stream of “dads” coming in and out of my life since I was a little kid. My granddad told me the millions upon millions of stars thing when I was little, before he died. It helped me. And also it's a great chat-up line with the ladies.'

I smile. That is so like Ben: one moment he is serious, and he'll show you just a little of what it is that makes him the man he is, and the next it's gone – hidden in some off-the-cuff remark. Our friends have always thought he plays the fool, and he does, but he's more than that. If you know him, if you look carefully, you can see the truth of him. Sweet, brave, curious Ben, who wonders how many stars the universe might contain.

‘You know how my mum never goes out?' he says. ‘She stays in all day and drinks cider or pops pills, and watches telly and cleans the house. She's afraid. She's fifty-seven and afraid of her own shadow. That's how she'll end, in another ten or twenty years, if she keeps on drinking the way she does. She's afraid of everything, and she always looks down and never up. She's going to die looking at her feet.'

‘What are you, a shit motivational speaker?'

He laughs, and I like to see him smile.

‘What I'm saying is that … well, you should be doing everything you can to make your life last as long as it does. Stop skipping your physio because it's a bit boring, for one thing. Take care of yourself, not just that body but your head and your heart and your soul. You don't want it to be university all over again.'

‘What the fuck does that mean? I had to come back from uni; I got really sick.'

‘And then you got better, and you never went back.'

‘It wasn't the right time. I'm just waiting …'

‘For what?' he asks me. ‘Seriously, for what? Because I'm the sort of bloke who will probably kick around Camden dressed as a rock star on weekends until I'm at least forty, and we all know I'll still be working in a phone shop …'

‘Bullshit,' I say.

‘No, it's true, and it's fine. I don't care. But you … you aren't that type of person, Hope. You are one of those annoying shiny, special people. People who achieve things, who change things. You're one of the people who matter. One of the ones that make life better for the rest of us. Not dust or ashes but one of the stars.'

I watch his face for a moment – the shadows constantly moving over his long nose, his eyes almost hidden.

‘You think that about me?' I say eventually, scoffing so as to cover up the fact that suddenly my heart has swelled in my chest and I think I might want to hug him. ‘No wonder you've only got four GCSEs.'

‘Of course,' he says.

‘Ben, you know the kiss?' I prise the words out of my mouth, making myself say them before the moment passes.

‘What kiss?' he says, but his eyes never leave me.

‘The reason I struggled and freaked out was … well, it made me feel things. Emotions and … urges.'

‘Christ,' Ben says, holding his guitar just a little bit closer. ‘And it wasn't even a very good kiss: it was all jaw bones and teeth.'

‘And it wasn't even a good kiss,' I agree. ‘But I liked it. I liked feeling things, and I think that's what rattled me so much. I don't want to be like this, Ben. I want to be well. Not like this, now, but more than I ever have been before. It sort of feels urgent that I get my act together and start to live whatever life I've got, but … I am just so scared. I'm shit scared.'

‘Want to have another go – at the kiss, I mean?' Ben offers. ‘Not out of lust, or anything, just in the interests of experimentation on the old urges front?'

I close my eyes and let my mouth fill up with words. I think of Issy: small, pale Issy, with no chance to have another first kiss – in fact, no chance for a lifetime of firsts beyond that – and I let her memory make me brave, reckless, alive. This time, I open my mouth and let the words come tumbling out.

‘Ben, will you have sex with me? Let's just find a place, have sex. It won't matter if it's awful – you're my friend, the person I trust. I know you'll take care of me. And we love each other enough to be careful, without feelings and stuff getting in the way, and the only other time I have ever had sex it was over in less than two minutes and was frankly quite depressing … Please, will you do it, with me, for me? I want to feel that way again, the way I felt after the kiss. I want to feel alive.'

Ben looks in turn appalled and then terrified, and then he thinks for a long moment.

‘Yes,' he says. ‘Yes, OK, then.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sarah opens her door as I walk up my front path, and I discover that I am pleased to see her – I've been thinking about her.

By the time she'd got in last night after I'd looked after Mikey, I'd dropped off in front of the TV, and Mikey had taken himself to bed. Suddenly, I was aware of her weight on the sofa, and forcing my eyes open I turned to look at her, collapsed into the all-engulfing cushions, her neat profile and small nose ending in a perfect ski slope. She'd smelt faintly of bleach, her jogging trousers were ripped at the knee, her boots worn down. Her hair was tousled, her hands looked chapped and cold, her sooty eyes were closed. She was too tired to talk; as I watched her, her breathing stopped and then slowed as she drifted into much-needed sleep in the very place she had been able to stop.

‘How was it?' I'd asked her, because somehow it felt wrong to leave her sleeping there, her long day so unfinished.

Her eyes had fluttered open, and she sighed.

‘You know, cleaning up other people's mess, it's always the same.' She'd reached out an exhausted hand and it landed heavily on my knee, with a soft thud. ‘Cheers, though. You saved my life.'

Before I could reply, she'd used my leg as a prop to force herself into a weary standing position, and I'd followed her into the hallway, guessing how much she wanted to be in bed for a few short hours.

‘Night,' she'd said, leaning on the front door as she opened it. And just before I left, she stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. That's the part that I have been thinking about.

‘Hello, Hugh,' she says now.

‘Hello, Sarah,' I reply. ‘Everything OK?'

‘I hope you don't mind: I wanted to say thank you for last night, for you sitting with Mikey and that, so I made you a casserole. It's nothing fancy, just cobbled together out of what I've got. You don't even have to eat it if you don't want to.'