The Half Life Of Stars Part 38

His face. What a face. What desolation.

He says, 'None of you know what I did.'

They stood in the park with their mouths held wide open watching the shuttle debris fall to earth. Every part of my father's body ached. The flight of this rocket had excited and invigorated him in a way that he couldn't have imagined. Its wild bid for freedom had touched him, and the vivid disappointment of its failure had carved a line straight to his chest. It made him sweat and cough, until he couldn't catch his breath. It felt like the end of all dreams. Right then he wanted to go home. To his wife, to his daughters, to his family; to begin his small world of repairs. How stupid he'd been, how unsteady. How bitterly, rigorously in love.

They walked away in silence, just the two of them, pus.h.i.+ng and shoving through the grief-stricken crowds as they forced their way back to the car. His son's face was sulky and teenage, purposefully turned away from his. Daniel shouldn't have mentioned ithe wouldn't have mentioned itbut something was snapping on his skin. A mixture of the purest kind of sorrow and exhaustion. Somehow, he couldn't keep it in.

'I can't stand you,' he said to his father.

'Daniel. Stop it. Enough.'

'You shouldn't have done this. Why did you do this? Why did you have to ruin everything?'

His father wouldn't listen or talk, it's not what his father cared to do. So Daniel kept on pressing, digging, forcing, while his father began to slide away and sweat. He missed the exit they needed and he swore.

'Stupid,' he said. 'Now I've missed it.'

'You're still in contact with her, aren't you? You're still calling her, aren't you? I know.'

'This is none of your business. Do you hear me? You don't...you can't understand.'

But he did, of course. He was sixteen years old, he understood the whole world.

'I do do understand.' understand.'

'No. No, you don't.'

'You've ruined Mum's life.'

'No, I haven't.'

'She's stoned all the time. Did you know she gets stoned? You dragged us out here to this dump and you spoilt it all. You ruined all of our lives.'

His father turned round, half pleading, half choking. He took his hand off the wheel.

'And what about my life? Jesus, you ungrateful...what about mine mine?'

Daniel decided that was the end of it. He lurched forward as they slowed in the traffic and dealt a blow to his father with his fist. Right on the cheek, near the nose, below the eye, and the sound it made when it hit him. Like a boot on a football, like a bat on a wicket, then that moan like a cow giving birth. He slumped forward so hard on the steering wheel that the car's horn went off with a howl. Daniel reached over and stopped it. He shook his father's shoulders and his face. He put his hand to his father's mouth and felt the hot shallow breaths that crept their way over his lips. He heard rasping and saw bubbles of blood. Then he ran. And he ran. And then he ran.

I try not to recoil, but I do. I sense myself pulling away. It only lasts a second, but he feels it, I I feel it. I break it. I move back. I breathe. feel it. I break it. I move back. I breathe.

'Do you think I killed him?'

'You think you killed him. Isn't that what you mean?'

'I punched him. I hit him and he died.'

The tree stump digs hard into my back. I'm swirling like I might faint.

'He had a heart attack, Daniel, he was terribly ill. He would have...he would have died anyway.'

'How do you know that? How can you know know.'

'That's what they said...the coroner said so. If it hadn't happened then...it would have happened the next day or the next.'

My brother cries out. He starts to sob.

'I made him miss the turning. I knew he wasn't well. If I hadn't...we wouldn't have been trapped.'

'Daniel, please, you can't do this.'

'He might have survived.'

'Daniel, what's the good good?'

'So I killed him? Didn't I? I killed killed him.' him.'

I grab him by the shoulders and shake him like a rattle, until some of the pain falls out.

'Listen to me. Listen Listen to me. to me. Stop Stop. You asked me how I found you and this is the reason, I found you because I knew where to look. Because I know who you are, what you are in your bones. And you have to believe me...I swear it. I know you did the best that you could.'

Promises, Promises.

We sit in a cafe a mile or so from the road, our bodies are sore from the walk. Daniel sips cold Coca-Cola. I stir a weak cup of tea.

'How long had you known?'

'About Annie? I don't know, for years.'

My metal spoon clinks on the rim. This cup is chipped, it has cracks.

'He introduced me to her. They used to pick me up from school in her car.'

'You're joking?'

He shakes his head.

'Was she beautiful?'

'Yes.'

'Younger?'

'Not younger, just different. He wanted me to meet her, I think he was proud. He thought that a son would understand.'

I twist in my seat, I can't stay still.

'What was she? What did she do?'

'She was an artist of some kind, I don't think she was particularly good. Dad paid for everything, supported her. That's why we never had money.'

'How often-'

'As often as he could. He didn't take overtime, he didn't work weekends. He spent all his free time with her.'

My mother. I think of my mum.

'Why not just...leave us?'

Daniel sips his drink and rubs his neck.

'Maybe it suited him that way, the security of us, of Mum, of home...and then the excitement of her...I don't know, Claire, maybe he was scared. I think the indecision ate away at him. I don't think he had the strength to jump.'

'He loved her?'

Daniel reaches into his bag.

'Here,' he says, 'see for yourself.'

Daniel has more of Annie's letters: years of correspondence, kept silent and hidden, letters that he knows off by heart. He found them after Dad died and hid them from Mum, and poured over them night after night. He took them with him everywhere he went after that: from home, to university, to his first shared apartment, to the first house he furnished with Kay. He hid them in all kinds of daft places: a tin in the garden, a carton in the freezer, and one he forgot to pick up when he left, squeezed inside a resealed pill packet. I take half a dozen and read them. They are frank, sweet, pa.s.sionate, dark; alternately delicate then wild. One side of a dialoguelover to lover, woman to strangerto a man I never knew, never met.

'G.o.d.'

'I know.'

'They're not...when she describes him...it just doesn't sound at all like Dad.'

'He had a different life when he was with her. They did things, they went out a lot. Galleries, theatres, exhibitions; they ate in nice restaurants, hung out with her friends, went to parties.'

'Dad liked to watch TV. He hardly went out of the house.'

'No, not with Mum. Not with us.'

'They're quite-'

'Physical?'

'Intimate, yes.'

I fold the letters up tight and wrap them back in their brown paper envelope. I've read too much already. I don't want to know. I'm an uninvited guest, an intruder.

'I have more.'

'That's enough, Daniel...really.'

'You don't want to read them?'

I shake my head. My brother leans back, he looks defeated.

'I hated him for it. I hated hated him, for what he was doing to Mum.' him, for what he was doing to Mum.'

'He shouldn't have involved you. You were far too young...it wasn't fair.'

'I didn't understand it. Why couldn't couldn't I understand? I thought he was pathetic, just...weak.' I understand? I thought he was pathetic, just...weak.'

'Mum knew?'

He nods.

'When did...when do you think she found out?'

'I'm not sure. She'd probably put up with it for years. But Sylvie was so small, I don't think she'd have left him, and Dad doted on her, you saw how he was. I think she hoped Sylvie might mend things, bring the two of them back together.'

But she didn't, not really.

'He laid off for a while, the year after she was born, but he didn't...he couldn't stay away. He used to make me cover for him. I had to say Dad was out working on a build, that he couldn't be reached, that he'd called me.'

I'm feeling uneasy and adrift. How could this all go on without me? How was it possible not to know?

'She gave him an ultimatum in the end, that's when we moved over here.'

'Why didn't you tell me...you could have. Why didn't you say?'

He doesn't need to answer. He thought he was doing the right thing.

'I thought it would get better. I hoped it would...but it just got worse.'

'He missed her?'

Daniel's fingers clench and relax.

'He built that whole place just for her, the hotel, the Rose Bar, all all of it. And I knew what was going on, I was there when they named it, I saw the neon sign they put up. He tried to buy me off with some f.u.c.king of it. And I knew what was going on, I was there when they named it, I saw the neon sign they put up. He tried to buy me off with some f.u.c.king telescopes telescopes, can you believe it? And Mum was left at home...just as worn, just as lonely; getting stoned, getting drunk, and wearing those ridiculous clothes that she'd started to wear, because she thought they made her look more...attractive.'

'She still loved him?'

'I suppose so.'

'So, that's how it was?'