The Half Life Of Stars Part 40

'No.'

He smiles.

'The lack of gravity. Just for a second, wouldn't you like to feel weightless?'

We spend some time jumping on the sand. No matter how hard we push our legs into the ground we still come crashing back down to earth. Daniel on his a.r.s.e in the sand, me face down in the water. But it feels good to try. So we jump. We both jump for hours.

Re-entry

The Meteorologist A year and some months on.

'Come on Julian, let's find your coat. Kay, is he going to need his coat?'

'It's winter there. Pack it, he'll need it.'

'You won't come back speaking like an Aussie will you, Jools? Grandma will still be able to understand you?'

'Yes.'

'You won't change?'

'I won't change.'

'You'll still be you?'

'Yes.'

'How will I know?'

He screws up his face.

'Don't be silly, Grandma. Me's me me.'

'You're confusing him.'

'I wasn't trying to.'

'Well, I didn't say that...but you are.'

We are a family subtly shifted; uniquely altered and changed. If you're careful, if you're gracious, if you don't dig about too hard, you'd probably find us much the same. But underneath the surface, deep below the skin, our atoms have fractured and realigned. The patterns we've spent a lifetime sewing into place have slowly begun to unravel. We don't refract the light in quite the same way that we did, our centre of gravity has shifted. Where did they go to, those people we were last year? Try as I might, I can't keep hold of us.

'You'll be with your Daddy at Christmas. Are you looking forward to seeing your Daddy?'

'Yes, because Daddy lives at Disney World.'

'You spoke to him at the weekend, didn't you. Weren't you a clever boy on the phone?'

My mother has her fingers on her grandson's cheeks: squeezing them, pinching them too tight. He squirms, he doesn't like it. He can't understand she's already missing him.

'Will you miss your Grandma?'

'Yes.'

'Will you call her?'

'Mummy, will we call Grandma?'

'You should visit us,' Kay says. 'Why don't you visit? Robert, you must try and make her come out.'

Robert promises to work on her, but all of us suspect she'll never make it. The Australian outback, this is where they're headed; a sheep station in the depths of New South Wales owned by Kay's uncle and aunt. The divorce came through a couple of weeks ago and Kay decided she needed to take some time out. She deserves a break and a chance to refuel, six months away from the grind.

'I won't need these shoes. Sylvie, you're the same size as me. Do you want to take these shoes?'

'They're beautiful, they must have cost a fortune.'

'Take them...really. I don't want them. There's more in the trunk, take the whole box if you like.'

Kay on a farm, I can't imagine it. But look at her now, look at the way she's loosened up.

'Jools, puppy puppy, come on now. Put your trousers back on.'

'Don't want to.'

'I know you don't want to, but we can't always do what we want.'

'Leave him, Kay, he's all right. It's hot in here, he's probably hot.'

She ruffles his hair. She leaves him be.

There's so much to clear out when you sell a house like this and move on. Most of it is going straight into storage but much of it will just be thrown away: papers and ornaments, pictures and baby clothes, textbooks and records and tapes; fragments of a marriage snapped in half.

'Do you want to take his telescope?'

'If that's OK?'

'I'm sure he'd like you to have it.'

'I'll take care of it, for when he comes back.'

I don't know why I said that, she hates it when I say that, but I'm certain he'll settle back in London some day. He's running in another of his marathons this week. He's competed in half a dozen since he left; always in the top fifty finishers, always in under three hours. He runs them for charity, Amnesty or Oxfam, and once or twice for the British Heart Foundation.

Daniel's travelled a lot since the breakdown. Is that what you'd call it, a breakdown? Anyway, he's been all over the world: Asia, India, South America, Alaska, j.a.pan. He thinks he might settle down in Florida for a while now to study for a degree in astronomy but I'm not convinced that he'll do it. I'm not sure he's really all that happy. I know he misses Julian like crazy, and it will take him a while yet to admit it, but there are other parts of his old life he misses too. Last month one of his running mates dragged him off to Nevada for the Burning Man festival in the desert, some kind of annual new age retreat. He called me the second he got back.

'What was it like?'

'Ridiculous, full of hippies. You have to barter for food, there's nothing to buy. Everyone coats themselves in wild-coloured body paint, takes drugs and dances all night.'

'Right, and that was...?'

'I don't know, Claire it was OK...an experience, you know. I mean, it's supposed to be a place where everyone can be themselves. But, f.u.c.k it...it wasn't really me.'

So he's getting to know what he is now. He's getting to know where he stands. The last time we spoke he confessed he missed practising law, that he was good at it, better than he thought. The marathons are wearing away the cartilage in his knees and he's not sure he can face going back to university at his age. There's a piece of him that liked the big house he had in London: the status, the cars, the security. Perhaps he chose more of it than he realised. And maybe Dad was right after all; you can't make a living from running.

'Some of these things should go to a charity shop. Daniel's suits. Kay, you can't can't throw away Daniel's suits.' throw away Daniel's suits.'

'I haven't got time. I think we'll just have to dump them.'

'I'll do it, I'll take them next week.'

My mother's face tightens.

'No...Claire, you'll forget. Sylvie, will you take these things for Kay?'

Sylvie knows better than to answer a question like that these days. Gabriel squeezes her hand.

'Mum, I won't forget, I'll take care of it.'

She takes a moment.

'You'll remember to wrap them up in cellophane?'

'Yes.'

'They'll get moths in them otherwise. They're wool, you ought to remember to use moth b.a.l.l.s.'

'I said I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it.'

'Well, I suppose...if you're sure?'

Mum lifts a gla.s.s of juice to her lipsorange, or mango, I can't tell which. She doesn't drink alcohol at all any more, she's a recent disciple of AA. She spent so many years being absent from herself but when Daniel left, it forced her to be present. So we shifted. So we turned. So she drew the rest of us towards her. We're still drifting, still separate, still speaking in codebut we're progressing. Occasionally, we even speak the same language.

'I was angry with you,' she said to me last year.

'I know you were.'

'For not realising. For not being there. Your father was...it was always...hard for me.'

'You could have told me...you could have said something.'

But she couldn't, of course. She really couldn't.

'I was protecting you. I didn't mean to punish...to confuse confuse you.' you.'

'I would have helped.'

'Sweetheart, I know that you would.'

'I think we should all drink a toast.'

'Christ...must I have orange juice again? Robert, I'm so sick of orange juice.'

'Elderflower cordial?'

'Disgusting...have you tried it? Sylvie, don't make me have it, it's revolting.'

Sylvie hands the champagne bottle to Gabe and he twists off the cork with a flourish. Still strong, still stupidly handsome, and newly engaged to my sister.

'To the wedding, next year. Let's hope we can all be...'My sister falters, she trails off.

'To the wedding.'

'And to Sylvie. Her results.'

Sylvie pa.s.sed the first stage of her medical exams this month and I've never seen her look quite so happy. She's fulfilled her own destiny. She finally has a purpose. She's becoming the person everyone always said she was; she's the girl who makes people feel better. We met Gabe's family last week at her graduation, his father baked a beautiful cake. You should have seen his mother, his two sisters. They're stunning, outrageous, they almost make Sylvie seem plain. Gabe's a boy grown immune to the value of beauty, that's part of why she loves him so much. I wonder if she's still doing phone s.e.x? In secret, on Thursdays, when Gabriel works late nights at the bakery. I don't know what it is, but there's something about her. I wouldn't be at all surprised.

'So, Claire. How's it going with the meteorologist?'

'He...yeah, it's OK.'

'Meteorologist? I didn't know there was a meteorologist.'

'He's someone I met in Florida. We've been writing to each other. He's over here on sabbatical.'

'She likes him.'

'Sylvie.'

'OK, OK...I'm just saying.'