Page 18 of A Sky Full of Stars
‘Yup, guilty as charged!’ Thea laughed. ‘He mentioned he’d met you.’
Charlotte wondered what exactly Tristan had told his sister about her, and wryly assumed it wasn’t great. However, now Thea had met her, perhaps both siblings would be reassured.
‘Well, nice as this is, I’d best be off,’ Nick interjected, ‘or I really will miss my chance on the wicket.’ Charlotte noticed Nick looked back at Thea as he added, ‘Why don’t you, er, bring the kids down to the club later, Thea? There’ll be a few people there if you fancy a pint and a catch-up.’
‘Thanks,’ Thea replied. ‘I’ve got a few things to do this afternoon, but I’ll see how it goes.’ She smiled at Charlotte briefly and then headed past her around the back of the house.
‘Thanks again for the last-minute delivery,’ Charlotte said. She noticed that Nick was still looking towards where Thea had walked and wondered what the story was. They were obviously good friends, if the hug had been anything to go by.
‘All part of the service!’ Nick said, snapping his attention back to her. He said goodbye and then jumped in the van. ‘See you back at the store soon.’
As Nick pulled out of the driveway, Charlotte found she was still smiling. What a contrast he was to the dour, stormy presence of Lorelai’s grandson, Tristan. And he wasn’t bad looking, either. She definitely wasn’t in the market for anything other than some good food from the Saint family, but it was a lovely contrast to have a chat with someone who didn’t spend their whole time criticising her and her dog. On cue, Comet bounded around the corner of the house and stuck his nose straight into one of the paper bags.
‘Out!’ Charlotte said briskly, picking the bag up. ‘If you’re a good boy, I’ll take some of those fresh dog treats out with us on our next walk, but for now, let’s get this lot safely into the kitchen.’ She managed all three bags at once, and, when everything was put away, she debated where to go to stretch her legs. It was a long time until dinner, and she felt at a bit of a loose end. Working a nine to five had never been part of her career, so she wondered if she’d be better off just heading back to the observatory for a couple of hours. Given everything she’d discovered from Lorelai, she was feeling an urge to return there, to try to connect more with the ghosts of the past. She’d take Comet this time, too – he’d be all right if she kept him inside the building and on a lead inside the fence. She changed back into her walking boots, made a quick flask of coffee to take with her, as well as grabbing some snacks for herself and Comet, and set off back up the hill.
19
The path to the observatory was becoming familiar now, and as Charlotte rounded the hill, and headed up the last stretch, she felt an increased sense of belonging. It was daft, really; the observatory was going to be bulldozed out of existence soon, and she’d be back at university welcoming the next undergraduates into their halls of residence. In her more fanciful moments as an astronomical archivist, she imagined herself as some kind of great protector of the astronomical past: the one person standing between the loss and preservation of information vital to understanding the fabric of the universe. Then she’d give herself a shake and chide herself for such daft notions. Most of the time, there were no earth-shattering discoveries to be made: she was merely cataloguing things that had been seen and recorded a hundred times before, by many different people. She was a glorified house mover in her less confident moments. All the same, she liked to imagine that, sometime far in the future, some descended version of herself would find the patterns, find the links in the information she’d so carefully stored, and be thankful for the work of a scruffy researcher working in a near-derelict building in the middle of nowhere.
Charlotte gave Comet’s lead a tug as she removed the padlock from the chain that bound the fence and then closed both halves carefully behind her. She didn’t bother locking it again: she’d had some trouble re-attaching the padlock and didn’t want to get trapped inside the compound. She was doubtful that anyone else would come here on a Saturday anyway. The developers largely did work regular hours, and LBAS were still banned from the site because of the danger, except for Brian O’Connor, of course. She’d seen Brian a couple of times since she’d started work, but he’d been keeping away, giving her space to do her job, and for that she was grateful. Archiving could be quite a solitary profession, and while it was helpful to work as part of a team when everyone was an expert, sometimes enthusiastic amateurs could be more trouble than they were worth.
‘Come on then, boy, let’s try to remember where we left off,’ she said as she and Comet opened the large steel door. She scrabbled on the wall to the right of the door for the light switch, and after a moment’s dull buzz and a flicker, the lights went on. In contrast to the bright sunlight outside, the observatory looked even more wan and unloved. The steps to the gantry that ran around the top of the dome had a fresh covering of debris, which must have drifted in on the breeze.
Hurrying through to the records room, Charlotte let Comet off the lead where she could keep an eye on him, and then placed her backpack down on the desk that she’d come to call her own while she was working. She’d finished setting up the database, but she hadn’t brought her laptop with her today. This brief stop this afternoon was more of an emotional visit than a fact-finding mission.
As she wandered around the dimly lit library space, she didn’t bother to switch on any more lights. When she was working up here, she had it as bright as possible, but she was content just to keep the lights low today. It felt as though the ghosts of the past were walking with her in this old, abandoned building, but she wasn’t afraid. Knowing a little more about the history of the observatory’s custodians felt right, and she was beginning to put faces to the names she’d seen during some of her early forays into the reams of paperwork in the filing cabinets and drawers. She’d seen the signatures – L. L. Ashcombe and M. J. Ashcombe – a few times on various star charts and logs, and the connections were starting to develop in her mind between those old documents and the humans who’d created them. She’d seen the family photos on one of Lorelai’s sideboards in her living room, too – pictures of Laura and Martin’s wedding, pictures of Tristan and Thea at various ages at different family functions. The links between the academic research of the observatory and the people who carried it out were getting stronger.
On her meander around the room, Charlotte was drawn to the green cabinet marked ‘Q1, 1995’. It didn’t take a genius to work out why. The first part of Lorelai’s tragic family tale had ended on a winter’s night in January. Whatever the last calculations were that Martin and Laura had made before they closed the observatory down for the rest of the winter, they’d be in that drawer somewhere.
There was probably nothing significant or terribly interesting, Charlotte thought. Lunar observations, winter star patterns, seasonal changes, all would have been noted. But she felt a need to get to know these people better, to more clearly inform her archiving. The observatory’s records weren’t just a stack of paper and files to her, as they might have been to an active astronomer: the combination of disciplines she held, the research she’d done, meant that she saw things with a historian’s eye, as well as having the knowledge of astrophysics that meant she could interpret the charts, calculations and data.
Charlotte carefully unlocked the cabinet using the bunch of keys that Brian had given her. The drawer, stiff from lack of use, slid with difficulty on the rails of the cabinet with a squeak that made Comet prick up his ears.
‘It’s all right, old chap,’ Charlotte said reassuringly. ‘Sorry about the awful noise.’
Comet went back to his mooch into the corners of the room, sniffing here and there and padding around. Charlotte knew he was safe in here, unlike outside: she’d checked thoroughly for any jagged edges or broken glass before she’d allowed him to come in.
She pulled the drawer out to its full extent, and then strained her eyes to see the labels on the file dividers, smiling to herself to see the neat, typewritten sections that had obviously been created even pre the acquisition of a dot matrix printer. She wondered who’d been responsible for those – Martin? Laura? Brian? Some long-suffering partner of one of the members of LBAS who could touch type? Even that little story intrigued her.
Gradually, squinting slightly, she began to search back through the tabs. They were divided chronologically with sections for each week and were clearly the forerunner for a computerised database. At the front was January, Week 1, and then right at the back, March, Week 12. Eventually, these files would all go into a box and be shut away in the university’s astronomical archive room, possibly never to be seen again. She felt as thoughsomeoneought to spend some time looking at them before they succumbed to that fate.
Charlotte pulled out the first of the January files and brought it to the nearest desk to the filing cabinet. Carefully, she opened the cardboard divider and began to leaf through its contents. Nothing was out of the ordinary here – some printouts of logs for the first week of January, which included times, instruments used for the observation and phenomena seen. In early January, most observations centred on the planet Jupiter, and the solar storms on its surface. So far, so routine.
There were also a couple of printouts of email correspondence from various academics. Clearly the Lower Brambleton Observatory was regarded as very significant in its heyday, even if it was run and maintained by volunteers. Charlotte was surprised to see an email from the University of North West Wessex’s then head of the department of astronomy proposing a data sharing exercise on the Jupiter observations. She wondered, with all of the resources at their disposal, why the university would be interested in such a collaboration. Perhaps the LBAS had more ambition and scope back in the 1990s than she had been led to believe?
A rattle at the outside door of the observatory distracted Charlotte from her musings, and she hurriedly closed the file. As she did so, a piece of plain paper, folded into quarters, fluttered to the floor. Shoving it hastily back into the folder, she put her bag over it. She wasn’t quite sure why: she was allowed to be here, after all.
‘Hello? Is there someone there?’ A deep voice echoed through the hallway.
‘It’s Charlotte James,’ Charlotte called back. ‘I’m just, er, doing a bit of work.’
‘On a Saturday?’ the voice came back, lighter in tone this time. ‘And I thoughtIwas the only workaholic around here!’
Charlotte hurried out of the library, her ears pricking up in recognition at the voice. And there, hovering by the front door, was Tristan Ashcombe.
20
Charlotte’s heart beat a little faster as she crossed the hall to the front door of the observatory, where Tristan was waiting. As she drew closer, she noticed that he was wearing tan-coloured shorts and a dark-blue Henley shirt, with a couple of the buttons undone at the neck. A glance down at his feet showed a pair of sturdy work boots, though. Clearly, even in his down time, he was taking no chances when he visited Observatory Field. A contractor had been in on Friday to begin shifting some of the rubbish but there was still a fair bit to move, so the footwear was a good idea.
