Page 19 of A Sky Full of Stars
‘What brings you here on a Saturday?’ Charlotte asked as she reached the door. ‘I thought it was only me who kept irregular hours!’
Tristan smiled, and Charlotte realised, with a jolt, that it was the first time she’d seen him looking cheerful since she’d met him. She was surprised at how much more attractive it made him, as his greenish-blue eyes crinkled at the corners.
‘I’m glad I caught you,’ he began, and Charlotte was sure she spotted a sheepish look crossing his features. ‘I, er, wanted to apologise for being so abrupt the other day. If I’d known who you were, and why you were up here, I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did.’
Charlotte smiled. She wasn’t one to sulk or hold grudges, and she appreciated Tristan’s apology. ‘That’s OK. To be honest, if I’d found me stuck in the gates with a dog off the lead, I’d probably have jumped to the same conclusion.’ She paused. ‘Did you, er, just come back up here to apologise?’
Tristan looked surprised. ‘Well, now you come to mention it, therewassomething else. I’m actually in charge of the Observatory Field development, and I remembered that you should have signed a couple of indemnity forms before you started work up here. In all of the rush of the past couple of weeks, it completely slipped my mind.’ He was clutching a blue document wallet with what looked like a thick stack of paperwork inside. ‘Ordinarily, I’d have emailed them to you, but the company’s been having some trouble with our electronic signatory, so I thought it would be quicker just to run them over to you. I popped in to see Gran and she told me you’d come up here.’
‘You’re in charge?’ Charlotte echoed. She thought back to the story Lorelai had told her about the ownership of the observatory, and she felt a jolt of recognition as the pieces fitted together.
‘If you wouldn’t mind checking and signing these, then I can tick that job off my list,’ Tristan said, interrupting her thoughts.
Wrinkling her brow, Charlotte tried to think back to her first day at Observatory Field. ‘I’m sure Brian O’Connor gave me a load of stuff to sign when I started here, including the indemnities. Did he not give you the copies?’
Tristan smiled again, this time showing a row of even, straight teeth as he did so. ‘Brian, bless his heart, is not only forgetful but he also buggered off on holiday yesterday without handing over the forms. Flowerdew are conducting an internal audit of this site and its procedures sometime over the next few weeks, so I wanted to be sure everything was ready, should the auditors descend before we break ground. I hope you don’t mind signing them again?’
‘Sure,’ Charlotte replied. She reached out to take the document wallet from Tristan, and as she did so, her fingertips brushed his. She felt a little flutter of something she hadn’t felt since her first introduction to Todd, but tried to suppress it. She couldn’t reconcile this apparent friendliness with his brusque manner when they’d encountered one another before.
Realising she was just staring at the folder, Charlotte blushed and raised her head, so that she made eye contact with Tristan again.
‘I can sign these now if you want to come in and wait,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to keep you or the auditors hanging about!’
As she said this, she saw something flicker over Tristan’s expression. It looked like doubt, or even apprehension.
‘Er, no, I won’t come in if you don’t mind,’ he replied after a beat. ‘You can leave the folder with Gran if you like, and I can pick it up from there at some point?’
‘Sure,’ Charlotte replied. Given what she had discovered about the Ashcombe family’s complex history with the observatory, she wasn’t entirely surprised he didn’t want to hang about. ‘I would offer to drop them at your office, but I don’t have a car, and I’ve discovered the public transport links in this part of the world leave a lot to be desired!’
Tristan was smiling again, the brief apprehension gone from his expression. ‘You can say that again. I can’t quite believe you haven’t got your own transport, though, and you’ve come all the way out here for a job. You must feel quite isolated. Gran’s house isn’t exactly on the main road, and this place, well…’
‘It’s been a bit of a culture shock after living in central Bristol for so many years,’ Charlotte agreed. ‘I’m a house parent in one of the halls of residence, so I’m used to being bothered at all hours of the day and night by pissed or homesick undergrads. The quiet at Nightshade Cottage takes a bit of getting used to.’
‘I keep suggesting to Gran that she sells up and gets something smaller, closer to the busier parts of the village,’ Tristan replied, ‘but, well, you must be getting to know Gran. She’s dug her heels in and refuses to be moved from Nightshade Cottage.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Charlotte said, ‘I’ll keep an eye on her while I’m her lodger. Not that she needs an eye kept on her, of course. She seems very spry.’
‘Oh, she is,’ Tristan said, running a hand through his hair to brush an errant lock from his eyes. ‘At the moment, she’s in great health, but she will insist on taking in lodgers, and while she claims they’re all vetted by the accommodation company who handle the annexe, she’s had a couple of close calls.’
‘Oh, really?’ Charlotte raised an eyebrow, then, rather to her own surprise, added, ‘I’d love to hear about them, sometime. Lorelai hasn’t said anything about the more, er,eccentriccharacters she’s had in the annexe.’
This time, Charlotte felt a more profound flutter in her chest as Tristan laughed. ‘Oh, I could tell you some stories, believe me!’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But they’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. I’ve got a ton of paperwork to reconcile before the site move happens, and not a great deal of time to do it in.’
Feeling their cordial exchange was coming to a businesslike close, Charlotte nodded and tried to replicate his more formal tone. ‘Well, I’ll get these done and leave them at Lorelai’s for you to collect at your convenience,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’ Tristan gave her another smile. ‘And I’m sorry for the hassle of having to do them again. Bless Brian, he’s actually the most reliable member of the Astronomical Society these days, but even he’s getting absent minded.’ He paused, and glanced up towards she shabby domed roof of the building. ‘It’ll be a lot better for him, and for all of us, once this place has been knocked down.’
Given what she’d been discovering about Tristan’s family connections to the building, Charlotte didn’t feel she could disagree.
21
Later that afternoon, having signed the indemnities and put them carefully back in the folder, Charlotte decided to call it a day. She felt flummoxed by Tristan’s visit to the observatory, as if its past and present had intersected like two lines on a star chart, and there had been a collision of worlds. He’d been friendlier, even if it was because he needed her to re-sign those forms, and she’d felt a definite stirring of attraction towards him. Perhaps it was the dearth of events in her love life that was making her respond that way: she’d noted to herself how attractive Nick Saint was too, or maybe it was the fresh country air, but whatever it was, she felt conflicted about leaning into it. She was fresh out of the break-up with Todd, and though Gemma would have told her that the best way to get over a man was to get under another one, she’d never reacted that way to the end of a relationship.
As she walked back down the sloping woodland to Nightshade Cottage, Charlotte reflected on how she was beginning to settle into Lower Brambleton and the observatory. She was developing a real desire to unravel its mysteries, before it was all lost to demolition, and she was looking forward to getting back up there on Monday morning, having already decided to spend Sunday putting the final touches on the computer-based filing system and organising her archive boxes, ready for transport up to the observatory. She’d asked for them all to be sent to Nightshade Cottage so that she could label them up in relative comfort, but it hadn’t escaped her that she was now going to have to move them up to the observatory herself.
Letting herself and Comet through the door of the annexe, Charlotte made a cup of tea and then settled down to answer some emails. There was a check-in from Professor Jim Edwin, her head of department, to which she fired off a cheery reply, and another email from Todd, which she ignored for now. She knew he had one of those trackers that would tell him exactly when she’d opened his emails and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking she was desperately waiting to hear from him. He could definitely wait.
‘Helloooo?’ Lorelai’s voice drifted through from the garden. ‘Are you back in for the evening, dear?’
