Page 44 of A Sky Full of Stars
‘Hang on.’ Charlotte rose to follow him. ‘Let me walk you out.’
Todd stepped back from the table, and Charlotte was sure she spotted a flicker of triumph in his eyes. Tristan reached out a hand to shake Todd’s briefly. ‘It was good to meet you,’ he said.
‘You too,’ Todd replied.
Then, in a formal gesture that spoke volumes, Tristan leaned forward and kissed Charlotte’s cheek. ‘Lunch was great,’ he said. ‘Text me when you’ve finished discussing your research.’
Charlotte felt a pinprick of frustration at the back of her neck. Why was Tristan the one to walk away? The last thing she wanted was for him to leave, and to be stuck with Todd until he buggered off to get his flight. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to Todd. ‘I’m sure whatever you’ve found out can wait,’ she said. ‘Or even better, be put in an email. I’m busy right now, as you can see, and I was enjoying a pleasant lunch. Why don’t you contact me when you’re back in Georgia and we can discuss things further. You did say you needed to check a couple of things?’
Todd was the one looking surprised, now. A man unused to being given the brush-off, his face assumed an irritated expression. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said, after a beat.
‘It is,’ Charlotte replied. Nothing Todd could have discovered was worth leaving Tristan with an incorrect impression about her and her relationship with her ex. She kicked herself for not being up front with Tristan at the start of lunch and making it clear that, although Todd might be in Lower Brambleton, it wasn’t because she’d invited him. She’d have to make sure that he knew that now. Without pausing to say anything else to Todd, she hurried out to the bar area, where Tristan had finished paying the bill and was heading for the door.
‘Tristan!’ she called as she crossed to follow him.
Tristan stopped, but Charlotte could tell he was reluctant. His posture was stiff, mannered, as if he was trying to act as though he hadn’t been bothered by meeting Todd, but he couldn’t quite pull it off.
‘It’s OK, I got the bill,’ he said, going to walk out of the door.
‘That’s not why I stopped you, and you know it,’ Charlotte replied hurriedly. ‘Look, I know you said you’ve got to get to Thea’s, but can we talk?’
Tristan’s eyes flickered past Charlotte, clearly to see if Todd was still lurking. ‘Yes, all right. Why don’t we leave the car here and walk off some of that apple pie?’
Charlotte felt the first stirrings of relief at his response. She smiled. ‘That sounds good.’
There was a public footpath across the road from the pub that many Sunday dog walkers used to burn off the excesses of their lunch so without further ado they headed out towards the path.
‘Look,’ Charlotte said when they’d crossed the road and were out of potential earshot of any other walkers. ‘I’m sorry about what just happened. I should have levelled with you from the start that Todd had decided to make an unannounced detour from Greenwich to come and see the Lower Brambleton Observatory.’
‘And you, presumably?’ Tristan added.
Charlotte glanced up at him, but his face gave nothing away. She felt another pinprick of frustration that he’d put what she was beginning to realise was his ‘game face’ back on. She’d thought they were past that. They had been until this lunchtime. Taking a deep breath, she realised that she had to be honest.
‘I emailed Todd recently,’ she said. ‘I wanted a second opinion about something I’d found in the observatory’s records. My boss at North West Wessex, Professor Edwin, was my first choice, but he’s on annual leave and I didn’t want to bother him. Since time is of the essence, I decided to swallow my hurt feelings and contact Todd. Despite the way things ended between us, I still respect his scientific opinion. I sent him some anomalous data that I’d uncovered, and the next thing I knew, he’d rocked up here.’
‘Convenient that he was in Greenwich at the time you emailed him,’ Tristan observed.
Charlotte didn’t like the implication. ‘He wasn’t until a couple of days ago. And I didn’t know he was there, just to be clear.’ She stepped around a fallen branch on the footpath. ‘As far as I was aware, he was still in Atlanta. I thought it would just be a quick email exchange: I’d send him the information; he’d give me his opinion and that would be it. I was shocked when he turned up at the observatory on Friday.’
Tristan’s head shook slightly, and if Charlotte had been looking ahead of her, she’d have missed it. ‘It’s true, Tristan, I promise you.’ She didn’t like having to repeatedly justify herself and was growing frustrated by his apparent scepticism.
‘So, you knew he was here. Did you know he was staying at the Star and Telescope?’
Charlotte drew in a quick breath. ‘I did. But I thought he’d checked out on Saturday. I saw him in the bar just before you arrived, and I should have mentioned it to you straight away that he was here, but I just didn’t think it was worth it. He’s going back to Heathrow later, and he’ll be back in Atlanta by the end of tomorrow. Apart from communicating about our research, I don’t anticipate seeing him again.’
‘So, what are these findings?’ Tristan asked, clearly keen to get off the touchy subject of having an ex-boyfriend sprung on him.
Charlotte took a moment to consider her next words carefully. She still didn’t really know how aware Tristan was of the relative historical importance of the Lower Brambleton Observatory. It would be a fair bet, given how young he and Thea were when their parents were killed, that unless he’d made the effort, his parents’ astronomical work would have remained a fairly abstract, distant concept for him. Lorelai might have enlightened them both over the years, but she was no expert, and given the somewhat parlous relationship between Lorelai and the only other member of the family, her brother Philip, who had also been an astronomer, she wondered how much Tristan would really understand. All the same, she knew she had to try to explain things to him: she would need to explain to all the surviving family members eventually, if what she suspected did indeed turn out to be true.
Charlotte waited until a young family, complete with chocolate-brown Labrador, had passed, before she turned back to Tristan.
‘While I was sorting through the observatory’s records for the last quarter of 1994 I came across something that surprised me.’ She proceeded to explain, in as clear a way as possible, the observations made by Tristan’s parents about the eclipsing binary and the fact that there had been no reference to its discovery before or in 1995.
Tristan looked deep in thought as she recounted the story, and as she paused, he took a seat on a nearby tree stump.
‘So, what you’re telling me is that my parents should have been credited with the discovery, but due to the rather inconvenient event of their sudden deaths, that didn’t happen?’
Charlotte’s heart gave a lurch at the strange tone of Tristan’s voice: a tone she couldn’t interpret and was struggling to understand. ‘Well,’ she ventured, ‘I wouldn’t quite put it like that.’
