Page 48 of A Sky Full of Stars
‘Darling,’ Lorelai murmured. ‘Let me try to explain…’
It was as if Lorelai’s voice was light years away. Tristan’s world had shrunk to the words on the page he was holding. The writing began to blur before his eyes as he read further, trying to stem the rush of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him.
‘He was in love with Mum…’ Tristan heard his own voice as if it was outside his own body. ‘All those years, he was in love with her.’ From the corner of his eye, he could see Lorelai nodding.
‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Your mother was the only woman Philip ever loved.’
A terrible thought occurred to Tristan as the possible repercussions of what he was holding sunk in. ‘Did she… did she ever feel the same way?’ With a struggle, he raised his gaze to look Lorelai straight in the eye. He had to know she was being truthful.
Lorelai didn’t hesitate when she shook her head. ‘No. She never felt for him as he felt for her.’ Lorelai tried to reach for the pages in his hand. ‘Let me have those. It’s all ancient history. An old man’s desire for someone he knew he could never have.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us, Gran?’ Tristan said. He could feel a pain in his throat that refused to go away, no matter how hard he swallowed. ‘All those years that Uncle Philip kept his distance from us… and we couldn’t work out why. Was it because of this?’
Lorelai nodded. ‘Your mother was Uncle Philip’s best and brightest student when she was at university. She was all set for a career in academia, under his tutelage, when she finished her postgraduate degree. Philip adored her, thought they’d make a wonderful research team. He’d never been in love before: he was forty years old when she came to work with him, and he fell for her, hook, line and sinker. Your mother was twenty-five.’ She paused. ‘Somehow, though, she always seemed to be the one who was wiser about the world. He’d spent his whole career in labs, in libraries, pursuing the abstract and chasing the unknown. He had very little idea about life outside his subject.’
Tristan nodded. The perception he’d had of his great-uncle tallied very much with Lorelai’s account of him. The man had been so bound up with his research, with his books, that Tristan and Thea had always been slightly intimidated by him. When he’d come to live with Lorelai at the end of his life, he’d been a remote figure, and had shunned any attempts by the twins to get to know him better. ‘So, what happened?’
‘They’d secured some funding from the European Union to extend the research she’d carried out for her doctorate. It wasn’t quite enough, but Philip convinced Laura to stay on for the two years of the project – he assured her he’d find funding from other sources to make it work. Really, he just wanted to be with her, and the prospect of another two years’ study with her was a great reason for him to keep pushing for the money. She even moved into his spare room – he was living in Redland in Bristol at the time – and they spent day and night together.’ She paused, searching Tristan’s face for a reaction before continuing. ‘I suppose he thought that, eventually, with them both in such close quarters, she’d fall in love with him, too.’
‘But that didn’t happen.’
‘No.’ Lorelai sighed. ‘You could say that it was written in the stars. Your father, who was a couple of years older than your mother, as you know, had graduated before she’d come to work in Philip’s department. He’d been working at Greenwich Observatory since he’d graduated, but he wanted to get back into the research side of things. Being far more commercially minded than Uncle Philip, though, it was a means to an end – his goal was to go out into industry, eventually, and he saw a short-term placement at North Wessex as a good string to his bow to achieve that aim. He and Uncle Philip could never see eye to eye about that: Philip was an academic through and through: he lived for the intellectual challenge of discovery and research. Your father saw research as a means to an end, and his goal was to work for a corporation, at the cutting edge of commercial research, if he could. They often argued about the merits of their own paths. It was never an easy relationship.’
‘So Dad came to work in Uncle Philip’s lab?’ Tristan let out a breath, feeling as though he was bracing himself for what he knew was inevitably coming.
‘Yes. He was everything that Philip wasn’t… charismatic, confident, charming… your mother, of course, was smitten. Uncle Philip watched it all happen; observed the woman he adored falling in love with his own nephew, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.’ Lorelai brushed at her eyes impatiently. ‘When your parents decided to get married, it was the final straw for him. He cut off contact with them both, and with me, for a long time. By the time you and Thea were born, he’d retreated so far into his work that he was a virtual stranger to us all. As far as I know, he never told your mother how he felt but when he died, I was sorting through some of his old paperwork. That’s when I found the letter. He obviously never sent it to her, but it was all there.’
‘So Mum never knew?’ Tristan asked. He was trying to keep a foot on the bottom of the pool, but the abrupt intersection of the past and present was sending him off balance. He’d spent most of his life trying to get away from the traumatic undercurrents of the past, and now it felt as though the waves were once again rising around him.
Lorelai smiled sadly. ‘I have no idea. Your Uncle Philip was intensely private: rather like you, in fact. Played his cards very close to his chest for his whole life, never letting anyone in.’
Tristan winced at the comparison: his memories of his uncle were of a person who seemed embittered by experience, and reluctant to let anyone close to him. Was he, himself, really like that?
‘The accident destroyed your uncle almost as much as it did the three of us,’ Lorelai continued. ‘But he could never talk about it. The maudlin side of me wonders if it was a broken heart that killed him, in the end. After your mother died, he just seemed to give up. By the time he came to live with me, he was damaged beyond repair.’ Lorelai looked as though she was about to add more, but at the last moment she stopped herself.
This did not go unnoticed by Tristan. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Gran?’
‘Nothing, darling,’ Lorelai replied, a little too quickly. ‘Heavens!’ she then exclaimed, rising from the chair with a creak. ‘I had no idea it was that far past dinner time. I’d better get something together. Did you want to stay for a bite?’
‘Gran, please.’ Tristan reached out a hand and covered one of Lorelai’s, hoping to stay her progress before she started buzzing around the kitchen. ‘I know when you’re not being truthful with me. There’s something else, isn’t there?’
‘Don’t be daft!’ Lorelai’s smile looked forced, and Tristan became worryingly aware that he didn’t know the whole story.
‘Gran,’ Tristan said, keeping his tone as gentle as he could. ‘Whatever else you need to tell me, I’ll understand. I promise you.’ Mindful of his earlier conversation with Thea, and wanting as much clarity as he could get now, for fear of what might happen in the future if Lorelai really was in danger of losing her memory, he pushed again. ‘You’ve always been there for me, and I want to be there for you now. You shouldn’t have to keep things to yourself any longer.’
Drawing a deep breath, Lorelai’s expression was bleaker than he’d ever seen it. He knew she was steeling herself to give him the final part of the puzzle. As she faced Tristan, and looked him straight in the eye, he felt the warning creak of Pandora’s Box being fully opened, and for a moment, he wanted to slam the lid shut again.
‘Tristan, my darling, darling boy,’ she began. Tristan felt the warmth of her hand as it closed over one of his, and he braced himself for another revelation.
47
The rapping on the door that led out to the back garden made Charlotte start awake in shock. She’d been in a heavy doze on her sofa, having dropped off after she’d finished working for the evening in front of some unmemorable drama on Netflix. Heart racing, she struggled off the sofa. With a pang of concern, she wondered if Lorelai had locked herself out of her side of the house. As she moved, still half asleep, to the back door, she was doubly shocked to see not Lorelai, but Thea Ashcombe, an expression of worry etched on her face, getting rapidly soaked in the heavy downpour that had obviously started while she was asleep.
‘Charlotte, I’m sorry to pop round so late,’ Thea said. ‘Can I come in for a sec?’
It was coming up to eleven o’clock, and the greyish-blue colours of the cloudy, rainy night sky were beginning to give way to a velvety blackness as the stars emerged. Orion, who always led Charlotte home, sparkled cold and brightly through a shawl of cloud like a signpost directly above Lorelai’s garden, and the rising moon caught the blondish-brown hue of Thea’s hair.
‘Sure,’ Charlotte replied, admitting Thea into the annexe. ‘Is everything all right?’
