Page 49 of A Sky Full of Stars
Thea shook her head. ‘Not really, no.’ She began to fidget with a bracelet on her wrist, as if she was weighing up whether or not to tell Charlotte something.
‘What’s happened?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Is it Lorelai? Tristan?’
Thea took a deep breath, and Charlotte got the distinct impression she was trying not to cry. ‘Gran called me about an hour ago, in a hell of a state.’ She blinked rapidly. ‘She and Tristan had a really difficult conversation earlier, about some family stuff. Tristan, well, Tristan doesn’t handle things to do with the family very well and he was incredibly upset when he left her. I was hoping he might have come straight around to you…’ She trailed off, hope flaring in her eyes. ‘Is he here?’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘No. I haven’t seen him. I didn’t even hear his car earlier, but then I was wearing noise-cancelling earbuds while I was working, so I may have missed him.’
Thea looked downcast. ‘I’ve got that Life 360 app, and so has Tris. He likes to keep track of me and the kids, and he even persuaded Gran to get it on her phone, although that’s no help when she forgets to take it out with her. He definitely tracked here about four hours ago, but then he went off grid. It can drop in and out round here because the signal’s so crap, but something feels off. I’ve been trying to call him but his phone’s just going to voicemail. I’m starting to get really worried, Charlotte. Gran told me what she’d told Tristan, and from the way he reacted, he’s in no state to be on his own.’
Charlotte’s heart began to beat a little faster. She desperately wanted to know what the revelation was that might have set Tristan off, but she didn’t want to pry.
‘Look,’ Thea continued, ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but if he gets in touch, please can you call me? I just want to check in and make sure he’s OK.’
‘Why wouldn’t he be?’ Charlotte asked.
‘He can be very, very good at falling down mental rabbit holes, and I just want to make sure he’s not tripped into one after talking to Gran.’
‘Why would he have done that?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Thea… you can tell me to bugger off if you want, but it might be useful if you told me what it was that you think might have upset him.’
Thea paused for a long few beats before she answered. ‘Tris told me that you’ve been chasing down some information about Mum and Dad, haven’t you? To do with their time at the observatory?’
‘That’s right,’ Charlotte said. She hesitated before adding, ‘That’s kind of what Tristan and I were talking about yesterday. He wasn’t completely at ease with me trying to gather the facts about a discovery they may have made.’
‘When I popped in to see Gran earlier, she was looking through some paperwork of her own. Personal stuff that belonged to Great-Uncle Philip – Philip Porter, Gran’s younger brother. He was a professor of astronomy back in the day, and he and Gran owned the observatory site after they inherited it from their father.’
A faint spark of recognition flared in Charlotte’s mind when she heard the name. Could Philip Porter have been the ‘PP’ in the notes from the first recording of Volucris by the Ashcombes in 1994? ‘Lorelai told me she was the one who sold the site to the developer after her brother died. Tristan mentioned that your great-uncle was an astronomer, but he gave me the impression it was more of a hobby for him than a profession. I had no idea he was an academic.’
‘Yeah,’ Thea replied. ‘He never really spoke much about it after he retired.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘He didn’t speak to us much, in fact. He wasn’t interested in the family, and even after Mum and Dad died, he didn’t offer Gran any help when we were growing up.’
Charlotte felt a pang of sympathy for the woman in front of her. The support and love of a family was what both Tristan and Thea had so desperately needed after the death of their parents, and she couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to know that another member of that family was so uninterested in them.
‘I’m so sorry, Thea,’ Charlotte said gently.
‘I know,’ Thea said sadly. ‘But what’s worrying me now is where Tristan’s gone. Gran, er, Gran tried to stop him from leaving but he bolted out of the door, and he was in no state to be driving. I have to find him, Charlotte. If you have any idea where he might be, please tell me.’
‘I don’t mean to pry, Thea, but if you are able to tell me what Lorelai said before he left, it might help us to find him.’
Thea’s eyes glistened with tears, and she blinked them furiously away. ‘Gran was getting rid of some papers, as I said. One of them was a letter from Great-Uncle Philip. Tristan read it before Gran could stop him. It was a love letter. To our mother.’
‘Oh, God,’ Charlotte breathed. ‘Did they? I mean, were they…?’
Thea shook her head. ‘No. It was unrequited. But it explains a hell of a lot about why Uncle Philip kept his distance from us. He worked with Mum for years, they were close, and then Dad came to work at the same lab. The rest is history.’
‘And you never knew?’
‘No. Gran kept it a secret. I suppose she didn’t see the point in giving us any more emotional baggage.’ She gave a short, nervous laugh. ‘I mean, it’s not like we didn’t have enough already.’
‘She seems like the kind of person who’d want to protect you as much as she could,’ Charlotte said gently. ‘She obviously loves you both very much.’
Thea looked thoughtful. ‘She says that even she didn’t know until she was going through Uncle Philip’s papers after his death.’ Thea bit her lip: the conversation with Lorelai had been distressing. ‘She’s really upset, but I’ve told her to go to bed. She’ll probably ignore me. Thankfully, the kids are both at sleepovers tonight so I can get out there and see if I can find Tris.’
‘Is that wise?’ Charlotte asked. ‘It’s bucketing down out there, and these roads are dangerous enough in the dark. I’m sure he’s fine and his phone’ll just blip back on when he hits a decent spot.’ Even as she said it, she knew Tristan’s sister wasn’t going to listen to her. She, herself, wouldn’t have.
‘I’ll be all right. To be honest, I’m not worried about driving in the rain. But Iamworried about Tristan, and what finding all of this out might have done to him.’ Her eyes glistened, and Charlotte could see that she needed a few seconds before she spoke again. ‘After Mum and Dad died, I talked to everyone and anyone the bereavement charity who supported us could give me. I wasn’t going to let this awful thing dominate my life. And although it still hurts like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, I’ve learned to walk alongside that pain: to live my life in a way that allows me to think about them, and how much they’d have loved to have seen me grow up, to meet my own children. It’s never easy, but I think it’s been healthy, for the most part.’ She paused.
‘Go on,’ Charlotte replied. She got the feeling that Thea felt as though she was breaking a confidence by talking about Tristan to someone who was only in the early days of a relationship with him, but circumstances seemed to make it necessary.
‘Tristan wasn’t the same,’ Thea said flatly. ‘He refused to talk to anyone, no matter how hard Gran or I tried to persuade him. He sat in the room with the counsellors, but he wouldn’t say a word. He talked to me, of course, but we had both experienced the same thing: we became our own echo chamber. What he needed, more than anything, was an outside perspective. But he ploughed himself into his studies, into his social life, into everything he could to try to blot out the pain of our loss. And to a point it worked. What he’s achieved has been extraordinary. He’s the youngest project manager in his field. But it came at an emotional cost. He repressed everything to do with our parents’ death. He never looks back, and he never lets anyone get close to him.’ Thea leaned against the wall. ‘Gran and I have always worried that one day he’d crack, and when he told us he was going to manage Observatory Field, we were even more concerned. He’s the perfect person to do it, because he knows how to create beautiful, sustainable places, but he’s also the worst because of how bound up in its history he is. He jumped through the hoops, satisfied everyone he could do it without any kind of conflict of interest, and now everything’s signed and sealed, it looks as though he’s almost made it.’
