Page 52 of A Sky Full of Stars
But now, as Charlotte tracked her torch upwards, she knew that this time she’d be ignoring Brian’s advice to avoid the gantry. The metal gate that had been put in place to stop anyone going up was at a strange angle on the staircase, as if something or someone had pushed their way through. The thunder, right overhead now, growled menacingly, and a brilliant flash of lightning infiltrated the cracks in the observatory’s dome, poking long fingers of light through the building, as if it was reaching out to claim her. Panning her torch light around the area at the top of the stairs, between the viewing platform and the dome, she called Comet’s name again.
It was no good: she’d have to get up there. The dog had clearly got spooked and scuttled to the top level of the building. That was definitely where the barking was coming from, and as she strained her eyes in the diminishing light of her phone’s torch, she thought she caught sight of a soggy black tail wagging in the darkness. It was enough to harden her resolve. She began to ascend the steps, testing the weight of each one gingerly before she put a foot fully down. She huffed out a breath as she painstakingly made progress towards the platform. With one hand gripping the handrail, and the other clutching her phone, she moved further upwards, praying the structure wouldn’t give way beneath her.
‘When I get you home, I’m going to give you such a talking to!’ she muttered, feeling the adrenaline prickling over her skin as, with the next step, the staircase gave an alarming creak. What the hell was she doing?
Just as she was about to give up and head back down, what was left of her bravery having been virtually shredded by the careful ascent up to the viewing platform, she caught a more definite glimpse of a dark, wriggling mass of sodden fur at the far side of the structure. There, about thirty feet away on the curve, was Comet. And the little spaniel with the white star on his chest wasn’t alone. Huddled against a recess in the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, was Tristan.
50
‘Oh, thank God!’ Charlotte breathed, trying to stop her hands from shaking. Her nerves were already shot to pieces, but the sight of Comet and Tristan sent her senses into overdrive. How had he ended up here, when his Audi was in a rhyne a mile away? And why the hell did it have to be in the most dangerous part of the site that she, or rather Comet, had found him?
‘Tristan?’ she said softly. ‘Tristan? Can you hear me?’
The figure thirty feet away on the gantry that was curving away from her in the gentle swirl of the circular dome didn’t respond, although, she reasoned, he must have heard her shouting for Comet, who was now nosing Tristan’s huddled form in concern and mild annoyance that he couldn’t raise even a pat from him.
Charlotte’s heart sank. She knew she was going to have to make her way over to Tristan, and try to rouse him, try to get him off this blasted platform. The floor underfoot was spongy and damp, neither great signifiers of the safety of the wooden boards. The handrail that ran around the platform was in varying stages of rust, the white paint having flaked off almost entirely and, as Charlotte put out a hand to grip it, terrifyingly unstable. She rapidly withdrew her hand again. The rail up the stairs had felt more secure, but it would be safer not to trust it now she was at the top.
‘Come on,’ she said to herself. She had no idea if the platform would take the combined weight of two people, but what choice did she have? Thea was unreachable at the moment, and in the absence of Tristan’s sister she might be the only person who could talk Tristan down off the ledge.
Step by step, testing the rotten floor before she put her full weight on it, she carefully began to close the gap between herself and Tristan. Her legs were trembling from the adrenaline that was coursing through her body, and she found herself counting each breath as she inhaled and exhaled. She’d been terrified when she’d done a high ropes challenge on a friend’s hen weekend at Longleat: this felt infinitely scarier, thirty feet in the air without the aid of a safety harness and a hard hat. Trying to push those thoughts away, she continued moving, hoping with each step that Tristan would raise his head and acknowledge her presence. With every passing second, she grew more and more concerned for him.
‘Tristan,’ she said softly. ‘Tristan, can you hear me?’
Still nothing. Charlotte moved a couple more steps forward. She was now only about twelve feet away from the huddled figure in the alcove. Another clap of thunder warned her the storm wasn’t abating any time soon. As the lightning swiftly followed, she took a few deep breaths to stop herself from hyperventilating. Having a panic attack right now would be the icing on the proverbial cake.
‘I’m coming towards you,’ she said gently, hoping that the sound of her voice might elicit some kind of response from Tristan, whose head was still buried in his knees. ‘If you can hear me, try to let me know.’
No response. She was about eight feet from him now. Edging closer, she jumped as her phone rang. Scrabbling to answer it, seeing it was Thea, she prayed the reception, and her battery, would hold out so she could tell Tristan’s sister that she’d found him.
‘I’m with him,’ she said as Thea began to speak. ‘We’re at the observatory. Yes, please, as soon as you can.’ She glanced at Tristan, who still showed no signs of having heard her. ‘He’s, er, he doesn’t seem to be in a good way. No, not hurt, but we’re inside the observatory on the viewing platform.’
Charlotte ended the call, hoping Thea had picked up enough of what she’d said to make her way back to Observatory Field. She was so busy trying to put her torch back on that she didn’t notice the appallingly rotten board she’d stepped on. As her foot went through with a sloppy, crashing groan of aged timber, she screamed. Her phone dropped out of her hand, bounced and tumbled to the ground floor of the observatory, its light extinguishing as it smashed apart on the concrete floor thirty feet beneath.
Comet gave a surprised and concerned bark, and Charlotte called out in fear. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she found herself with one foot dangling beneath the platform, the other knee forced into a bend only inches from the rest of the rotten board. Tears of pure terror streamed down her cheeks as she tried to pull herself back up, but she was too afraid to put too much weight on the boards around her, which had been weakened by the collapse of the one she’d stepped on.
‘Tristan!’ she yelled again. ‘For Christ’s sake, help me!’
For a long, agonising moment that to Charlotte felt like years, he remained still and uncommunicative. This is it, she thought. I’m going to break my neck falling from this bloody gantry, and my name will be added to the tragedy of the observatory, just in time for it all to be knocked down. Why the fuck hadn’t she just stayed put at Nightshade Cottage? Why had she come out here on some godforsaken heroic journey just to find a man who could do what he wanted? This was not how she wanted it to end. If Tristan needed to be here, that was his business, not hers. Why hadn’t she just waited for him to come back to her in his own time? This had been a fool’s errand, and one that now seemed to be the stupidest, most dangerous errand of her life.
And then, as Tristan finally raised his head from his knees and, as the lightning flared once more, her eyes, in that split second of illumination, locked with his and she knew exactly why she’d done it. It had been stealing up on her, like the quiet emergence of Arcturus in the velvet darkness of the summer night sky, and, like Orion, the brighter companion, it had come to guide her home. ‘I love you!’ she yelled across the eight-foot gap between them. ‘I bloody love you, Tristan Ashcombe, and if you don’t come and get me out of this hole, I’m never going to be able to tell you that again!’
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Tristan didn’t know how long he’d been sitting at the top of the viewing platform. He didn’t even know how he’d got there. The last thing he could remember was climbing through the woods to the observatory, having abandoned his car after it had slipped off the road in the rainstorm.
Lorelai had tried to stop him from leaving Nightshade Cottage, but he’d had to get out of there, put as much distance between himself and the memories that had suddenly confronted him after they’d spoken. ‘Tristan, we need to talk about this,’ she’d said to him, but he couldn’t. They’d never really discussed what had happened the night his parents were killed on the road by the observatory, and that, combined with the knowledge that Great-Uncle Philip might have been the trigger for the tragedy, was enough of a push for him to have to get away. Why had his uncle been at the observatory on a freezing cold January night, and what had been said between Philip and his parents? He could go around in circles forever trying to work it all out, but, in truth, he’d never know. Had Philip finally told Tristan’s mother how he felt about her? Or was it something to do with the discovery his parents had made, that binary star? It felt impossible to escape what was in his own head. ‘No,’ he’d kept muttering. ‘No, it’s not like that. It can’t be like that…’
All he knew now was that, through the fog of his own thoughts, through the barriers he’d erected to keep the outside world at bay, something had slowly, painfully brought him back to the present. It took a few moments for him to re-associate with the moment, to get out of the maelstrom of his own thoughts and emotions, but as the fog began to clear, he became aware of Charlotte’s terrified voice. His eyes met hers across the short distance between them, and then the darkness fell again, as the lightning disappeared with the flip of an atmospheric switch. It was enough, though. Charlotte was in terrible danger, and he knew he had to do something to try to help.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ she was screaming at him. ‘Did you not hear what I just said? Tristan, help me, please!’
It was the uncharacteristic swearing as much as the declaration of love that brought him back. The storm was right over their heads, and another sheet of lightning lit up her pale face, and showed her caught in the rotten wood of the platform, likely to fall through at any moment.
‘What are you doing here?’ he shouted, raising himself from the sitting position he’d been stuck in for God knew how long. His knees told him it had been a while.
‘What do you bloody think?’ Charlotte was almost snarling with fear now, and Tristan knew he had to make his next moves extremely carefully indeed, or he was at risk of both of them hurtling to the ground, and Comet, too. The little dog was looking frantically from him to Charlotte, clearly unsure which way to run.
‘I’m coming over,’ he said as calmly as he could. ‘Try not to move.’
