Page 61 of A Sky Full of Stars
Charlotte’s heart, already slightly elevated from the incline through the woods, sped up as Tristan broke the not-entirely-comfortable silence between them.
‘So?’ Charlotte echoed. She glanced ahead of them, to ensure that Comet wasn’t likely to go dashing off in pursuit of any local wildlife, or to greet other walkers in his usual enthusiastic way, before pausing to catch her breath and meet Tristan’s gaze.
‘I’m sorry about Thea,’ Tristan said. ‘You were absolutely on the nail when you said she had no right to interfere. Sometimes, though, she just can’t help herself.’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘To be fair to Thea, she was right to get irritated by that text. It was a little, er,to the point, and was less than you deserved for sending me the Ultron.’
‘It was up to you to choose how you responded to it, not my bloody sister,’ Tristan muttered. ‘She can’t help sticking her oar in, sometimes, and I’m just sorry you were on the end of it.’
‘That’s as may be, but I should have replied a little more sensitively.’ Charlotte paused by the stump of a newly felled pine tree. Its sweet balsam scent seemed to calm her thoughts. She needed to keep her feet on the ground for the next few minutes, at least. ‘That letter you sent, with the telescope… it meant a lot to me that you could be so honest about yourself and your feelings. The reason I didn’t mention it in that text was because I didn’t want to just write off everything you’d said. It felt wrong just to shoot back a WhatsApp, when there was so much else I wanted to tell you.’ She rummaged in the back pocket of her jeans. ‘So much so that, after I got Thea’s call, I finished off a reply of my own that I’d been drafting to you.’ Pulling out an envelope, slightly crumpled from where she’d been sitting on it while she was driving, she handed it to Tristan. ‘You don’t have to read it now,’ she said. ‘Just stick it in your pocket and read it when you’re ready.’
Tristan’s mouth gave a little upward twitch when he saw how crumpled the letter was. Charlotte immediately knew he was thinking back to their first meeting and how scruffy she’d looked. ‘I’d like to read it now if you don’t mind.’
‘Sure.’
Tristan perched on the tree stump. Feeling incredibly awkward, Charlotte searched the immediate vicinity with her eyes for Comet and noticed he was disappearing in the direction of the building site. Determined to give Tristan a couple of minutes’ space to read her letter, she took her time meandering over to Comet.
When she’d located him, she turned back to see Tristan was still sitting on the tree stump, but he’d shifted his gaze from the letter in his hands to where she was. The look on his face, from this distance, was difficult to make out. Drawing closer, she could see that his eyes were fixed on her, and much to her relief, he was smiling.
‘Do you mean it?’ he said gently, as he stood and closed the remaining distance between them.
‘I do.’ Charlotte’s knees, only just recovering from coming face to face on the doorstep with Tristan that afternoon, began to shake again. And when Tristan dipped his head, and she felt his lips, tentatively at first and then with increasing assurance, meeting hers, her knees very nearly gave way altogether. It was just as well he’d slid his arms around her, to give them both some stability on the uneven forest floor, as by the time they broke apart again it was difficult to tell who was trembling more.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Tristan murmured. ‘You’ve no idea how much.’
‘I’ve some idea.’ Charlotte smiled into another kiss. ‘And I think it’s time to press play again on things, don’t you?’
‘Definitely.’ The kisses could have gone on all afternoon, with the odd gently falling copper-burnished leaf fluttering from the beech trees that interspersed the pines in the wood, had Comet not returned with a large stick, and butted Charlotte on the back of her legs with it.
‘Timing, dog,’ Charlotte muttered as she was pushed even closer to Tristan.
‘I don’t know.’ Tristan’s eyes sparkled with amusement and love, never breaking her gaze as he stooped slightly to give the errant Comet a pat. ‘His timing seems pretty perfect to me.’
EPILOGUE
A YEAR LATER
At number sixteen Orion Close, a small, three-bedroomed house tucked into the corner of the Observatory Field development, and a stone’s throw from the woodland that the new owner had explored as a child, the champagne cork popped and fell a long way short of the back fence. Cheering followed, almost as swiftly as the small black and white cocker spaniel, Comet, did after the cork.
‘Congratulations, Thea.’ Lorelai raised her glass, which was the first to have been filled, in her granddaughter’s direction. ‘This has been a long time coming, but I wish you every success in your new home.’
‘Thanks, Gran.’ Thea passed a glass to Charlotte, who was standing off to one side of the patio table with Tristan, and then filled her own. ‘I can’t believe we’re finally here!’
Thea had been one of the first owners to move into her new home on Observatory Field. The house, big enough for herself and the two children as they grew into teenagers, was part of a tasteful development that her brother had overseen from start to finish. The garden, while not enormous, was substantially bigger than the small courtyard plot she’d had in her rented property, and ensured that Dylan could practise his penalty kicks for the Lower Brambleton Under-9s without fear of losing his ball to the road or the house behind. Cora, who’d loved the woodland since she was old enough to walk, now spent a great deal of her time exploring the surrounding countryside, and had a chart on her new bedroom wall which detailed the different kinds of British wildlife she might expect to find. She’d ticked off many of these already. The estate, still in the process of being built, was welcoming new residents regularly, and a community was beginning to form. In a few years’ time, it would ensure the survival of this charming little Somerset hamlet.
Charlotte looked over at Tristan, who was sipping his champagne and gazing out over the garden, seemingly lost in thought.
‘You OK?’ she murmured, slipping closer to him.
‘Absolutely,’ he replied. ‘You know, it’s nice to think about the changes that have happened here and just be happy.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what that says about me, that I had to watch a building being razed to the ground to feel that, but that’s how it happened.’
Charlotte smiled up at him. She knew what a concession that was for him to admit out loud, even though they’d had a lot of discussions about it over the past year. Losing the observatory but gaining a sense of peace about the past had been a worthy exchange, not just for Tristan but for his whole family. A family that now included Charlotte, unofficially at least.
Charlotte herself had seen out the academic year in her flat in the halls of residence, but had been pootling up and down the A roads between Bristol and Lower Brambleton on a regular basis to visit Tristan, and almost as regularly, Lorelai. Still not quite ready to take the plunge and move in together, Charlotte had commandeered a space in Tristan’s study for some of the days during the university vacations when the students had gone home and she couldn’t be bothered to drive back to her flat, and they’d been moving their relationship along slowly, giving each other the time and space they needed to progress at a pace that suited them both. Things had been getting more serious lately, though, with more of Charlotte’s possessions finding their way into Tristan’s house, and Tristan quietly rearranging them whenever she went back to Bristol. Despite Thea’s none-too-subtle hints that Cora was desperate to be a bridesmaid, Charlotte and Tristan were content with their own timeline, for now.
While Tristan had now moved on to mastermind the next Flowerdew Homes development, Charlotte still worked in the North West Wessex archives, where she was putting together a research paper proposing that the Volucris Binary’s German name be given an additional identifier called the ‘Ashcombe Formation’. From across the Atlantic, Todd had been her research partner and was even now using the vast resources of his university’s astrophysics department to provide up-to-date calculations of the pair of eclipsing stars, to ensure that, unlike thirty years ago, Martin and Laura’s discovery would not be forgotten. Even if the identifier never took, their names would be recorded as the first astronomers to have observed and noted the discovery.
The small housewarming gathering at Thea’s had been the perfect excuse to get friends and family together, and along with Lorelai, Thea and the kids, and Charlotte and Tristan, Thea had invited Annabelle and her husband and Nick Saint, too, who, having just split with his girlfriend, was pleased to get out for a chat and a drink. Nick spent most of the afternoon saving Dylan’s goal kicks, and Annabelle was heard to remark to her husband that it was good to see him smiling again.
