A Sea of Stars (13 page)

I
wake up again and I don't know if I've been sleeping for a minute or an hour or a year. It's dark outside and, through the huge window, bright stars are glittering in the sky, piercing my eyes with a trillion pointy pins. I cover them up with my arm and hide in the soft velvet black box. The police are still hammering; their big black boots are still stomping on my skull.

“What's happening to me?” I croak. “My head hurts so much.”

Mum holds my hand and strokes it.

“You're poorly, sweetie,” she says. “You've been
here for a few days now. Hopefully we can take you home soon. Will you have a drink? Something to eat?”

Dad helps me sit up. I take a tiny sip of water, but I have to keep my eyes closed because it hurts too much to open them. And just sipping the water really tires me out. My body is so heavy, like I'm made of lead.

“What's wrong with me?” I whisper.

“You're going to be OK,” says Dad, stroking my head. “You've had some kind of nasty virus – viral meningitis – but we're not certain yet. It must've been coming on before you went surfing, poppet.”

“Am I going to die?” I say. “People die from meningitis.”

“No, darling, no,” says Mum, “but you've been a really poorly girl. We've been so worried about you. But you're not going to die. We're sure of that.”

The next time I wake up I hear loads of clattering going on. A man in a green outfit is cleaning the floors with a bucket and mop. It must be morning because a milky sun is peeping into my room and
I wonder how many days of my life I've missed. I open my eyes just a tiny bit to see if it still hurts and it does a bit, but it's more like thumbs pressing into them than pins. The police and the army must be dozing. Mum's snoozing in the chair next to my bed, but as soon as I move she's awake.

“Hello, sweetie,” she says, feeling my forehead. “How you feeling?”

“A tiny bit better, I think.”

Mum smiles. Her eyes shine. And then the memory of what happened drops on my head like heavy black rock from the cliff. It floods through my body like ice in my veins instead of blood. I don't know what to say, or where to start. My mind feels so cloggy and heavy; my head's still really, really sore. But I need to say something.

I wish I could just turn back the clock and say ‘No' to Cat. I wish I'd just stayed home with her and got bored and played games. I wish I hadn't minded about not being allowed out. Maybe if I lie here long enough the whole story will just evaporate. Then we can start again and
pretend it never happened.

“Hey,” says Mum, holding my hand, “you look worried. Don't think too hard; we've plenty of time to unravel things. Right now we just need to get you well.”

 

I stay in the hospital for one more day and then they let me go home. Everything feels so different. The surf competition's finished and all the bunting's been taken down. Georgia Timson won the under thirteens, but that doesn't matter now. I'm never going surfing again. Not ever. It's too dangerous. My mum was right; Cat was right.

Mum comes over and puts a cool flannel on my head.

“I saw Alfie,” I say, “when I was under the water. He was seven and in St Cuthbert's uniform; he had a grey book bag and everything.”

Mum nibbles her lip. Her eyes fill up with tears.

“It was really weird,” I say. “Everything went all white and soft and peaceful. I kind of drifted off and I wasn't scared any more. I felt free and
wispy, like nothing mattered, like even being alive didn't matter any more. And then suddenly Alfie was there, calling me to go and play with him in his tree house that Granddad made. It was beautiful, like a bird – like our house, really. Like a seagull ready to fly.”

Mum takes hold of my hand and presses it to her lips to kiss. There's so much string to unravel between us, so much stuff to say, it might take forever. A lump as big as a plum swells up in my throat.

“I'm really, really sorry,” I say, “for going out without telling you and for surfing on my own. It was a stupid thing to do.”

Huge silver tears start rolling down my cheeks.

“I just got really cross about being grounded,” I say. “I've tried really hard with Cat and she's done so many things she shouldn't do and I only did one. And I hate it that you're so scared of everything since Alfie and the bus. I'm so sad you don't want adventures any more. You've kind of disappeared and I miss you, Mum. I want you back. I didn't
mean to surf. I tried to find Luca and Anna, but I was just so hot and the water looked cool.”

Silver tears roll down Mum's cheeks too. She fiddles with her fingers; she nibbles her lip.

“I was so scared, Maya,” she says. Her voice is low and husky, trembly and scared. “When the hospital phoned us, I nearly went crazy. I thought you were safe. If it wasn't for Cat you might… I couldn't have lived through that, Maya. I can't lose you as well!”

“Well, you won't have to worry about me surfing any more,” I say. “You're right – it's too dangerous. I quit.”

“I'm just so sad,” says Mum, twiddling her fingers, “that you lied to me. I don't know how to be with that. I don't know what to say.”

I try to swallow, but my throat is blocked with shame.

“I've been so scared of losing you,” she says, her voice steadier than I've heard it in ages. “I've been afraid of you growing up and meeting the world and spreading your wings. And I've kept you too
close. I can see now that's not been healthy. It's your beautiful life, Maya. I need to let you live it. But how can I trust that you'll tell me the truth after this?”

Dad brings in a tray of soup and bread for me. He looks so sad. He wipes my tears with his hanky. He plants a kiss on my cheek.

“It's so painful, Maya,” he says, “knowing that you lied to us. Knowing you might have died because of that.”

Cat barges in holding her ‘Life Story Book' under her arm.

“It was all my fault,” she says. “I told Maya to go. I'm the liar, not her.”

Mum and Dad look at me.

But I can't see anything because my eyes are swimming with tears.

C
at lifts the soup spoon and carefully feeds me. She tears the bread into tiny bite-sized chunks.

“I'm sorry for making you lie,” she whispers, “but you were an idiot. You weren't supposed to surf. I told you! I need to tell you other stuff too. But in a minute, when you've eaten your lunch.”

When she's finished feeding me, she puts down the tray and sits close. Not so close that we're touching arms or anything, but close enough that I can smell her hair. Then Cat rests the ‘Life Story Book' across our laps and opens the first page. And there she is, a teeny-weeny little baby with a big
fluffy tuft of black hair. And there she is again: a toddler in a pushchair with her mum standing next to her.

“Here's the flat we lived in when I was born,” she says. She presses her thumb over the photo and smiles. She points at a window. “That was the bedroom. I don't remember it, though.”

We go through page after page of Cat's book. She shows me all the different people she's lived with in all the different foster homes. She shows me photos of the social workers she's had, and some of her schoolteachers in all her different schools.

“What was it like?” I say. “You know, moving around so much?”

Cat shrugs. She nibble-nibble-nibbles on a nail.

“My photos are nothing special,” she says, “except to me. They're not like your brilliant ones on the walls.”

“I think they're really special, Cat,” I say. “Maybe we could put some up on the wall next to mine? If you wanted.”

She shrugs again. She bites her lip. She turns the page.

“These are the precious-est ones,” she says, stroking a little boy's face, smoothing his beetle-black hair, “because they're of Jordan. I'd run through a burning house to rescue these.”

She hugs her book to her chest and is so quiet for a moment we'd hear a feather if it dropped to the floor.

“I'll be with him again,” she says, “I promise you. I just have to grow up a bit more. I've promised him that one day I'll go and find him and we'll get a really nice flat somewhere and it'll be warm and cosy with a big fridge full of food. And it'll be just me and Jordan forever. Not our stupid mum and her wine and her stupid boyfriends.” She looks at me. “Well, maybe you can come over for sleepovers sometimes,” she says, “and round to play and stuff. And Chloe can stay, of course.”

Cat strokes Jordan for a while, her eyes dull green like pond water. She stares into space and thinks.

“I need to know what happened,” I say, “in the
water. I mean, why were you even there, Cat? Why weren't you at Chloe's? I thought you hated the water.”

“When I got to Chloe's house,” she says, “I had this really weird feeling. Like somehow I knew you were in trouble. So I ran down to the beach and started looking for you. I couldn't find you for ages and ages. And I was just about to run back home and get Mum when I saw you, far, far away from the crowd, tumbling around in the sea. You were churning round and round, and then you disappeared. I thought you were going to drown. So I just charged in. I can swim, Maya, I just don't do it any more. I stopped the last time I lived with my mum.”

And then Cat starts telling me another story. Tears well up in her eyes and ghosts from the past cling to her hair like seaweed.

“We were at the beach, really, really late one night,” she says, “and Jordan had this bad cough and he really needed to be in bed. And I kept telling her we had to go home, but she wouldn't listen. The social workers had given her one last chance to
sort her herself out and look after us properly. But I knew she wouldn't do it. I knew she'd mess up. She was a bad, bad mum.”

She turns back to the page full of photos of Jordan and starts kissing his face.

“Then she had this really stupid idea,” she whispers. “She thought it would be fun to go in the water for a late-night dip. I told her it was mad. But she dragged Jordan out of his pushchair and carried him in. She was so drunk, she kept toppling all over the place because she still had her shoes on and she was singing at the top of her voice. Then she slipped and they both went under.

It was so dark, I couldn't see them anywhere; the water was all cloudy and black. So I just charged in. But, once I'd found them, Jordan kept slipping away from me and my mum kept falling down. I kept slipping under. Mum was really heavy. I couldn't choose between them. I couldn't let my brother die! I couldn't leave my mum! So I just clung on and on and I was freezing cold. We all nearly drowned. I just about dragged them to the shore and I hit
Jordan's back to make him cough up all the water in his lungs. Then I had to get them home and put them both to bed so nobody would find out.”

I'm totally silent, listening to Cat. I'm holding my breath and not moving one bit. Never in my whole life have I done anything as brave as Cat. I've never had to worry about anyone's cough or put anyone else to bed. A single silver tear runs down her face. She nibbles on a nail. She twiddles her hair round and round and round. She swallows hard. She turns to the page with pictures of her mum and punches her right in the face, over and over and over, until the photos crumple.

“And then she made me swear never to tell anyone,” she says, punching again, “because if they found out, she said we'd definitely go back into care. And I didn't want that. I don't care about her, but I'd have done anything to stay with Jordan. He's so sad when I'm not there. He gets all lonely.”

I wish I had some precious words for Cat, ones made of silver or gold, or like Nana's special crystal glasses – something to soothe her.

“Are you well enough to come up to my room for a minute?” she asks.

She takes my hand and clings on tight while we creep past Mum and Dad, and up the stairs, past the photos of me, past the stripy lighthouse on the wall and the seagull hanging from a spring and our paper-crane mobile.

“I want to show you something,” she says, “but I'm a bit scared. I feel a bit shy.”

Cat sits me on the carpet in front of her wardrobe and gently opens the door. There, at the bottom, all laid out neatly like an altar in a church are photos of Jordan and tiny hand-print paintings from his old school and seashells and driftwood from the bay. And scattered between the things are dried up bits of biscuit, crumbled up bits of cake and cheesy garlic bread.

My heart swells up to my eyes and makes me cry.

“What's it for?”

“I know it sounds silly,” Cat says, picking up a photo and hugging it, “but I'm worried he's not getting enough to eat. I thought if I had food here
for him it would kind of bring him good luck. It might be a way of still caring for him.”

Cat starts nibble-nibble-nibbling on a nail; she starts twiddling her hair round and round and round until her finger glows bright red. I really want to hug her and make it better. I want to tell her not to worry. But she'll never stop worrying about Jordan.

“I was wondering…” she says. “You see, I think Jordan gets quite lonely up here on his own, and I was wondering… if maybe you think he could share the shelf with Alfie? If Mum and Dad and you would mind them both being on there together?”

And I'm about to say, “Yes, that's brilliant idea, Cat,” when her words ring in my brain like bells.

“You called her ‘Mum'!” I say. “I thought you were never going to do that.”

“I probably was,” Cat says, smiling, “eventually. It just felt a bit weird, a bit like I wouldn't love my own mum any more. And I do hate her and I know she's a really rubbish mum… but she is my mum.”

“Do you really hate it here?” I ask. “Do you really hate me?”

Cat shakes her head.

“Not really,” she says. “I'm just scared of letting myself love you in case I get taken away again. Then I'd lose you as well as Jordan.”

I carefully slide my hand over to hers until our fingertips are touching. She takes a sharp breath in, but doesn't scream.

“No one's ever going to take you away, Cat,” I say. “We won't let them. I promise.”

Then she does it. She sends me a twinkle, brighter than a star and I catch it and tuck it safe inside my heart. Then together we carefully gather up all of Jordan's things, take them downstairs and arrange them neatly on the shelf next to Alfie's. Dad lights a candle. Mum gets some special strawberry cake. We all sit there munching and thinking about Alfie and Jordan.

“I know,” I say to Cat, “every time you visit Jordan you could take a photo of him. Then we can line them all up on the shelf and watch him grow.”