A Sea of Stars (3 page)

“What about you, Cat?” says Dad. “What will you have?”

Cat's eyes slide over the menu. She shuffles in her seat. She nibbles on her nails.

“Am I allowed a whole one?” she asks. “All to myself?”

“Yes, Cat,” Mum laughs. “Of course.”

“Don't laugh at me,” snaps Cat, turning into a shark. “I didn't know.”

Mum zips her laugh away and turns redder than her hair. She coughs and the air between us tugs
tight. “No,” she says, “of course not. I'm sorry, Cat. What would you like, sweetheart?”

“Meat feast, two lots of cheesy bread and a Coke.”

“Mmmmm, I think I'll have the meat feast too,” says Dad, stretching back in his chair and rubbing his hands together. “And, go on, I'll push the boat out and have a Coke as well.”

“Same as me, Daaaaaad,” says Cat.

Her words creep under my skin. It's weirder than weird hearing her calling him ‘Dad' already. It makes my whole body whir and my heart feel empty and small. I know I have to share him now, we've talked about it loads, but I didn't think it would feel like this. He's my dad.

Cat looks in Dad's eyes and smiles. She turns her head a little bit to one side like she's unexpectedly shy, then she nibble-nibble-nibbles on a nail. Dad smiles back and winks. And the little knife in my tummy twists and bites as a spark of love flies from Dad's eye to Cat's heart. I pinch the back of my
hand. I should have ordered Coke and a meat feast as well, then I would've been in Dad's team too.

The waitress comes over and puts a pot of felt-tip pens in the space between Cat and me. She smiles and gives us each a poster for colouring in, even though we're a bit too old for it.

“Someone's birthday, is it?” she asks, tying purple balloons on the back of our chairs. “I love birthdays.”

We look up, trying to think of what to say.

“Well, no…” says Dad, hunting for words and sending another wink to Cat. “But it is a very special day for our family. A very, very special day indeed.”

Colouring isn't my favourite thing in the world, but it's better than watching Dad and Cat together, and it's better than looking at Mum's anxious glares. I'm busy doing an OK job of colouring in a stupid girl on a pony, when Cat's custardy hair wafts up my nose again, the beetle-black gleam of it shimmering in the light. She's leaning right over to look.

“I'm rubbish at colouring in,” I say, quickly covering the picture with my arm. “I'm rubbish
at arty things. I like surfing best and camping and outdoorsy things – adventuring and stuff.”

“Let me see, though,” she says.

I slide my arm away and feel my cheeks burn.

Cat sniggers.

“It's lovely, Maya,” Mum lies, picking up my poster. “It's really beautiful!”

We look over at Cat's. She's only done the pony's face so far, but it's amazing. I never knew anyone could make such a brilliant picture with such rubbish felt-tip pens. The pony looks almost real, like its eyes are actually glinting in the sun. And I'm so amazed by Cat's neatness that my body stops whirring. She hasn't gone over the black line once and the colours are so smooth and even, not scratchy and bumpy like mine.

“That's absolutely brilliant, Cat,” says Mum, tugging the picture round to get a better view. “How do you do it so neatly?”

“Dunno,” says Cat. “It's easy.”

“An artist in the making,” smiles Dad, sending her another wink.

“Sshhhhh,” she says holding her finger to her lips. “Stop interrupting.”

She takes a deep lungful of air and holds her breath for ages while she colour-colour-colours. We stare transfixed at her concentration. I quietly scrunch up my page. I'm not an artist in the making. But if we were surfing I'd be better than her – or swimming, or making fires, or putting up tents.

This is the weirdest day of my life so far. Much weirder than when we started looking at adoption websites and all those faces loomed out at us, waiting for homes. Much weirder than Alfie dying or the time I was so excited about my new bodyboard that I kept it in bed with me all night.

When the waitress brings over our food the meat feasts look the best. They smell really yummy and the cheese is all gooey on top of big juicy chunks of salami and ham. Mum's salad is so colourful even that looks delicious, and suddenly my margarita seems boring and normal, flat and dull. I always have a margarita. Why didn't I have the meat feast as well? I'm really thirsty now too. The chocolate
milkshake is nice but it feels cluggy in my mouth and the Coke looks so refreshing.

Dad stands up and chinks his glass with a spoon. The forgotten rope in my tummy tugs tight.

“I'd like to raise a toast,” he smiles. The lump starts wobbling in his throat again and Mum's eyes well up with tears. “To Cat and Maya and Mum and me; to all of us and our new life together. Cat, welcome to our family. We're a little bit crazy sometimes, and you'll have to forgive us for that, but we do have lots of fun and we're very excited to have you join us.”

“Errr… thanks,” Cat mumbles. Her face flushes red and her eyes dart around the restaurant, checking no one's looking. And with all the toasting and welcoming and eyes full of tears and throats full of lumps, Dad doesn't notice, and neither does Mum, that, quietly like the shadow of a robber on a dark, dark night, Cat slips a whole portion of cheesy bread into the bottom of her bag.

As we're leaving the restaurant, I slide up close to her.

I long to say to her, “Cat, I've waited my whole life for you to arrive. I've dreamt about us being together for years. And I know things feel a bit confusing right now, but they will get better – they have to. I have so many ideas for us, so many plans.”

But the words get twisted up with my feelings and somehow come out all wrong, so what I whisper into her ear is, “I saw you.”

T
he next day, we pick Cat up from foster care and go for a walk along the cliff path. I love walking the cliff path – it's my favourite, especially when it's windy and the breeze streams right through my hair. I'm charging ahead with my arms stretched out wide like a bird when Cat runs to catch up to me.

“You didn't say anything, did you?” she whispers. “About the garlic bread.”

“I'm not a tell-tale, Cat,” I say. “But you could've just asked. The waitress would have put it in a takeaway box and no one would've minded. You
didn't have to sneak it.”

She blushes and nibbles on a nail.

“Don't go near the edge,” she whispers, tugging my jacket. “It's too dangerous. You might fall.”

“It's not dangerous!” I laugh, moving closer to the bit where the tufty grass ends and the ground slips away. “It's fun! I love it! Every time I go near the edge I feel like the sea is calling me down, daring me to jump off. It makes me so dizzy. Same with tall buildings like the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building. Come and stand next to me, Cat, and I'll show you. I'll hold you tight, I promise. I won't let you fall.”

“No,” she says, tugging me more. “I don't want to. Come back here.”

I make my face go all ghosty. I wiggle my fingers in the air.

“Woooooooo,” I whisper. “The mermaids are calling me down! Woooooooooo! Wooooooohoo ooooo!”

“Maya!” shrieks Mum, catching up with us. “Come away from the edge. If the wind caught hold
of you now you wouldn't stand a chance. You'd be down on the rocks in no time.”

Dad laughs. He grabs me and tickles me and pretends to throw me down on the rocks so the fish and the mermaids can eat me up for tea. I start giggling for England and then Dad turns into the tickle monster and plays the game from when I was small. He tries to pull Cat in too, to get her giggling, but she and Mum back away looking scared, so it's just Dad and me shrieking with laughter and splitting our sides.

“Over you go,” growls Dad in his tickle monster voice, holding me high in the air. “I'll feed you to the sharks.”

“Stop it, you two! Please!” Mum shouts. “You're scaring me to death!”

Dad smiles and puts me down.

“Calm down, lovely,” he says to Mum, folding her into a hug. “We're just playing.”

I move even closer to the edge. We were only playing! We weren't doing anything wrong. We're allowed! I move closer and closer to the edge, so
close that if the wind gets a teeny bit stronger I might actually fall. Then Cat, Cat, Cat puts her hands over her eyes and starts screaming. It's a shrill, icy scream – a harsh, empty sound that rises up from a place deep inside her that's never felt sunshine. And, if you were watching, you'd think she'd seen a ghost. Or a silver-tipped dagger heading for her heart. Or a horror film labelled ‘18'. Anyone listening might think a murderer was kidnapping her.

We freeze for a second, shocked by the noise that's ripping up the sky. Then Dad and Mum rush to her side.

“It's OK, Cat,” Mum says, fussing around. “We're here.”

“You're safe,” says Dad. “Maya's safe. It's OK.”

Their words are like special cream to soothe her, but they don't help and Cat's scream goes on and on and on, slicing through me, shredding my ears.

“Cat,” says Dad with a deep, firm voice, “stop this! Take a deep breath and look at me. You're OK. Maya's OK.”

A lady with a dog walks past, her shoulders
hunched away from us, her brow knitted up with concern.

“That whole display was really unnecessary,” hisses Mum, glaring at me and Dad. “Look at what the pair of you have done to her!”

“It's not my fault!” I shout. “We were just having fun. Me and Dad always do that! We always do the tickle monster.”

“Not today,” sighs Mum, pulling Cat in close, regardless of the continued screaming. “Not today. Remember, we're supposed to be taking things gently.”

I feel angry now. Mum's fear and Cat's scream are like tight bandages on my legs, tying me down. Like great heavy boots on my feet. Cat's scream goes on and on, filling the sky, freezing the universe. Mum's face twists up with worry and panic. She strokes Cat's hair, she rubs her back, she mouths to Dad, “Oh, God! What shall we do?”

I hate Mum like this. I want my old mum back, the cool one from ages ago who let me crawl around in the mud and eat stuff off the floor. The one who
took me to festivals and climbed mountains in Nepal and slept on beaches in Italy, under blankets by the fire. Not this mum, who's trembling with panic.

Huge tears well up inside me, sharp knives cut the back of my eyes. My throat fills up with hard pebbles that are impossible to swallow down. I want the mum back who bathed me in a bucket and tucked me up to sleep in a drawer. I love her to the moon and everything, but if she had it her way she'd put me inside a silver bubble of light and surround me with a thousand golden angel bodyguards. I know she wants to keep me really, really safe so I don't die like Alfie, but she can't wrap me up in cotton wool forever. I have to be able to play with my own dad and have fun.

Dad looks from me to Mum to Cat; he runs his hand through his hair and sighs.

“Cat, sweetie,” he says, kneeling down and clutching her shoulders, “listen to me. It's OK; we're all here. You're safe.”

But Cat's scream just goes on and on and on.
She's hardly even stopping for air and everyone's staring at us like we're a bad family doing something wrong.

An old man walks past and mutters, “Disturbed, that one is.”

Dad nods and stares out at the horizon, to the huge grey ship in the distance, travelling far, far away. I know he feels the same as me. Travelling was his whole life before Alfie and he wants that life back too. I know he does. Sometimes I see him exploring the world on Google Earth, having his own private mini-travel. But it's not the same on Google Earth – you can't smell the world from a computer or feel the wind in your hair.

My chest is burning now. I move so close to the edge that bits of earth start crumbling under my feet. I hold my arms out wide and let Cat's screams drill through my skin. I let the wild wind lick my face with its salty tongue. I stare at the jagged black rocks rising up from the sea.

“Get away from the edge!” shrieks Mum. “Maya, please! You're upsetting us all.”

Then something in me snaps. I flash my eyes in defiance and start flapping my arms like mad, like I'm suddenly going to take off and fly to the end of the earth.

“Maya!” shouts Mum. “Will you do as you're told right now!”

Cat pulls her hands from her eyes. Her face is whiter than white. Her eyes are red raw and she just stands there, trembling. A part of me wants to run to her and tell her it's OK, but I was only playing; I wasn't doing anything wrong. Her scream gets quieter; it's all raspy and juddery, coming in great huge gulps. She stares out at the sea, like a deathly ghost is about to come and swallow her.

“Please, Maya,” she says. “Please, I don't want you to get hurt.”

“I'm not going to get hurt,” I say. “I was just having fun with my dad! We were just messing about.”

Cat stares into space. She starts nibbling on a nail and then a man attached to a paraglider runs past us. He jumps off the edge of the cliff, his kite
crackling and billowing in the wind. The ropes tug and pull at his chest as he flies through the air like a beautiful rainbow bird.

Cat stares at him and shudders. “I don't like your kind of fun. I hate it here.” She turns to Dad. “Can we go now?”

“Yes, of course we can,” says Dad, turning to leave. “Let's go.”

I want to stay and watch the glider. I want to see where he lands. I want to stretch my arms wide with him and jump inside the clouds.

“We did that once, Mum,” I whisper, kicking the ground, “when I was a baby. Remember? You strapped me on to you and we did paragliding in India. There's a photo of us in that box and the video.”

Mum shudders.

“I was stupid and young then,” she says, glancing back to watch the man. “I don't know what I was thinking. I could've killed you! I could've killed us both!”

“You weren't stupid, Mum,” I say. “You were
brave. You loved exciting things! You loved adventure! And I didn't die, Mum. Look at me – I'm alive!”

Mum stares at the paraglider swooshing through the air. She shakes her head. She stretches out her arm, grabs me and pulls me away from the edge, back towards the car, scared my jacket might turn into wings and whoosh me far away.

I wish it would.

“Come on,” says Dad, rubbing his hands together. “Let's go and get something to eat, shall we?”

Then, as sly as a fox, Cat's hand slips slowly into Dad's. I pull away from Mum's grasp and my hands hang empty and lonely, flapping about at my sides. And for the first time in my life I don't know what to do with them. They feel all big, like everyone can see I have nothing to hold on to. We're supposed to be having a nice time with Cat. We're supposed to be feeling all familyish and warm. But I'm as cold as winter, as empty as Alfie's cot. I don't mind Cat holding Dad's hand, not really. I know she has to.
I know she needs to because he's her Dad now too, not just mine. The problem is I'm sad I've never really thought about Dad's hand like this before, about how precious it is, like a jewel.