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Seventeen Years Before I Do
‘Do you remember the story of Andromeda?’ her father asked, as he and Audrey lay side by side on the tartan blanket looking up at the night sky over Hampstead Heath.
‘Was she the one whose parents tied her to a rock as some sacrifice to a sea monster?’ Audrey asked.
‘That’s the one.’
‘I guess they hadn’t heard of social services in ancient Greece.’
‘Very good,’ he said, gently elbowing her in the ribs. ‘Look, you can see her tonight.’ He pointed out the constellation in the sky, moving his arm slowly between a line of stars. ‘See her arms pinned out at right angles?’
‘I don’t think that looks anything like a woman.’ Audrey sighed, referring to the constellation map, then trying to identify the formation in the sky above her.
‘You have to use your imagination, it’s not a dot-to-dot.’
He sat up, rearranged his woolly hat, then opened his leather drawstring backpack and pulled out a thermos. He was wearing so many layers, yet Audrey noticed he still looked desperately thin. He slowly unscrewed the lid and poured the steaming hot chocolate into two tin mugs.
On clear nights, Audrey and her father had taken to coming up here, sometimes with the telescope, other times making do with just their eyes. She stayed at her dad’s place one night a week and was always glad when the weather allowed them to go out. Audrey didn’t dislike his new wife, Carmel, but she tended to dominate conversations. Time with her father was so precious, Audrey didn’t want it diluted.
Clasping the hot chocolate in her own gloved hands, Audrey shivered, and her father wrapped an arm around her.
‘You cold? Want to go?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m fine.’ She’d sit here until her toes froze as long as he was happy to stay.
‘Good, because we’re meeting this nice sea monster here in a bit, and I promised him dinner.’
Audrey humoured him with a smile, then they sat in contented silence.
‘So, your mother’s getting married again,’ he said, and she felt his arm around her tense. ‘You like Brian, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘He’s nice.’
‘Good. I’m glad. I like him too.’ His arm around her relaxed, and he took a long, deep breath. ‘You know what I find interesting about the constellations,’ he said. ‘Ancient civilisations, which didn’t exist in the same time period, or even on the same continent, chose the same stars to connect in the sky, even made up similar stories. What does that tell us? That our eyes pick out the same dots of light from the thousands that are up there. When you think of human history, of all the war and conflict, isn’t there something heartening in such commonality? We have always looked to the stars for answers, used stories and mythology to help make sense of what is beyond our reach.’
‘I don’t know if I’m trying to make sense of anything when I look up. I just like knowing what I’m looking at,’ said Audrey, and her dad reached his hand up to ruffle her hair.
‘You are a better scientist than me, then. Perhaps it is the writer in me who sees the stars like chapters in a book, thrown across the sky in no clear order or chronology. If only I could rearrange them in a more orderly way, in a shape that made sense to me, then I would understand the story better. Yet logic tells me those stars are millions of light years apart, they care not a jot that they share space in our sky. Are we fools to look for meaning?’
‘Are you okay, Dad?’ Audrey looked across at him. She was not used to hearing him talk in such a serious, meandering way. It sounded as though he was asking himself these questions, rather than her.
‘I’m fine,’ he sighed and clasped both hands back around his cup. Then he said more brightly, ‘Did you know that a star’s light can still be seen long after it’s gone?’
‘That’s one of the first things you taught me.’
‘Some of the stars we’re looking at now, they don’t exist anymore. Yet we can still see their light travelling towards us.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘As long as someone is here to see the light they created, then they are not gone.’
Audrey shifted her body towards his, suddenly concerned.
‘You’re not sick again, are you, Dad?’ she asked, her voice trembling.
His eyes darted away, unable to meet hers.
