The Half Life of Stars (6 page)

‘You like to watch the TV?’

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Why not?’

‘The sound is broken.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Has been for a while.’

‘One day we’ll fix. Maybe next year…but I like the pictures. I like this programme. This programme very good.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘
Yonigeya
,’ she says, darkly. ‘Very thrilling and mysterious.’

She concentrates hard on the television screen and it feels like an imposition to ask her any more. So we sit for a while, just the two of us. Two strangers in an empty sushi bar on the loneliest evening of the year: sipping tea, eating lychees and watching pictures of a distant Asian city flicker gently back and forth on the screen in front of us. As calm and empty as a silent movie.

For Christmas day lunch at my brother’s house I wear an outfit that declares war on the world of gloom: a lemon-coloured skirt, a pale green wrap-around cardigan and a T-shirt that says
Aloha Hawaii
on the front. Everyone else is decked out in their Sunday best, in funereal shades of black and grey. I keep my cardigan tightly fastened so they don’t see the Hawaii logo or notice the screen-printed rainbow that joins the two dots above the i’s, but I fear that the damage has already been done.

‘Nice outfit,
sis
. Good one.’

I hadn’t fully realised it yet, but we are a family in mourning. The chains of multicoloured fairy lights have been removed from the windows and the porch, and replaced with tall white candles. Muted flames dance unhappily in the living room grate–careful not to burn too high or crackle too enthusiastically–and even the paper used to wrap up Julian’s presents is a subdued and tasteful shade of navy blue.

‘Is that your Hawaii T-shirt under your cardigan?’

‘No, Sylvie. It’s not.’

‘It looks like it to me.’

‘Well…I’m sorry. I just thought that if we were going to do this today, I should make an effort.’

This is typical of me. Somehow I always manage to get it wrong; to interpret things in a way that isn’t appropriate. How did Sylvie know to wear a charcoal coloured trouser suit today and tie her hair back into a stiff blond bun? How did Kay know to match her demure woollen dress to my mother’s, and who put Robert in that undertaker’s suit? Did they all discuss it before
hand? Was there some pre-arranged signal that was shared between everyone but me?

Kay goes upstairs to change Julian’s nappy and I tag along with her; partly to avoid Sylvie, partly in an effort to make the peace.

‘Don’t listen to them,’ she says, not quite meaning it. ‘You look cheerful. It’s nice…for Julian.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course, who cares what you wear?’

‘Hello, Stinky,’ I say, patting Julian’s nappy. ‘Did you get any lovely presents?’

My nephew wriggles on his changing mat.

‘Do you think he understands that his daddy is missing?’ I say, cleaning him up.

‘No,’ says Kay, taking a deep breath. ‘I don’t think he does.’

‘It’s better that way. With a bit of luck, he won’t ever have to know about it.’

She looks at me, wondering what I mean.

‘I’m just saying that he needn’t know this happened. When Daniel comes back…afterwards. Julian will be too young to remember.’

‘You think he’s coming back?’ she says, quietly.

‘Yes…of course I do. Don’t you?’

She looks at the floor, she can’t answer. She thinks it’s time we made a start on lunch.

All of us chip in to prepare the food and make the meal, and at 2:00 p.m. on the dot the Ronson family sits down with the rest of the country to eat a traditional Christmas lunch. The table is perfectly laid. Each place setting has a napkin and a cracker and a china plate, and a crystal glass filled up with wine. It seems faintly perverse to be eating a meal like this now, but in truth its preparation has given us all something to concentrate on. We haven’t had to talk about anything awkward for the last couple of hours. We’ve boiled and baked and grilled in a frenzy with no talk of psychics or police officers or mysterious coke deals, or sisters sharing one another’s one-night stands.

Sylvie has kept away from me all morning, amusing Julian with his new toys in front of the fire. Robert has busied himself making a starter for our meal and even my mother has helped prepare the vegetables and managed to lay off the alcohol. All of us have kept our ears wide open for the phone; our eyes happily diverted from one another and trained furtively on the windows and the door. We are all hoping for–perhaps expecting–the very same thing. It’s Christmas day, he knows we’re all together, if he’s out there somewhere,
anywhere
, now would be the time for him to ring.

But, there’s nothing. No call as we sit down to the bland tomato soup that Robert has made. No grand entrance as we force down powdery slices of meat from a turkey that still managed to dry out like a bone, despite our vigilantly over-attending to it.

‘Should we light the pudding?’ Robert says, breaking the silence. ‘Is there some brandy we can use?’

Nobody wants to light the pudding, but my mother would quite like a glass of brandy. The party is over. It’s done with. The honoured guest has failed to arrive. We’ve acted out our play, draped a veneer of normality over the day as best we could, and still we failed to entice him back.

We can’t wait to clear up the detritus of the meal. It seems to be mocking us: the livid green sprouts, the roast potatoes barely touched, the Christmas pudding still swimming in its gravy of discoloured cream. The crackers are tossed un-pulled into the bin and the last of the wine is recorked and refrigerated before it sours. With everything cleared away and cleaned there’s nothing left to occupy us and nothing useful we can think of to say. In the silence we can hear the walls breathing and floorboards creaking, and our own minds spinning uselessly around. As if to express all the pent up emotion that we can’t, Julian begins to wail.

‘I’ll take him,’ I say, gratefully. ‘He’s probably tired. I’ll see if I can get him off to sleep.’

Julian falls asleep almost immediately, his small chest rising and falling in his cot as I stroke the side of his face. He’s exhausted.
We’ve passed him between us like a parcel all day long, demanding that he distract us from ourselves. He’s done his job; he’s worked as hard as he possibly could.

‘Is he down yet?’

‘He went out like a light.’

Kay is standing in the doorway. She comes over to check that I’ve lain Julian on his back the way she told me to, and the two of us sit for a while, watching him sleep.

‘Should we leave? I don’t want to wake him.’

‘No, he’s fine when he’s like this. Nothing will disturb him now.’

‘Right. Well. That’s good.’

‘Claire…I meant to say, Sylvie told me.’

‘About what?

She looks uncomfortable.

‘About
Gabriel
? Great, does Mum know?’

She nods.

‘Well, that must have cheered her up a bit. What did she say?’

She pauses for a moment, wondering whether to tell me or not.

‘She said it made sense. That he wasn’t really…your type.’

‘She said he was too good-looking for me, right? That Sylvie and him made a better match?’

‘Well, you know your mother, I’m not sure she thinks a pastry chef is much of a match for anyone…but, yes. She thought Sylvie was more in his league.’

‘God…that woman is harsh.’

‘Yes,’ says Kay. ‘She really is.’

We both exchange grudging smiles and in the spirit of frankness I decide now’s a good time to ask her about the pills.

‘Look, it’s nothing,’ she says, coolly. ‘I already explained it all to Sylvie.’

‘Sylvie
spoke
to you about this?’

‘When she found the boxes. She wanted to know what they were.’

I rub my eyes. It’s impossible to work out who knows what around here.

‘I would have said something,’ she says, uneasily. ‘But he never took them. He was better, he was fine. And you know what doctors are like, they hand out antidepressants like sweets these days.’

‘Do they?’

‘He was feeling under the weather. He was working too hard. We were arguing a little after Julian was born but it wasn’t…anything serious.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘He’s my husband, Claire. You might not have known what was going on with him day to day, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t.’

‘No…I’m not saying that. But I think you should have told us…it’s important. We should have informed the police.’

‘And let it get into the
papers
?’

I don’t know what to say to that. The fact that she cares how things look to the outside world strikes me as astonishing.

‘It might help, that’s all. If they knew Daniel was depressed, having problems.’

‘He wasn’t having problems, he was fine. He wasn’t about to do something crazy…he wasn’t
suicidal
.’

‘I didn’t say that. I’m just saying he might have needed some time.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know for what, Kay. That’s why I’m asking.’

She’s getting angry now; she’s finding it hard to look at me.

‘Might he have wanted to get away for a while?’ I say, pushing her. ‘Might he have needed some time alone?’

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Is it?’

‘What am I supposed to think? That he just walked out on me and Julian? That he hated us
so
much, cared for us
so
little that he didn’t care to let us know if he’s alive or dead. Daniel’s had some selfish moments in his life, but he wouldn’t do something like this. To me, to
you
. To his family.’

‘Well, not normally, no. But what about the medication? It can
cause side effects can’t it? I’ve heard it can make you worse sometimes.’

‘She already told you, Claire. He didn’t take them. They’re still up there in the medicine cabinet. Go take a look.’

Sylvie is stood on the landing looking fierce. She struts into the bedroom, sits down on the bed and lays a protective arm around Kay’s shoulder. This is her tactic, then, it seems–to play people off against one another. To turn up just in time to mop up the emotional damage that she’s provoked and fulfil her leading role as this family’s carer.

The warmth of Sylvie’s embrace seems to break Kay’s resolve and she begins to crumple and cry. The stress, the ridiculousness, the dreadful sadness of the day overwhelms her. As the tears run over her cheeks Sylvie hugs her even tighter, scowling at me as if I’ve purposefully hurt them both.

‘Men like Daniel don’t walk away from their lives,’ Kay says, almost to herself, her voice battling hard against the words. ‘He had everything he wanted.
Everything
. He had no reason to leave us.’

‘Of course not,’ says Sylvie, offering her a tissue. ‘He loves you. He loves all of us.’

‘But, what if he was in trouble?’ I say, refusing to let it go. ‘Could he have been in some kind of trouble?’

‘He would have told me about it. I would have known.’

‘Maybe it was something…he couldn’t talk about.’

Kay swallows hard and scrubs at her face with the tissue.

‘Something criminal, is that what you mean?’

I don’t answer. I don’t know what I mean.

‘He wouldn’t abandon us, Claire. Not Julian, he just…he couldn’t do it.’

I lower my head, unable to bear the force–the accusation–of her stare. She has to be right. He would never have walked away from all this voluntarily, not if he and Kay were genuinely happy. He had it all, the life most people dream about. The money, the status, the home, the loyal wife, the baby, the successful career. He had exactly the life my father would have wanted for him,
planned for him; a life that would have made him supremely proud.

‘So?’ I murmur. ‘If you don’t think he left…what
do
you think?’

‘Honestly?’

I nod.

‘Don’t make me say it, Claire. For Christ’s sake, don’t make me say it out loud.’

Sylvie takes Kay downstairs and I wait until I hear the living room door click shut behind them before I make a start on my search. I can’t help myself. I go to the bathroom unlock the medicine cabinet and root around for the boxes. They’re still there, just like Sylvie said: six months’ supply, still sleek in their cellophane wrappers, none of them opened or used. I turn them over in my hand, weighing them, touching them, sniffing them, searching out a clue of some kind. He didn’t open them but he
kept
them, he didn’t throw them away. Perhaps he thought he might still need them. Perhaps the mere fact of them being there, locked away on the other side of the landing, was enough of a comfort to get him through it.

To get him through what? A rocky patch in his marriage? The pressures of becoming a first-time parent? The stress of making partner in his law firm? I’m not buying it. Daniel’s not the type of person to request antidepressants on a whim, I can barely remember him taking anything stronger than an aspirin. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not but I suspect that Kay is holding something back.

I examine the date on the packets, wondering if it’ll spark some ideas. The prescription was first issued back in February this year, a couple of months before we had our sushi lunch at Jin Itchi. I was lost in the depths of my marriage break-up, I hadn’t spoken to Daniel–to any of the family–for several weeks. I hadn’t dared tell them about it. I couldn’t face letting them know how badly I’d screwed up; how short sighted and rash I had been. It’s unfortunate timing. Nothing makes you more inward looking than your own fuck-ups.

For some reason I decide that I want to hold on to the tablets. I shove the boxes deep into the pockets of my cardigan, rearrange the corn plasters and the Savlon so you can’t see that anything’s missing, and make my way across the landing to Daniel’s study. It’s immaculate, as always. Files neatly stored, papers carefully stowed, pens lined up neatly on a leatherbound blotter. There’s a picture of Julian on the polished oak desk alongside a pair of wedding photos in smart silver frames: Daniel smiling in a grey morning suit and top hat, Kay in acres of satin and vintage lace looking like something out of a magazine. Michael and I got married in a registry office. We both wore T-shirts and jeans.

Beyond the study there’s a small balcony where Daniel still keeps a telescope, and I brave the Christmas chill and go outside. He always complains that it’s too bright in London to see the constellations properly so he doesn’t use it as much as he used to. When he was a kid he used to spend hours–whole nights sometimes–staring at the sky, especially in the months before we left to go to Florida. In the summer he’d sometimes camp out in the garden so he could wake up in the small hours of the morning to view a predicted meteor shower, or spot a particular comet that he’d read about in one of his library of astronomy books. I used to tease him about it mercilessly, I used to call him ‘the boffin’. In those days Daniel was the one they worried about. The moody one. The dreamer. The drifter. The kid who only ever showed singularity of purpose when he was training or racing or stargazing.