As Far as the Stars

One Year Later (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

DAY 1 (#ulink_930d66cb-3715-583e-89c0-0710dde22eeb)

SATURDAY 19

AUGUST, 2017 (#ulink_930d66cb-3715-583e-89c0-0710dde22eeb)

Prologue (#ulink_b514efc4-d779-571d-97a0-e34ffc5d5fca)

On the I-81, heading for Nashville, a yellow Buick comes to an abrupt halt.

A girl swerves onto the hard shoulder and hits the brakes.

Then she checks the message on her phone again.

Damn it!

She thumps the steering wheel.

She checks the clock on the dashboard, takes a breath and then puts the car back into gear.

She takes the next exit, gets back onto the I-81 and heads back to DC, praying that her brother’s plane will be on time.

A continent away, a pilot looks at the paper model sitting on the dashboard in his cockpit: a warbler, a tiny bird that can fly for three days across the Atlantic without landing.

He never takes it for granted: how miraculous this is, to be up here, hundreds of miles from the earth. And at night, to see the stars, up close.

He thinks of his son, who made the paper bird. In a few hours, they’ll be together and then a holiday, just the two of them. He’s going to try harder this time.

Beyond the paper bird, through the thick glass windows, the sky is that endless kind of blue. His eyes aren’t big enough to take it all in.

It’s morning. The day is starting.

It’s going to be a beautiful day, the pilot thinks. A beautiful flight. Not a whisper of wind. A smooth parabola through the sky from one continent to the other.

He’s done this route hundreds of times. Sometimes, he jokes that he could do it in his sleep.

He cranes his neck and looks down. They’re passing the west coast of Ireland. In a few more minutes they’ll leave behind the land and then, for thousands of miles, it’ll be just him and his passengers and crew, flying between sea and sky.

There are times when he’s so happy up here that he wishes he could fly for ever. That there was no land to go back to.

The plane is flying steady now. He switches the controls to autopilot; there’s no more need for his intervention, not for a good while.

He sits back and looks back out at the sky.

Across the Atlantic, at Dulles International Airport in DC, a seventeen-year-old boy waits by the arrivals gate. He sits on the floor, his back pressed into the wall.

It’ll be hours before his father’s plane lands, but he doesn’t mind waiting. Airports are like home for him. He’s good at blocking out the noise and the people. All those comings and goings.

He pulls a scrap of paper out of his backpack and starts folding.

A few miles off the coast of western Ireland, where the sea is so deep it’s black, a fisherman stands in his boat, pulling in a net. He’s been out since before light.

He hears the drone of the engine before he sees the plane. He lives under the flight path, so over the years he’s become used to the sound, to how the rhythm of the planes weave between the currents of the sea.

But still, it takes him by surprise: to see them up there, those big metal birds, carrying all those people through the sky.

The sea he understands: a wooden raft floating on the waves is as ancient as the world. But the planes, they never seem quite right.

He holds up his hand and waves. He knows that it’s too far for the pilot to see him, but still, he likes to do it.

The sun’s so strong – the sky so blue – he has to close his eyes.

Behind his eyelids, there’s darkness and then stars. And when he blinks them away and tries to adjust again to the brightness, he thinks the plane will be gone – far off on its journey through the sky. A few moments peace until the next one.

But the plane hasn’t gone: it’s still there.

He’s familiar with this trick of time and distance, how it seems as though the planes are not moving at all, when really, they’re tearing through the sky faster than anything on land or sea.

He keeps staring at the plane, a straight, white arrow piercing the blue sky.

But then the plane seems to change direction. Its angle shifts. Its wings tilt to one side.

Maybe it’s steading itself, he thinks, having reached altitude. But usually the planes climb higher, especially the big airliners.

He blinks again.

Strangely, now, it looks like the plane is slowing down.

The fisherman rubs his eyes. I’m getting old, he tells himself. And I’m tired. I was up early; I’ve been staring at the sea for too long.

He thinks of going home. Of taking off his wet clothes. Of washing the salt from his skin and then climbing into bed for a few hours’ rest.

His eyes adjust.

He can see clearly now.

And then something makes him stand up in his boat and tilt his head up to the sky and wave frantically, even though he knows that no one can see him.

He’s not just tired. And his eyes are fine.