Free The Comet Seekers: A Novel by Helen Sedgwick

children on the plane he certainly doesn’t mention it. It’s like he was born for this, Severine thinks to herself; they are part of the larger world. And she opens her hands wide, imagines whole universes contained between her palms.
    She hasn’t seen the ghosts for eight years – and for eight years now she has been the parent, the one in charge. It seems like alifetime since she felt looked after; since she was allowed to be the child.
    François is older now though, she thinks, more able to take care of himself. Besides, he is not afraid of travel – he seems to love it.
    Maybe they can go and see all that world, after all.
    He’s never asked about his papa, and that’s OK by her; she’s had enough questions from her mother to last her a lifetime.
    Actually, he’s a nice enough man. He says he likes receiving the photos she sends, says to let him know if there’s ever anything they need.
    He works on a boat that travels the Atlantic.
    They could have been good friends (the love thing was never going to work out; they soon realised it wasn’t love that drew them together) and a part of her wanted to go with him, but another part of her chose to stay and now she doesn’t really know why. Sometimes, though, she imagines a vast ocean, the brightness of so much water, the wide-open expanse of it.
    Can I run on this bit?
    François jumps with impatience; there is a moving strip of floor and he wants to fly along it, to race faster than he can on grass.
    His mama checks behind her – they were the last to get off the plane; they are the last on the people carrier that will take them to the terminal.
    OK, she says, run like the wind.
    She is supposed to say be careful but that’s not the kind of mother she wants to be.
    His arms fly out as he runs. When he gets to the end he waits for his mama to do the same, come on! he shouts, but she doesn’t run – she stands tall and waves at him as the flat escalator carries her forwards and something in him is disappointed.
    On their first night, François wakes with a nightmare. He was on a dark beach, there were waves crashing against the rocks; there was cold and there was fear. The salt water filled his mouth when he tried to shout out, he gasped and choked, he had to save his mama . . . He opens his eyes; pulls the covers over his head and grips his toy tiger as if someone were trying to steal it from him.
    In the bed next to his, Severine is awake too. This always happens when she leaves home: a knot in her belly, something between guilt and loneliness that haunts her in the night. She wishes the ghosts would appear now; even after all these years she misses her granny. She never really said goodbye. One day she thought she was surrounded by so much family, and then they were all gone, leaving just her and her child, a baby then, to wonder how the house could feel so empty when there was so much noise. She too pulls the covers over her head and tries not to wake her son, tells herself this is crazy, that it probably never happened at all, that she spent two days hallucinating after her granny died.
    And then, of course, she knows that they have arrived.
    Granny?
    She pulls the covers away from her face to see the shadow of a woman standing by the door. This is not like it was the last time. Where is the rush of voices, the laughter, the playful bickering of people who have loved one another for decades, for centuries?
    This is silence.
    Severine tries to beckon Brigitte closer, but she won’t come.
    She thinks about getting out of bed herself, but something makes her stay.
    They look at one another across the room, neither making a move.
    There is a sound though.
    What are you trying to say?
    Please . . .
    Severine stares. In the shadows Brigitte’s face is obscured, her clothes are long and loose; her skin looks dark, but that might just be the lack of light. Severine looks down at her own skin, at her arms. She is visible in the moonlight coming in through the