Free The Comet Seekers: A Novel by Helen Sedgwick Page B

ghosts.

    IN THE FIRST SECONDS AFTER Róisín wakes she doesn’t know where she is, and she loves it. She looks over to the curtains – red and gold, thinner than expected – up to the ceiling with its ornate plasterwork and old-fashioned charm. Voices, traffic, laughter, unexpected sunshine. Her flatmate is making coffee. She knocks; passes it in.
    Skies look clear, she says. You’re going up to the observatory tonight?
    Tammy sits cross-legged on the floor as they chat. She is studying French and Spanish; says it means she can live in pretty much any continent of the world.
    But after she’s left the flat and Róisín is on her own again Liam appears in her mind; every morning there is this moment, the flash of a different life, his face the last time she saw him, the shadow beneath his eyes, before he is brushed away. The sea is keeping them apart, the distance. It’s for the best. She did the right thing; she’s out in the world.
    She rolls onto her side, decides not to get up just yet.
    She doesn’t have to work today. The party is planned for this evening.
    The predictions are for the comet to explode in the atmosphere of Jupiter, in the early hours of the morning. A comet this size, colliding with a planet; it’s the stuff of Armageddon.
    That is what she wants to see, in her life. The power of something extraordinary.
    Eventually she pulls on leggings and a jumper; changes the jumper for a T-shirt when she looks out of the window.
    Below her flat there are people on the street, some waiting at the bus stop, others walking past the grocer’s on the corner. A mother and son, hand in hand, are standing by the flowers and vegetables on display outside. She pushes open the window and French voices reach her on the air; she almost calls out to them before she catches herself – people in Edinburgh don’t wave to strangers the way people in the country do. Still, the sun in Scotland can make people do unexpected things.
    She checks the news on her computer for any preliminary observations. Nothing from NASA so far, just promises that the best is yet to come.
    She closes the window; the people below have moved away. It makes her feel strangely alone.
    Róisín decides to climb the hill a bit later than the others; she knows they’re all going to be there together, at the observatory,and she feels like making her own separate entrance. She takes her time with the day, letting the anticipation build as she does some washing, as she listens to a radio play, as she thinks about phoning her mum but doesn’t lift the receiver to make the call. Simple everyday things on a day that is not everyday, on a day that is once in a lifetime.
    Patience.
    Another hour slips by; the comet will know it cannot escape now, will be feeling the rush of the outer atmosphere as it edges closer to its fate.
    She paces her flat, pulls on her shoes.
    It is nearly time for sunset.
    In orbit, telescopes orient themselves towards the stormy gas giant; in deserts, on mountains, terrestrial observatories prepare to record the collision in all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. There have been great comets before, but this is something special. Earth knows it, for once; the planet is at a safe distance, but it knows where to look, and it’s learning how to wait.
    Róisín is learning to wait, too; she’s trying to stop cheating, to stop expecting something new to feel as powerful as something old. Things with Liam, they couldn’t be the same; that couldn’t continue, not as adults, not when they had lives to lead. A secret like that would fester.
    And so she’s gone home, twice a year, like she promised; has visited on Boxing Day and called in to the farm each summer, and they have gone back to being cousins, if not best friends – they are a long way from that. But cousins is something. Cousins is what it should be.
    She shakes her head. Pulls on her coat, grabs a hat from by the door. It could be chilly, on the hill.
    Tonight,