Free Under a Falling Star by Fabian Black Page A

could see Tay’s eyes wandering to it as we talked. He’d obviously never seen brown sugar in such a fancy form. In the end curiosity got the better of him and he reached long fingers into the bowl to pick up a piece of the confection to examine it. Somehow he upset the bowl sending sugar pebbles scattering across the table and pattering to the floor. He made an effort to clear up the mess only to knock his coffee cup over and then the cream jug. His skin flamed once again as he uttered sheepish apologies and tried to make good the chaos he had caused. Once again we found ourselves laughing.
    We enjoyed a second cup of coffee without mishap and then went our separate ways after wishing each other the best of the season. We shook hands and it might have been imagination but I fancied his hand stayed joined with mine a fraction longer than strictly necessary, or perhaps it was my hand that lingered.
    That evening I went to a party with friends, a Christmas event. I went through the outward motions of socialising but in all honesty my thoughts were elsewhere. For some reason I couldn’t get Tay out of my mind. I kept picturing him, a lean young man with chestnut-brown hair and hazel eyes, dressed in impossibly scruffy jeans and a semi-smart jacket. Something about him had spoken to me. I permitted a memory. He reminded me of Josh, my sweet, clumsy Josh whose life had been all too short. Mindless hatred had ended a relationship I had lifetime hopes for. Two strangers attacked him and left him dying from his injuries.
    After the party I went home, my home, with a man called Scott and we had sex, but even while fucking him I was visualising the man I’d had coffee with that afternoon, imagining it was his naked body beneath me. It was ridiculous. I was too old to be fantasising in such a manner about a man who in all likelihood wasn’t even gay.
    Scott left my bed in the early hours of the morning. Kissing my cheek he told me to call him. We both knew I wouldn’t, what we’d wanted we’d had, sex. There was no more to be said between us.
    In the days that followed I put Tay out of my mind. There was no point dwelling on a man I would probably never see again. As things turned out I was wrong. He crashed back into my life on Christmas Eve, exactly two weeks after our first meeting.
    I was at work. It was afternoon and the museum was deserted. Few people put visiting a local museum high on their list of Christmas Eve priorities. I was working alone having let the rest of the staff leave early in order to begin their Christmas Day preparations. I had no real preparations to speak of. I would be lunching with my brother and his family. All I had to do was turn up at the appointed time bearing gifts.
    I was making a start on clearing one of the exhibition rooms; carefully packing away photographs, ration cards, gasmasks and other paraphernalia relating to the town’s wartime history. The room was to be used for a nomadic exhibition in the New Year, showcasing a variety of curiosities from private collections, everything from dinosaur fossils to science inventions, some as early as the sixteenth century. I was looking forward to it. I’d lobbied hard for the museum to be used as one of the venues for the show. It would bring in more visitors.
    I was in process of labelling a box of photographs ready for storage when the bell on the museum door jangled, indicating that someone had entered the building. Heavy clattering and crashing noises soon followed the jangling.
    My immediate reaction was that someone was attempting to rob the till in the small gift shop situated in the reception area, perhaps hurling it to the floor in an effort to open it. It wouldn’t be the first time. They wouldn’t find much in it. It had been a slow week. All the same I hurried to investigate.
    It was not an attempted robbery. I stared in disbelief. It was Tay and he appeared to be engaged in a fight to the death with the suit of armour that usually