Free The Near Miss by Fran Cusworth Page B

stars, before his folding chair broke. The sky, as he leaned back and gazed, seemed more like a dome than an infinite space, so closely massed were the stars. You forgot about stars, living in the city, or you started to believe those paltry few sparkles spotted through the night-time smog, around the tops of chimneys and at the tops of alleyways, were all there was. Then you came out to Ten Mile, and you remembered. He had carried the diamond in his pocket, as if he had plucked one of those blossoms from the night sky and mounted it on a ring, ready to present to his girl. He remembered hearing something about Mars being visible that night, a big red star, apparently, and he leaned back a little further to look for it. The beauty of the night sky, the roaring fire, the guitar, the singing of Romy and her friends, the ring in his pocket, all combined in a moment of quiet joy. Then he leaned too far back and the chair broke.
    There were hoots, screams of laughter, wild applause, cries of ‘Taxi!’ He laughed along with the crowd, hoping they thought he was drunk. Not likely, they knew him too well. He could sit on a single can all night, and surreptitiously pour out the remains behind a tree at the end. ‘Do it again, Eddy!’ He clowned around for a while, dragging himself to his feet with a piece of chair in either hand, pretending to puzzle over fitting them back together, like a stupid giant. He mocked himself for the requisite amount of time until their attention waned and he could escape into the darkness. At last the singing started up again and he felt his way to the trampoline at the end of the garden, rubbing his arse. Ow. That really hurt.
    â€˜Are you alright?’ Mary, Andy’s wife, lay stretched on the trampoline staring up at the stars.
    â€˜My chair broke.’
    â€˜I heard. You wouldn’t want sympathy from that lot, would you?’
    â€˜Landed right on my coccyx.’
    â€˜Ouch. Here.’ She rolled onto her side, leaving him room, and he crawled gingerly onto the screen, feeling the rolling motion of the web that held he and Mary, and the give of the steel springs. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘Can I do anything?’
    â€˜No thanks.’
    â€˜Rub your coccyx?’ Was she teasing? He couldn’t tell. Surely not Mary, too; he spent enough time feeling like the rest of these guys were privately laughing at him.
    â€˜Uh, no thanks.’
    â€˜Get some ice?’
    â€˜No, no.’ Maybe she was actually caring, but he wanted nothing that would draw the mob’s attention again. ‘God, they’re so pissed.’ Romy’s voice wailed high above the others, singing a Michelle Shocked song. The guitars played fast and wild, catching the songs’ shapes rather than the notes.
    â€˜Oh, they’re pathetic.’ Mary waved her hand, its outline blocking out the stars. ‘They get together down here and they regress to sixteen years old again. I’ll never get Andy back to the motel tonight. He’ll be passed out around the fire.’
    â€˜Romy’s the same. She always comes home from here so restless and grumpy.’ How had he forgotten this about Ten Mile? Why on earth had he thought that this might be a good place to propose? It was the worst place in the world. Or no, he could have taken her back to London andout the front of the theatre where she had narrowly missed making her acting debut, robbed by her parents’ death. That would possibly be a worse place.
    â€˜I know. How long does it take to get sixteen out of your system? I couldn’t wait to get out of my teens. Seems like Andy never wanted to leave.’
    â€˜Maybe they just had a better time than us.’ Romy’s friends had bonded in high school, and taken to hitchhiking down here every available weekend to camp. It was a circle knit close with histories of drunken adventures in the hills and valleys now around them; unusual in a time