Work Text:
Dear Daniel,
Well here it is, the eclipse is coming - as we astronomers predicted. Excitement is rising across the planet. Wild theories and predictions abound!
If you hadn’t left me then I’d have been at the observatory night and day, never seeing you, never seeing Luna, absolutely immersed in it all. Or on one of the research expeditions to observe from the mountains, which set off yesterday.
But I thank you for that. Yes, really! I manage an extraordinary amount of work at home. Which means that our daughter is as immersed in it all as I am.
She seems very happy at the new school. Of course, your Piers (look how I use his name and not ‘your mistress’ as I used to! Growth, you see. Although ‘mistress’ is more fun, you know. It makes you sound rakish and me sound wounded, and Piers sound very sexy and alluring. But you never would go for it) – your Piers picks her up and drops her off and don’t they have a lovely time together.
(That is not dripping with sarcasm by the by – I do mean it. He’s wonderful with her.)
Anyway she’s here now with a little school friend and they’re having a wonderful game which involves shrieking rude words for parts of their anatomy at the tops of their voices, so I shall finish this for now, and persuade them to quiet down a bit, or at least use the scientific terms.
I never know how to sign these off anymore. What are we to each other now?
I have an old book of collected letters so I shall crib from there.
Your esteemed friend,
Innes.
(too formal?)
Message on Communal Pinboard
Dear all:
Whoever moved my Atmosphere Readers from the lower garden can they please leave them alone. I am collecting important scientific data, as previously explained.
MANY. TIMES.
The Angry Scientist at No. 114.
Private message to No. 114
I’m so sorry, I moved them to make room for my morning solar ritual. I won’t touch them again.
Be star-blessed,
No 118
Triple Eclipse may lead to Dangerous Animal Behaviour
Scientists have warned that the impending Triple Eclipse may cause unprecedented behaviour in the Animal Kingdom.
“The triple eclipse hasn’t happened for centuries,” said Innes Leith, an astronomy professor at Eratosthene University warned during today’s press conference. When asked about the effect on human and animal behaviour, he had no answers.
“We can’t know how animals may react,” he said, declining to reassure our reporter.
East Sedaris School Newsletter
We are excited to let you know that our first years will have a new teacher. Professor Ray will be introduced to the class tomorrow. He has excellent credentials from the University of Galileo, and a variety of new teaching methods from that country which will allow our school to continue to Forge the Way in this new age of Education.
Message on Communal Pinboard
If you would like to join me for evening meditation on the east lawn, please feel free. I will be there at first moonrise.
Be star blessed,
No. 118
Private message to No 118
About the evening meditation - I have some very sensitive equipment
Private message to No 114 enclosing previous note
Is this a euphemism? Because I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it really is only a meditation session.
Private message to No 118
No! My daughter tore a part of the note away to draw on. My apologies.
I have some sensitive scientific equipment in the cleansing plant border. Just don’t touch it.
message to No 114
I promise that I won’t lay a hand on your sensitive equipment.
Dear Daniel,
Only weeks until the eclipse. The findings are quite thrilling as it approaches, and I would have happily told you all about them at length, causing you to run to your study for respite. Don’t think I didn’t realise you did that.
The press plague me! Cattle giving birth to rodents, they predict. Huge waves destroying all in their wake. A magnetic field so strong it will crash Luna Minor down onto the surface of Sedaris! My dear, the scientific education we supply in this country is shocking. At least I am confident in Luna’s school, which prides themselves on theirs.
We have a new neighbour. I of course Took Against him. I can sense your eyeroll from here.
But I wonder what you would think of this.
I was in the lower garden this evening – that time of year you know, when Luna Major rises early and high. I wanted to watch it with my atmoscope because the colours, Daniel! They really indicate some very interesting changes to the upper atmospheric layers. Anyway, this is not quite the point.
I was very quietly watching. The night finches were just quieting down – the flock has grown, you’ll be pleased to hear. Luna has been very dedicated to her bird feeders this year – when I caught something out of the corner of my eye.
(see how I am building the suspense? And you said my writing could tend towards dry!)
A figure in the twilight, walking straight-backed and gracefully and barefoot across the lower garden. Hair loose down their back and carrying something rolled under their arm. Like something from one of your novels, really; a sprite or a spirit. I must admit I stared.
Then the figure tripped over my atmosphere reader. I know what you’re going to say – Innes, those things are a fucking hazard. I’ve tripped on them more times than I can count. But no one usually uses this bit of the garden! And I thought I’d fastened it down quite neatly.
He even fell gracefully though, a sort of twirl and spin and a sudden sit down. He said “oh,” and I went over to him. The reader was half wrenched out so that data was of course useless, and I swore a bit. I have a beard now – you haven’t seen me in a while, but I do – and Luna thinks it makes me look quite fierce. Anyway he looked horrified and sort of scuttled backwards, and I swore again which didn’t help because of course my accent never does.
“Why are your feet bare?” I asked – why that was the first thing I said, I don’t know. But they sort of captivated me - slim and strong and elegant.
He looked up at me and broke into a smile. “Oh, you’re real,” he said.
I mean, really! He’s the one who looked ethereal, not me. I look like an angry bear.
“What else would I be?” I said back and scowled at him.
He was nearer my age than I had thought, at first. Well, at first I thought he was a supernatural creature – one of your creations if I’m honest. In fact I had thought, for a moment that perhaps…that it was a memory, or…Or alright, some kind of message, from another world.
(No, I haven’t gone quite mad. I’m just more open minded than I used to be. All that has happened has made me so.)
This very real man was tall and slim and long-legged. I could see that, even from where he sat on the ground. He had brown skin and crinkles around his eyes, and straight dark hair with a tiny bit of white in it. You’d find him charming.
I was not in the mood to be charmed.
I was angry that he was smiling, and angry that I’d thought he was a message from Elsewhere (the hope that it dashed, I suppose), and even more angry knowing that you’d have been charmed by the whole thing.
“You are the scientist?” he said. I could hear from his accent he was Galilean. Oh – charm upon charm, you’d say.
I remembered at least some rudimentary manners and held out my hand. He took it. Firm, strong hand, slightly damp from the lawn.
“I am,” I said.
“I’ve seen you, have I not. Professor…”
“Professor Leith. Innes Leith. You’ve tripped over my atmosphere reader.”
“And after I said I wouldn’t touch your equipment,” he said with a laugh, unfolding his legs in an elegant way and rising to his feet. He thanked me nicely and looked right into my eyes when he did so. His eyes were dark but lit up from within in some way. I can’t describe it. You could have.
I bent to fuss over the reader – mostly to stop myself looking at his legs again.
“So what does it do, exactly?” he said. And we both crouched, and I told him. He listened very intently and asked a number of intelligent questions. Then he bade me goodnight and faded off into the twilight again.
Why am I telling you all this?
I should tell you about Luna instead. But I suppose your Piers does. I never really think about what Piers does when he’s out of sight. For so long he was just the villain of the piece. I expect he has some kind of inner life, however pretty and empty headed he looks. (Oh see, I can still be quite petty. I’m a work in progress.)
I am telling you, when I think about it, because of what you said when you told me you loved someone else. That I wasn’t part of our world anymore. My head was in the stars and I was completely unreachable.
I am trying to keep my head out of the stars. I am on the planet, Daniel. Grass and flowers and night finches, the lot.
Your most faithful friend,
Innes
(too much?)
FOA The Head Teacher, East Sedaris School
I am concerned that Luna has not brought home any homework at all this week. Is this an error by the new teacher? I hope that the school continues to maintain the standards I selected it for.
I will expect an answer by return.
Yours faithfully,
Prof. Innes Leith.
Dear Daniel,
I saw the apparition again at twilight tonight. We both seem to haunt the garden at that time.
He was limping this time, but picturesquely.
“Are there any more buried atmosphere readers I need to worry about?” he said, as he saw me approach. “My right foot just found another one. Don’t worry, it’s alright,” he added as I made a lunge for it. The reader, I must add. Not his foot.
“How can you walk around out here with no shoes?”
(Why are my first remarks always about his feet, Daniel? I’ve never noticed anyone’s feet before. I don’t know if I could pick yours out of a lineup. Or even my own.)
He only looked down at them, his hair swinging forward like a shiny curtain, and wriggled his toes in the grass. “Why wouldn’t I?” he said.
“Well, the tunnel beetles, to begin with.”
“I’m immune to them,” he said airily. “They don’t bite me. Anyway, you know they only bite at a certain part of their life cycle and this is the wrong season for it?”
“I don’t know much about wildlife,” I said. “Too busy staring at the stars.”
“That’s not what the newspaper said,” he replied. When I looked up at him, he was laughing a little.
“Blast that bloody reporter,” I rumbled, scowling again. “Putting words in my mouth. I have farmers writing to me, wanting compensation for the calves they claim will be born with two heads, or as snakes. That was a new one.”
“Oh dear,” he said and tried not to smile. We both fell silent, but not in an awkward way.
“Did you know, you haven’t asked me my name yet?” he said after a moment.
“Well, I’m very busy and important. And also very rude,” I said. “What is your name?”
(I thought that was quite charming. Do you think, Daniel? Oh, what do you know)
“It’s Lumen,” he said.
“Of course it is,” I said without thinking. (Not charming. I know).
“What do you mean?” he said, curious.
“It’s just the sort of name I’d expect you to have,” I said. “By which I mean, it suits you.”
He grinned at me, and he has a dimple, Daniel. Two of them, probably. It shouldn’t be allowed, quite frankly.
I frowned and nodded at him and marched off upstairs to see if Luna was alright.
She was quite alright, of course. Curled up fast asleep in bed with five books, a small telescope, a collection of rocks and some animal bone she’d found somewhere. It didn’t look comfortable but she was sleeping very peacefully.
The crown of her head is exactly like yours, did you ever notice that?
Anyway, it’s late. I shall sign off.
Your most humble servant,
Innes
(well, I’m not entirely sure of this one. Bit servile.)
From Prof. L. Ray, East Sedaris School
I appreciate your concerns regarding the homework assigned for your daughter Luna’s class. I have spoken at length with the Head about the concept of homework (I am not in favour of it), but in keeping with the other classes, I shall now be setting a weekly science task for all the students.
Best regards
Prof L. Ray
Dear Daniel,
Well if you could see me now. Making an “Eclipse Viewer” out of a cardboard box, some sequins and a lot of gold paint. Luna is not that impressed with my skills so far. This is what I get for my homework complaints to school. I shall be writing back again.
Luna, I would like to note, got bored of making this eclipse viewer about half an hour ago and is playing something very violent sounding in her room. But she seems unhurt (the screaming is happy and not panicked) and I’m determined to finish this now. Just waiting for the gold glitter layer to dry.
So instead of having a wonderful learning moment with our daughter, I’m watching Lumen from the window, watching him do his strange stretching ritual on the lawn. Well, I’m only human, and he really doesn’t wear very much while he’s doing it.
I should talk to him more. He seemed to want to be friendly when we met. But when I think about trying to be friendly, or even trying to be more than that, I just feel this great weight descend on me. A vast tiredness about the whole idea. I suppose because I think about when we sat together that last time. You had Luna against your shoulder fast asleep - that sweet little face of hers squashed against you.
And you said we don’t love each other the same way any more.
I was so angry. Because you were right, but I wanted to say it first. How petty. I wanted you to feel the lash of those words first - I don’t love YOU anymore. As though you somehow didn’t feel it, because you said it first! You were always so brave about these things.
I’m not.
And if I’m truthful I feel lumpen and awkward around Lumen, because he moves like a dancer and trails charm and good nature. I want to talk to him more, but I can’t think of anything to say. In short, I like him, but I don’t know if I’m fit to go through all that sort of thing any more. And it makes me sad.
Well, that’s enough of all that.
Lumen has got to the part of the sequence where he stands on his shoulders and it’s almost unbearably erotic (I can hear you saying ‘just say sexy! Why can’t you ever just say it?’) so I am going to check my glitter paint, and check on Luna, and perhaps cook dinner.
My very respectful and kindest regards,
Innes
FOA Professor Ray, East Sedaris School
I will get directly to the point – although Luna has completed her homework this week, it seemed of very little academic benefit. I would rather not waste my daughter’s efforts on such a task again. Please do not fob me off with further references to Stages, Learning Outcomes and so on, it will not change my mind.
Yours sincerely,
Prof. Leith
Dear Daniel,
Luna found me writing this letter and wanted to add something to it. She cannot write very much yet, so I’ve enclosed a picture she has drawn. Yes that ogre is me. It’s the beard. I have almost decided to get rid of the beard.
She’s such a sweet child. (Only to you can I gush like this. To the world I have to pretend that I don’t think she’s the most wonderful creature in the universe, but to you I can reveal the truth.) Every day I think “this is the most wonderful age. I want to preserve her at exactly this moment.” And then she learns something new, and I think “Oh now, this is the most wonderful age.” And again, and again. But we scientists must revise our conclusions as new evidence presents itself of course.
And therefore, my next conclusion is that I’m quite smitten with Lumen. I find him radiantly lovely - there, I said it and I’m sure you’ve been expecting it.
We talk every day, Daniel. It seems so easy to talk to him, about almost anything (except about you). Perhaps it’s the twilight. He can be a little hesitant with me, keeping things back perhaps. But then I am keeping things back from him too.
I make him laugh. Have I told you that already? Not in a terrible way, like you’d humour an old relative, but genuinely. He giggles. Eyes fill with tears, undignified snorting. I can’t remember what even set him off like that.
Alright, that’s a lie, I remember very well. But I’m not telling you, because you’d groan and roll your eyes at me for making old men’s jokes. He’s Galilean though, my jokes are all new to him.
What can be done about it at all though? I am still so very much myself.
Piers is on his way to look after Luna while I go to the observatory this evening. A rare treat. I think I need to lose my head among the stars for a while. I am becoming altogether too obsessed with her homework.
Your sincere and affectionate admirer,
Innes
(I am, you know)
FOA Head of East Sedaris School
I would like to know if you are aware of the homework set for First Year this week. They must write their own Eclipse Myth? On what planet is this Science? Luna wrote a very charming one about an enormous hungry monster eating a hole through the moons and lode star, but this is besides the point. I have lost my faith in Professor Ray almost entirely!
Best regards
Prof. Leith
Dear Daniel,
Well here’s an update you might relish. I can picture you now, scrubbing a hand across your hair and then across your eyes, and the little moan of despair at my awkwardness. I can see the little lighter patch of skin on your finger where you had taken your wedding ring off. I can see it all.
Anyway, here is the confession of my stupidity. Do with it what you will.
It was one of our twilight meetings. The atmosphere readers were giving me some wonderful stuff, and I was almost – but not entirely – distracted from the way he looks when he does his ritual stretching thing.
I patted my pockets for my notebook to take down the readings, and instead only found the latest missive from Luna’s school.
With a groan I read it.
“What’s the matter?” Lumen said.
“All I want,” I ground out, “Is a realistic framework of measurement for Luna’s achievements. I don’t understand why the school can’t set some simple tasks at home to allow collection of that data. But the school just will not listen.”
Lumen went quiet then. “I can’t work you out at all,” he said, and he looked a little angry. As angry as he ever got.
“What is there to work out?” I said, and I know I was poking at him on purpose because I liked the look in his eyes. “I chose Luna’s school for a reason, and I like the teaching there. I don’t want anyone undermining it.”
“I’m not undermining anything. Isn’t she doing very well at school?”
“And that’s the way I’d like it to stay,” I said.
“So what are you saying?” he said. He was rolling up his mat in neat, practiced movements and I watched his hands as he did. They were like the rest of him; lean, strong and capable.
“I have no faith in these teaching methods whatsoever! They seem based on whatever is easiest for the teachers.”
Lumen looked at me then, and his eyes snapped with fire. “They are based on nothing of the sort. You are a very clever man, Innes, but you do not actually know everything.”
He stood, his hair falling in a straight curtain and obscuring his face. With the same neat movements, he pulled it back from his face and fastened it at the back of his head. I wanted to touch it, but I didn’t. At least I got that right. I stood awkwardly and waited. Lumen always makes me feel so large and so old in comparison.
He seemed to force down his anger and smooth the frown from his face. When he looked back at me, he only looked sad.
“I have been trying, very hard, to fit in to this new position,” he said. “Most people have been very kind. But you –“ he shook his head. “You have not. So let us leave this here.” He was slipping more and more into a Galilean speech pattern.
“Lumen, what do you mean?”
He looked at me sharply. “May I beg something of you?” he said, his Galilean accent still strong. “If you can stop complaining to school of me. As I said, I am trying, very hard.”
“Why would I complain to school about you?” I said, and yes I am this stupid and yes it did take me this long to work it out.
“You communicate with the school all the time. Weekly,” he said.
“But what have you to do with that?”
“Well, they show the class teachers what is relevant to them. It doesn’t breach any confidentiality. You know I have written to you myself.” His expression was curious now.
“You,” I said, which is singularly stupid, and quite dramatic. But you’ll agree that I’d been quite dramatically thick.
“Yes?”
“L Ray.”
“Yes.”
“Professor Ray.”
“Professor Leith,” he said back. “Are we just repeating each other’s names in some Sedaran argument ritual I’m not aware of?”
“You…are Professor Ray.”
He paused in his task of packing up the rolled mat and looked up.
“Yes, of course I am. Didn’t you…did you think I didn’t teach the class myself? I know that the school would have my credentials available for all to see. You thought I was an assistant. Because, why? I am Galilean?”
“I didn’t think anything at all!” I said, and I sounded startled because I was. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but of course, that doesn’t excuse me. “I didn’t know it was you. That you and Professor Ray were the same person,” I said. “Somehow.”
He looked at me in utter disbelief. And to be fair, I barely believed myself in that instant.
“Professor Leith,” he said again. “I am going to go.”
He fastened the neat straps on his neat bag and settled it across his shoulders. Then he turned and walked quickly away in that elegant, straight-backed way he had, with his shiny hair piled up and the nape of his neck so vulnerable.
I have never felt such an unkind, worthless sort of fool.
At least Luna didn’t witness it. So I carried on in the twilight alone and I checked the machines, and then I went upstairs and wrote this to you.
Your stupid but affectionate friend
Innes
Dear Daniel,
I left things a couple of days after Lumen left me in the garden. I know two days would have driven you mad, had it been you. But Lumen and I have something of the solitary about us both - we like to think things over.
Anyway, I waited till I saw him unroll his little mat on the lower garden and begin his delightful stretching routine. He hadn’t been out there since our argument, so I took it as a sign.
He was doing some kind of complex thing when I reached him. One foot and one hand on the ground, a leg and arm in the air, and all the muscles in his back just…
Well, it rendered me a little speechless.
“Lumen,” I said. And he lowered his leg and arm – the muscles in his shoulders, Daniel! Piers would want to paint him – and sat up on his knees.
“Professor Leith,” he said formally, folding his hands in his lap.
“Oh don’t do that,” I said miserably. Then I launched into the apology I’d been mulling over for the last two days. “I came down to say I’m sorry. I was awful to speak to you like that, and I’ve been awful all term. And probably before that, but you haven’t had to witness it. I suppose it doesn’t really help that I didn’t know who you were because I shouldn’t have been behaving like that anyway. I haven’t any excuse and it’s nothing to do with anything you’ve done, or where you are from,” I paused to take a breath before continuing.
“I have had rather a difficult time these past few years, and the work around the eclipse is overwhelming, and…I believe I got obsessed over my daughter’s homework rather than addressing any of those things. Now that I think about it.”
I shut up then. (about time too, you’d say, but with a tinge of pride, I’d like to believe. Admitting fault!)
“Oh Innes,” he said. I must have looked rather pathetic.
“I must seem so selfishly incurious about you,” I said. “Not even knowing what your job was. But I was trying not to get too involved you see.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know if I want…involvement,” I said.
“But you’re so lonely,” he said. He moved in that lithe way he had, his dark hair moving with him. He sat up and looked right at me, waiting.
“I have Luna,” I said – I know, I know “evasive.” I do hear you, of course.
But Lumen doesn’t fight with me the way you did. I’m afraid to say that only makes me dig my heels in about whatever stupid position I’ve taken, or whichever annoying thing I’ve said, as you experienced often enough. Instead, he is still and silent. But his silence is such a comfort, and it makes me feel safe enough to reflect, and back down.
“You make me feel less so,” I said.
There, now! Emotions awash in all directions!
(But don’t undercut the moment with humour, you would say. Why can you never let a feeling sit.)
I sat down next to him, with nothing like his grace of course, and trying very hard not to give a middle-aged ‘oof’ as I bent my knees.
And then, I simply looked at him. The atmosphere readers click-clicked and the night finches chattered in the tree above us. He smiled. And I smiled. And then I cupped my hand under his chin and kissed him.
Dear Daniel,
I haven’t written to you in a while, I know. I left you on a terrible cliffhanger! I kissed him! Did he kiss me back?
He did.
But why, you ask, would I be telling you all this? Have I just made the beautiful man up to make you jealous? Am I spinning you a tale? We used to tell each other tales of our conquests, didn’t we. The ones before we met each other. I was less interested in it all, but you would get very…well I remember how my stories would excite you. So now I am telling you this one. A gift from me to you.
But before it could even become a story worth telling, I got in a panic about Luna. I’d only gone downstairs to apologise – I hadn’t meant to be away so long. What if she was having a nightmare? Or someone had broken in to murder me – an angry farmer wielding a two-headed calf or something.
I am mortified to say that I almost threw Lumen from my lap. But he very sweetly listened to why, and took my hand, and we went back inside to save Luna’s life.
She was of course fast asleep. No marauding farmers, no nightmares. Not so much as a blanket untucked.
“She looks like you when she’s asleep,” Lumen said, peeping over my shoulder into her room.
“She looks like Daniel when she’s awake,” I said, closing her door. I showed him that portrait of you, by the tree. You know the one.
He looked at it, then laid it aside and went up on tip-toe to kiss my nose, which felt kind when I was being so mad. Then he kissed my mouth again, and - well. That set me off. I went a little wild for him. Didn’t manage to make it out of the hallway, just pushed him up against the wall, kissing him, shoving up against him. And he wrapped those long legs around my waist and I hitched him up, and we…well we fucked with our clothes on. Whatever you call that. Like a couple of teenagers. Oh but it was good though. Bone deep, satisfyingly good. I think I saw stars.
(that was a little joke there by the way. You need to do your little comedy trombone noise. I’ll wait)
We went into the bedroom after that. We were both in a mess from fucking in our clothes, so we undressed, and then I took him into the shower with me. I love kissing in the shower. And he looked beautiful, with his eyelashes all starred and the water running down his lovely body. We fucked again (I know! At my age! But I hadn’t been with anyone in such a long time), me pushing myself between his thighs (his thighs are…well they’re something else). He’s noisy, you know - I hadn’t expected that. He’s so measured and serene in all the other ways. Noisy and filthy. The things he says! Another time I’ll tell you. For now I’ll spare your blushes.
So then we showered again, and dried ourselves, and then got half-dressed and watched asteroids hit the upper atmosphere. Or shooting stars, you might say. It’s that time of year. He made me a cocktail from a couple of the sticky, half-finished bottles of who-knows-what which lurk on the sideboard. He explained to me very, very thoroughly the scientific basis for his teaching decisions.
It was so easy to be with him that it frightens me a little, Daniel.
“I can’t stay,” he said after a while, not quite looking at me. Usually he’s so direct.
He was standing at the terrace looking up at the sky. There would be a partial eclipse of two of the moons later that night, but no one was excited about that one. The triple or nothing. But they were high in the sky and a deep gold colour, lighting the garden below. I slipped my arms around him – I couldn’t help it – and I buried my nose in the nape of his neck.
“Please,” I said. I heard the little huff of laughter. I was probably tickling him. The beard, you know.
“Well alright,” he said.
We went to bed and slept all tangled up together. His head on my shoulder, his fingers curled in my chest hair (it has grey in it now, like my beard).
“I’ll get up very early,” he murmured. “I don’t want to confuse Luna.”
“Mmm,” I said, and hoped he would sleep in.
He didn’t of course, and I woke at dawn to find him gone. But it wasn’t an awful sort of gone. Just a pause before I would see him again.
I invited him back that night for dinner.
Luna was delighted. She was a little shy at first when Lumen came through the door in his ordinary clothes and his hair loose. But then I suggested she show him her bedroom, and all her little things there (oh the collections of sticks and stones and who alone knows what) and then there was nothing but excited chattering.
He was lovely with her and not at all teachery. We all ate dinner around the table and I don’t think she stopped for breath the entire meal.
Afterwards she was very insistent that he join in with her bedtime story.
(Oh Daniel, every night you miss the bedtime story. It isn’t fair. Nothing is fair about this.)
“Tell me the story of my other daddy,” she said.
“Perhaps not tonight Luna,” I said quickly. Her little face fell and my heart clenched. I don’t know why I find this hard. The vulnerability. As though Lumen would be anything but kind!
So I told them both the story of you. How you were a writer and you fell in love with a grumpy scientist, and how we made each other happy for a long time. And how we’d had her, and she was a little like both of us. And then how you’d begun to love the artist who made pictures for your books (oh, I hate this part, but I tell it, for her) and they made another part of our family.
“But he died,” Luna said. “When I was a little girl.” She likes this part of the story. Not the loss of you, but the bit that comes next.
“He did. He loved you very much, and he didn’t want to leave you,” I said. I couldn’t look at Lumen, because of course, I’d never talked of you to him.
“And…” she prompted.
“And so left you this mark,” I said. She has a little birthmark you remember, a tiny strawberry one on her forearm. Has always been the shape of a heart. “He loved you so much that he left a mark on you right here.” I kissed her little mark, then I kissed her little nose, and she nodded with satisfaction.
“Yes,” she said.
I glanced at Lumen then, and his eyes were wet. He turned to our daughter.
“Goodnight Luna,” he said, and smiled at her and quietly left us alone.
I bent down for the neck-crunching hug she likes to administer, hoping my knees would hold out.
“Daddy,” Luna whispered, her arms tight around my neck.
“Yes?” I whispered back.
“Do you think Lumen wants to be in the story?” she said. “Next time.”
For once, I really don’t know what you would have said.
It hurts that I know less and less what you might have said about things these days. I know what your thoughts were four years ago, but those are frozen in time. You always changed, adapted, evolved. That was your beauty, my dear. So I cannot rely on that version of you any longer. I am talking to an old echo of you, like the light from a star.
But I do think that Lumen is becoming part of our story now.
Enough philosophising, for I am no good at it.
I remain, dear Daniel,
Your devoted friend,
Innes
FOA The Head Teacher, East Sedaris School
I would like to invite Professor Ray along with the rest of Luna’s class to the observatory to watch the eclipse.
I would also like to apologise for my letters to you and Professor Ray this term. All I can say was that I have been under some considerable stress, and it manifested in an obsession with my 6 year old’s homework. There is really nothing else to say, other than I am very sorry.
But I would also very much like to know what grade she got on the Eclipse Viewer.
Best regards
Professor Leith
Note from 114 to 118 attached to a small package
Dear Lumen,
You left your shoes by the door and your coat on the hook in my flat and went out without either of them this morning. I’m concerned you won’t be able to get them when you want them.
So here is a key. It is yours to keep.
And I would very much like you to keep leaving your shoes and your coat in my flat, for as long as you’d like to.
Innes
Dear Daniel,
So this, I think, will be the last time I write. After all, you left me long ago – first to go with Piers, and then to go completely. I don’t know what I will do with the letters. Would Luna ever want to see them? I can’t imagine it.
But let us set things straight.
You were right to leave me, and right to make a new life with Piers, of course. We didn’t love each other in the right way – not a wrong way either, but you know what I mean. But I was furious about it because I always had to be right (you were right about that). And perhaps you guessed you didn’t have much time (you were right about that too).
And so I know I am not addressing you any more, Daniel. Your atoms shut down and disassembled a long time ago. They are, I suppose, parts of many other things now. That’s a comfort that I can’t tell anyone of, because being comforted by the idea of one’s ex-husband’s disassembled atomic matter is perhaps unique to me.
It might be a comfort to you - or any of your atomic matter which is still around and has inexplicably gained sentience - that you were loved. As a wonderful friend by me, and a father by Luna, and so very passionately by Piers.
We loved you very, very much, but you died anyway.
And now life has sent me a light. Unexpected, and much treasured.
I was wrong to think I could do this all alone. What am I not wrong about you would say? But that is the nature of science I suppose. I cannot be a scientist if I don’t make mistakes.
Piers likes him too, you know. Not like that – or maybe like that. Maybe we all like each other a little like that. He is actually a very good man. For an ADULTERER. (I joke, I joke.)
He’s moving into to Lumen’s flat downstairs and Lumen is coming to me. All our family together. So who knows what the future might bring. Who can tell. I can’t keep telling you, at least. Enough is enough. I owe you some peace.
My dear Daniel, I think this is goodbye.
For the final time, I am, dear sir,
Your Innes.
My dearest Lumen,
I know I have been hopelessly busy, and my goodness it is hard to say all I want to in those brief times I see you. And it is impossible not to be very distracted because you insist on answering the door with your hair down - you know my feelings on that. Although if it is up then I can only think of the nape of your neck, which is almost as distracting.
So here I am trying not to be distracted by thinking of you and your hair by thinking of your eyes and perhaps your mouth. Have I told you how I love your mouth? The way it forms the words of a language that isn’t quite yours yet, the way it bites into fruit. The way you use it to excite me.
Three more days and I plan to show you each and every single distracting thought I have had.
The research trip has been a success. It has been so wonderful Lumen, I can’t wait to bore you with it endlessly. And I know that you’ll let me. And that you might not even be entirely bored.
Until then, I will write to you every day. And when I see you next, we will take Luna and her class to the observatory to watch as those three stars align. I am so very happy.
And I must go.
I am, dear Lumen, Inviolably yours.
Innes
(what do you think of this as a sign off? It’s something new I’m trying. Think I might stick with it.)