‘Truly it astounds me,’ Lord Brandrel said, stroking his beard, ‘that a woman so fierce and learned should put her faith in superstition.’
‘Even so. How should I be expected to plight my troth to one who will not indulge an innocent fancy?’
Adam laughed. His whole face seemed to come alive, the stillness and wariness all gone. ‘I’m Aquarius, you numpty. Same as you.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I guess that has potential. Aquarius man and Aquarius woman is one of the better matches. Our shared fascination with the spiritual world means we’ll never tire of exploring wider issues together, and we’ll have a rich, fulfilling and inventive sex life.’
I was making it up, just like Fabian’s paid writers had been, but it was totally worth it to see Adam blush.
‘Come on,’ he said, putting his glass down on a corner of Alice’s desk. ‘I want to show you something.’
Before I could ask what, he’d set my glass down next to his, put his arm round my shoulders and guided me out of Alice’s office. And then the closeness and warmth of his body and the juniper scent of his skin was so strange and new and wonderful I don’t think I would have been able to say anything if I’d tried. Adam led me into the lobby with the four doors opening off it – one to the kitchen, one to the bar, one to the stairs that led to my flat and one to the garden.
‘It’s like being back in the D&D game,’ I said, regaining the power of speech. ‘Four doors lead out from the chamber. Which one will you pick?’
Adam laughed. ‘Don’t take the piss. We’re going outside.’
The beer garden was empty – no smokers had ventured out that night, which wasn’t surprising, as it was bitterly cold. The night air bit through the thin fabric of my dress, and I was glad of Adam’s warm body next to me. The cold didn’t seem to bother him at all, even though he was dressed no more warmly than I was.
We stood there for a moment, our breath forming clouds of vapour that drifted away like ghosts. The garden smelled of damp earth, fallen leaves, the last of the cooking smells being pumped out by the kitchen extractor fan and a distant bonfire. The bird table was deserted and the parasols folded. I could hear a hum of voices from inside the pub, and the faint popping of firecrackers somewhere out in the night.
‘Well, this is romantic,’ I teased.
‘Zoë! Look up.’
I tilted my head, and everything changed. Above us, the clear autumn sky was pitch black but spangled with stars. A thin crescent moon like one of Frazzle’s claws hung over the rooftops. On the horizon, the lights of an aeroplane beginning its descent blinked steadily.
‘See that bright star just there.’ Adam pointed up into the darkness.
‘I can see loads of stars.’
‘There. In the middle of that dark bit of sky.’
I followed the long line of his arm, pressing my head against his shoulder to keep warm and also so I could look the same way he was looking.
‘I think so.’
‘That’s Beta Aquarii, the brightest star in the constellation of Aquarius. It’s about six hundred light years away. The dimmer one close to it, Alpha Aquarii, is a hundred times as big as our sun. It’s the right time of the year to see them, and we’re lucky it’s such a clear night. The third one is called Gamma Aquarii.’
‘It’s… I never knew you could actually see it,’ I said. ‘I mean, I knew Aquarius was a constellation and everything, but I thought you needed to work for NASA or at least have a telescope.’
‘When I was a kid I used to dream of working for NASA. I thought I’d fly to the moon or be an astrophysicist or something. But I do have a telescope.’
‘Is that a telescope in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
Adam pressed me closer, and I could feel the laughter shaking his body. Making this man laugh could get quite addictive, I realised.
‘Tell me more about the stars,’ I said.
‘Their Arabic names are all to do with luck. The luck of kings, the lucky star of hidden things. So if you want to wish on a star, you should pick one of those.’
‘Isn’t wishing on stars a load of bollocks, like astrology?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say. Maybe we should try it, then we’d have scientific proof.’
‘Okay. You first.’
‘We should do it together.’
I nodded, knowing that Adam would be able to feel the movement of my head where it pressed against him. His arm squeezed me closer and we stood in silence for a couple of seconds.
‘What did you wish?’ he asked.
‘I can’t tell you! If I do it stops the magic working.’
‘But what about our scientific proof?’
I turned around within the circle of Adam’s arm and looked up at him, and he looked down at me. He was smiling, and in the darkness it looked like his eyes were sparkling. I felt something shift inside of me, like I was melting, even though it was so cold.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I wished you’d kiss me.’
‘Funny, that. So did I.’
And suddenly his other arm was around me, too, and both my hands were reaching up to pull him close, so I could press the whole warm, strong length of him against me. My fingers touched his hair, surprisingly soft and silky. The clean man-smell of him joined all the other smells of the night, and as his lips touched mine it was like Aquarius and all the other constellations started spinning round and round at once – although I knew I’d never be able to tell Adam that was how it felt, because he’d say they were stars and planets in orbit and spinning was exactly what they did all the time.
Thirty
‘So what happened after that?’ Dani gasped. We were in the gym and taking it in turns on the rowing machine, and she was a couple of hundred metres into her go, and really giving it some.
‘Shall I wait until you’ve finished?’
‘No, distract me!’
I laughed. ‘Keep going – you’ve got this. Okay, so we went back indoors and finished the D&D game.’
‘No way!’
‘Well, we couldn’t not. We’d left the others all on tenterhooks waiting to know what happened with Galena and Lord Brandrel.’
Dani half-laughed, half-panted.
‘Except it turned out they weren’t, really. They were waiting to find out what had happened with me and Adam. Turns out they’d all been in on it, since the party for Tansy and Josh when nothing happened. Basically it feels like everyone who’s ever been in the Ginger Cat has been trying to set us up for ages. A hundred metres to go.’
‘Oh God, I’m dying.’
‘Just a few more strokes. So we went back into the bar and everyone went all quiet, you know how that happens? But Adam had his arm round me still and it was fine. No one said anything, they just looked at us like we were their late-developing babies who were finally taking their first steps or something.’
Dani finished her row and collapsed, laughing, on the floor.
‘Right, you’re up,’ she said, when she’d got her breath back a bit.
‘But don’t you want to hear what happened next?’