Crown of Stars by Sophie Jaff

Author:Sophie Jaff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

After class, Katherine puts all her paraphernalia away and then looks around. Niamh is gone. Shit, she frets. You missed your chance. What if she never comes back to this class? Why would she? She really wanted to talk with her, at least to say “thank you.” The other women are in clumps now, phones are out, numbers are being exchanged. They’re networking, bonding, the very thing Katherine came here for, but everyone is avoiding her. Pregnant bitches. She hates them. She walks up the stairs slowly and into the lobby where someone rises from a bench.

“Hey,” Niamh says.

“Hey,” Katherine says. She feels like she may cry with relief.

They walk outside together.

“You know what I could use?” Niamh is solemn, earnest.

“What?”

“A drink, possibly a fag.”

“Or maybe a big fat joint?”

“Oh no!” Niamh looks shocked.

Katherine kicks herself. You crossed the line.

Then Niamh grins, and it’s marvelous. “That’s nowhere near strong enough. So seriously, fancy a pint?”

“Can we?” Katherine decides to confess. “I never used to enjoy beer, but recently I’ve started to dream about it.” She wasn’t going to mention this specific dream in class.

“Of course! We can drink anything!” Niamh pauses. “Well, probably not, but I like going into pubs just to see everyone’s expressions.”

Katherine doesn’t hesitate. Mrs. Bailey—“Call me Mrs. B”—bless her efficient heart, will give Lucas dinner. Mrs. B, turned out not to be the plump, rosy-cheeked Victorian cook of Katherine’s imagination, but rather a thin, dour woman on the other side of fifty. However, she is as capable and domestically brilliant as Katherine had hoped for. Then Lucas will play with Cordelia, and Sael will work, and she really has no desire to go home at all. Not that it’s home anyway. “A drink, or a pretend drink, sounds heavenly.”

They stride into the first pub they find. Katherine is still discovering the warm intimacy of a traditional pub’s low ceilings, the worn but still plush patterned carpet, its clusters of old wooden chairs and tables, the lush low jangling of a lone “fruit machine.” They end up getting cokes, find a corner table and sit. No one gives them a second look.

“So, class went well,” Niamh begins.

“Didn’t it?”

Then their faces break and they almost kill themselves laughing.

“Tough crowd. That instructor . . .”

“What an eejit!”

Katherine is delighted with the word. “She is an eejit.”

“I can’t stand it when they start that natural giving-birth-in-the woods shite,” Niamh continues.

“Shite” and “eejit.” Better and better. Like most Americans, Katherine’s a sucker for other accents. “I didn’t dare say the word ‘epidural.’”

“They’re not that keen on them here.”

“Really?”

“Yup, but you do get given gas.”

“Oh my God, they gas us?”

Niamh grins. “They’ll probably make an exception for you. Don’t want to be sued by a Yank.”

“Well, that’s something.”

They talk and laugh. I haven’t done this in a long time, she realizes. It feels good to laugh. Katherine thinks of her friends in New York. They still “check in,” but it’s taken on a tinge of guilt and duty. There’s the time difference, and they all have their own lives.

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