Star Shot Read Online Free Page A

feeling he hates worse than disruption itself. A small sturdy upright tree would somehow offset the fall. He strikes out across the field towards the nursery. Damson. Hazel? No, damson. She loves the jam. And she can still be pretty sharp, herself. He wishes she hadn’t called him by his dead brother’s name. The first time, he thinks, that she has ever done that.
    As the spade pushes into the hard ground he reorganises the day in his head. He’d had to cancel the school session, because of visiting times and trains; but he could move the contract work forward by an hour and a half. He’d have an extra hour on the train – no, two, there and back – for the paperwork. Though he knows that on the journey back he will be more likely to read or look out of the window. He gets down on his knees, and his big hands gently, gradually, release the tangle of roots from the compacted earth.
    14.
    In spite of herself Myra is on her bench. Shivering. And still ignored. I am going back to the hospital, she thinks quietly, and I would appreciate a flicker of concern, a little kindness. She is irritated with herself for coming back at all. You said you’d go shopping, buy a nice cardigan, some new wool for a scarf, you said you wouldn’t come up this far today, you could have arranged lunch with Elin, you have only yourself to blame. But work was painful: the senior colleague has started bringing her cake. Handing it over publicly, as if to an invalid, saying how frail she looks, how pale she looks, how she must build herself up. Myra, who has no objection to cake in the normal course of things, could not eat a mouthful. She took it home, left it in the tin until it blossomed with mould, then threw it out and put the tin through the dishwasher till it shone, returned it with thanks, and waited with a kind of low-level dread for the next one. It all added to her anxiety, the thought of the waste; she felt she should distribute it among the poor or something, but didn’t know how.
    She looks up to find a man standing in front of her. He has a plump, earnest face and is holding an iPad.
    Ah, hello, he says; softly American.
    She looks just past him, to the left of his ear, disapprovingly.
    I’m sorry to interrupt …
    His embarrassment is terrible but Myra is not inclined to help. He takes a deep breath.
    My name is Dr Luke Stringer, I work at the University, in the Department of Cultural Cartography. I’m leading a research project. On people. Who, ah, people who sit. On Benches.
    For a fraction of a second she looks as if this might be funny, but then reverts to flickering disapproval.
    Luke is in agonies. He told them he would be no good at this. He is an Ideas Man. She was the only one he had agreed to interview, the one who had appeared on paper the least threatening, the most normal, an office girl on a lunch-break with a fondness for a particular place. He summons his nerve, and the words come all in a rush.
    Look, he says. I’m really sorry. Please just let me show you quickly and then I’ll leave you in peace. I’m not trying to sell anything or get you involved in anything, it’s just that we need a few stats for the mapping programme and it would be really helpful … just a few questions … nothing personal. May I show you? May I, ah, sit down?
    His small deft fingers swish and tap the screen, pulling up an intricate logo with the words BenchMarks/MeincNodiadau wrapped dynamically around a stylised park bench. He taps on the image of the bench and reaches a series of questions, which he waves in front of her. Look, he says. It’s not that much really, and of course you don’t have to answer them all. Or, he adds helplessly, any of them. Of course. May I?
    It is, thinks Myra, better than battling with an uncooperative building. She nods her head very slightly and moves up the bench to make room for him, holding her bag tightly on her lap.
    Ok, here goes.