Talk.

Talk.

Talk.

So there I am on the bus and everything is perfect, when it stops and I hold my breath. The bus starts moving again but as soon as I let out the breath, a head appears at the top of the stairs and my heart sags. Two women emerge and the moment is over. That’s why you’ve got to make the most of moments like that, like when you walk into a shop and they’re playing your favourite song and you can’t leave until it’s over. You know they’re not playing it for you, but if you’d gone in there five minutes later you would have missed it, so how could it not be for you?

The women don’t see me. They sit at the front, where my sister Meredith and I used to like sitting when we were kids because we could pretend that we were driving the bus. I know they’re together. It’s not obvious, they’re not holding hands or kissing, but I know by the way they sit next to each other. There’s no clumsiness, no knocked hips or elbows or sitting on each other’s coats, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s what love is, if it’s knowing exactly how much space someone takes up in the world and not making them feel bad about it.

I don’t pay attention to couples, I don’t pay attention to anyone really, but there’s something about this couple. They’re just sitting there and it’s so comfortable – so easy – that I catch myself staring at the back of their heads, no longer aware of the sunset or Sigur Rós.

They go to get off at Rottingdean, but before they do, one of them reaches over to tuck the label back into the other’s jumper and it’s so intimate that I have to look away. Imagine being seen like that? Not looked at but seen. Imagine someone seeing every part of you right down to the label sticking out of the back of your jumper? I don’t think anyone has ever seen me as anything other than the sullen sixteen-year-old on the bus with the headphones on.

I want that.

The words bubble up from nowhere and the shock of them is dizzying. I look down at my feet and when my eyes come back into focus, I notice that someone has written LOOK UP on the floor. I do, and there, on the grubby cream ceiling, is a square no bigger than a seven-inch record sleeve, and inside someone has drawn the moon and stars in black Sharpie. An entire constellation above my head, low enough to touch with the tip of my finger, as though someone has cut a hole in the roof of the bus so that I can see a tiny scrap of the sky, and it can see me.

*

By the time I get home, my grandmother is in her favourite chair in the living room, the glow from the television making her already pale face look almost see-through. When I walk in, she holds out her hand and I take it in mine.