Neptune's Tears (7 page)

‘Your turn,’ she said. ‘Tell me how that couple met.’ She nodded at the girl and her companion.

David held his hands up in surrender. ‘I’m out of stories, Zee. You win. Besides, it’s almost our turn to board.’

She gazed at him firmly. ‘Do you know that girl?’

‘The girl with long black hair?’ he asked in a way that suggested he
did
know her. Confused, Zee decided to forget the girl for the moment and not let her day be ruined.

The sun was high when they got out at Brighton and they were plunged instantly into the bright, swirling throng. Zee fought against the crowd to keep them from being pulled
towards the beach.

‘Aren’t we going to the pier?’ David asked.

‘Not yet,’ Zee said. She felt excited to be there with him, and when they finally struggled free of the masses around the station she led them quickly inland, until they arrived at
what looked like a vast green meadow. Above the meadow, people balanced on surfboards and coasted about five metres in the air. Some seemed to glide up an invisible curving wall, do a complete
loop, and go on their way. Others lost their balance and fell onto the green of the meadow, which turned out to be as soft and yielding as marshmallows, swallowing them up for a few seconds, then
popping them back up to the surface where they would reclaim their boards, lay flat on their stomachs, touch the board in a certain place, and rise slowly into the air again. Then they would get to
their feet and go shooting off through the air as if nothing had ever happened.

‘I hope you’re up for this,’ Zee said, her cheeks flushed with anticipation. ‘I haven’t been airboarding for years, but I used to love it. My dad taught
me.’

They checked in their belongings and rented boards. Zee showed David how to read the symbol-coded signs around the park. Beginner air currents were in the front nearest the sea. The farther from
the sea you went, the stronger the currents became.

Zee pointed out an area far from them, at the very back, where the green foam of the meadow was marked with black diamonds. ‘Don’t go there unless you want to get rag-dolled. Wicked
air.’

She showed him the pressure points built into the board, and how to get the board aloft and stand on it. He wiped out twice before he could do it, but laughed each time and tried again. He was,
she saw, a quick learner, and within an hour they were riding the advanced beginners waves together. They tried riding in holding hands but tumbled off their boards each time, falling together into
the softness of the meadow. Neither of them seemed to mind, and neither was quick to let go of the other’s hand.

By the time they turned in their boards, they were tired and breathless and leaning on each other. ‘That was great,’ David said, slinging his arm around her. ‘And now I’m
so hungry I could eat a horse.’

The sun was starting to dip and they headed for the pier. There were all sorts of shops along the way – old-fashioned shops that sold things no one needed but everyone seemed to want.
Candles. Charms. Books printed on paper. Clothes that had gone out of style a hundred years ago. Badges with pictures of all three Queen Elizabeths on them – sixteenth, twentieth and
twenty-third century. Some poses were serious, other showed them with pink glitter crowns on their heads.

‘Why do people buy all this stuff?’ David asked.

Zee shrugged. ‘For a bit of a laugh, I guess. For fun. To take home to friends as gifts and make them feel remembered.’

‘That’s crazy,’ David said, shaking his head but smiling at the same time. ‘Will I ever understand Earthlings?’

Zee surprised herself by taking his hand. ‘You just need to get to know us better.’

They walked on, holding hands and smiling at each other and at other couples, who smiled right back at them, as if they were all in on a happy secret. If anyone noticed that David was an alien,
no one seemed to care.

While Zee was gazing at a window that contained a complete and highly detailed replica of Buckingham Palace in chocolate, David suddenly broke away from her, promising to be back in a minute.
Zee watched him disappear into Ye Olde Book Shoppe, glad he’d left her in front of the chocolate shop.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ he said when he came back twenty minutes later. ‘I got a little carried away.’

‘Over books?’ Zee wrinkled her nose.

‘Yeah, of course over books. Especially old-style ones like that shop sells. Printed on paper, with covers, nothing digital.’

‘I haven’t read much, I guess,’ Zee said. ‘Empaths are discouraged from reading novels and poetry. In training they taught us that thoughts and feelings in books can
interfere with our perceptions.’

She felt a little sad to realise something so important to him was an unknown world to her, and for a moment she felt a little jealous of the books he was so passionate about.

‘I’d like to read more, though. I’m pretty good at divesting, and now that I have more experience, the risk wouldn’t be as great.’

‘Good thing I got you this, then.’ He held out a small, book-shaped square tied in paper with a sea-coloured silk ribbon. ‘For you,’ he said. ‘To remember
today.’

She didn’t want to open it. Not right away. She wanted to have the little package with the blue ribbon to look forward to, so the day wouldn’t be over.

They looked at each other for a long moment. The silence lengthened and neither of them seemed to know what to say.

David seemed to read her thoughts and smiled. ‘It’s for you to open at home. Right now, I’m starving. Let’s get some fish and chips.’

They bought food at a stall on the pier and ate as slowly as possible, finding one excuse after another to stay just a little longer. The last thing they did was stroll along the beach. It
wasn’t really dark, with so many lights from the pier and the shops, and it certainly wasn’t private. But it felt both dark and private when he put his arms around her and kissed
her.

It was the first real kiss of Zee’s life and it felt like a current of mercury gliding through her body, smooth and silver and full of a sweet, heavy weight all its own. After all the
years of feeling immune, of being convinced this drawing, drowning feeling would never happen to her, she realised it
was
happening, had happened, and would never
un
happen. Without a
moment’s hesitation she kissed him back, hoping she was kissing him the same way he’d kissed her, making him feel the delicious slow sliding of magic though his bones, but not knowing,
because it was something she’d never done before.

‘I wish,’ he said after a while, ‘I wish things were different, Zee.’

‘So do I,’ she said. His kiss and the bright lights cartwheeling around her left her feeling intoxicated. ‘I wish I had a place we could go back to. We can’t have
visitors at Fordham Square.’

‘Zee . . .’

‘But you have an apartment,’ she whispered. ‘My time off lasts until tomorrow night. I don’t have to go back to the residence hall. If I call Rani, she’ll cover for
me. Rani is great at things like that.’

David was gently disentangling himself from her. ‘I can’t, Zee.
We
can’t.’

‘Why not?’ A look of pain crossed his face. Suddenly, all her doubts and insecurities flew back into her head. ‘Is it me? Did I do something wrong?’

He was probably used to more sophisticated girls. Cooler girls who did not wear their heart on their sleeve. She thought of the suggestion she’d just made and began to feel horribly
embarrassed. What had she been thinking? Had that one comment ruined everything between them? She felt a tear spill down her cheek. He must have seen it in the moonlight because he checked it with
his thumb and kissed the top of her head.

‘It’s not you, Zee. It’s nothing to do with you.’

‘Then tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I can’t,’ he whispered. ‘It’s too complicated and too dangerous. Things you shouldn’t know about Omura.’

Every fibre of her being wanted to keep probing, keep asking, until he told her the truth, but she kept silent. For now, she’d just have to trust him. She tried to let her feelings of
trust flow out to him, but his mood was dark and distant. It didn’t help that on the vactrain going home she again saw the girl with the black waterfall hair, or that once more she was sure
she saw a glance of recognition pass between the girl and David.

The minute Mrs Hart opened the door, Zee felt brightness. It wasn’t just the elegant bracelet she wore, the false version of one of the Neptune’s Tears pieces. It
was something that streamed through the open door, as if the air inside were lighter than the air outside.

‘Come in, Zee, dear. It’s so good to see you again.’ There was no way Mrs Hart could possibly know how glad Zee was to be there at all. For almost a week she’d been on
tenterhooks, not knowing whether she’d be allowed to come or not. Mrs Hart had specifically asked for Zee to work with her at home during the last phase of her illness. A significant honour
to come so early in an empath’s career, her adviser pointed out, but also a significant responsibility. It was more than a question of helping the patient with physical pain; it was helping
them meet the end of life, a task that required not only skill and rapport with the patient but the maturity to sublimate all of one’s own beliefs to the beliefs of the patient. Empaths often
heard things – anger and grievances, confessions and guilts – that the patient could tell no one else. The empath’s natural tendency was to ease the patient’s way by trying
to fix the situation or urging the patient to a different point of view, but this was exactly what the empath must not do. As Zee’s adviser put it, ‘This is one river you must let flow
by itself, and find its own way to the sea.’

Zee’s youth and inexperience alone were cause for concern, but there had also been the matter of the patient known as David Sutton, where Zee had lost the barrier between self and empath
and failed to connect with – or help – the patient. Zee’s adviser had read Zee’s report of the incident. Zee had decided not to mention seeing David in her own time unless
she absolutely had to, but did point out that he had helped as a volunteer after the shock bomb, and the two of them had worked effectively together, hoping this would lessen the importance of her
initial failure.

‘Yes, we’ve already been told about his assistance with the shock bomb victims,’ her adviser had said. ‘He took quite a lot of risks that day.’

Zee had been caught by surprise. Who else had told her adviser about David’s help that day? She’d known it hadn’t come from Rani, who’d spent most of that frantic
afternoon helping triage patients in the car park. ‘Who —?’

‘We were also told that David Sutton wasn’t supposed to be your patient in the A&E, that you’d prepped for another case and were switched without time to prepare. Is that
right?’

Zee nodded. Piper! She had to be the source for both stories. But what was in it for Piper? Zee was so baffled she almost missed hearing her adviser say that in view of her overall excellent
record and Mrs Hart’s insistence, the request was approved.

The next time Zee saw Piper, she thanked her.

‘I never meant for anything to happen. I was just . . .’ Piper paused, as if choosing her words carefully. ‘Just tired of you being everyone’s Golden Girl. I just wanted
to take your leg bud patient and rattle you. A mild piercing, that was all. I didn’t mean for anything else to happen.’ Her voice faded to a whisper. ‘After all, if anyone knows
how distracting love can be, it’s me.’

That was how Zee knew her feelings for David weren’t exactly a secret any more. It was as if Piper had guessed the truth of David’s effect on her. And, for some reason, taken
pity.

On the outside, Mrs Hart’s house had looked very much like all the other Hampstead terraced houses. Inside, it was very much like Mrs Hart: elegant and irreverent. The walls were a soft
butternut colour, with white woodwork and crown mouldings. Against this were bright splashes – a pillow the colour of peacock feathers, a chair in bright red silk, a bowl of clear green glass
with rippling edges like an ocean wave. Zee had never been in a room quite like it, yet she felt instantly at home.

‘I brought some things to read from the hospital,’ she began, suddenly feeling the weight of her task. ‘Different experts suggest different approaches to take.’ Zee laid
the loaded reader on the coffee table.

Mrs Hart set it aside. ‘Oh, experts! I don’t think we’ll need those. I’m not much for experts. I did have some pain the other night, but I’d rather not take the
pills. Why don’t we just talk about some things I can do for it? And I could use advice about talking to my daughters. The younger one especially – just turned seventy – seems to
feel I can live forever if I just put my mind to it. How can I tell her I don’t
want
to put my mind to it? Wouldn’t do it if I could. I’ve had a good life and I’m
tired. I want to see John again.’ Her eyes flicked towards a photo, the old-fashioned flat kind, not a hologram.

‘Your husband?’ Zee asked, following her glance. ‘Wow, he was gorgeous.’