In the middle of the night, I stare through Ash’s telescope at the planets fanning out across the sky. They’re on the ecliptic so they look as though they’re more or less in a straight line.
The five brightest planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – sit sequentially in their order from the sun, and between Mars and Jupiter hangs a thin crescent moon, representing Earth’s position in the solar system.
The only outliers are the ice planets of green-tingedUranus, which is sitting between Venus and the moon, and blue Neptune, which hangs in the sky between Jupiter and Saturn.
Saturn was the first planet to appear, rising just before midnight, and it took my breath away to see its rings through Ash’s powerful telescope. Jupiter rose just after 1 a.m., shining twice as brightly as the brightest star in the sky. Next came Mars, with a distinct orangey-yellow hue, and at just after 3 a.m., Venus graced us with her presence to become the brightest member of the line-up. Finally, just a few minutes ago, tiny Mercury peeked above the horizon, an hour before the sunrise will wash all the planets from the sky.
The next time the five brightest planets will align sequentially like this won’t be for almost twenty years, so I feel privileged to have witnessed it.
I also feel connected to the universe in a way that I never have before.
It blows my mind that the solar system was formed five and a half billion years ago out of a dense cloud of interstellar dust and gas, and that the spinning, swirling disc of material that was created when the dust cloud collapsed eventually became the planets that we see orbiting the sun today.
Ash explains that in another five billion years the sun will exhaust all the hydrogen fuel in its core, its outer edges will begin to inflate and it will become a red giant, expanding millions of miles out into space. Mercury will be engulfed, as will Venus. Mars may hang on beyond the dying star, but our rivers and oceans will dry up and all life on Earth will be extinguished.
Ash is right: the enormity of space makes everything else feel small. Out there, new stars are being born and new worlds are being spun into existence.
But here on Earth, four and a half billion years after our sun was formed, five billion years before it will start to die, one girl sits on a hill in Wales, falling in love with a boy. And nothing can stop it from happening.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
June blazes into July and the temperature soars. In the middle of the month, Wales experiences its hottest day on record.
But despite what the weather forecast says, the climate at work and at home remains frosty.
I’ve been spending most of my free time up at the cabin. It’s more bearable in the woods.
‘Have you been in touch with your dad since you started working here?’ Ash asks one evening as I lie on the sofa, my head in his lap.
He’s lazily stroking my hair and I don’t want to move, even though the sagging seat cushion is doing my back in.
‘No, only before I left, but my parents’ PA texted me out of the blue yesterday to tell me that one of my sofa ranges has been featured inELLE Decorationmagazine.’
It was actually nice to hear from Alison. She sent me a screenshot of the article.
‘That’s cool. Which one?’
‘The Stella range.’
‘Oh, I like your Stella sofas. I saw them when I googled you. Hot pink and black, right?’
‘That’s right.’ I smile up at him.
‘Why the hot pink? I had a feeling there was a story behind it.’
‘Colour of her lipstick on some of our favourite nights out. The black is a nod to her winged eyeliner, and, of course, they’re modern wingback sofas, so the design is a nod to it too.’
‘You’re so talented. Your Lisbon range is my favourite. I love the curved tram shape of the canary yellow and the contrast with the light brown. Whydidyou use that colour?’
I feel my cheeks warming as I lift up his T-shirt and press a kiss to his flat stomach.
‘Are you trying to distract me?’ he asks with amusement, tugging his T-shirt back down past my face and touching my jaw with his fingertips. ‘Why brown?’
‘It’s the colour of the peach iced tea I was drinking on the rooftop of the hostel when we met.’
‘Oh, right!’
I bite my lip, looking up at his face. ‘It’s also how I remembered the colour of your eyes,’ I admit.
