look. Really impressed. Like he understands – how wanting to go into space is the most awesome thing anyone could ever want to do.
I feel a rush of pride.
I nod. ‘Yep, really.’
He looks up at me, his pale, grey eyes wide and shiny. ‘That’s meant to be really hard – isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it’s really hard. Only a tiny percentage of those trained ever go up into space. I did an internship this summer, at the Smithsonian to help my chances of getting into MIT. NASA recruits from MIT,’ I explain.
‘So, you’re going to study engineering?’
‘Yep. One more year of school—’
‘One more year of school?’
‘What?’
‘You look – I don’t know – kind of—’ he stalls.
‘Young?’
He nods. His face goes red.
‘I skipped a grade. That’s why this internship was really important. I have to prove that I’m ready.’
‘Skipped a year? So you must be, what—’
‘Seventeen. Just. My birthday was last week.’
Mom usually makes a fuss about birthdays but this year, mine got kind of lost in all the wedding preparations and I was busy doing my internship and Blake was in London. I didn’t mind. I don’t like the fuss. Dad took me out for red velvet cake at my favourite bakery in town and then we talked for hours, until it was nearly dark and the owner of the bakery had to kick us out. It was probably the best birthday I’ve ever had.
Christopher shakes his head. ‘God, you must be really clever – skipping a grade. I can barely keep up with my own year.’
‘I work hard. And starting young has advantages. If you want to be an astronaut, I mean.’
‘So, when you get to MIT—’
‘I’m going to do a BA in Physical Science – majoring in Astronomy. I want to understand the skies before I get into the mechanical stuff. Then I’ll do a Masters in Aerospace Engineering. And after that a doctorate.’
‘Wow, you’ve really got it all worked out.’
I nod. ‘If you want to be an astronaut, you basically have to start planning from when you’re born.’
‘Won’t it be kind of lonely – I mean, all those years of studying and then going off into space?’
‘Besides my immediate family, I’m not into personal relationships, so I’ll be fine. And I quite like being on my own.’
Those bushy eyebrows of his knit together. ‘You’re not into personal relationships?’
‘Getting married and stuff,’ I explain.
‘Oh – right.’
‘I mean, if it’s a toss-up between finding the man of my dreams and having his babies or getting to land on some undiscovered planet, the choice is easy.’
‘It is?’
‘Definitely. And anyway, break-ups are distracting, right? I can’t afford to be distracted, not when I’m planning a space mission.’
‘Why would there be a break-up?’
‘There are always break-ups. It’s like a thing for astronauts: break-up statistics are high. So, it’s better to be single.’ I pause. ‘Especially if you’re a woman.’
His eyes look wider and paler than ever. Maybe I’ve told him too much. But then he was the one who asked all the questions.
‘You’d get on with my mum.’ He makes it sound like a sad thing.
‘As in Atlanta Mom?’ I ask. And then I feel stupid. It’s not like he’s got any other moms.
‘Yeah, Atlanta Mum. She’s a scientist. A marine biologist – sea rather than sky. But she wanted to study too – rather than having a kid, I mean. Which is why Dad looked after me.’ He pauses. ‘I guess that, like you, she didn’t want any distractions.’
‘Oh…’ I don’t really know what to say. I think he’s just compared me to the mom who walked out on him.
‘I’m sorry.’ I say. ‘That you didn’t get to have both of your parents.’
Mom and Dad had us all pretty young. Dad was still doing his doctoral thesis at Oxford when they had Jude. Mom was finishing her legal practice course. They would never have considered giving her up though. Mom jokes about putting her down for naps in her filing cabinet at work and Dad says that she’d sit in her stroller at the back of his lectures, good as gold, and that having her around made the students like him more. I guess they worked it out. Then, one year later, they had Blake. They were so close in age people thought they were twins. And then, four years later I came along, by which time Mom and Dad had hired an au pair from Sweden who allowed them to get on with their jobs without making us feel like we’d been abandoned. Juta drank goats milk, forced us to go on these epic hikes and cycled through Oxford, pulling us behind her in a trailer. She sang constantly – which meant that she adored Blake because he’d sing along with her. They’d do harmonies and people would stop in the street and listen.
At first we hated her but by the time she left, three years later, we thought our lives would end if she wasn’t there anymore.
She’s coming to the wedding too. Bringing her husband and four children.
Anyway, I wonder what I’d do. Whether I’d give a kid up if it meant being able to go into space. It doesn’t feel like a fair decision. Which is why it’s better not to get involved in all that to begin with. Keep things simple. And the world’s overpopulated anyway.
‘Sometimes it’s hard,’ I say. ‘To make it work. But I’m sure they both still love you. Parents are parents, right, no matter how much they mess things up?’
For a while, Christopher doesn’t say anything. And then, he says:
‘I’ve never really felt like I’ve had parents. I mean, I haven’t felt like I belonged to them – like you’re meant to feel.’
‘You don’t feel like you belong to your parents?’ That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
‘I mean – I don’t feel like I come from them, like I’m one of them or that I have bits of them in me.’
I think about the bits of Mom and Dad I have in me. I thought I was more like Dad. Kind of chilled. Happy in my own company. But then, when I’ve got an idea for a project or when I go off on one of my rants about female astronauts, Dad looks at me and smiles and says: You’re just like your mother
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