Virginia Macgregor - As Far as the Stars

VIRGINIA MACGREGORis the author of What Milo Saw , The Return of Norah Wells , Before I Was Yours , You Found Me and the young adult novel Wishbones . Her fifth novel for adults, The Children’s Secret , will be out in the UK in November 2019. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. After graduating from Oxford University, she worked as a teacher of English and Housemistress in three major British boarding schools. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and now writes full time. Virginia is married to Hugh, who is Director of Theatre at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. They moved to New Hampshire from the UK in July 2016 and live at St. Paul’s with their two daughters, Tennessee Skye and Somerset Wilder and by the time this novel is published, they will have a new little boy too.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Virginia Macgregor 2019

Alice Feeney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008217334

PRAISE FOR VIRGINIA MACGREGOR:

‘I defy you not to fall in love’

Clare Mackintosh

‘Warm, wise and insightful’

Good Housekeeping

‘Sharp, funny and hugely moving, this is a must-read’

Fabulous

‘Impossible not to fall in love’

Stylist

‘Touching and poignant’

Cathy Hopkins

‘Might restore your faith in human nature’

Bella

‘Will delight you but break your heart several times over’

The Sun

‘This wonderful story will tear at your heart’

My Weekly

‘Original, poignant and heart-warming’

Sadie Pearse

To my beloved husband, Hugh, who never stops believing in what I do.

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

PRAISE

Dedication

Epigraph

DAY 1: SATURDAY 19 THAUGUST, 2017

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

DAY 2: SUNDAY 20TH AUGUST, 2017

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

DAY 3: MONDAY 21ST AUGUST, 2017

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

DAY 4: TUESDAY 22ND AUGUST, 2017

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

One Year Later

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

DAY 1

SATURDAY 19 THAUGUST, 2017

Prologue

On the I-81, heading for Nashville, a yellow Buick comes to an abrupt halt.

A girl swerves onto the hard shoulder and hits the brakes.

Then she checks the message on her phone again.

Damn it!

She thumps the steering wheel.

She checks the clock on the dashboard, takes a breath and then puts the car back into gear.

She takes the next exit, gets back onto the I-81 and heads back to DC, praying that her brother’s plane will be on time.

A continent away, a pilot looks at the paper model sitting on the dashboard in his cockpit: a warbler, a tiny bird that can fly for three days across the Atlantic without landing.

He never takes it for granted: how miraculous this is, to be up here, hundreds of miles from the earth. And at night, to see the stars, up close.

He thinks of his son, who made the paper bird. In a few hours, they’ll be together and then a holiday, just the two of them. He’s going to try harder this time.

Beyond the paper bird, through the thick glass windows, the sky is that endless kind of blue. His eyes aren’t big enough to take it all in.

It’s morning. The day is starting.

It’s going to be a beautiful day, the pilot thinks. A beautiful flight. Not a whisper of wind. A smooth parabola through the sky from one continent to the other.

He’s done this route hundreds of times. Sometimes, he jokes that he could do it in his sleep.

He cranes his neck and looks down. They’re passing the west coast of Ireland. In a few more minutes they’ll leave behind the land and then, for thousands of miles, it’ll be just him and his passengers and crew, flying between sea and sky.

There are times when he’s so happy up here that he wishes he could fly for ever. That there was no land to go back to.

The plane is flying steady now. He switches the controls to autopilot; there’s no more need for his intervention, not for a good while.

He sits back and looks back out at the sky.

Across the Atlantic, at Dulles International Airport in DC, a seventeen-year-old boy waits by the arrivals gate. He sits on the floor, his back pressed into the wall.

It’ll be hours before his father’s plane lands, but he doesn’t mind waiting. Airports are like home for him. He’s good at blocking out the noise and the people. All those comings and goings.

He pulls a scrap of paper out of his backpack and starts folding.

A few miles off the coast of western Ireland, where the sea is so deep it’s black, a fisherman stands in his boat, pulling in a net. He’s been out since before light.

He hears the drone of the engine before he sees the plane. He lives under the flight path, so over the years he’s become used to the sound, to how the rhythm of the planes weave between the currents of the sea.