Chapter 18

‘So you’re enjoying work experience then?’

‘Loving it,’ Emily enthused to her school friend Julie, ‘it feels like real work, as it were.  Can’t believe tomorrow’s my last day.  I’m looking forward to starting full-time, instead of gap year-ing, waitressing on Saturdays and evenings like I’m still seventeen.’

Julie lived in Lower B too, and the girls had met on the 260, the bus she caught to and from her job in Wolverhampton.  They had not seen one another since school, and were enjoying catching up.

‘You’re so lucky doing all this globe-hopping, though.  My bus pass takes me as far as I’m going to go at present.  Anyway, see you tomorrow Em.  Sounds like you’ve got a text.’  She nodded towards Emily’s pulsating handbag as they parted at the bus stop outside the Bargeman pub.

‘Bye Julie.’  Emily walked home into Danks Avenue studying her cryptic text from Robyn.  DIDN’T KNOW HE SAW STARS FOR A LIVING – SEE E&S P5 2NITE!  ENJOY SATURDAY WITH OUR RO!  LUV ME XX

Her shorthand communication with Robyn never needed decoding.  ‘He’ naturally meant Dominic, the ‘E&S’ was the Express & Star, a regional daily printed in Wolverhampton…but ‘seeing stars for a living’?

Something swooped inside Emily’s stomach.  Her front door key was wobbly in her hand.  Dominic may not be her problem for much longer, but unsettling conundrums about him remained; she sensed answers might lie in this enigmatic news report.

‘Hi Mom.  Had the paper yet?’

‘Yeah, in the lounge.  Lovely piece on Ellery.’

Emily flicked to page five, where as it happened the headline ‘THE £75,000 VICAR’ topped a picture of Ellery grinning with Chris Tarrant and a preview of Who Wants to be a Millionaire edition, due to air on Saturday.  He was allotting his winnings to St Matthew’s Primary School fund, a holiday, Christian Aid and that perennial favourite, the church roof appeal.

The picture lead on the opposite page coincidentally related to another village personage.

A young Black Country-born astronomer, now based in the USA, made a rare appearance on home turf to sign copies of his latest book.

Dr Dominic Osbourne, originally from Upper Bratchley, near Wolverhampton, has been professor of Astrophysics at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, for four years. 

His guidebook Heavenly Bodies: A History of Comets has proved a hit amongst stargazers on both sides of the Atlantic.  It was recently published here following a successful print run in America.

Dr Osbourne, 30, a former pupil of the Royal Wolverhampton School, is in the UK on a week-long promotional tour and was at Waterstones in the Merry Hill Centre yesterday signing copies.

Not her Dominic.  Dr Osbourne, posed with his pen autographing for ‘fan Simon Box from Stourbridge,’ sported tiny oblong glasses and a hedge of blond curls.  A curious taste pervaded, though.

Her mobile tolled.  ‘DOMINIC,’ flashed the display, eerily.  His first call since that Saturday.  Well she had consented to keeping in sporadic touch.

‘Were you reading my thoughts?  You’re in the paper!’

‘The what?’

‘Well not really.  You have a namesake.  From Upper B, no less.’  She quickly apprised him of Dr Osbourne’s existence.

‘Really?  Small world.  But then we know that, bearing in mind how we met.’
That voice!  Mellow and educated, unimpeded by the cagey body language he displayed during their last face to face exchange, it evoked the Raffles, orchids and Singaporean spice.  Emily shook her head manically, as if saying no to an imagined attempt to re-charm her.

‘Anyway, how’s the work placement?’

‘Brilliant.  Been accompanying the solicitors to court, doing all sorts really – ’

‘Mmm?  You’re not working at Alveley Manor Saturday, are you?’

Emily’s brow rumpled at the peculiar question.  ‘I’m not there at all this week.  I was going to go in this Saturday, as they’re a bit thin on the ground and there’s a big wedding on – ’

‘You were?’

‘ – but now I’ve been invited on a hike in the Peak District, would you believe.’  She chuckled – Dom assumed self-effacingly, as though at the thought of herself in walking boots and waterproofs. 

‘A hike?  Who with?’

‘A village group.’  Emily flapped her hand flippantly, despite the pointlessness of hand gestures on the phone.  ‘They travel up in convoy on the second Saturday of the month.  I’ve been asked to join.  We’re doing nine miles around Buxton.’ 

Emily could have fried eggs on her face.  She would not be disclosing that Rowan Moss had issued the invitation.  Saturday did not constitute a date – nothing would, just yet – but she saw no harm in the interim from munching sandwiches on a rock with the bloke while acquiring a new hobby.

‘Oh.  Well.  Enjoy it then.’  A clumsy pause, which they were both at a loss how to fill.  ‘And the rest of your placement.  Where’s it at again?’

‘Howard Teece & Thomas.’

‘Howard T– ’

‘Litigation solicitors in Wolverhampton.’

He almost dropped the phone.