Wild Blue Yonder (The Ceruleans: Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

air, no change in light, but
still when I opened my eyes there was hope. It was dashed instantly. Same room.
Same old hotel. Same island off the coast of England.
    Either women did not have the gift of Travel, or there was a
trick to it I’d have to be taught.
    I sighed. What now?
    A good cry, apparently, given that my eyes were welling up
and heat was rising in my chest.
    I allowed myself a long bout of feeling . I sobbed
into the sofa cushions. I threw the sofa cushions. I collected them all up and
threw them again. Then, exhausted, I collapsed onto the sofa and scanned the
iPod. There were thousands of tunes. I started with angry, shouty songs, the
kind of music I hated. Then I tortured myself with every song I could think of
that reminded me of home.
    ‘Town Called Malice’, The Jam. Luke and I had danced to it
crazily, uninhibited, in our little penthouse haven in Newquay.
    ‘One Day Like This’, Elbow. The song that had been playing
in the car the day Luke and I first went out together, the day I first realised
I liked him.
    ‘Never Let Me Go’, Florence and the Machine. At my party,
the day I turned eighteen, the day I learned I would die. The day I wished for
more time.
    ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul,’ They Might Be Giants. Cara driving
away after a shopping trip, windows down, singing loudly, tunelessly.
    ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’, Ella Fitzgerald. In Luke’s arms,
swaying beneath a canopy of stars, he as handsome as I’d ever seen him in a
black suit and tie, me thinking, I want it to be you who watches over me,
not Jude.
    ‘Set Fire to the Rain’, Adele. My mum and I dancing around a
roaring bonfire of designer clothes.
    ‘We Are Young’, Fun. Dancing it out in Cara and Luke’s
kitchen, Cara in her knickers – legs beautifully healed, Luke’s arms around me,
his whisper in my ear: ‘I-love-you-I-love-you-I-love-you.’
    ‘Kiss Me’, Ed Sheeran. The folly. Moving past the fear. The
first kiss.
    ‘Wherever You Will Go,’ Charlene Soraia’s version. Finally,
a song to turn the tide. It had come on the radio a few days before The End,
when we were baking gingerbread. Once Luke had registered the lyrics, he’d put
down his spatula and wrapped his arms around me and held me tight and said,
‘I’d come with me, if I could.’
    There were no tears left. Something else had filled the
aching place inside. A kind of steely calm.
    I put the song on repeat. I turned it up to maximum volume.
I crossed to the French doors, turned the handle, pushed them open wide and
stepped out onto the balcony. The air was so cold it made me gasp, but I didn’t
balk. I stepped forward, to the wrought-iron balustrade, and I stood looking
out at a world I couldn’t see.
    Somewhere out there, in the thick blackness of the night,
was everyone I loved.
    My mother, blissfully oblivious yet to my passing. Still
grieving the loss of her eldest daughter, but looking forward now to a long and
happy relationship with her remaining child.
    My friend, Cara. Cheerful to the end. Embracing of anything
beyond the norm. But sad to lose me and, I was sure, haunted by the fact we’d
never said goodbye.
    My… my… Luke. What would he be doing now? Was he too
outside, up on the roof terrace, staring out at a starless sky and wondering
where I was, whether I was okay?
    I stood and I stared and I thought. I thought about finding
a way back to them all.
    *
    To thaw my frozen body, I took a long, hot bath. The
bathroom was old-fashioned in a chic kind of way – claw-footed slipper bath,
pedestal basin and a toilet with a chain to pull. The tiles on the wall and
floor were new, though, and the shower attachment was, I found to my soggy
surprise, majorly powerful.
    Wrapped in a soft bath sheet, I stood for a time before the
mirror, eying the hollow of my throat – bare. For months a blue pendant had
lain there; Luke’s gift to me on my eighteenth birthday. Gone now. Lost, or
taken? Either way, I felt naked without it.
    The haunted eyes