Ling and I were in our third year at King’s College London when she started going out with a media studies student called Mac McCall (even his mum didn’t call him by his real name, Jonathan). I liked Mac, up to a point – he was good looking in a russety sort of way, funny and exciting and generous with his drugs, but he had a way of taking over whatever space he was in, and I resented him slightly for crashing into my friendship with Ling. I was in no hurry to meet his twin brother, who was studying theoretical astrophysics at Oxford. Chalk and cheese, I thought, and I was right. Mac is your classic extrovert – he draws his energy from people, from crowds – while Kit is a textbook introvert. Conversation drains him; ideas recharge him.
Eclipses brought us together, in a way. As a very young woman I chased any experience that purported to be authentic or alternative to the mainstream culture I used to sneer at. I only liked grimy clubs and right-on bands no one had heard of, and I went out with a lot of boys who looked like Jesus. I thought that standing in a field watching a star disappear would be the ultimate climax to the ultimate rave, a special effect beyond the imagination and budget of any club promoter. When Ling said that she and Mac had found a way to see the upcoming total eclipse in Cornwall and get paid for it, I was in.
Mac lived in Kennington, in an ex-council flat with low ceilings and walls covered in swirling fluorescent fractal posters. I walked in across a forest floor of torn-up Rizla packets. The bulb in the living room had blown, and the place was lit by candles in jam jars. Kit, down from Oxford for the weekend, was a coiled figure in a shadowy corner, his face hidden behind a floppy strawberry-blond fringe, a woolly black jumper pulled down over his wrists. He seemed paler than Mac, in all ways.
‘Dearly beloved,’ began Mac, his hands busy with a lump of hash and a lighter (he could talk and roll a joint the way most of us can talk and blink). ‘We are gathered here today to find a way we can go to a festival without actually having to pay for it. The best mark-up I can find is on hot drinks, teas and coffees, and if we work in shifts, we should turn a tidy profit.’ Mac was surprisingly entrepreneurial for a self-professed anarchist. He wore Amnesty T-shirts and preached peace and love but only to those who mirrored his own values. He made a peace sign by way of a greeting, but thought nothing of keeping his neighbours awake all night with deafening techno.
‘Right,’ he said, sparking the joint. The lighter’s flare showed me Kit’s angles for a second: brows straight as rulers, an arrowhead nose above a set mouth. ‘There are about ten festivals in the West Country that week. They’re all still in the planning stages, but I’ve got as much information together as I can, to help us decide which one fits best with our ethos.’
I tried to catch Ling’s eye to share a smile at Mac’s pomposity but she was gazing in rapt adoration. I felt the usual sting of exclusion.
‘The big eclipse festival is in Turkey, but that’s way beyond our budget,’ said Mac. ‘Plus, how often does this come around on home turf?’
‘Less than once in a lifetime,’ Kit piped up from his corner. His voice was Home Counties, educated: Mac’s without the mockney drawl. ‘A total eclipse needs really precise alignment. It’s hard to average, but the last one here was in 1927 and the next one won’t be until 2090. And we didn’t have a single total eclipse between 1724 and 1925.’
‘All right, Rain Man,’ said Mac, going back to his list. He discounted three festivals where the music was ‘too mainstream’, and another where the sponsor was ‘too corporate.’ Ling, who had the predicted visitor numbers, ruled out a tiny gathering that wouldn’t be worth our while. We were left with one festival in North Devon, and another on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. ‘It’s too close to call,’ said Ling.
‘Bro?’ said Mac. Kit got to his feet without using his hands. He’s taller than me, I thought. Measuring men against my own five-nine frame was often the first sign I had that I was attracted to someone. From a leaning plywood bookcase with half the shelves missing, he produced a sheaf of computer printouts.
‘The thing about Cornwall, all of the West Country really, is that there are a handful of micro-climates. The weather conditions really can vary mile by mile. So I’ve correlated average sunlight and rainfall with all the festivals and plotted this against the path of totality. By my reckoning, this location gives us our best chance of seeing the sun.’ He unfolded a battered Ordnance Survey map of Cornwall, and pointed at the Lizard peninsula.
‘The Lizard Point Festival it is,’ said Mac, and Kit’s smile went from tentative to broad. ‘I think this calls for a celebration.’
The celebration consisted of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, passed around while Mac played DJ and Kit shuffled his papers. I was used to Mac and Ling’s public displays of affection, and I assumed that Kit would be too, but when they started snogging on the sofa, he was clearly mortified, blushing scarlet and eyes looking anywhere but in my direction. After a while he disappeared into the kitchen. I cleared my throat loudly.
‘Sorry,’ said Mac, smoothing down his T-shirt. ‘We’ll go next door.’
‘How am I supposed to get home?’ It was a long, dark walk back to our little flat in Stockwell and the last bus had gone. I hadn’t drunk so much that I was willing to risk the walk, and back then it wouldn’t have occurred to me to get a cab.
‘Kit’ll walk you,’ Ling said, getting unsteadily to her feet. Her bra was already unhooked. She winked at me over her shoulder. ‘Don’t shag him, though. It’ll make things really awkward in Cornwall.’
If I hadn’t already been entertaining the idea, I’d have decided to shag Kit just to spite her.
‘Oh,’ he said on returning to find me there alone, then retreated to his corner where he sat cross-legged, drumming his fingers in perfect time to the music.
‘That’s really clever, what you did with those charts,’ I said eventually, to break the silence.
‘It’s just maths,’ he shrugged, but his fingers stilled.