ANNIE and BLUE

            “‘Strange lights have been seen over the lake at Thatcham Discovery Centre.’” Blue read aloud from the local newspaper. “Did you hear that, Annie?” It was force of habit that made him say it – he had been tuned to notice headlines like that for so long that it had become impossible not to. His words broke into the quiet of the kitchen like rocks hitting still water. He paused, listening as silence flowed back into the room. Annie didn’t reply. She didn’t speak these days, and she hadn’t touched her breakfast. Blue felt his heart grow a bit colder in his chest, a bit heavier. He was sure it was slowly turning to stone, and it pained him with its every beat.

            Once, not so long ago, they would have started preparing as soon as a headline like that appeared – especially one so local. They would give notice to their casual employers, and would revert to a nomadic, nocturnal existence. Warm clothes had to be found, food packed into the van, and a tent; binoculars, note books, folding chairs, their battered technical recording equipment, maps, cameras, their old tin kettle and a tiny camping stove. Annie would bustle around with her customary efficiency, and Blue would do as he was told, smiling inside because he could see the excitement running through her like electricity, flushing her face and swelling her chest.

            They had aged a great deal since first meeting near Roswell in 1953; but to Blue, Annie was unchanged - as captivating as ever. She had been prowling the fence like a tiger, kicking up the New Mexico desert dust, waiting for movement from within the compound, waiting for somebody to challenge. Her face was wide and angular, skin tanned to the colour of hazelnuts so that her green eyes shone like glass. She had tawny brown hair that she wore in a long braid that swung behind her. Blue watched her for hours, finding his eyes drawn back to her again and again. He imagined winding the long plait around his hand, undoing it, combing the hair out with his fingers, touching it to his face. Annie was strong, she moved like a fighter. When she asked him his name his throat went as dry as the sand. How could he say Lewis Blumenthal? She was not the kind of woman who would look twice at a Lewis - a Lewis with conventional hair and a quiet manner, a Lewis who was only there on holiday, and usually worked in his father’s hardware shop in Bedford. So he introduced himself as Blue, and the name stuck.

            In their small kitchen in Thatcham, Blue stared into space as his tea grew cold. Outside, the weak autumn sun disappeared behind clouds, and the kitchen went flatly grey. Staring into space – that was what life had been about for Annie and Blue. Blue had been curious, he’d been tentative; he had thought it would be fun to discover life beyond their own planet. But Annie was a believer, right from the start. She knew life was out there – intelligent life. She knew that aliens visited Earth. She knew that the global government was keeping the truth hidden. And she infected Blue with her belief, filling his head with the certainty as she filled every corner of his life. She strode through the world like a diminutive battle cruiser, and Blue went after her. Years passed and he lost his clumsy youth. His skin weathered and he grew a beard, into which he wove straggling plaits, knotted in odd colourful beads. Annie nodded in approval. It looks shamanic; she declared. It reflects your wisdom. Blue didn’t feel wise, but he kept the plaits in for Annie.

            They never got around to marrying, and one day, twenty years ago, Blue realised that the chance to have children had passed them by, all unnoticed. Annie shrugged when he mentioned it, and said that they had more important things to do; but Blue felt the pull of regret inside. He’d seen families at the camps that sprang up around the bigger sightings – scruffy urchin kids, lively with health; perched on their father’s shoulders, having water fights, chasing each other as they shook the stiffness of long journeys from their elastic limbs. He dreamt of a daughter: shy; with freckles, sun-kissed hair and a faded cotton dress. Once she had seemed so real to him, but now he wondered if his imagination had plucked her straight out of Little House on the Prairie.

            So many camps, so many journeys; generations of campervans. They’d chased up sightings in over fifty countries, on four continents. Watching the skies not just for alien objects but for anything else that the authorities could use to dismiss sightings. They saw St. Elmo’s fire after electric storms; they learnt about marsh gas so that they could distinguish it from extraterrestrial activity. They interviewed people who’d been visited by aliens, buoyed up by their descriptions of the beings smiling with their eyes. They found out where and when weather balloons were flying, and where the military were testing. In more recent years, the internet became invaluable. Annie and Blue ran a website themselves – skyisalive.net – where they shared information with believers around the world. And then there was the one thing Annie could not fathom. The Northern Lights. Aurora Borealis.

They had seen them in Alaska, and in Canada; and hearing the scientific explanation for them did not dull their splendour - the heart-soaring joy of witnessing them. It was like a drug. Secretly, Blue named his shy, freckled daughter Aurora. But whilst he knew in his heart that the lights had nothing to with alien life, Annie had nagging doubts. It seemed impossible to her that such a glorious display did not somehow demonstrate a link between our world and others, between mundane Earth and the infinite, unknowable expanse beyond. Blue watched the lights for the sheer joy of it; Annie watched them with a question mark, searching them for answers. They were like a riddle she couldn’t solve, as if the answers she sought were there, but in a language she didn’t speak.

So she had to see them one last time, after Blue had his heart attack. A lifetime of healthy living, fresh air and exercise and it turned out that he had a natural tendency to retain cholesterol. Just one of life’s little jokes. They had to slow down, stop travelling, take it easy, no excitement. No excitement - Annie’s face had fallen. They rented a little house in Thatcham; as good a place as any to settle, and in an area where there’d been several sightings in recent years – triangular light formations, moving strangely; fiery orange orbs. And their retirement present to themselves was one last trip north, to the frozen extremity of Sweden, to watch the lights again. Blue shut his eyes in the gloom of the kitchen. He asked himself for the millionth time, what if they hadn’t gone? What if they’d gone back to Roswell instead, to where it all began? How different things might be.

January was one of the best times to see the lights in Sweden. They stayed in a log cabin swathed in deep snow. Blue smiled sadly, remembering Annie’s small frown of concentration as she’d pulled on her thermals, packed their old backpacks, wormed her wrinkled fingers into her gloves. They saw nothing on the first two nights except their own breath, blooming in air so clear and still that it seemed to crystallize around them. Then, late on the third night, it began - wild colours pouring across the sky, taking their breath away. Smiling, Blue had glanced at Annie, and squeezed her hand. She was leaning back in her canvas chair, eyes wide to absorb every moment. Her jaw had fallen slack in awe. The lights stayed for almost an hour, and when at last the sky went black and the stars re-emerged, so dim by comparison, Annie’s fingers felt stiff in Blue’s grasp. He did not look at her for a long time, until the cold began to eat into him as well, and when he did he saw a dull film taking the shine from her eyes. He wondered, abstractly, if she had gone away with the lights.

Blue would not go to the lake at the Discovery Centre. He would not post the sighting on skyisalive.net. He would not call any of their old friends; or cross-reference the eyewitness descriptions with other sightings in the area, across the country or around the world. He had only read out the headline because he couldn’t not - the same reason he still made Annie’s toast each morning, watching the butter melt into the bread, and then watching it congeal again. None of it meant anything anymore. He wondered if it ever had. In the grey, empty kitchen, Blue combed the plaits out of his beard.