‘Didn’t this photo used to be in that frame we decorated with shells April found at the beach?’
Sometimes, it would be nice if Nicky didn’t question everything. Cassie doesn’t respond, but she knows Nicky wants an answer.
‘Cas?’
‘Oh, yeah, it was, but we were given those ones as a wedding present.’ Cassie glances over at Nicky and shrugs. ‘It looks so much better in a proper frame, and besides the shells had started to fall off the other one.’ That was a lie; they hadn’t started to fall off. Jack binned the old frame, assuming Cassie had bought it at a charity shop or something. When Cassie told him her mum found the shells, he tried to go to the dump to look for the old frame but Cassie told him not to bother; she’d never liked it that much anyway and, besides, the shell frame had looked ridiculous in their sleek white kitchen.
Nicky picks up a photo of another lost parent, in an identical silver frame. Cassie knows which one it is without looking at it. It’s Jack about eight years old, on his dad’s shoulders, in his football kit, Jack’s muddy knees hovering by his dad’s ears. Mike’s holding onto his son’s ankles. They’re both grinning at the camera, dimples on their left cheeks, dark hair combed away from their faces, like nothing bad could ever happen in their world.
‘They look exactly the same,’ Nicky says, peering into the faded photograph. ‘You said he died from a heart attack?’
Cassie nods slowly, putting the glasses on the oak kitchen island. She finds it hard to talk about Mike with someone other than Jack or Charlotte. Even though she’s family now, it’s still not her story; she feels she can’t tell it the way it should be told. She starts filling an ice bucket to keep the bottle cool as Nicky puts the photo carefully back in its place on the shelf.
‘I loved meeting Charlotte at the wedding. She’s amazing,’ Nicky says, taking the ice and bottle opener off Cassie.
The wine glasses clash against each other as Cassie picks them up by their stems.
‘She is,’ Cassie answers. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how she did it, after losing Mike – coping with her own grief and still raising Jack.’
‘I guess that’s what your mum did as well,’ Nicky says gently.
Cassie looks at her friend. She doesn’t know her face like she used to, as if her freckles and the familiar notes of her face have subtly moved like stars in a night sky. Nicky always seems to find a way to remind Cassie about the exotic way she grew up, never knowing her dad, the fact that she is basically an orphan now. Nicky always resented her suburban, secure childhood. She’d moan on and on about her two younger brothers, and their family holidays to Greece, while Cassie shared a bed with her mum until she was twelve and stayed in South London all summer.
Nicky, oblivious to Cassie, is still staring at the photo of Jack and Mike.
‘I think we’ve got everything. Come on,’ Cassie says, turning away from Nicky and walking towards the safety of Jack’s low, gentle voice outside before Nicky can say anything else.
They eat salmon fillets, salad and new potatoes, as if it’s summer already. After a few glasses of wine, Cassie feels herself soften as Jonny tells her about the dog-rescue centre where he adopted Dennis.
She’s pleased she didn’t snap at Nicky before. That’s Jack’s influence, she thinks; he soothes her … calms her fire.
As she talks to Jonny, she keeps half an ear on Nicky and Jack’s conversation. Jack’s telling Nicky how busy he’s been at Jensen and Son, the family property company founded by his grandfather and run by Mike until his death. For the last twenty years, the company had been grinding along, managed by an able but uninspiring ex-lawyer hired by the board. Jack was advised to gain experience in another company before taking a position at Jensen and Son, so Jack worked for the last ten years for huge developers in London. Soon after he met Cassie the board agreed he was ready to join the small, rural company – an opportunity that had been the deciding factor for their move from London to Buscombe.
Now he is asking Nicky’s advice on recruiting a new project manager. She won’t have a clue, but Cassie knows she’ll pretend to be expert, and she’ll feel good that Jack asked her opinion. Cassie feels herself relax knowing the two of them are getting on; it seems silly now that she ever thought they might not.
Jonny opens another bottle of red wine. ‘So, Jack was saying that in your spare time between getting married, doing up a house and moving to the country you’ve set up a business?’
‘Painting?’ Cassie frowns. She’s too much in Jack and Nicky’s conversation to know what Jonny’s talking about.
‘Oh, that must be another one then. No, he was saying something about jam?’
‘Ah, jam.’ Cassie laughs. In the autumn months after April died, Cassie found unexpected solace in making jam after Jack bought her a box of plums from his mum’s garden. She had no idea what to do with the plums, but found a recipe in between the sticky pages of one of April’s old cookery books and found the steady preparation of the fruit, the careful weighing of the sugar and the bubbling of the pans to be a sweet meditation, a break from the monotony of the uncertainty, the strangeness of her new life. She gave Jack a jar of jam to give to Charlotte before she’d met her future mother-in-law, and Charlotte and Jack told her it was so good she should sell some locally. She resisted at first, but then worried it might look like she wasn’t making an effort to fit in – that she wasn’t fully embracing the new, rural Cassie.
Jonny raises the bottle to Cassie’s glass. He doesn’t pour wine like Jack: a precise, rich tap of wine. No, Jonny tips the bottle so it slops in a wave, creating a tiny tsunami inside her glass.
Cassie raises her hand to get him to stop.
‘That’s like, half a pint!’ she says, looking at the glass. Jonny sloshes the same amount into his own glass and keeps talking.
‘So, Jack said you’re selling jam next weekend at a local festival?’
‘Oh no, I’m not doing that any more.’
Jonny takes a long gulp from his glass, like he’s drinking water not wine.
‘How come?’
‘Oh, it’s just I’ve got a lot on and Jack has to work. I can’t drive so it’s just too much faff to sort out really.’
Jonny holds the plump bottom of his wine glass between his middle fingers as if he’s worried someone might steal it if he left it on the table.
‘That’s a shame.’ He pauses for a moment, before continuing, ‘I’ve got a van and am around this weekend if that’s helpful?’
Cassie looks up at Jonny. It’s one of Charlotte’s friends organising the small fete and she’d been putting off making the difficult phone call, telling her she was going to cancel and letting her down.