Over the last couple of weeks Cassie has gone from eating mouthfuls of jam with a spoon straight from the jar to feeling like she’d puke at the thought of even smelling any jam. She must have overdone it, like listening to one song too many times. She’ll get Jonny to open the taster pots today.
Cassie thought Charlotte was going to offer to help set up, but she hasn’t seen her since Charlotte handed Cassie the tablecloth in the car park and said she was going to see if Maggie needed help.
Cassie looks around the space. People are slowly starting to trickle in, but there’s no sign of Charlotte. She heard a rumour that representatives from Flavour Awards were going to be coming today, incognito. Charlotte wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, would she? Cassie had hoped Charlotte would report back to Jack, tell him how good the stall looks, how hard Cassie’s worked to make it look professional but still keeping the cottage, home-made feel.
‘Right, that’s the last one.’ Jonny, back in his flip-flops, shuffles towards Cassie with another cardboard box. He lowers it carefully on the floor behind the trestle table and wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist.
She briefly touches his back, feels his muscles move under her hands. She doesn’t say thank you; he knows she’s grateful, just like he’s grateful to Cassie.
He swigs from his bottle of water. Cassie took a sip from the same bottle earlier and almost spat it out, the water had a salty, chalky taste like clay. Jonny must have dropped an Alka Seltzer in it before leaving home.
He’d been on the phone last night to Lorna, his wife in London. He always drinks too much when he talks to Lorna. Cassie knows things have been worse for Jonny since Cassie answered Jonny’s home phone while he was out walking Dennis two days ago. Lorna went mental on the phone, called Cassie a bitch and a marriage wrecker before Cassie hung up and left the phone off the hook so Lorna couldn’t call back. Cassie had been left shaken, but Jonny held her, reminded her that Lorna’s unwell. He said it wasn’t Cassie’s fault as he poured her a glass of wine.
‘You didn’t see Charlotte anywhere, did you?’ she asks Jonny.
‘Not since we arrived,’ Jonny says, looking either side of them, as though he expects Charlotte to be hiding near them.
‘OK.’ Cassie walks around their stall. ‘I just realised I left the flyers in the van. Can I have the keys?’
‘I’ll get them,’ Jonny says.
‘No, no, I’ll go, I want some air, I’m feeling sick again.’
Jonny throws Cassie the keys and grins at her. ‘Great catch,’ he says with a wink, as her hands close around the keys in mid-air.
Outside Cassie checks Maggie’s stall and the ladies’ toilet, before she looks in the pop-up coffee shop. Her mother-in-law is seated on one of the rickety-looking tables, her hand clasped around a polystyrene cup. Her eyes are cloudy, like she’s lost somewhere in her memory. She only looks up, slightly startled, when Cassie puts her hand on her shoulder.
‘Charlotte, I’ve been looking for you! You OK?’
‘Oh, Cas, sorry. I just wanted to have a quick sit down.’
‘OK, well, I’ve just got to nip to the van quickly,’ Cassie says. ‘You won’t leave without coming to see our stall, will you?’
Charlotte picks up her cup, drains the last of her coffee and says, ‘I’m finished anyway, I’ll come with you now.’ Charlotte stands and the two women walk side by side back to the van. The grass is flattened, tattooed with tread from tyres. A mood Cassie hasn’t met before hangs around Charlotte today like a fog; she doesn’t know how to lift it, so it’s a relief when Charlotte speaks first.
‘What’s the latest on Jonny and his wife? Jack said she’s still in London?’
Cassie turns to look at Charlotte, but her mother-in-law keeps her eyes fixed forward. Cassie can’t read her expression under her sunglasses.
‘She’s not very well. It became impossible for them to live together any more, so that was a big part of Jonny’s decision to move down here.’
‘What do you mean? Surely if she’s not well she needs her husband more than ever?’
Cassie looks at her mother-in-law. Sometimes she can be quite unsubtle.
‘This is confidential, but she’s mentally unwell, Charlotte. She became violent towards Jonny, started stalking one of his female colleagues at work before she was sectioned.’
‘Why? Was he having an affair with his colleague?’ Charlotte asks, a clipped coolness in her voice.
Cassie frowns; Charlotte’s usually so astute.
‘Charlotte, I really don’t think now …’ Cassie was about to defend Jonny, but Charlotte has suddenly stopped walking.
Cassie walks back a couple of paces to stand opposite her.
‘Don’t be so naive, Cassie.’ The older woman pulls her sunglasses off her face like they’re burning her suddenly. ‘Either he lied to his wife or he didn’t.’
Cassie realises she’s never heard her gentle mother-in-law angry before.
‘Where is all this coming from, Charlotte?’ Cassie shakes her head, she’s only ever seen Charlotte’s eye swell with happy tears. ‘You seem really upset.’
Charlotte raises her eyes to something in the distance, over Cassie’s shoulder; she squints as her eyelid starts pounding again.
‘Cassie, look, I’m going to tell you something, because I trust you and because I think you should know so you can maybe understand my concerns about Jonny.’
Cassie feels the fog lift slightly between them. Charlotte trusts her. She’s OK. She nods and waits for her mother-in-law to keep talking. Charlotte’s shoulders drop slightly, as if finally giving in to an invisible weight.
‘After Mike died, a woman came to our house. She told me she’d been Mike’s lover. That they were together on and off for years. She came because, after he died, she found out she wasn’t the only one, that Mike had been having affairs with other women.’
Charlotte pauses, her lips purse, pulling together as if they’ve been sewn by invisible thread. She breathes out before she starts talking again. It sounds sore.
‘She told me because she knew now how it felt to be the other woman, how it felt to be lied to for so long. She thought she was doing the right thing.’ Charlotte shakes her head, a laugh dry and mirthless sticks in her throat like a shard of glass.
‘The truth is, I think I knew already. Some deep, fundamental part of me knew he wasn’t fully mine.’ Silence swells around them.
‘Does Jack …’
Charlotte’s eyes finally lock on to Cassie’s face.