Outside, Cassie drops down onto the lawn between the shed and the cottage. Her bare toes rake against the grass, decorated with daisies and other wild summer flowers Cassie can’t name. White clouds scud across the blue sky like cartoon drawings, and a may bug like a rusty, tiny bomber, rattles unseen nearby. Cassie always thought it was especially cruel that April died in the summer, a perfect sunny afternoon, two years ago to the day. April loved the summer. Cassie leans back, and opens herself to the sky. She closes her eyes and tries not to think too much. She feels weightless, as though she could lie there for ever.
She dozes but after a few minutes her phone rattles, fracturing the silence. She pulls it out of her pocket, hoping it’s not Marcus calling again. She’s already ignored one call from him today, lying to herself that she’d call him back later; ignoring a second call would feel too cruel. But it’s not Marcus; it’s Nicky. Her friend’s name, as familiar to Cassie as her own, flashes on the screen, desperate for attention. She hovers her thumb over the ‘Accept’ button, but she pauses and suddenly it’s too late, the answer phone clicks on.
Cassie tells herself she’ll call Nicky back later.
She lies back and closes her eyes again, trying to find her peace, but she can’t. Her phone buzzes again, with Nicky’s voicemail this time. Cassie peaks a hand over her brow against the sun as she presses to listen to the recording on her phone speaker. Traffic and the painful hammering of roadworks explode out of her phone, the noise dystopian and alien in the soporific summer slumber of the little garden. A longing twists like a knife in Cassie. London, the smell of molten tarmac, the distracted buzz of people, people everywhere.
‘God, sorry, Cas. Hope you can hear me.’ Nicky’s voice breaks just over the scream from traffic and roadworks. Cassie can hear her rushing, trying to get past the noise. ‘I’m at Victoria. Jesus, it’s always a nightmare around here. I’m just calling to say I’m thinking of you and April so much today. I can’t believe it’s been two years already. It’s nuts. Anyway, I really hope you’re OK. It must be beautiful down there. You’re so lucky; London’s filthy. Maybe call me later if you can, OK? Let’s sort out a date for me to come down again, yeah? Lots of love.’
Cassie’s arm drops heavy on top of her grassy bed. What’s wrong with her? She thought she’d be OK today; after all, it’s just another day, isn’t it? Cassie remembers Jack’s line that ‘grief is a kind of art form’. She rests her head back and thinks maybe there’s some truth in it. Maybe now is a good day to try and give in to it. She’s got April’s diary from Mexico, when she became pregnant with Cassie. It’s upstairs in a drawer. She considers reading it stretched out on the grass. That’d probably do the trick – release some of the tears she can feel building in her throat like a storm.
She’s about to get up when her phone buzzes again. This time it’s a text message from Charlotte.
Thinking of you and April today, Cas. Let me know if you need anything. All my love, C x
Charlotte and Cassie haven’t talked about Mike’s affairs again since their chat in the car park at the food festival, the spring grass under their feet, the oily tang from the cars and trucks parked all around them. Cassie wants to know more. How did Charlotte hide it from Jack all these years? How has she let him go on believing his dad was some kind of hero and not the slippery cheat he really was? Doesn’t she want revenge? She has a new admiration for Charlotte, a new, dizzying perspective on the love she has for Jack, always putting his feelings before her own, even though at times her heart must have crackled and spat with anger in her chest. Cassie strokes her stomach. She hopes she’s capable of the same love for her child, and promises the little life that, whatever happens, she’ll try her best to be a mother like Charlotte.
Without warning, she hears the crispy munch of wheels on the little gravel drive at the front of the cottage. She lifts herself up onto her elbows; her heart lifts. Jack. He’s come home early as a surprise so she won’t be alone! Her knees click as they bend for her to stand and, feeling better already, she runs on her tiptoes on the lawn and around the corner of the house, where she thinks she’ll bound headlong into Jack’s arms. She runs sharply around the corner and then has to skip herself to a stop. She knows the old Volvo parked in front of the cottage, but like a face she hasn’t seen in years, it takes a moment for her to place it. The driver’s door opens and a pair of long legs in corduroy trousers and round-toed brown leather shoes that look at least two decades old land on the pebbles. Marcus uses the door to pull himself to his full height. She sees him wince as his bad hip takes on his weight. He opens his arms to her and she walks gingerly over the pebbles towards him, trying to smile at Marcus through her surprise.
‘Marcus, what are you doing here?’
She plants a carefully placed kiss on each of his cheeks, his face as crumpled as his plaid shirt, far too hot for this weather. He smells stale, mothballs and wood smoke. The smell makes Cassie feel twelve again, disappointed he doesn’t smell like the dad she always dreamed of, aftershave and expensive leather.
‘What are you doing here, Marcus?’ she asks again, feeling the pebbles dig into her feet.
Marcus’s eyes widen as he says, ‘Cassie!’, as though she’s the one surprising him.
‘Marcus, I did not expect to see you!’ she asks again, smiling so he doesn’t feel foolish.
He frowns again, glances up at the cottage and says, ‘I thought it would be nice to see you for a cup of tea. It’s not that far really.’
‘You mean you were in the area?’ Cassie asks.
Marcus shrugs. Cassie knows he wasn’t. He drove two hours all the way from the Isle of Wight, ‘on the off-chance’ she’d be in.
Marcus squints again at the friendly face of their red-brick cottage.
‘Lovely place, Cas,’ he says. He’s grown more wrinkles, his face a map of wiggly lines, the ones around his eyes most deeply riven. April always loved his white hair long but even she would bundle him off to the hairdresser’s if she saw him now. It’s crimped and wild, but flat at the back from where his head rested for the long drive. He’s grown more fragile in the seven months since the wedding, as though the scales of his life have been weighted by his years and have at last tipped him into old age.
Cassie takes his arm. ‘Come on, I’ll make us some tea,’ and she leads him, both of them hobbling slightly over the pebbles, towards the cottage.
They sit on the old wooden table and chairs, greened with outside living. The table wobbles as Cassie balances a teapot, cups and saucers on top – the cups and saucers a wedding gift from one of Charlotte’s friends, until now unused.
‘So, you’re painting again, Cas?’ Marcus looks at Cassie’s hands. She rubs her thumb over a streak of blue paint.
‘Yeah, just for fun,’ she says, shy suddenly. ‘I’ve got a little shed over there where I work. I’ve got some of Mum’s canvases in there actually, I’ll show you in a bit.’