Jack nods. ‘One of Cassie’s friends told him, apparently. The thing is, I’ve asked him not to visit, but Mum thought she saw him in the hospital café the other day. I just don’t want him knowing about the baby. I think it could send him over the edge again.’
Jack pauses, looks down the ward and bends his head lower, closer to Alice’s ear.
‘He turned up at ours completely out of the blue on the last anniversary of April’s death. He really upset Cas, implied it was Cas’s fault he cancelled a memorial weekend for April, all sorts of shit.’ Jack pauses and looks at Alice as if to ensure he has her full attention. ‘There was an argument. I tried to defend Cas, get her to stand up to Marcus, but she got a bit pissed off with me, to be honest.’ Jack clears his throat and frowns. ‘Cas miscarried after he drove off.’
Alice is nodding her head slowly, and, encouraged, Jack keeps talking.
‘I know you said she might be able to hear us, and I don’t want to risk her getting upset if she hears Marcus. I really, really can’t let that happen.’
Alice keeps nodding her head. She pats Jack’s arm.
‘It’s all right, Jack. It’s OK. We don’t let anyone visit her without your permission anyway, as we agreed, but if you give this Marcus’s full name to reception we can be especially careful, OK?’
I blink again. The movement catches Alice’s attention and she looks over towards my bed, looks me in the eye, but she just missed it.
So close that time.
‘Thanks, Alice. I don’t mean to sound cold. I just, you know, I just want to make sure Cas … Cas and Freya are safe. It kind of feels like the only thing I can do.’
Alice nods again. ‘Of course, of course, Jack.’
There’s movement at the end of the ward. Jack and Alice both turn towards it. I can just see two doctors and a small herd of student doctors cluster like sheep for afternoon rounds.
Alice looks at the watch on her chest and says, ‘I guess that’s our cue.’
‘Thanks, Alice. I appreciate it. And you like the name?’
‘Very pretty.’ But Alice is back to biting her lip. As Jack starts to walk away, she says, ‘Oh, Jack?’
He turns back to Alice. ‘Yes?’
Alice looks lost, disorientated for a second, as though surprised to hear herself asking for Jack’s attention again.
‘You did pick up the envelope Brooks left for you?’ she asks after a pause.
Jack looks slightly relieved, as though he anticipated bad news. He smiles at Alice. ‘Yes, I picked it up over a week ago. It wasn’t anything too important.’ He gives her a little wave and walks away.
Alice watches him leave. She goes back to biting her bottom lip again, pulling at the skin with her teeth, her eyes slightly narrowed.
I recognise that look; I’ve seen it on Ange’s face too many times. It’s the focused, slightly pressurised look of someone who thinks they’ve just been lied to.
Paula’s on shift again tonight. I know it’s around 3 a.m., because Paula’s a woman of habit. She carefully positions her second snack to give some relief to the final part of her night shift. It sounds and smells like popcorn this morning. I hear the door slowly open just as the first kernels start to pop; it makes for a strange soundtrack. My heart clutches and I know it’s him; he’s back.
Paula has left me with my chin to my chest, so I see more of him tonight as he limps towards Cassie like an injured shadow. Her curtain sways as he moves to the side of her bed, where Alice stood just a few hours before. I think about Jack warning Alice about Cassie’s stepdad, Marcus, how worried Jack was that he’d get onto the ward. It’s him. It must be him.
He stands grimly over her bed. He doesn’t move for a few minutes until I start to see him shake, his shoulders pumping up and down.
He’s laughing. He’s fucking laughing, the sick bastard.
Jack made him sound a bit weird, but he never said he was a complete fucking mad man. I can do nothing but stare as he moves closer to her, and lowers himself slowly down into her visitor’s chair.
My skin senses the air tighten around me, like the air itself is being slowly sucked away. I squirm within myself as he props his elbows onto the edge of her bed and he presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as his head starts shaking back and forth, back and forth. His shoulders rise up and down and I hear him suck in a damp-sounding chesty breath, and I realise he’s not laughing, he’s sobbing.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.’
At first I think I’ve finally lost it, that my brain has short-circuited but the longer I watch and the more I hear those words, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ the more convinced I am that this is real, that the night visitor isn’t Marcus at all, and it can’t be Jonny, because whoever it is begging for Cassie’s forgiveness is a woman.
15
Cassie
Cassie sits at Jonny’s old pine kitchen table, the surface almost completely covered in scraps of paper, handwritten sums in pencil, receipts and invoices. She planned on bringing it all home with her, but it had started raining and it just felt easier to stay at Jonny’s rather than hauling everything down the lane in the rain. Besides, they keep most of the equipment – the sterilisers, jam pans – at Jonny’s now. There’s more space and Jonny doesn’t mind the mess like Jack.
OK, where to start?
She picks up a torn piece of paper, an ‘I owe you’ written in Jonny’s billowy hand, for some money he took from the jam jar full of coins they jokingly call ‘petty cash’ to pay for breakfast one morning. He’s doodled in pencil at the bottom of the page, more of a sketch really. Cassie stares at it and recognises her own ear, slightly indented at the top. April always called it a ‘pixie ear’. Strands of hair float around her ear, and she recognises the small diamond studs Jack gave her on their wedding day. She lifts her hand to stroke the fleshy drop of her lobe between her thumb and forefinger. Jonny doesn’t miss a thing.
Cassie, concentrate!
She puts the scrap piece of paper back down on the table and pulls her laptop out of her rucksack. Jack’s been on at her for ages about starting some sort of financial spreadsheet to keep track of all the Farm Jam money. She reckons they’ve made around two grand this summer, her and Jonny. Not bad for what was supposed to be just a hobby, a way of getting involved in the community, meeting people. She’s not sure she can account for all that money now, not since they’ve gotten into the routine of going to the pub after most events, eating whatever they want and drinking expensive wine.
How different things could have been; she’d be around seventeen weeks by now, thinking about buying prams and baby names, not trying to decide between the Shiraz or the Pinot Noir.
She gets up and flicks the kettle on.