‘I think that would just be awkward. Francesca won’t want me there anyway.’
The tightness around his eyes loosened. ‘Thank you for making it easy for me. I know it’s not ideal. I’m hoping we’ll be able to persuade Francesca to go. She’s refused point blank to visit Caitlin’s grave so far, but it might, I don’t know, reaffirm in her mind she’s not coming back and she has to get on with the here and now, stop her being so angry.’
‘And what about you?’
He kissed the top of my head. ‘I’ve been lucky to get a second chance. I don’t feel angry any more. Just sad for anyone who dies too young and misses out on the life they could have had.’ He tried to make a joke. ‘You know, all that quality time with Francesca.’
I still didn’t know what face to put on when anyone talked about Caitlin. I felt caught between apology and guilt. Though we started going out long after Caitlin died, no one believed us. And it was ironic that I’d only met Nico because his wife was ill and my mum had helped out with the cleaning and shopping. And sat with her towards the end.
When I went to pick Mum up, Nico would invite me in if she hadn’t quite finished. After the first couple of times when I nearly keeled over with the effort of not asking anything to which the response could be ‘shit’, ‘crap’ or ‘what do you bloody think?’ I texted Mum instead of knocking on the door so I could wait in the car. Mum, though, saw owning a mobile as an exercise in battery conservation rather than a vehicle for communication. So with no agenda, Nico and I got to know each other at the worse time of his life until I looked forward to seeing him every day. And nearly a year after Caitlin had died, we’d bumped into each other in town, had a coffee and remembered how much we enjoyed each other’s company.
No doubt I wasn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable about the circumstances. But I probably needed to knock that on the head sooner rather than later so we didn’t creep forward with Caitlin’s name seeping between us like an embarrassing smell everyone was trying to ignore.
‘Why don’t you let me do lunch here for everyone? Make it clear that Caitlin is, and should be, part of our lives and no one needs to feel ashamed of missing her?’
Nico leaned forward and kissed me. ‘You are so lovely. And I am very lucky. Would you really do that?’
‘No worries. I’ll get Mum to help. She’ll be so pleased to see everyone again. And then you can all concentrate on Francesca without stressing about your lunch burning to a cinder. You’ll need something hot. It’s so flipping blowy up at that cemetery. Will you let your mother know?’
Nico nodded. ‘Of course. Or you could nip over the road tomorrow? If you’re feeling brave enough? She’s friendlier than she seems. I bet she’d be pleased to see you.’
I wasn’t sure Nico was right about that. In fact, Anna living opposite us was affecting how often I wanted to go out of my front door. For the first time in my life, I was looking in the mirror before I left the house. And as for popping in, of all the vibes Anna gave off, ‘Do drop in for a croissant and a cappuccino’ wasn’t one of them.
It would take more than my shiny new wedding ring to catapult us into the category of family. Anna probably still thought of Mum as ‘staff’, as she had been when she was looking after Caitlin, with Anna firmly in the role of lady of the house and chief instruction issuer. And my little seamstress business wasn’t going to impress her when Nico owned one of the biggest garden centres in Brighton: ‘You’d be amazed how much people will pay for a little bay tree. Plants are a gold mine these days. Makes a fortune.’ Her real boasting, however, was reserved for her firstborn favourite, Massimo, who could barely walk into a room without Anna rushing over to tell him to put his feet up after working so hard. ‘He’s an accountant, you know, doing so well, at one of the best firms in the country.’ No doubt Anna saw herself standing at the top of the social ladder peering down at the Parker riff-raff at the bottom, churned up with fury that we’d managed to haul ourselves up the rungs to be part of her life on an equal footing.
But of course, we’d never be equal in her mind. She’d seen me arrive to pick up Mum in my battered old Fiesta. She knew we lived on the council estate. It was easy to see how she’d come to the conclusion I’d clapped eyes on Nico, spotted a house with a downstairs ‘cloakroom’ and a utility room and plotted to reel him in.
But I couldn’t really blame Anna. Sometimes I wondered whether I’d had a subconscious plan myself. Except, in the middle of all the emotions pecking away at me, whenever I was close to him, everything in me lightened as though I hadn’t realised what a huge gap there was in my life until he filled it. And even Francesca’s resentment of me couldn’t make me wish I’d never met Nico, never fallen for his gentle way of making me feel special without a price to pay. Rashly, I agreed that I’d talk to Anna first thing in the morning.
But I didn’t get organised as early as I’d hoped by the time I’d waved everyone off to school and work. The preparations to darken the doorstep of the Scary Mary matriarch herself – plucking my eyebrows, flossing my teeth, searching for my eyeliner, which I found on the handle of the hamster cage – of course – took forever. I’d just popped to the loo by the front door when I heard a rustling and a key in the lock. I registered a rush of embarrassment that I hadn’t shut the door and Nico, or worse, Francesca, had come back for something and was now going to catch me with my pants round my ankles. But to my horror, Anna marched in, a swish of black crepe trousers, silk blouse and scarf knotted at the neck in a way that would have made me look like a pirate on a hunt for treasure.
Christ. I expected her to have a key to our house ‘for emergencies’ but unless I’d missed smoke billowing from the roof, this was just an ordinary Friday morning. Anna did a dramatic step backwards at witnessing me in mid-flow, as though she’d caught me doing something unspeakable with the hamster.
‘Just give me a minute,’ I shouted.
I probably wasn’t as horrified as she was. No one would ever have got to work or school from Mum’s if we’d all taken our turn in the bathroom one at a time.
Some swift pant-pulling up later, I found Anna sitting in the kitchen, her eyes flickering to the toast and butter bloodbath Sam had left behind, her fingers encountering a little blob of jam and recoiling as though a cockroach had mounted a mating ritual right in front of her. I made a big show of drying my hands so that she wouldn’t add filthy non-handwasher to her list of things I didn’t do as well as Caitlin.