35. Chapter 35
There was a knock on the office door.
‘You decent?’ Cassie called.
‘Har-dee-har,’ Lucy shouted. ‘Come in! Why are you knocking on your own office door?’
Cassie flung open the door. ‘Well, you never know with you.’
Lucy huffed.
‘It was once, and I was trying to get my Hallowe’en costume on for the event at—’
‘Yeah. What I saw certainly scared the shit out of me,’ Cassie said.
‘Did you just start this conversation to insult me, or was there some grander purpose?’ Lucy grumbled.
Cassie raised her eyebrows.
‘What if insulting you was my grander purpose?’ She grinned. ‘The printers dropped off the proofs for the Christmas brochures.’
She dropped a packet on Lucy’s desk.
Lucy stared at it but made no move to pick it up. For the past few years, poring over the proofs for the Dulcetcoombe Christmas brochure had been one of the highlights of Lucy’s year. She loved working with the designers to define the colour palette and layout, selecting images and visitor quotes to include, and checking the proofs for errors and corrections. And then, a little later in the year, seeing the finished glossy brochures on display in local shops, libraries and venues. Seeing people pick them up and browse through them, overhearing parents say, ‘We must take the kids this year,’ always made her smile.
But this year, she couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to get excited about Christmas in September. She slumped in her chair and stared listlessly at the volunteers budget on her computer screen that she’d been looking at for the past hour without making a single update.
‘You love Christmas!’ Cassie said.
Lucy shrugged and plucked at a knotted ball of elastic bands.
‘And you love proofs. Christmas,’ Cassie tapped a finger on the envelope, ‘proofs.’
Lucy was unmoved.
‘I’m sure they’re fine,’ she said, shrugging and shifting the envelope to the side of her desk. ‘And I don’t love Christmas anymore. I’ve gone off it. Along with ice cream, puppies and those pictures of babies asleep in flowers. Anything cute and cheerful, keep it away from me—it has no place in my life anymore.’
Lucy saw Cassie eyeballing her desk.
‘Hasn’t Dot said anything about this mess?’ Cassie asked.
She poked at a packet of half-eaten chocolate chip cookies.
Lucy batted her hand away.
‘Her husband made her go on a Caribbean cruise. Apparently, he said she spent too much time here, and he hadn’t retired for her to abandon him to spend all her time with an old wreck every day.’ She tidied a pencil back into a penholder. ‘I think he meant the house, not me. But it’s touch and go.’
‘Oh, Lucy,’ Cassie said, her voice softer now. She sank into the chair opposite Lucy. ‘Have you still not spoken to him?’
‘What is there to say? He obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.’ Lucy’s mouth turned down, and she fiddled with her computer keyboard. ‘I don’t think I even know how to talk to him anymore, to be normal. It’s all gotten too weird. He messaged me the day after we got back—just said he hoped I had a good drive home.’
‘Oh, well. That’s…considerate of him…what did you say?’
‘I said it was fine and said I hoped the train journey wasn’t too bad. And then he just put a thumbs-up emoji.’
Lucy pulled an elastic band to full stretch and then let it snap back onto the ball, narrowly missing her fingers.
‘So I sent a smiley face. And that was the last time we were in touch. That was nearly two weeks ago.’
‘Wow.’
Cassie let out a breath.
‘I know.’ Lucy sighed. ‘It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.’
‘Well,’ Cassie reached over and prised the elastic band ball from Lucy’s fingers. ‘It’s a fine line between comedy and tragedy.’
‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ Lucy said. ‘I keep nearly,’ she squeezed her fingers together to show a tiny gap, ‘picking up the phone to call him, but the way he left it, I’m not sure he wants to hear from me. And he hasn’t called me, so it’s not like he seems eager to talk. He said he’d be leaving for New York in a few weeks, and that was two weeks ago, so if he hasn’t contacted me by now, I guess that’s it.’ She added, ‘I didn’t go to yoga on Saturday in case he was there—might have been weird.’
‘Lucy,’ Cassie said, in the voice one uses to explain a maths problem to a six-year-old for the third time. ‘As far as I can see, the only person committed to making this weird is you. This is not a big town. Are you never going to go to yoga again? Are you going to do your shopping two towns over, or hide inside and wait for online deliveries?’
‘I don’t need to worry, do I?’ Lucy said, her bottom lip wobbling. ‘He’ll be in New York soon, then we can both move on.’
She sniffed and picked at a Post-it stuck to the side of a book.
‘I got an email from Ollie and Sophie today,’ she said. ‘They’re still on honeymoon, back in a couple of days, but the wedding photographer sent them some early sample pictures, so they sent me a link.’
‘Mmm,’ Cassie said, her voice wary. ‘Are they nice?’
‘I haven’t looked,’ Lucy sighed. ‘That’s my karmic punishment, isn’t it? Never being able to look at my brother’s wedding photos because Jack will be in half of them because I am a big fat liar, pants on fire.’
‘Don’t forget drama queen,’ Cassie said helpfully. ‘Let me look,’ Cassie said, gesturing for Lucy to slide over her laptop. ‘You know, it wasn’t your wedding—the sample might not actually include any of you.’
Lucy pulled a face and slid the laptop over.
‘There’s a password in the email for the online gallery page,’ she said. ‘I just have to hope my mother doesn’t choose a big family shot to blow up and frame, so I have to stare at Jack’s face whenever I go home. That might finish me off.’
Cassie flapped her hand at her to shush and started browsing.
‘Gosh, Sophie looked gorgeous,’ she said. ‘They’re a really good-looking couple.’
Lucy brushed some crumbs into her bin.
‘And your mum looks fab. What was the colour scheme? Was it lilac?’
Lucy groaned and waved for Cassie to give her the laptop back.
‘Nope, lavender.’
‘Isn’t that the same colour?’ Cassie asked, batting Lucy’s hands away. ‘Get off, I’m still looking.’
‘Ohh,’ Cassie said, suddenly falling still.
Her eyes flicked up to meet Lucy’s.
‘Oh God,’ Lucy hid behind her hands. ‘Is it awful? Does that fascinator look ridiculous? Do they all have Jack in looking like he’s my community support officer or something? What is it?’
‘Oh, Lucy,’ Cassie said softly, passing her the computer.
Lucy turned the screen and looked.
A picture of her and Jack taken at the couple’s photoshoot her mother had arranged filled the screen. It wasn’t one of the staged ones—the artful gazing down, the gazing into the distance, the hand holding. It was a candid shot taken near the start, just after Lucy had awkwardly perched on Jack’s knee when they were still struggling to keep a straight face. She hadn’t even realised Jess had captured any of that. Lucy’s head was tipped back, laughing. Jack was holding her upright to stop her slipping off his knee and falling backwards onto the bench, while Lucy’s hand reached across his chest and clutched his lapel. Jack was grinning and looking at her with adoration.
Lucy swallowed. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at it. It was a beautiful photograph. They looked like a couple full of joy and love.
She raised her hand suddenly to shut the laptop, but Cassie reached up and stopped her.
‘Click the button to the next one,’ she said.
Lucy hesitated, her hand still poised to shut the laptop, but then she clicked next. This one was in black and white and was taken just before they kissed. Lucy was looking down—she remembered feeling silly and nervous. Jack’s hand was on her cheek, his thumb brushing her skin below her eye, his eyes on her mouth, his lips parted as he leaned in. It was a very sexy photograph.
Lucy felt like she couldn’t breathe. She felt pressure rising up in her chest, and her throat tightened.
In a small, strangled voice, she said, ‘The photographer made us do that one.’
Cassie found a squashed box of tissues under some folders on the desk and passed them to Lucy.
‘No one made him look at you like that,’ she said.
Lucy remembered then the tenderness and passion of that kiss. In the middle of the day. No alcohol, no nighttime giddiness, no arguing about who had spoken to who. Nothing to confuse or explain away why it happened. A peck on the lips would have been enough for the photo. Or they could have flat-out refused to do it—the photographer wouldn’t have cared. She plucked a tissue from the box Cassie was proffering and wiped at her eyes.
‘Oh Cassie, I’m such a mess. I’ve made such a mess of it all!’
The pressure rising in her chest bubbled over, and Lucy was blubbering into a handful of tissues.
‘I made it all so complicated, asking him to pretend to be my boyfriend.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘What was I thinking? And then I wouldn’t listen when he tried to talk to me about New York, to explain, at breakfast the morning after we…’ She felt her face flame. ‘The morning after the wedding. I was so upset and angry, and I….’ She let out a shaky sigh. ‘I just don’t know how to talk to him anymore. Which might not matter, because I don’t even know if he wants to speak to me.’
Cassie stared at her, her gaze direct.
‘Lucy, I don’t know if it’ll work out. Sometimes things are complicated. But if it doesn’t, I’d bet a weekend of childcare it won’t be because you don’t have any feelings for each other.’
‘Wow,’ Lucy sniffed. ‘A weekend of childcare. That’s a serious wager.’
‘Lucy,’ Cassie leaned over the detritus on the desk and took Lucy’s hands. ‘You can sit here and wallow in self-pity and wonder about how Jack feels about you and if he’s leaving or staying—but you’ll never know what could happen between you if you don’t ask.’
‘I know in my gut that—’ Lucy interrupted.
‘Oh, fuck off!’ Cassie waved her away. ‘You don’t know. If you really knew, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be finding a way to move on, not telling me you no longer like Christmas. Christmas, Lucy!’
Lucy looked at her, mouth down-turned, eyes wary. She tore at the edges of her tissue.
‘What do you think Dot would say if she was here?’
‘About your relationship woes? I think she’d tell you to get a grip and stop hiding behind that desk like a child. And then she’d have a lot to say about the state of this office,’ Cassie said, looking at the piles of files, books, and coffee mug rings covering the desk.
Lucy tipped her chin up, hiccuped, and slid a pile of papers into a drawer.
‘Strong woman, Dot,’ she said. ‘Even if she has had to leave her precious volunteers list with me because it was cruise or divorce.’
‘So,’ Cassie pressed as Lucy wiped at her red nose. ‘What are you going to do?’