‘I know. I barely recognise myself,’ James said. ‘I’m also having Ella and her family to stay for the weekend in two weeks’ time.’ He’d never confided fully in Matt about his family – he was a great friend but it was too hard to explain his own family set-up to someone from a solid background with sober, together, caring parents – but Matt did know that James and Ella didn’t see each other a lot. ‘I was thinking I could maybe get you all over for Sunday lunch. With them. With the kids.’
‘Wow. Mate. We’d love to.’ Matt nudged the ball onto the tee and looked up. ‘Would you cookthe lunch yourself?’
‘Yes, I think I would.’
‘Wow.’ Matt took a swing. ‘I’ll bring a takeaway menu as a backup. Just in case.’
* * *
‘Thank you so much for inviting us. This has been such a wonderful weekend. You’re a super popular uncle.’ Ella smiled at James. They were walking together in Hyde Park while Ella’s husband Patrick ran ahead with their eight-year-old twin daughters. ‘It’s a mark of how little time that we’ve spent together in recent years that I was gobsmacked when we got back and you’d baked with the girls.’ In the end, James had bottled inviting his friends to meet his family, and had instead suggested that he look after the girls to allow Ella and Patrick to go out for a relaxed lunch, just the two of them, and they’d jumped at the chance. ‘I didn’t think you did that any more.’ She hesitated for a moment, and then continued. ‘You used to bake with Leonie.’
‘Yeah,’ James said. Oh God. Choking up.
‘Do you…?’ Ella cleared her throat and then said nothing. She stopped walking and said, ‘Could we sit on this bench for a moment?’
‘Sure,’ said James, not pleased. She was blatantly going to carry on talking about Leonie. This was why he’d avoided Ella so much for so long.
Ella sat down at one end of the bench. He sat down at the other. He sensed her turn to face him. He carried on staring straight ahead.
‘I totally get that you don’t want to talk about Leonie,’ she said. ‘I have talked about her, to Patrick and to some of my closest friends. It helped. But I understand why you wouldn’t want to and I respect that. I want you toknowthat I respect that and that if you and I start to see each other more regularly again I will not try to talk about her. I think we could acknowledge she existed, like for example just now mentioning about how you used to bake with her and how cute—’ her voice wobbled ‘—she was when she wore her apron and stood on the chair next to you. But we don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to and we never have to talk about the rest of it. Ever, if you don’t want to. But, James, we’ve both lost one sibling, and our mother. We don’t have to lose each other. We could do this again. When we were young, we were together against the world. I’ve missed you.’
James stared straight ahead of him at two squirrels playing together. Rats with tails. If he told Cassie he thought that, she’d probably get annoyed.
‘I saw red squirrels over the summer,’ he said eventually. ‘In Maine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a red squirrel in London.’ He carried on watching them for a while and then looked round at Ella. ‘I don’t think I can talk about Leonie but I’d like to spend more time together,’ he said. ‘I’ve missed you too.’
She shuffled along the bench a bit and reached her hand out towards him. He took it and squeezed, hard.
‘Love you, sis,’ he said. He had a lump the size of a boulder in his throat.
‘Me too,’ she said. She took her hand out of his and wiped under her eyes with her fingers. ‘Sorry. Getting sentimental in my old age.’
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes.
Then Ella said, ‘So what made you invite us for the weekend? If you don’t mind me asking.’
James didn’t mind her asking, in fact so much so that he was going to give her a straight answer, with almost full information.
‘At the risk of sounding as sentimental as my older sister—’ he smiled at her ‘—my few months in Maine had quite an effect on me. Different pace of life. I was bored at the beginning, to the extent that I decided I might as well spend time with the neighbours. It’s a very neighbourly place. And, you know, the animals.’ He’d shown his nieces, Daisy and Lottie, more videos of the alpacas and chickens this afternoon. They’dadoredwatching them. Daisy had immediately decided that she was no longer a horse but an alpaca and had stopped galloping around the flat, a relief, and instead had started trying to extend her neck and twitching her face, which would definitely get annoying quickly if you lived with her. ‘It all just made me think, I suppose.’
Cassie had made him think, too, if he was honest, but he wasn’t going to mention her because Ella might misinterpret what he said and think he was interested in Cassie romantically. Ella and Patrick had met at medical school and had got married when they were twenty-five and had the girls when they were twenty-nine. James was pretty sure that Ella would like him to settle down too. But he wasn’t like her. Their mother had always said that she didn’t know who Ella’s father was, and, given that she’d contacted both James’s father and Leonie’s and had done her best – however limited that was – to assist them to develop relationships with their fathers, it seemed likely that she really hadn’t known who he was. It also seemed likely, to James, that Ella’s remarkably steady temperament had come from her father. It certainly hadn’t come from their mother.
James knew that both his parents were incapable of great relationships, his father because he was an arse, and his mother because she’d been an addict, so it didn’t seem likely that he himself would be a great candidate for a long-term relationship. Or being a good father. So he wasn’t going to go down either route. But no point ever mentioning that to Ella because it would just upset her. People who were happily loved up usually seemed to think that everyone else around them would be better off if they were loved up too.
‘Well, I’m grateful then to your Maine trip,’ said Ella into the silence, ‘because this has been great. Thank you. Would you come and stay with us for a weekend soon? The girls and Patrick and I would all love to see you.’
James nodded. ‘I’d like that.’ He genuinely would.
* * *
‘Hi, Cassie.’ He hadn’t spoken to her over the weekend while Ella and Patrick and the girls were staying. He’d told her before they came that he probably wouldn’t be able to chat. Really, they should probably stop talking so regularly. Although there was always a lot to say. ‘How was your weekend?’
‘It was lovely. We had our annual pumpkin festival and, drum roll please, I won the “best oddly shaped pumpkin” prize.’
‘I’m impressed. I must also be a new person or mad because I genuinely think that sounds like fun.’
When James had finished telling Cassie about his weekend, she said, ‘So I have a question for you. My big meetings with my editor and the TV company are next Thursday and Friday, so I’ll be in London for a long weekend, and I wondered if you’d like to meet on Saturday and come with me to the exhibition that Jennifer gave me tickets to for my thank-you-for-babysitting present?’
‘That would be great.’ No thought required. ‘Where are you staying?’
