‘I’m well, thank you. How are you?’ She actually sounded a little odd.
‘Yep, also well. I’m doing something pretty huge this afternoon.’ Cassie’s call felt quite serendipitous, given that she was the only person who he’d ever talked to properly about his background and was the one who’d encouraged him to talk properly to Ella again. He had a sudden overwhelming urge to confide in her now. ‘I’m on my way to meet Ella and we’re going to visit Leonie’s grave together for the first time.’
‘Oh my goodness. Oh, James. That’s huge. I should go. I’ll call another time.’
‘No, don’t go. I’d like to talk. If you’d like to.’
‘Of course I would. So you and Ella…?’
‘Yes. It’s hard. When my phone rang I was almost on the brink of bottling it.’
‘You know what? I totally get that it’s scary and that you’d probably likeanything, like sudden vomiting or a minor injury,anything, to happen to get you out of it. But, actually, I’m sure that it will be a very good thing to do. Cathartic.’
‘Yep. You’re right that I would like to do pretty much anything else, and, yes, you’re probably right that it’ll be a good thing to have done. But right now it feels like an almost insurmountable step. I can’t really imagine getting from here to later in the day. Like I mighthaveto walk away.’
‘No. You can do it. Break it down. Just one thing at a time. At the moment, you’re on the phone to…’ she paused ‘… a friend. And you’re walking somewhere. I can hear the noise of the traffic. So you’re just going to carry on with that walk. And then when you get there, you’ll say hi to Ella. And so on. You can totally carry on walking while you talk to me. One step at a time.’
‘You’re right. I can do that.’ God, he missed talking to her every day. Maybe they could start doing that again in due course.
They ended up talking for the whole of the rest of his walk to the cemetery. He told her about how Patrick was taking his nieces to the cinema in Leicester Square while he and Ella met, and how they were all then going to stay the night with him again and he was going to babysit while Ella and Patrick went out for dinner. Astonishingly, Cassie even managed to make him laugh a couple of times.
‘I’m here,’ he said eventually. The cemetery was very flat and he could see Ella in the distance. Even at a good couple of hundred metres he could tell that she didn’t look relaxed. Something about the way she held her body. He checked his watch. No, he wasn’t late. Ella was early. ‘I’m sorry; I’ve been talking about myself for the past fifteen minutes. How are you? Was there something specific that you wanted to talk about?’
Cassie paused infinitesimally, before saying, ‘Nothing, just a chat, really. I hope it goes well now, with Ella. I’ll be thinking of you.’
‘Could I call you later? Or tomorrow? Hear your news?’
‘Of course. Any time. Don’t feel that you have to, though. You might not want to talk this evening. Or you might. Any time.’
James would definitely like to speak to Cassie almost any time. Hereallymissed her. ‘I hope it isn’t too difficult now.’
‘Thank you. You’re a good friend.’
‘So are you. I’ll be thinking of you. Speak soon.’
‘Bye.’
‘Hi, Ella.’
She turned round and he saw that his sensible, organised, solid, unemotional older sister had tears running unchecked down her face.
He really didn’t want to do this.
He wanted to turn around and walk awayso much.
His feet were almost itching with the desire to run.
It was all too much.
He was going to go. He was going to let Ella down because he always let family down and he just could not do this.
And then Cassie’s words echoed in his mind. One step at a time.
Maybe hecouldget through this like that.
Okay. Give Ella a hug.
He moved closer to her and put his arm stiffly round her shoulders.
