She backed away and returned to the kitchen to measure out the rice. ‘Thanks, Leo. Much better than me doing it.’
Leo returned the drill to its case. ‘No problem, told you it wouldn’t take long.’ He snapped the case shut and she thought that might be it, that he’d leave her to it, but he left the case there on the floor and came over to the kitchen. ‘I could stay, if you want the company?’
She’d put a pan of water on to boil and had been pouring the rice into a cup when his words jolted her and the rice gushed out all of a sudden, overflowing the vessel.
‘Where’s your dustpan and brush?’ He side-stepped the rice that had landed on the floor as she told him it was under the sink.
Nina cleared up what had spilt onto the kitchen benchtop and before she could change her mind she asked, ‘Do you want to stay?’
‘I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t.’ He still had the dustpan in his hand and turned to throw the remnants away.
‘If you want some wine there’s a bottle in the cupboard next to the glasses. Actually there are a couple of bottles leftover from the other night.’ Her nerves almost got the better of her, but a glass of wine might calm her down.
‘Sounds good to me.’ Leo got out the glasses, but paused before he opened the red wine he’d found in the same place. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘The wine or the meal together?’
‘Both. I mean, people might talk.’
‘Stop.’ He was teasing her, she could tell. ‘And the gossip mill is already underway. Maeve says we’re getting on well. So did your gran.’
‘Well we are.’ He poured the first glass and handed it to her. ‘But you used to worry about what other people thought.’ He poured a glass for himself.
‘I never did.’ With the water on for the rice and the chilli all right for now she leant against the kitchen bench.
‘You did so. It was one of your worries.’ The wordworrieshad her interest. ‘You put it in the jar, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
She stumbled over her words. ‘I’d forgotten the worry, but I hadn’t forgotten the jar.’ She just never thought he would’ve remembered. It felt so long ago and she’d assumed Leo would’ve buried that memory about her along with the rest when she left the bay. ‘I wonder if anyone ever found it,’ she said, looking at him over the top of her wine glass.
‘Who knows.’
‘I can’t remember half the things I wrote now.’ She wasn’t sure whether to be glad about that or not. ‘I’m sure a lot of them were ridiculous.’
‘They weren’t.’
‘I appreciate the vote of confidence.’ Another sip of wine relaxed her some more. ‘I hope nobody found it – what if they traced it back to me, to us? We’d be ridiculed. It could be all over social media.’ But as she laughed and tried to joke she realised he wasn’t doing the same. ‘Leo? You know something don’t you?’ He kept averting his gaze, taking particular interest in the wine’s label on the back of the bottle.
‘You always could read me like a book.’ He looked up. ‘Ok, admission time. You know how we threw the worry jar in the sea?’ She nodded. ‘Well about a year after you left the bay my dad brought out the jar.’
‘He found it?’
‘He saw us throw it in the water that day and went to grab it before it was washed out further. He told me he hadn’t ever looked inside but he’d seen us pushing pieces of paper into it before and he thought we might regret getting rid of them all. He was going to try to sound me out about it and throw the jar back into the water if that was really what we’d wanted – we’d never have had to know what he’d done he said – but he didn’t get much out of me when he tried and then he forgot about it until he was looking for some old oars in the loft and found it again. He handed it to me and told me he’d never opened it.’
‘He really didn’t look inside?’
‘He says not,’ Leo answered. ‘I think if he had, he might have thrown it back in the water. It would’ve all been nonsense to anyone else but us. I mean imagine if someone had found it thinking there was going to be a mysterious message inside or a treasure map and all they found was our crappy scribbles.’
When Leo leapt up and shot into the kitchen she realised the pan of water must’ve boiled over. It snatched their attention away from the worry jar. He turned down the gas, she grabbed some kitchen towel to mop up excess water and once the pan was topped up again and heading towards a simmer she asked, ‘What did you do with the jar?’
‘I kept it.’ He pulled his key from his jeans pocket, set down his glass of wine and left her dumbfounded. ‘Wait here.’
It seemed to take forever for him to bring the jar back, when really it had only been a couple of minutes. ‘I can’t believe you still have it.’ She briefly glanced at the jar as she checked the heat on the cooktop and made sure they didn’t have another accident.
‘Didn’t seem right to throw it back into the water when you weren’t around, so I stashed it away and kind of forgot about it.’ He set down the orange glass jar, scratched on the sides, the tinny lid tarnished on the edges.
‘Have you looked inside?’ She had a dulled awareness that the jar contained feelings that had long since been left behind, others that hadn’t, some trivial worries, others that ran much deeper.
‘Of course not.’
