See You In September, page 1
Also by Charity Norman
Freeing Grace
Second Chances
The Son-in-Law
The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in 2017
Copyright © Charity Norman 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
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Set by Post Pre-press Group, Australia
For George, Sam and Cora Meredith, with all my love
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Fifty-five
Fifty-six
Fifty-seven
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Diana
2016
It doesn’t look like a scene of death. It looks like paradise. Wooden cabins dream in autumn sunshine, goats graze by the lapping waters of a lake. Even the hills seem placid, luxuriating in their pelt of native bush. She can’t hear a man-made sound: only the distant chuckle of a stream, the fluting and whistling of birds. The valley is submerged in a blue haze of peace.
Paradise.
Or not. Gaudy plastic stirs among the flax bushes. Police tape: a jaunty, jarring souvenir of tragedy. There are other signs too, if you look for them. Empty buildings, marker pegs on the beach. The authorities set up camp here, she knows, and stayed for weeks. Squads of divers plunged into the lake; dog handlers combed the shadowy folds of bush. They even used a drone to take aerial footage. She imagines them tramping around in heavy-booted incongruity, coaxing and bullying statements from people who desperately want to forget.
Until a few years ago, Diana had never heard of Justin Calvin. She’d never dreamed that events in a valley on the other side of the world could decimate her family. She and Mike were pretty bog-standard people in those days. They’d been married longer than the national average, got through his army years and come out the other side. Not rolling in money, not struggling. A redbrick- and-stucco semi in South London. Most of their worry, their focus and hope were centred on their two daughters. Nobody had gone off the rails. Not unless you counted Tara’s suspension for smoking behind the gym.
No sign; no sign at all of what was to come.
There’s a new sound among the cabins. It’s strong and clear and utterly unexpected. Someone is playing a piano: rippling, complex triplets with a haunting melody woven through them. A pair of fantails swoop and dive around Diana’s head as though riding on the currents of the song. In this strange and beautiful place, after so much loss, the music seems to speak of appalling sadness. It makes her want to cry.
She has a photo of Cassy, taken as they waved her off from Heathrow. One final picture. One final smile. A butterfly in a glass case. Have fun, they were yelling, in the moment it was taken. Watch out for man-eating kiwis! Diana has used it as her desktop background ever since. She greets her elder daughter in the morning, and last thing at night, and a hundred times a day.
The girl smiling out of the screen is dear and familiar and … well, she’s just Cassy. Voluptuous, long-legged, quick to blush. A thick plait hangs over one shoulder, an in-flight bag over the other. Her nose isn’t quite straight, never has been since it was broken by a rogue hockey ball, but there’s something arresting about the dark blue eyes and flicked-up lashes. She’s always had that wistful expression: a downturn at the corners of her eyes, as though she knows something that others don’t.
My God. Did we really make jokes about killer kiwis? If I’d seen what was around the corner, I’d have begged her not to get on that plane.
Across the lake, the volcano is a sleeping giant. The peace has a hypnotic quality. It stills your soul. It slows your breath. No wonder the media has become obsessed with this glorious wilderness. No wonder the police struggled to understand what happened here. No wonder the nation is still searching its soul, wondering who to blame.
She’s often wondered the same thing herself. There have been moments over the years when she’s found she has stopped. Just stopped dead. She was meant to be walking to work or feeding the cat. Instead she is far away, arms limp by her sides, gazing at the past.
It’s like watching a milk bottle falling off a table. It rolls and falls in nightmarish slow motion and yet it seems unstoppable. There was a time when the family was whole, and a time when it hit the ground, milk and shattered glass spraying across the tiles. In between is the moment when she should have caught it.
One
Diana
July 2010
Such a precious memory, those last minutes in Cassy’s bedroom. They were driving her to the airport soon, but there were no long faces. After all, this was just a glorified holiday. She’d be back before they knew it.
Diana heard laughter and put her head around the door. There they were, her daughters: twenty-one and fifteen, both taller than their mother. Cassy had dumped everything she was taking into piles on the floor and was trying to cram it all into her backpack. Tara sprawled across the bed, hair a dark fan on the pillow, music pouring from her phone. It sounded tinny and pointless to Diana, but perhaps beauty was in the ear of the beholder.
‘Mum!’ cried Tara. ‘For God’s sake, tell Cassy she’s taking way too many socks.’
Diana sat down at the end of the bed, glimpsing her ruddy complexion and silvery roots in the mirror. Dowdy, she thought, though without regret. No other word for it. Never mind. She could still scrub up when she had to.
Tara stirred an imaginary cauldron.
‘When shall we three meet again?’ she demanded in a witch’s croak. ‘In thunder, lightning—’
‘Third of September,’ said Cassy, stooping to retrieve three pairs of socks from her pack. ‘We’re due to touch down twenty-four hours before Imogen walks up the aisle.’
‘I wish you weren’t cutting it so fine,’ said Diana.
‘So does Imogen. She’s obsessed with this wedding. Never mentions poor Jack at all. I think he’s just a by-product.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
Cassy pouted. ‘She says I’m not allowed to get a tan.’
‘You’re kidding me,’ gasped Tara. ‘Bridezilla!’
‘Yep. Apparently it’ll make her look pasty if her bridesmaid is a bronzed goddess.’
‘Tell her to fake it. She’ll be faking it for the rest of her married life.’
Diana tried to be shocked, but her daughters mocked her. This is 2010, Mum, not 1810! They were a formidable team when they banded together.
‘D’you want to see the bridesmaids’ dresses?’ asked Cassy. ‘Monstrous! Hang on a sec.’ She picked up her phone and flicked through the photos until she found one: a puff-sleeved nightmare in bright purple.
‘Not good,’ groaned Tara, sh
Cassy stared at the photo in dismay. ‘Becca can pull off that colour, being a skinny chick. I’ll look like Barney the Dinosaur.’
‘You could get your own back,’ suggested Diana. ‘Marry Hamish and make Imogen wear an orange jumpsuit?’
‘Brilliant idea! But I wouldn’t go shopping for wedding hats just yet, Mum. We’re far too young.’
‘True,’ said Tara. ‘Then again, a bird in the hand. Hamish isn’t bad-looking, he’s rich as Croesus and—big plus—Dad likes him.’
Diana listened with flapping ears. She rarely dared to pry into Cassy’s private life, but Tara seemed to get away with it.
Cassy crouched by her pack, shoving in a sponge bag with both hands.
‘I think I annoy him sometimes,’ she said. ‘We don’t care about the same things.’
‘You mean he isn’t a raving tree-hugger like you and Granny Joyce,’ scoffed Tara. ‘I mean—Lord save us—he’ll drink coffee that wasn’t grown by a one-legged women’s cooperative in Colombia. What a total bastard!’ She was yawning as she spoke, stretching angular arms. ‘We can’t all be bleeding hearts, Cass. Oh my God, that’s spooky. Your door’s opening all by itself.’
The three of them looked towards the bedroom door, which creaked as it inched just wide enough to admit the family’s cat.
‘Pesky!’ cried Cassy, picking him up and kissing him. ‘Don’t creep about like that.’
‘He’s getting tubby,’ said Diana.
Cassy pretended to block her pet’s ears. ‘Enough with the body shaming! You want him to develop an eating disorder?’
She’d found Pesky on her way back from a party one stormy night: a mewing scrap of black-and-white, dumped in a charity bin. She got her friend Becca to lower her into the bin by her legs, bundled the half-starved kitten under her jumper and brought him home. Three years on, you’d never know the sleek king of the household had once been so close to death.
‘Dad doesn’t approve of this trip,’ she said, once Pesky had wriggled out of her grasp. ‘He was on about it again this morning. Thinks I should be doing an internship instead of gallivanting around the world.’
Tara snorted. ‘What a stuffed shirt.’
Diana was inclined to agree with Tara, though she’d never say so. Mike’s father had died the previous year, leaving cash to all his grandchildren. Cassy was saving most of hers but had splashed out on this adventure—her last, she said sadly, before the dreaded treadmill of work. She and Hamish planned a fortnight’s volunteering at a wildlife sanctuary in Thailand, followed by a few days on a beach, before exploring New Zealand.
‘I’m ready to roll.’ Cassy got to her feet, bouncing up and down to test the weight of her pack.
‘Passport?’ asked Diana.
‘Check.’ Cassy nudged an inflight bag with her toe.
‘Credit card? Mosquito repellent? Phone?’
‘Check, check and check.’
‘Condoms?’ asked Tara.
Diana smothered a smile. Cassy flushed pillar-box red and said her sister was a total embarrassment.
It was around then that Diana felt a flutter of unease—shapeless, nameless and immediately suppressed. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing. Thousands of students did this kind of thing every year, with their Lonely Planet guides stuffed into their backpacks.
‘Right then,’ she said, standing up. ‘Quick cup of tea before we go?’
•
The whole family made the trip to Heathrow, including Diana’s mother Joyce, who lived in a care home nearby and liked a day out. They reached the motorway in good spirits. Mike was driving, the girls were singing along to Magic FM. Joyce had fallen asleep.
Cassy tried to plait her hair in the back of the car, but twists and twines of chestnut-brown escaped. She was wearing jeans and a grey t-shirt, a jersey tied around her waist.
It was Tara who started the trouble. She didn’t mean to. She was never vindictive, just careless.
‘Hey, Cass,’ she said, as she sat between her sister and her napping grandmother. ‘What’s this about you dumping your law degree?’
‘I’m not.’ Cassy’s denial was fast and sharp, but Tara didn’t take the hint.
‘Well, that’s funny, because Tilly’s brother reckons you are. Said you’ve been to see the tutors and everything.’
Mike turned off the radio. No more music. No more singing along. Diana braced herself.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Cassy. ‘Honestly. Forget it. Tilly’s brother is an idiot.’
‘Doesn’t sound like nothing.’
‘Shh,’ murmured Diana, squeezing his upper arm. ‘C’mon, Mike. Not now. Not today.’
‘Cassy?’ insisted Mike. His voice was too loud.
Diana glanced around at the back seat. Cassy was biting her thumbnail, looking about six years old. Tara was pulling an agonised face and mouthing sorry.
‘I was just wondering about my options,’ said Cassy.
‘Why the hell would you do that?’ Mike raised both hands to head height and brought them down—slap!—onto the steering wheel. ‘Christ almighty! You’ve only got a year to go. Don’t tell me you’re going to throw it all away.’
‘I might have made a mistake, choosing law. That’s all. I maybe should have looked at something else. I’m not sure I want to be a lawyer.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re doing so well!’
‘Drop it,’ warned Diana. She squeezed his arm again, harder this time, but he wasn’t going to be deflected.
‘What modules did you say you’d chosen for September?’ he asked. ‘Company, intellectual property …’
Cassy sighed. ‘Employment. Competition law.’
‘Right.’ Mike was eyeing his daughter in the rear-view mirror. ‘By this time next year you could have a training contract in a city firm. You could be set up for life.’
‘That’s what worries me,’ said Cassy. ‘A lifetime of that.’
‘What does Hamish think?’
‘He thinks I’m mad.’
‘He’s got more sense than you. We’re not millionaires, Mum and I.’
‘I know.’
‘We can’t support you forever. We’d love to, but we can’t.’
‘I don’t expect you to support me.’
Mike carried on ranting all the way to Heathrow, despite Diana’s attempts to shut him up. The world’s more and more unstable … can’t live on air … I joined the army for a secure career with a decent pension, it wasn’t for love.
‘D’you want to end up serving Big Macs and fries?’ he demanded.
‘No.’
‘Well then! It’s dog-eat-dog out there. Millions of graduates end up unemployed.’
‘Leave her alone, for God’s sake.’ This was Tara. ‘It’s her life. Who cares whether she ends up working in McDonald’s?’
‘Stay out of this please, Tara.’
‘I only asked about course changes,’ said Cassy, sounding tearful. ‘I only asked. But I can’t do it. They said no way. I’d have to drop out and apply all over again, student loan, everything. And I’m not going to do that, so you don’t need to worry.’
The exit for their terminal was coming up. Mike swung off the motorway, running his hand through his hair.
‘So the upshot is you’re sticking with law?’
Cassy said yes, that was the upshot, and Mike said good, because he never had her down as a quitter. Tara said some people get their knickers in a twist over nothing, and Diana—who felt it her duty—told Tara not to be rude to her father. Mercifully, Joyce chose that moment to wake up.
‘Did I miss something?’ she asked.
‘No, Mum.’
‘Hmm. Could cut the atmosphere with a butter knife.’
It was true. The cheerful day had been ruined, and Diana could have throttled Mike. Desperate to salvage things, she tried to make conversation: empty twaddle about the weather—the flight—the traffic. Nobody helped her. Mike was parking the car when a text arrived on Cassy’s phone.
‘Hamish,’ she said. ‘He’s running late. Broken-down train.’
‘Is it going to be a problem?’ asked Diana.
‘No. They’re moving again already. He’s checked in online. Says he’ll meet us at security.’
The next half-hour or so was taken up with the maelstrom of the check-in queue, so there wasn’t time for family rows. Once Cassy had dropped off her bag, Mike offered to stay back to look out for Hamish while the others headed for security. This involved steering Joyce and her walking frame through the crowds and up in a lift.
