One Last Gift, page 18
Cassie whipped her head to the left, eyes frantically searching for whatever had gotten the two of them so excited. And then she saw it. A banner, small in comparison to the rest of them, in bold blue. It was her name. Cassie Rivers. Right at the top of the banner.
Her heart spasmed, and she sucked in her breath. It was Tom. It was like Tom was right there, shouting her name, trying to get her attention. And underneath her name, there it was.
It can be cold and wet, it’s true,
And also full of sheep, who knew?
It’s just across the border you’ll find
The little inn I have in mind.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God! Guys, what am I supposed to…” She grabbed her phone, took a photo of it. Then took several more, just to be safe. Her face felt hot, and she had the urge to cry and laugh at the same time. Around her, everyone was screaming as the boats passed right under her, the heat of many bodies pressing in around her. But she didn’t look at the boats. She stared at the sign with her name on. The sign Tom had put up, just for her.
This was insane. Tom was insane. How on earth could he have been sure she’d see this?
He’d planned on being here, she remembered again. So she supposed he would have made sure to position her just right. But if it hadn’t been for Hazel, insisting they watch it from here…
She read the clue again and her stomach turned. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to go on. He must have planned on giving her the rest in person, and now…She spun to look at Hazel and Josh. “I don’t—”
Hazel reached out, grabbed Cassie’s hand. Ignored the “Can you bend down, love?” from behind them. “Relax. Take a breath.” She slipped something out of her jacket pocket. An envelope.
“You have it?” Cassie breathed. “How?”
Hazel smiled a little. “He asked me for help with the advertising.” She paused. “I didn’t know if you’d go through with it, and I didn’t want to make you if you didn’t want to, but…Well, he said that in return for helping, I could be a part of it.” That smile again, tinged with sadness. “I was teasing him about using my help and getting nothing back, so he told me I could be involved.” Cassie could imagine it; it was the type of relationship they’d always had, that teasing, competitive one—almost a more argumentative sibling relationship than Cassie and Tom had had.
“You’ve had it all this time?”
“He made me promise not to give it to you until you found the clue yourself,” Hazel said softly, in a way that made Cassie’s eyes sting. She reached out, took the envelope from Hazel. And actually, she was glad Hazel had held on to it, had only given it to her now. She would have felt like she had failed Tom, somehow, if she hadn’t followed the treasure hunt as he’d planned.
“If you’re not going to watch, do you mind moving along?” a man with slightly graying hair asked from their left. It was a clear attempt to be polite, though he was wearing a scowl as he spoke.
Cassie blew out a breath. “Yeah, maybe we should…” The three of them fought their way out of the crowd, back toward the main park.
“I still can’t believe you were in on it,” Cassie said when they reached the grass area, trading the real view of the Thames for the screens. Josh shifted a little uncomfortably—perhaps feeling like this was a moment between them he shouldn’t intrude on.
Hazel shook her head, black hair swinging. “I can’t believe I almost let you miss this. Bloody Boat Race, I should have remembered when it was.”
Cassie looked down at the envelope in her hands, saw Hazel and Josh exchange a look. “Time for another Pimm’s, you reckon?” Josh asked.
“Yes, I think so. Cassie, do you want to wait here and we’ll come back?”
She nodded. They were giving her the time, she knew, to read the letter in private. And so, when they walked away, she opened it.
See! Trying new things is not that bad, is it, Chipmunk? And I reckon most of this Oxbridge lot only tried rowing for the first time at university…
Speaking of Oxbridge…I’ve never told you this, but I applied to Oxford. And I got in. I can literally hear you right now, screaming at me for not telling you. At least this way, you can get in a huff about it alone first, and then you’ll be calmer by the time you see me. But the point is—I didn’t go because I was scared to, Cassie. It felt too posh and out there and I didn’t want to go without Sam. I don’t regret it or anything—honestly, I don’t, I had the best time at Manchester and I’d still choose to go there if I could go back. But I’m imparting wisdom here—I don’t want you to be the same, to be afraid to do something new or different…
Cassie frowned. He’d gotten into Oxford? How—how had he kept that from her all this time? She’d thought they’d told each other everything. She would have told him. He knew everything about her life. OK, everything except, maybe, how she’d once felt about Sam. But that was different. She bit her lip, figured she’d have to digest the information later, and kept reading.
On a different note, did you know that Mum used to row?? I didn’t. I only found out recently, because I was trying to come up with the right clue (it’s great, don’t you think?), and remembered the oars at Claire’s, so I asked her about it—apparently Mum was on the team. Shame neither of us got the gene, hey? I would’ve looked great in all the rowing lycra.
Cassie paused again, thinking of Claire snatching the oars away from them. Cassie’s mum’s oars, maybe? Or even if not, a reminder of her mum, of a hobby she’d once had. Maybe that’s why she had snapped that day, rather than because of anything they were doing, specifically. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Claire had lost her sister when they lost their parents.
Anyway, in case you need extra help on the clue, because I know I went a bit wild, here are your P.S.s:
I’d head westward if I were you.
I always thought Of Pubs and Men was a good name for a B&B, don’t you agree?
Also, might be nice for Linda to tag along?
Chapter Twenty-One
Sam couldn’t believe how cold New York stayed all through April. He sat hunched on a bench, a gray sky threatening rain overhead, staring at his phone as he waited for Toby, who was meeting him at the youth center, before they went off to explore the wonders of Brooklyn. Toby had an apartment this way as well—rented, not owned, but still—so the plan was to stay for a few days. Toby had been staying with a friend on Long Island last night, so Sam had made his own way here and now he was early, having overestimated the time it would take from the Hamptons house.
He reread the message from Cassie as he waited—yet again. He’d sent her a message last night, unnerved by the lack of updates—what if there were some problems at that end?
We’re waiting on a solicitors’ meeting on Monday. I’ll let you know how it goes though!
He should tell her it was him. He was still feeling guilty about explicitly lying about the fact that he knew Linda, but he’d panicked and hadn’t known what to say—because if he’d said “yes,” things would have gotten trickier, wouldn’t they?
He was going to do it. Going to tell her it was him, so he could stop feeling like he was deceiving her. He actually brought up her number, dialed.
“Hello?” Her voice was a little cold, distant. Of course it would be. She would have seen his name flash up on the screen, and she’d made it perfectly clear how she felt about him. He felt his throat close. He couldn’t do it.
He hung up instead, feeling like a total coward. But he couldn’t just turn around and explain. It would sound too weird, and she’d want to know why he hadn’t told her in the first place. Besides, he wanted to keep the door open, to be able to help her with the pub again if need be. And OK, he was unlikely to be able to help on the financial front again, but he didn’t want her to throw it back in his face, if she found out the money was his. He didn’t think she’d actually do that—she wasn’t that petty—but best not to risk it.
His phone flashed with an incoming message and he jolted. But it wasn’t Cassie.
Can we talk?
Jessica. Shit. Heat trickled down the back of his neck, despite the cool day.
“All right, Mr. Malone?” A hand clapped his back and Sam nearly dropped his phone. He looked up to see Toby standing there in his Burberry coat. “Sorry to keep you waiting, been here long?”
“Nah, it’s all right,” Sam said, as a way of non-answer. He got to his feet, followed Toby to a slightly run-down-looking building—red-bricked and almost prisonesque in feel, with the smell of weed lingering in the air. “You sure they won’t mind me coming in? I can just wait out here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s freezing. It’ll just be a quick sweep of the place—I’ll only ask a few questions. The editor basically told me what to write already, piece of cake.”
“Right.” Sam followed Toby inside and looked around what he assumed was some kind of reception, given the desk at the front. It looked a little like a doctor’s waiting room, minus the chairs, though there were posters all along the white walls, clearly in an attempt to brighten up the place.
“Hello, hello.” A woman came rushing into the room from a door to the right, smiling at them both politely. “I’m Sheila.” Her accent was pure New York, her face open and friendly, dark, wiry hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. Despite the smile, there was something shrewd about her dark brown eyes. At a guess, Sam would put her in her late forties. “You the reporters then?”
“That would be me,” Toby said, all charm, stepping in and taking her hand in a firm handshake.
“Oh yes, hello.” Sheila shook Toby’s hand and gave Sam a semi-suspicious look out of the corner of her eye, as if wondering what he was doing here. But after she’d assessed him for a moment, Sam seemed to pass some sort of test and the woman smiled again. “Come on then, I’ll show you around.” She started talking as she walked them to the door she’d just come from, her words tumbling into one another in a way that was both slightly difficult to understand and oddly soothing. “We get a mix of kids in here,” she was saying. “Homeless teenagers, runaways. Some come along because they don’t know where else to go, I guess. We don’t tend to ask their stories, unless they want to talk about them. It’s open all week—we don’t have beds or places to sleep, but it’s somewhere for the daytime, and somewhere that’s always open, always friendly, never demanding or questioning.”
She led them into another room, this one brighter, the walls painted pastel green. It looked open and friendly—sofas in one corner around a TV, a pool table taking center stage, alongside table tennis. There was a bookshelf in one corner, full of books and board games that looked a little underused. Sam felt several pairs of teenage eyes on him as they moved in farther—why were teenagers always more judgmental than adults? Was it, like, a hormonal thing?
“We had a big fundraiser a few months ago, managed to do a bit of a remod. The idea was to make it somewhere people actually wanted to come and hang out.” She gave them both a smile, as Toby nodded along, saying, “Excellent, yes,” and making other noises of amazement and agreement. Sheila raised her eyebrows subtly at him, and Sam wondered if she somehow knew that he wasn’t a real reporter.
“So this is what we call the ‘chilling room,’ ” she said, the air quotes obvious in her tone, “but this next room is what a lot of them come for, I think—we’ve certainly seen a rise in the number of visitors since we did this up.”
Sheila took them through a second door and held her arms out to encompass the room. Sam had to admit, it was pretty impressive for a youth center. It looked like some kind of indoor sporting center, though obviously on a mini scale. There was a big indoor basketball hoop; a kid was there, already shooting hoops. A trampoline in the corner, with some kind of hanging contraption that presumably meant you could do flips or whatever; those gym ropes you get that are way harder than they look. And a bouldering wall.
An image of Tom, falling off rocks much bigger than the brightly colored fake ones, slammed into Sam’s mind. He took a breath, forced it back. Sheila and Toby were walking away now, Sheila still explaining how it all worked here, and Sam rocked back on his heels, scanning the room. There was a kid climbing the bouldering wall; he stopped about halfway up, face pale, arms shaking a little. A skinny boy, midteens maybe, with slightly greasy black hair. Sam hesitated, then crossed to him.
“You need to use your legs a bit more,” he said. “They’re stronger than your arms.”
He had a flash, then, of Tom saying almost exactly the same thing when Sam had first gone bouldering with him, Claire driving them to the center and waiting around for them to finish. Tom had been a few times already and loved it, but Sam had been nervous, he remembered. They must have been about eleven, something like that, and Sam remembered the feel of his arms shaking at the top of the wall. He’d glanced down, and the ground had seemed a lot farther away than he’d expected.
Tom was next to him, hair flopping into his eyes as he grinned. “Fun, right?” No hint of fear there, as he hung off the wall.
“Yeah.” Sam thought he’d done a good job at keeping the shake out of his voice, but Tom cocked his head, noticing something. Sam glanced down again and swallowed.
“Noooo,” Tom said, his voice still playful. “Don’t look down.” He paused, considering. “Though it doesn’t matter anyway. They have mats and the ground isn’t that far. Look.” And with that, he literally launched himself backward off the wall, landing on the thick blue mat with a thump, laughing.
Sam let out a bark of laughter too, hesitated, then, heart thumping, copied Tom. He landed right next to him and Tom whooped, and then they were both laughing in that way you did when you were kids and couldn’t stop. By the end of the session, Sam had forgotten about being scared, had gone home to his mum and declared he was going to do climbing for a living, to which she’d made supportive noises as she’d made fish fingers and chips.
Back in the present, the boy on the wall was glaring down at him, saying nothing. He could read it, though, the tension in his body. Could remember, dimly, the feeling of those nerves.
Sam shrugged, kept his voice easy, casual. No big deal. “I’d relax your grip a little. If it’s only your fingertips keeping you on, then you’re in trouble.” It was something both he and Tom had been told once, on a week-long climbing holiday that his mum had saved up for for ages. He got a scowl at his suggestion, but the boy kept climbing, and did seem to be taking Sam’s comments on board as he reached the top of the wall. Then, without saying anything or showing any sign of being pleased that he’d made it to the top, the boy started his descent, slow, careful. Coming down wasn’t always easier than going up, Sam knew. Around halfway down, the kid looked down at the floor, and frowned. “Hey,” Sam said, pushing off the wall he was leaning against. “It’s OK, just keep going.”
The kid shot Sam a suspicious look, but did keep going, right down to the bottom. “Nice work.”
The kid gave him another suspicious look, but this time, it looked like he was trying not to break out into a smile. “It’s the first time I’ve made it all the way up and down again,” he said, his voice softer than Sam had imagined it would be.
Sam slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Yeah?”
The boy nodded. “Yeah.”
Toby came up behind him, clapped him on shoulder. “You ready?”
Sam saw the boy slink off at the same time as Sheila came up to join them. “That’s Liam,” she said, watching the boy leave. “He doesn’t talk to many people.” She gave Sam a questioning look, and he shrugged.
When they got to the reception area, Sheila slipped a leaflet off the desk and handed it to Toby. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to get it into the article, but we’re hiring at the moment.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Toby said, with the confidence of someone who has no idea what they’re talking about.
“You’re hiring?” Sam asked.
Sheila gave him a measured look. “Yes.” She handed a second leaflet to him, and he took it automatically. What must it be like, working somewhere like this? “It pays a pittance, obviously, and it’s part time, but, well, if you know anyone, tell them to give us a shout.”
Both Toby and Sam assured her they would, and Sheila showed them out, Toby making a big deal of thanking her profusely. Sam found himself looking at the leaflet again as they walked away from the youth center and toward some sort of bar that Toby wanted to try out. It was insane. Totally ridiculous to consider it. But there was a small part of him that felt almost hopeful at the idea of it. At the idea of trying something just a little bit different. And that hope made him think that maybe—just maybe—there might be a way out of this hole for him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cassie stepped into Linda’s pub, feeling that familiar tug of nostalgic love as she took in the wooden bar, the beams, the fireplace, now cold in the corner. She tried not to think about the last time she was here, nearly four months ago. The memory of Tom’s funeral resurfaced despite herself, and she took a breath, allowing the grief to wash through her.
This time, though, she wasn’t here to mourn him—she was here so that she could collect Linda, as he’d wanted her to, and so that they could find the next clue. Wales. Across the border, to the west. She’d figured it out—Tom was sending her to Wales.
Linda came running out of the door to the kitchen, red-and-white tea towel tucked into the top of her jeans. “Oh, Cassie love!” She rushed toward her, enveloping her in a big hug, and Cassie breathed in that familiar smell of coffee. “It’s been too long.” She stepped back, holding Cassie at arm’s length and giving her a shrewd look up and down. “You look thin. Are you eating properly?”
