One Last Gift, page 31
He reached the gravestone, set down the bunch of flowers he’d bought from the local flower shop. He’d gone with the florist’s recommendation, something bright, but not too in-your-face. There was a metal container with holes in the top, but there were already flowers there, someone else having recently come to visit. So he set his next to them, on top of the stone. His eyes traced Tom’s name, gold on orange-and-black granite. Cassie would have chosen it, he realized—she was the next of kin. And it suited him. It was bright, stood out, like he’d done in life.
It had been a year now since Tom had died. Exactly a year. And it felt both like no time had passed, like there might be a chance it hadn’t really happened at all, and like an impossible, infinite amount of time had gone by, time weighted by the absence of his best friend.
He hadn’t been to the grave since the funeral. He’d made excuses to himself—he’d had wedding prep, been in New York, London, then had this climbing gig in Wales. But really, he just hadn’t been able to face it.
“I’m sorry about that, mate,” he said quietly, resting one hand on the cold granite. “It’s been hard, getting by without you. And I miss you.” He blew out a breath, watched the mist hover before disappearing. “God, I miss you. You would love Wales. I know, I know, it sounds boring, doesn’t it? But it’s actually cool and kind of beautiful. And it’s fun, teaching the kids. Fun seeing some of them want to hate you when they come because they’ve been shipped off by their parents or are trying to play it cool, and fun winning them round. You would’ve been great at it.”
He was going back to Wales now: he had decided to commit to moving there, seeing how it went. He’d come to visit his mum for a bit but he knew that, for now, Wales was where he wanted to be. And though he was slightly playing it by ear, the manager at the temporary gig had been impressed with him, asked him to stay on. He thought that he’d like to set something like that up himself one day. Set it up as a charity, maybe, work with disadvantaged kids and give them a chance to get out, do something physical. He still had lots to figure out on that front, but he reckoned he could do it.
He’d managed to find a little cottage in Snowdonia, close to both the beach and the mountains. He was loving the countryside more than he’d thought he would, having always been drawn to the city as a teenager. But he felt like he could breathe, really breathe, for the first time in a long time. A little like when he’d been in Cornwall, with Cassie.
“Cassie’s OK too,” he whispered to Tom, feeling like he had to reassure his friend. “But you probably know that. She’s probably been here, right?” Today? he wondered. Would she have come too, on the anniversary of his death? “But if she hasn’t, don’t be too hard on her. It broke her a bit, when you died, I think. She loved you so much. But she’s tougher than she looks, and I think, I really think, she’ll be OK. I…” His throat closed. It felt odd, to talk about her like this, almost like he was lying to Tom, somehow. What would he have thought, about Sam having feelings for her? Feelings that he hadn’t ever been able to make go away. “I guess all I can say is I’m not going to hurt her. That’s why I’ve let her be, OK? I’ll figure it out, but she’s going to be OK.” He said it firmly, then clapped the top of the gravestone, the way he would have clapped Tom on the back.
He turned, picking up two more bunches of flowers. Smaller, but still beautiful. He’d brought them for Tom and Cassie’s parents, who were buried here, right next to their son. He remembered coming here one year. It had been Mother’s Day, and Cassie had made a card for her mum at school. They’d put it in a plastic wallet to protect it from the rain, set it on the grave, and they’d stood, Tom and Sam each holding one of Cassie’s hands. Too young, really, to know what to do, to say, but they’d all stayed there together in solidarity, looking at the picture that Cassie had drawn.
Sam had gone home to his mum afterward and hugged her, stayed with her while she was cooking, worried about leaving her alone, and she’d let him be, singing to herself as she made spaghetti bolognese, like she knew he didn’t want to talk, just be there.
He’d always admired the two of them, for getting through it, for growing up without their parents and being OK. Then Cassie had lost Tom too. And still, she’d managed to get through the year, had quit her job, moved somewhere completely new. Jesus, how strong did you have to be to come through that still fighting? The thought of it made him miss her more than ever. Physically miss her, something inside him aching at the thought that she was out there, living her life away from him.
“I’ll see you, mate,” he whispered, his voice thick and a little pained. He brushed his hand over Tom’s gravestone, a hard lump in his throat that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times he swallowed. And that was OK. It was OK to feel like that, to want to cry. Because it was evidence that Tom had meant something, wasn’t it? Evidence that he wouldn’t be forgotten.
He took a deep shuddering breath, then turned away, back through the graveyard, past the Christmas tree outside the church and along the gravel pathway to the parking lot. He nodded to someone coming up the path the other way, someone else with flowers in their hand and a lost loved one to grieve.
He got to the parking lot, the sound of his shoes crunching on gravel strangely soothing, and held up the key to unlock his car. Then he jerked to a stop.
His dad was there, getting out of his car, slamming the door behind him. They’d met up once, in London, and it had been awkward and uncomfortable. But they’d talked, a bit—just small talk, nothing serious—and most noticeably, neither of them had yelled at the other. His dad had promised to be in touch more, but Sam hadn’t really believed him. Too many years of being let down for things to be smoothed over by one drink. Yet here he was now.
“What are you doing here?” It came out a little harsher than he’d meant it to.
His dad cleared his throat. “Your mum, she thought I might find you here. She said you were on your way back to Wales, but stopping here first.”
Sam shoved his hands into his pockets, not knowing what else to do with them. “Well, yeah,” he said. Because it was true, he’d give him that.
“You spending Christmas in Wales?” Clearly batting for small talk, then.
“Yeah.” It had felt right, to spend it there this year. He’d felt like he needed to be away, because last Christmas here had been so shrouded in grief. He wasn’t running, and he remembered what Jessica had said: running toward was not the same as running away. And so it seemed right, to be spending this Christmas and New Year’s somewhere where he was starting something new, making a new path in life, as his mum would say. She’d gotten it. And actually, she and Linda were going out to spend New Year’s with Claire in Bordeaux. Linda seemed determined to make a little friendship group there, though why now, he had no idea. Maybe it was Tom. Maybe it all came back to Tom. His mum hadn’t mentioned Cassie’s name, so he supposed she wasn’t going, though what she was doing for Christmas and New Year’s, if anything, he had no idea.
His dad was still looking at him, shifting from foot to foot. “I just came to see if you fancied getting a coffee or something, before you leave.”
Sam hesitated, then shrugged. It was going to take both of them working at it, after all, for anything to change. “Yeah. All right.”
He continued to his car, assuming that his dad would get in his own, follow him. “Sam, wait.” He turned back. His dad hadn’t moved. “I should’ve stuck around more before now,” he blurted out.
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I suppose you should’ve.”
His dad gave him a slightly sheepish look. “Your mum, she told me to be honest.”
“Did she now?”
His dad looked down at the ground. “I never really found what I was looking for. Or if I did, I didn’t fight hard enough to keep it.” He looked up. “I loved your mum. I did. But then we had you and I…” He shook his head. “I was scared I’d fuck it up. A kid, big responsibility, that.”
Sam flinched. A big responsibility, yes. One he should’ve stuck with. But then, he thought of Tom. Of how Tom had panicked when he’d found out Amy was pregnant. How he wasn’t sure he could go through with it, be a father, not yet. Sam thought he would have come around. He was almost sure of it. But even so, Tom, the best person he knew, had panicked and bolted at the thought of it. It was easier not to judge when it was your best mate, not your dad. But still.
“It was better,” his dad continued, “to not do it at all than do it badly. And then, well, I got scared to come back, because you were growing into this person I didn’t know. And I was worried about letting you down if I stayed.”
Sam nodded slowly, not sure what to say to it all. It wasn’t like they had a precedent for these kind of chats.
His dad took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, all right? It doesn’t mean I wasn’t wondering, all this time, how you were doing. When I heard you got that fancy lawyer job in London, I couldn’t believe it. It just made it harder—no way you’d want to know someone like me, not when you’d turned out so much better, actually made something of yourself.”
Sam ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Well, I’m no longer a fancy lawyer, if it makes you feel any better.”
“Never liked lawyers,” his dad said quickly, and Sam laughed, something in him loosening.
“Any reason we’re having this conversation in the cold? Or shall we go and get that coffee?”
His dad followed behind him in his own car to the nearest coffee shop. As he drove, Sam couldn’t help replaying the conversation. One part in particular stuck out. I didn’t fight hard enough to keep it. And Sam knew, that was him. That was what he was doing, with Cassie. And yes, maybe she didn’t feel the same. Maybe she really didn’t love him. But if he didn’t even try, if he didn’t fight for her, then how would he ever know?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Ready?” Hazel looked at Cassie and Josh, all of them sitting around a white-clothed table. “On three.” She counted, and they all pulled their crackers at the same time. Cassie, sitting in the middle of the two of them, was left with the straggly silver-and-gold ends of both of theirs. Hazel handed Cassie her extra one, and they all took out the contents.
They were in a Thai restaurant in central London, one of the chains—a smaller chain with really good Thai food, but still a chain. It wasn’t exactly ideal for a Christmassy lunch, but Cassie and Josh were both broke, and had needed to come somewhere cheap: Cassie, because she was spending time getting the house event-ready, and consequently living off savings and earning no money, and Josh because he’d left the hotel too, claiming that it was unbearable without Cassie there, and was concentrating on his master’s instead. Hazel had offered to pay for them both and take them out for a “proper” Christmas lunch, but they’d refused on principle. So there they were, ordering rice, noodles, and Thai green curry on the twenty-third of December. The restaurant had made an effort—crackers on the tables, tinsel in the window, and a little Christmas tree at the register. It was a slightly odd yet somehow great combination.
Following Josh’s and Hazel’s lead, Cassie put her red paper Christmas hat on, then cleared her throat as she extracted the little slip of paper from the cracker. “What did Adam say the day before Christmas?”
Hazel rolled her eyes. “It’s Christmas, Eve.”
Cassie put it down. “Yeah. Well, I don’t think it’s that obvious,” she said, feeling oddly defensive of her joke despite the fact she hadn’t come up with it.
“Hey, I wouldn’t have got that either,” Josh said, “so don’t worry. OK, do mine. What’s the most popular Christmas wine?” He didn’t pause for either of them to guess. “But I don’t like Brussels sprouts! Get it? Whiiinne,” he added for effect in a whiny voice.
Hazel wrinkled her noise. “My favorite wine is Malbec.”
Cassie prodded her in the ribs. “Your turn.”
She flapped a hand at Cassie. “No, I don’t want to tell jokes, I want to hear about Wales. Is it devastatingly moody? Is the house looking gorgeous now? Are you incredibly content and feeling very smug? Come on, make us jealous.” She settled back in her chair, clasped her hands together in front of her, like she was settling in for a good story.
“But not too jealous,” Josh added, moving his paper crown so that it sat a little crooked on his red hair. “Like, have a heart for those of us stuck in London running in and out of temp jobs too.”
“Or those of us in advertising meetings where you spend forty minutes discussing which blue color scheme to go for.”
“Right, so, like, maybe it can be eighty percent brilliant and twenty percent not?”
Hazel looked at Josh a little musingly. “Maybe seventy-thirty?”
“Yes,” Josh agreed, then looked at Cassie. “Go.”
Cassie laughed. “It’s…” She lifted both hands in the air, let them fall back to her lap. “I don’t know. It’s hard work, but it is brilliant. I think it’ll be ready to open in March—and you both have to come. I’m going to try and do a kind of launch party, invite the press, that sort of thing.”
“We will one thousand percent be there,” Josh said firmly, and Hazel nodded.
Tom would still be an investor, Cassie thought, even though he wouldn’t be around to see her try to make a go of it. She planned to do one retreat a year—a wellness retreat, with an emphasis on living harmoniously with nature, something he would have been proud of—in his name.
“Well, I guess this means you’re not coming back to the flat then,” Hazel said with a sigh. “Does this mean you’re officially giving your room up?”
Cassie bit her lip. “I think it does.” They’d agreed not to make it official until Cassie had spent a couple of months in Wales, in case she hated the whole thing—a kind of security blanket. She looked at Hazel, felt her eyes well. The thought of not living with her best friend gave her a pang. She’d just done it for three months, yes, but this would be more permanent. She’d lived with Hazel since leaving university; they’d grown up together.
Hazel was looking like she might cry too, but she straightened her spine, gave Cassie a mock-warning finger waggle. “Don’t back out now. Do you really want to move back in, go back to working for Robert?”
Cassie grimaced. “No.”
“Well then,” Hazel said, with a firm nod. She’d cut her black hair recently, into a chic bob, and it swished with the movement. “We’ll still see each other. All the time.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Cassie said with a smile.
“Does this mean you have a spare room?” Josh piped up. “Because the guys I’m living with are all parting ways and, well…”
Hazel looked at him, and her eyes widened. “Really?” He nodded, and she flashed a grin. “Oh God, you’re so in. That’s way better than having to find someone random.”
Hazel’s phone beeped and she picked it up. Smiled a little before she wrote back. “Who is it?” Cassie asked.
Hazel hesitated. “Chris.”
“Chris?” Cassie’s eyebrows shot up. “As in, the Chris you’ve already been on two dates with?”
“Yes, Cassie,” Hazel said in an overly placatory way. “That Chris. And you can stop smiling like that now.”
Two waiters came out with the food and the bottle of prosecco at the same time. Cassie looked from her newly poured glass of fizz to the vegetable Thai green curry in front of her. “Not quite the right vibe, is it?”
Josh waved that away. “We’ll make it the right vibe.” He held up his glass. “To Cassie and her new adventure.” The three of them clinked glasses.
“And Happy Christmas,” Hazel added.
Cassie clinked again with the other too, but she felt a twinge in her gut. She hadn’t figured out yet what she was doing for Christmas. Christmas without Tom. She’d been trying to ignore it, her new project a welcome distraction. Claire had invited her to France, and she was thinking she might do that—see if she could get a last-minute flight tomorrow. It would be a good combination of being with someone who knew Tom, but also not being where they’d grown up together. Hazel had also offered to spend Christmas with her somewhere completely different, just the two of them, if that was what she wanted, but Cassie knew that Hazel would go out of her way to make it lovely and fun, and then she’d feel the pressure to live up to that. With Claire, she was only just beginning to learn, she could just be. Either way, though, she was going to have to figure out a way through it.
She still had the prosecco in her hand, suspended in midair. Hazel met her gaze, gave her a small smile of understanding. “To Tom,” she murmured, and held her glass up a third time.
Cassie pressed her lips together when they wanted to tremble. “To Tom,” she whispered. She took a sip, put the glass down, and felt Josh take her hand on one side, Hazel the other, so that they were all linked. She took a breath, breathing in the chili and coconut, then let it out slowly.
One of the waiters came over, black hair slicked back, looking far too young to be working in a restaurant. “Umm…Miss?” He looked from Cassie to Hazel, eyebrows pulled together, clearly not sure who to address.
Hazel immediately sat up very straight, and gestured confidently to Cassie, who frowned. But her attention was diverted by the waiter when he spoke again.
“Something has been delivered here, for you. It came on a bike,” he added, in a voice that suggested that was most perplexing. “For your table number.”
He handed over an envelope. An envelope, exactly like the ones Tom used to put his clues in. Her heart jumped. One more clue? But that didn’t make sense; she’d gotten to the end. And Tom couldn’t possibly have known they’d be here now. “Umm…Thank you,” she said to the waiter, who nodded and, after hovering for a moment, perhaps hoping she’d open it in front of him, slunk off.
