See You In September

She’d intended to be doughty and cheerful; made an effort to look like the woman he used to know. She’d even put on mascara and a bit of lipstick. Her hair was a disaster, more pewter than mouse, so she’d bundled it into a clip.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said, accepting his kiss on the cheek. ‘Sorry to turn on the waterworks. It’s just—seeing you large as life and twice as handsome …’

‘Diana. And don’t be sorry,’ she said, as he followed her into the kitchen. ‘Who knows what your futures would have been?’

He’d filled out in the past five years and shaved off the designer stubble. Gold wedding ring; posh watch. He’d become exactly what she’d expected of him: successful, confident and ever so slightly smug.

‘I think the rain’s going to hold off,’ she said, as she made coffee. ‘Shall we brave the garden? It’s rather a mess, I’m afraid. Gardening was Mike’s thing. I’ve got a quiche in the oven but it needs a bit longer.’

There were still remnants of former glory: rosebushes and leggy lavender battled with bindweed and goosegrass. The potting shed was rotting under a feral buddleia while brambles crawled victoriously over the rusted swing. A couple of tea towels drooped on the washing line. Back in the day, that line had been a string of bunting: Mike’s shirts flapping, the girls’ colourful undies, and all the cheerful messiness of family life.

They sat at the picnic table. Pesky appeared from under the shed and settled on Diana’s lap.

Small talk, at first. Hamish and his wife had a baby. He produced the inevitable photos on his phone. Diana expected Charlotte to be a toned goddess with Gucci accessories and matching offspring; she was pleasantly surprised to see a buxom girl with a lopsided smile, spoonfeeding a child whose face was covered in mush.

It was only a matter of time before he asked after Mike. When she told him about their split, his eyebrows lifted in polite astonishment.

He nodded, looking wise; but he and—what was her name?—Charlotte clearly hadn’t met any corners on their road. Not yet.

‘Mike couldn’t cope,’ Diana said, stroking Pesky’s ears. ‘Not after Cassy made those horrible allegations. He blamed himself. He thought I blamed him too.’

‘Yes,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘If I’m honest, I think I did. It probably wasn’t fair but you want to blame somebody. I never said it, but of course he sensed it. It came between us—that, and the unremitting sadness and worry. It was pretty awful in this house. He came home less and less. One day he didn’t come home at all. I felt sorry for him, sorry for myself, but—I’ll admit this—I gave up on our marriage. We never even argued, really. We’re each still the best friend either of us has. We haven’t had the energy to divorce.’

‘Dropped out of school.’ Diana dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. The mascara had been a mistake. ‘She’s had a string of boyfriends, all as dull as ditchwater. I think she’s sticking herself to the ground with both feet in case she gets ripped away in a tornado.’

‘Perhaps. The thing is … if Cassy had been killed in a road accident instead of getting into that bloody van, we’d still have happy memories. Instead she’s alive and well, so far as we know, but she doesn’t want anything to do with us. And we love her, Hamish. We do.’ Diana was searching her pocket for a tissue, her voice dissolving. ‘So that hurts quite a lot.’

‘That’s nice of you. Thank you.’ She took a grip on herself. It wasn’t fair on him.

She gestured at the cracked tiles on the patio, the wilderness in the garden. ‘We should sell up, but how can we? This is Cassy’s home. She’ll be back one day.’

‘Hang on.’ Hamish was holding up a hand, his head cocked to one side. ‘Isn’t that your phone right now?’

‘Probably telesales,’ she muttered, as she hurried inside. ‘I’ll answer it anyway—that quiche must be ready to come out of the oven. Excuse me …’

The kitchen was filled with the smell of warm pastry. Diana grabbed the phone in one hand, oven gloves in the other.

‘I’ve got Hamish here for lunch,’ she said. ‘Remember I said he was coming?’

She heard heaviness in his breathing and wondered what had rattled him. Suddenly, she was afraid.

The quiche was burned. She steadied herself with one hand on the kitchen table, feeling her life shift and slide, yet again. The ground was never still. It hadn’t been still for five years. This time, she felt as though she might end up on her knees.

The man who might have been her son-in-law was waiting. He leaned under the frame of the swing, one hand gripping the chain, pushing it back and forth. Vividly—oh, how vividly—she remembered standing in a kitchen very like this (which house was it? Colchester?), looking out on a pocket handkerchief of a garden, filled with lilac and sweet william and brilliant purple daisies. She saw Mike and Cassy playing with that same swing, while baby Tara snoozed in her buggy. Cassy was wearing a white sundress with yellow lemons all over it—my lemon dress, she called it. A bird’s nest of brown hair, sparking with auburn lights; legs straight out in front, singing at the top of her voice—‘See saw, Margery Daw, Johnny shall have a new master!’ Mike was joining in the song as he pushed her. Hard to say whose singing was more tuneless.

They were ghosts, now. A ghost father and daughter, playing in a ghost garden among ghost flowers. Ghost happiness. Ghost love. All gone.

Bless him, Hamish rose to the occasion. He opened every cupboard in the kitchen until he found the tea.

‘Would you like me to contact somebody for you?’ he asked, carrying a mug. It slopped as he lowered it to the table. ‘Maybe Tara?’

‘Three months,’ she said. ‘Best guess. Maybe more, maybe less. He didn’t even tell me he was having tests. Then his leg broke, and it turns out to be pancreatic cancer that’s spread to his bones. So he had to tell me. Why didn’t he want me to know? I’m still his wife.’

Diana chewed her knuckle. ‘He wants her to come home. He wants to make peace with his girl. Not a lot to ask. Surely she’ll come home to make peace with her dying father?’

Hamish murmured ‘of course’ and ‘for sure’. But she could guess what he was thinking. She was thinking it too.

She found Mike in a hospital bed. He was hiding under a cloak of cheerful practicality, as though he’d broken his leg by falling off a ladder and would be right as rain in no time. She knew him too well to be fooled. He was already weakening, already diminished.

‘I’m well insured,’ he said. ‘And there’s the army widows’ pension. You’ll be better off.’

They talked in a matter-of-fact way about timescales and treatments, and when he’d be coming home to her. There was never any question that he’d be going back to his flat.

‘There’s only one thing on my bucket list,’ he kept saying. ‘And that’s to see Cassy again.’

They composed another desperate email to Gethsemane, though neither believed it would be answered. Then Diana kissed him on the forehead and left him alone in his condemned man’s cell.

She was halfway home when the grief hit her. It was a physical blow, smashing the breath from her lungs. She had to pull over and stop on the verge as traffic rushed past, unknowing and uncaring. She had never, in her whole life, sat in a car and sobbed before.

From: Mike and Diana Howells

To: CallsopDCIT@universityofsussex.org

Re: Mike and Cassy

Cameron,

Mike has metastatic pancreatic cancer. He wants to see Cassy, so I’m going out there to try to tell her. We’ve nothing left to lose. Any advice?

‘They must let me see her,’ she said. ‘Now her father’s dying. Even the police will back me up on that. And if I can talk to her, I know I can get through to her.’

‘Diana, you have to let go of the image you’ve got of that happy-go-lucky student you last saw at Heathrow Airport. After five years in a closed religious community, she will have changed beyond all imagining. You’ll be meeting a stranger.’

‘Do you really? People are chameleons. She’s lived exclusively in that mindset. She’s had experiences you can never understand. She’s loved people, really loved them. She’s danced to their tune, she’s changed her moral code to synch with theirs. She’s had to learn how to survive and succeed in that very odd, very rarefied environment.’

‘Well.’ A pause. A sigh. ‘First. Remember they’re her people now. If you walk in all guns blazing, telling her they’re a crazy cult, you’ll make things even worse.’

‘Second. If you do get her out, remember that lots of people go straight back. The hard part isn’t getting out. The hard part is staying out.’

‘Right. Imagine you’ve fallen off a boat. It’s gone. You’re alone, treading water. You know there are miles of water below your feet—miles—pitch-black depths, God knows what monsters. Nasty, isn’t it? Believe it or not, Cassy may feel that same terror of the outside world. A real phobia.’

‘Let’s take this a step at a time,’ he said. ‘First you have to see her. Then we’ll know what we’re up against.’

Then she spoke to Fiona, who was horrified by Mike’s illness and said of course, of course, she’d manage alone at the arts centre for as long as it took.

At midnight—eleven hours after first hearing Mike’s news—Diana booked a flight.

The night before she left, she cleaned every corner of Cassy’s room with superstitious fervour. Tara had come to house-sit. She stood in the doorway with her arms folded, wearing the cynical smile that seemed to have become her resting face.

‘You can’t turn back the clock,’ she said, watching her mother plumping pillows.

‘I can try.’ Diana had been daydreaming. Cassy could still finish her degree, still live the life she’d planned. Perhaps, magically, the family could go back to being the way they’d been.

‘Mum, don’t get your hopes up. Even if she comes home, she won’t be our Cassy any more. We’ve all moved on. We are what we are.’

‘Such a facile expression.’ Diana smoothed the duvet, removing imaginary wrinkles. She must get everything right. She must. ‘We are what we are. It’s a tautology.’

Every hour brought her closer to Cassy; every hour brought Mike closer to death. When the plane touched down at Auckland Airport, she felt a thrill of fear and excitement. She was in the same hemisphere as Cassy. The same country. She was looking at the same sky.