Bernard’s death wasn’t just devastating because he had been so important and so lovely. It was a disaster because he never got round to changing his will. So his death was quickly followed by the arrival of his sister, who hated Emily’s mother more than she could express in words, and kicked them out in seething silence, practically hissing that they were never to step foot in Mont Manor again.
Suddenly Emily and her mother were homeless again, their hastily packed bags at their feet as they sat in the Dandelion Cafe and pushed cold scrambled eggs around on their plates. Unlike other times like this, however, Emily’s mother had a back-up option. A tiny apartment in France that she’d bought with some money left over from a previous inheritance, a tiny bolt-hole for emergencies. So she had decided the best plan was to head to Europe to lick her wounds and regroup. Seventeen year old Emily was welcome to join her. But that meant passing up an acting opportunity that had been bubbling away for a while and had finally come to fruition. Her soap opera director, who by this point was more than a little in love with Emily, had been given his first big break on a low-budget movie filming at Pinewood and had wrangled a small part for his young protégé.
So in order to stay, Emily would have to find somewhere to live and her lifeline came in the unlikely form of Bernard’s friend, Enid. Enid ran the Dandelion Cafe on Cherry Pie Island and had been pouring the bereft pair free coffee refills while eavesdropping on their woes. Emily spent six months living with Enid. In a tiny box room at the back of her houseboat that was really a cupboard.
Much like how her and Jack were sitting now on the deck of his boat, the brandy on the floor between them, their legs up on the railing, the stars bright up ahead, Enid would sit up and wait for Emily, whatever time she came home. She didn’t think a seventeen year old should run around unaccounted for, whatever Emily’s mother thought. She would sit out on her deck drinking coffee and smoking cigars as she’d done so often at Mont Manor with Bernard.
The night Emily came home and said that she was auditioning for a role in a film that would shoot half in Bulgaria and then move to Hollywood, that she probably wouldn’t get it because she was up against proper people and she probably wasn’t quite thin enough and looked maybe a bit young for the part, but wouldn’t it be amazing? Wouldn’t it be the best thing ever? Giles Fox was in it? Imagine acting with Giles Fox! Enid had lounged back against the side of her boat, her bare feet dangling in the river, watching her quizzically as Emily practically lost her breath she was talking so fast and said, ‘It doesn’t all have to be such a hurry, Emily. There’s no rush.’
And Emily remembered getting really annoyed, throwing her arms up and huffing and saying how it was pointless even talking to her because she didn’t understand. And lying in her box room bed that night with the answer she wished she’d said going round and round in her head: Of course there’s a rush. Because if you don’t grab it while it’s there, then the next minute it’s gone. Of course there’s a rush.
‘I really do like your boat, you know?’ Emily said as she sat with her legs outstretched, swirling her brandy in the little green glass and shivering slightly in the cool evening air.
Jack looked around as if to check what it might be like to see it for the first time. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ she smiled, almost mocking their politeness.
Jack chucked a stone from the deck into the river and they watched as the light from the boat caught the ripples on the water. ‘How’s your new house?’ he asked, still looking at the river.
‘Ruined by dreadful interior design.’
He laughed through his nose. And his shoulders slumped back against the wooden cabin, like he was finally starting to relax since she’d arrived on the boat. Emily tucked her legs underneath her and pulled her hair out of its ponytail. ‘Do you want to help me put it back to normal? Build me a staircase or something?’
Jack leant back and closed his eyes for a second, then shook his head. Like he’d thought this question might be coming. ‘No.’
‘Oh why not?’ she asked, bashing him on the shoulder. ‘Please? You could do it as rent. For the mooring.’
He opened one eye. ‘If you want rent, I’ll pay you rent.’
‘I don’t want rent. I want lovely architrave.’
He laughed, and threw another stone into the water. ‘Sorry, Em, I can’t do it. I don’t have time.’
He didn’t look her in the eye when he said it and she knew it was a lie. She could feel it, but with Jack she still knew better than to push. She could only assume that he didn’t want to get further embroiled with her. So instead she said, ‘I’m cold. Can I borrow a blanket?’
‘Yeah, there’s one on the bed.’
She stood up and headed back into the cabin. Around her on the water the ducks drifted and she could see the thin wobbly reflection of the crescent moon. She heard Jack pour another slosh of brandy into each tumbler.
Inside it was cosy warm. The low lights from the kitchen cast the whole cabin with a soft yellow light that made her want to curl up and stay rather than head back, at some point, to her cool, dark manor. As she grabbed the blanket, she did a quick recce of Jack’s stuff. The wooden dish with coins and his keys in it. A notebook with squared paper and lots of diagrams, a pencil so short it was barely holdable with a rubber on the end flattened from use. There were a load of books stacked on a shelf, all biographies of people that she hadn’t heard of. As she was leaning over the bed to read the titles, her eye caught on the photographs pinned on the wall next to the books. One of his mum and dad when they were really young, standing in front of the lighthouse on the island. One of a group of eco-looking people, the men as equally bearded as Jack, all giving thumbs up to the camera. The shack behind them must have been the Spanish research centre. There was another of Jack and a couple of guys standing by a giant table and chairs. It was obviously some extravagant commission – all laid out with oversized teacups and plates.
It was the last photo that surprised her. Taken the morning of the festival. She remembered it because she’d been midway through doing her make-up when she was yanked into the picture, so had one big, spidery mascaraed eye and one nude one. It was her, her brother Wilf, Jack, Holly, Annie, Annie brother’s Jonathan and Jack’s younger brother, Ed. They were standing out the front of Enid’s ice cream van holding up the Cherry Pie Festival banner that Annie had painted and was about to be pinned to the gates of Mont Manor. Emily had cherry blossom in her hair. Holly was cross-legged on the floor in front of Wilf. Annie was looking away at something else. Jack was in the centre, beaming, his arms spread wide behind him, one hand resting on Emily’s shoulders, the other on his little brother Ed’s.
She realised she’d been staring and couldn’t work out how much time had passed. Probably only a couple of seconds but it felt like minutes. Bypassing how annoyingly young and fresh her skin looked, she saw how goddamn happy she’d been, how open. Even how she was standing for the camera, just full-square at the lens regardless of her bonkers eye make-up. She didn’t stand like that any more, she stood with one foot forward, body angled to the left, chin raised a touch, a half-smile that didn’t show too much teeth.
When she got back outside, Jack said, ‘You took your time.’
Emily hung the blanket round her shoulders and sat down, it smelt of the smell of him that she remembered from being a teenager. Like getting a whiff of your old perfume and reeling back through a thousand thoughts and feelings that you can’t quite catch. ‘I was looking at the photos by your bed,’ she said, letting her head roll to the side so she could look at him. ‘Of all of us at the festival.’
Jack turned to look at her. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to think what the me then would think of the me now. You know?’
‘I think she’d think you were pretty OK.’
‘Yeah but would she have expected her most well-known achievement to have been being humiliatingly jilted? Probably. Or ending up living back here?’ she paused and smiled, ‘Probably. Jack, have you been married?’ she asked, expecting him to shake his head.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’
He glanced at her and then back at the river. ‘But not any more.’
She took a moment to take that in. It shouldn’t have shocked her at all. Of course he could get married. He could have a couple of kids for all she knew. But it wasn’t the admittance of marriage that took her by surprise, it was the sharp catch in her chest when he said it. Almost like jealousy. Which, of course, she thought as she sipped her warm brandy, was completely ridiculous.