‘Hello, Cassie,’ he says. He’s got a strong West Country accent.
She turns to look at him. He’s older than her – nearer to her mum’s age – but he’s familiar somehow. She scrambles around her head for a name, but finds nothing. Water runs off his tanned skin like rain on glass and there are little droplets in his mahogany hair and eyelashes. Cassie looks down at her own skin, and realises she’s covered in dry sweat; compared to him, she feels stale, grubby. He’s smiling out at the view.
‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ he says softly. She feels safe standing next to him. He turns his smile to Cassie’s mum who’s now windmilling her arms behind her in a splashy backstroke. The man turns back to Cassie and asks, ‘You jumping in?’
Cassie turns to look at him, and tries to smile before she shrugs her shoulders.
‘Come on, Cas, it’s so much better from down here!’ her mum calls, before she dives under the surface, her body shimmering in the fading light as she swims, a mermaid in the clear water.
‘The water’s perfect today, so refreshing. Come on, you’ll love it,’ the man says, and, without asking, his wet hand reaches out for Cassie’s dry one and it doesn’t feel strange because he holds her hand so gently. She wishes she could remember how she knows him … understand why she trusts him. Cassie looks down again at her mum who’s treading water now, smiling up at them.
‘Come on, you two!’ The sound of her voice makes Cassie nudges her toes closer towards the edge. The man looks at her and starts counting.
‘One, two and three.’ They don’t let go of each other. Their clasped hands punch the sky as they leap into the warm, pink air and in that brief flightless moment Cassie knows they were right to make her jump. She wants to be clean; she wants to feel new.
And they fall.
Epilogue
Bob licks my hand as I load the final suitcase into the car. He’s been sitting in the boot, his eyebrows raised in worry, surrounded by boxes, for the last hour, terrified that we’re going to leave him behind, along with the house. He still hasn’t forgiven us our two-week holiday in Italy. It’s a boiling August day, the leaves curl in the heat and the tarmac is like molten treacle. It’s a day for lying in the shade with a book and a beer, not for moving house, but the removal men have already left and all we have to do is drive down to our new tiny seaside cottage. David promised we can go skinny dipping as soon as we arrive. I want to start our new lives feeling free, because we are free. With David’s redundancy and the sale of the house, we’ve figured out we’ll be able to get by fine for the next year. The plan is for David to finally set up his architecture practice from the small, converted stables next to the cottage, and I’ll do community nursing part-time while I start my psychotherapy course at Exeter. This time, we mapped out our future from our dusty rental car driving through the lazy hills and vineyards of Tuscany and Umbria. Experience has taught that even if the whole plan doesn’t fall neatly into place, we’ll find our own way; we’ll be OK.
We left for Italy just after Frank’s small memorial. David held my hand as his coffin was carried past us, the photo of Frank and Lucy from their fishing trip perched on top. I didn’t get to talk to Lucy; her relatives glued themselves to her all day, like they didn’t want to miss a moment of her mourning. I only let go of David’s hand to wave goodbye to her as we left. She waved back, a small, confused wave, like she’d forgotten who I was, didn’t recognise me outside of Kate’s. The day Frank died is always with me. I carry my broken promise around with me like a shard of glass stuck firmly into my side. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it out. I think about him every day. It was him who led us to Charlotte. Without Frank, Charlotte may have been able keep the truth hidden. In a way, he saved us all.
Freya was born, as if in homage to her maternal grandmother, on 23rd April, just shy of twenty-eight weeks. Elizabeth Longe performed the C-section; she’d held off for as long as they could. Cassie had been deteriorating for a while; both Cassie and Freya’s pulses consistently erratic ever since Frank’s death. Jack invited me to meet Freya when she was just two days old. She was in an incubator, preposterously big for her. Her tiny body covered in a fine down, her eyes wide, life a completely unexpected surprise. As we stood side by side, in front of her incubator, I noticed a new peaceful quality to Jack, as if he wouldn’t need anything again if he could just stay there, by her side forever.
Brooks didn’t have to wait long for me at the police station. The call came through about Frank from the hospital; they told her it was related to ward 9B and she knew it had something to do with Cassie, with me missing our meeting. It was Brooks who took Charlotte away. She didn’t try to resist, her arms were limp as Brooks clicked the handcuffs around her wrists. Charlotte kept her gaze fixed on Jack, begging him to look at her, but he didn’t look up at her once.
Charlotte has pleaded guilty to all charges. David told me her sentencing date keeps being pushed back due to her poor mental health, some form of repressed post-traumatic stress. The media couldn’t believe their luck when they found out. ‘Charlotte Jensen’ has become a byword for ‘evil’ in the cheap magazines ever since.
I haven’t worked out what I think about that yet, and I don’t know what happened to Nicky; she only crosses my mind fleetingly, like a bad memory every now and then. When she does, I wonder if she’s found any peace, a way of forgiving herself. Brooks said that Jonny’s moved back to London; she didn’t say where exactly, and I didn’t ask. I think it’ll take some time for him to rebuild his life, but I think he’ll get there. I hope he’s happy.
And now here we are. I move my sunglasses onto my head and sit for a moment on the back of the car, playing with Bob’s velveteen ear and look at the house we no longer own. I remember the day we unpacked our lives here almost eight years ago. I was so full of the future, planning a nursery and where our children would play, and now, here we are, just us, leaving again, our lives so different to how we planned.
David’s still inside so I open my handbag and take out the two envelopes from Jack addressed to me at Kate’s. Sharma wanted to open them, apparently, but Mary managed to wrestle them off him before he got the chance.