I wait, listening to my own breathing, gnawing at my lip.
“I promised Gran we’d have a family weekend at Winterbourne,” Edwin says eventually. “She wants you to come too, Seph. I’ll do us a roast on Sunday. It’ll do you good.”
“But Saturday? Please. I really need you here.”
There’s another drawn-out silence, and eventually he sighs and says, “I suppose we could come. I’ll talk to Danny.” And then more softly, “We’ll come.”
I close my eyes. “Thank you.”
“Look, I’ll try to leave work early tomorrow, head straight to you. Just don’t do anything else crazy until we get there, okay?”
I’m on my feet, looking out of my bedroom window down the lane toward Michael’s cottage.
“Of course not,” I say. “Have a nice time with Danny and the Ice Maiden.”
Edwin hangs up.
I’m preparing cheese on toast a while later, shaving the hardened crusts off the block of cheddar, when the doorbell rings. Joel stands there: shoulders hunched, eyebrows raised as if he’s not sure of his welcome. My eyes flick toward the damage on the front lawn, but I’ve parked my car to shield it from this angle. He holds out a carrier bag of shopping—some bottles, bars of chocolate, fruit, biscuits.
“I said I was fine,” I say, but I stand back and let him in. He walks through and puts the bag on the kitchen table.
“Just checking,” he says. He glances at the cheese I’ve been hacking. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“No, stay,” I say, pulling items out of the bag, keeping my back to him while I wait for my pulse rate to settle. “Thanks. It’s nice of you.” I offer him a bottle of beer, and he accepts. “Look, I’m going to toast this cheese, and then you can report back to Edwin that I’m cooking for myself.”
He takes the chair at the end of the table, granting me the smallest of smiles. His stubble is gone, but he still has deep shadows under his eyes.
“How’s Michael today?” I ask, keeping my tone light.
Joel sighs. “Not too bad. Two more weeks ’til Mum and Dad get back. It’s easier when they’re here to share it.”
“Does it mean you can’t work, while they’re away?”
“No, I can do some. I’ve been taking a few shifts.” He rubs his eyes briefly. “I just check him before and after.”
“You can’t get someone in? I wouldn’t mind sitting with him if you need help.”
He smiles at me properly then, and my knife curves out of the block of the cheese too soon, making me jump.
“Ah, thanks, but he’s all right by himself really. He doesn’t even try to cook anymore.” His eyes flick to my cheese shavings. “He just potters in the garden mostly, or takes a walk over the fields. It’s nice of you, though. I’d have thought you’d had enough of listening to him.”
I shrug. “I’m tougher than I used to be.”
Our eyes meet, and I have a disconcerting sensation that I’m fourteen again. He looks at me as though he can read my thoughts, and I force myself to turn away and sort out my food.
The grill is heating up, but the handle of the grill tray is broken. Joel twitches the pair of oven gloves from its hook nearhis chair and passes it over to me, and I slide the tray under the heat.
“I remember Edwin breaking that handle,” he says.
I poke the tray in a little farther. “Really? When was that?”
“Making toasties after school one day, when we were about ten, I guess.” He relaxes in his chair a little. “Freezing cold day. We put them under the grill and forgot to watch them, messing around. It was when you had that German nanny. The one who used to sing all the time. Do you remember?”
I shake my head.
“You must have been five or six. She was really nice. You don’t remember her?”
“We had so many. I wasn’t like Danny. I tried not to get attached.”
