Page 17 of Just for the Season

‘Don’t cry,’ I say weakly.

‘Sorry.’ She gives an enormous sniff, and I can’t help marvelling at the fact that the tears and the sniffing do nothing to diminish her beauty.

Why is she so beautiful? She has a heart-shaped face, which Ruby has already admired, with regular features and the most amazing smile. And very thick, very straight, blondy-brown hair. And for some reason, with all of it put together, she isn’t just regularly beautiful, she’s stunning. Even when she’s drunk and crying.

‘No,’ I say again, even more weakly.

‘You have to,’ she gulps. ‘My grandmother.’

‘But my children,’ I say.

‘You can tell them it’s just a short-term thing. They clearly won’t tell Gran. It will be fine. Please, please, please.’

She sniffs again, and, unbelievably, I hear myself say, ‘Maybe just for a few days.’

‘A few weeks would be better,’ she tells me. ‘For my grandmother. The children won’t even really notice what you’re doing. In fact—’ her face lights up ‘—genius idea, tell them that it was a drunken joke and then we really barely need to actually see each other; I just need to pretend to Gran that we see each other and do stuff together. I mean, she’s almost eighty-five. She doesn’t go out to the kind of places people our age go on dates. So I can just tell her we’ve been out together, and give her some details, and she’ll be happy and so will you because it will all be fake. You might as well really just be a photo of a handsome man from a magazine. This is the one and only time you’ll actually have to be my partner in person.’

‘I must be losing my mind,’ I say, ‘because you’re almost making sense.’

‘I am making sense. Incredible sense.’ She’s beaming at me, and, bizarrely, I find my own lips curling upwards in response. ‘Everyone’s a winner.’ When she sees me frown, she amends her sentence to, ‘Okay, everyone’s a winner or at least not a loser. Look on this evening as a sunk cost. It’s already done. The pain has been had. We’re just going to be in-person partners for this evening, and then for the rest of time we don’t ever have to be in the same place together with my grandmother again, so all good, and you can tell your kids tomorrow, or even later this evening, basically as soon as Gran’s left for the evening, that it was all a silly joke. And there we go. Perfect. No-one loses and my grandmother, my wonderful, kind, caring, easily worried grandmother wins.’

I stare at her, and then, unbelievably, I hear myself say, ‘Fine. You have a deal. One in-person evening only.’

7

FRANKIE

I’m very happy. Marcus is a wonderful man. I don’t know why I ever thought I didn’t like him. Who cares about a trashed carrot cake or cat-antibiotic rudeness.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ I seize his hand and pull him back out of the utility and into the kitchen.

‘Will we be hand-holding for long?’ he enquires in a low voice in my ear as we stand just inside the room, facing everyone. A lot of eyes are turned in our direction.

I look down at where I do indeed still have his hand in mine and say, ‘Oops,’ before releasing him.

Gran waves her stick at us from a chair in the corner of the room, just as Ruby rushes forward.

I turn to Marcus and instruct him in a whisper, ‘Talk to her outside,’ before heading over to see Gran.

I check over my shoulder as I cross the room, and see Marcus disappear with Ruby and Sam.

‘Tell me more about Marcus,’ Gran commands. ‘And I’ll tell you something about him.’ She pauses. ‘Or maybe you already know?’

‘What?’ I ask. I now realise that I was a little drunk before, but I’m feeling a lot clearer-headed now, and strangely interested in whatever information she might have about him.

‘He’s the grandson of the man I jilted at the altar,’ she announces.

‘No! That’s such a coincidence.’

‘Not really,’ Gran says. ‘Roderick has always lived quite locally and when Marcus moved here recently it was because he’d bought out a family farm.’

‘Wow, though.’ I feel pre-emptively guilty about double-generational jilting for a moment before I recall that Marcus and I are only together for this one evening and there will be no jilting involved in our brief fake relationship. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Did you not remember that Roderick’s surname is Brooks, like Marcus’s?’ Gran queries. ‘It isn’t a particularly common name.’

‘Roderick’s name slipped my mind,’ I improvise. Obviously I had no idea what Marcus’s surname was because I don’t actually know him.

‘Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose it’s natural that I would remember facts about Roderick much better than you would. Well, it’s a lovely end to an awkward story that you and Marcus are now together,’ Gran continues, smiling fondly at me. ‘And, in fact, if Roderick and I had married each other instead of our respective partners, you and Marcus wouldn’t exist. What a wonderful way for things to turn out. Hmm.’ She looks thoughtful for a moment. ‘I wonder how Roderick will feel about this.’