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‘There are still some on that tree, over there.’
Jamie shook his head. ‘They’re not ready to pick yet.’
‘Just as well probably. What are you going to do with all these?’ Anna gestured towards the four large boxes of apples.
‘Um... Caroline will take some of them. And I can pack the undamaged ones and put them in the outhouse, they’ll keep for a while.’
Anna nodded. ‘What about picking some blackberries and making pies with the windfalls? You could freeze them.’
‘Good idea.’ There hadn’t been so many apples last year, and Jamie had given them all to Caroline, because making pies would have reminded him that he’d had no one to eat them with. Now it felt like a real harvest.
He carted the boxes back to the house while Anna picked blackberries. Two boxes were set aside for Caroline, and Jamie put the box of windfalls on the kitchen table.
‘Do we have enough?’ Anna surveyed the apples and blackberries, and Jamie laughed.
‘Enough for what? How many people were you thinking of feeding?’
‘I meant enough butter and flour for pastry.’
Jamie opened the refrigerator, pulling out half a packet of butter. ‘No, I guess not.’
‘We’d better get some, then.’
Going to the supermarket felt like an excursion to heaven. Weaving through Saturday shoppers with a trolley, standing patiently as Anna changed her mind for the third time about how much flour they’d need, and then loading everything into the car. Stopping for coffee and a sandwich on the way home, because they had too much to do this afternoon to contemplate cooking lunch. He’d done this a thousand times, and it had slipped past him like all the other irrelevancies in life. Today it felt special.
‘How are you at pastry-making?’ Her face was shining as they re-entered the kitchen. Anna was enjoying herself too, and that made it all perfect.
‘I can give it a try. Caroline does it all the time, it doesn’t look too difficult.’
Anna grinned at him. ‘I’ll make the first batch of pastry then, and you can make a start on peeling the apples.’
When it was Jamie’s turn to make the pastry, he found that it wasn’t as easy as either Caroline or Anna made it look. But practice seemed to be the key ingredient, and after a few false starts Anna judged his pastry good enough to line some of the foil pie dishes they’d bought.
‘The counselling’s going well...’ He was still curious about the things that Anna didn’t talk about, and it seemed to Jamie that if he were candid with her, it might encourage a similar response.
‘Yes?’ She grinned at him. ‘That’s good.’
‘My counsellor said she was relieved to find that I wasn’t going to be billing her.’
Anna snorted with laughter, dropping the apple she was peeling into the basin of water in front of her. It landed with a plop, scattering water all over the table. ‘I’d be wanting to get that one sorted out as well.’
‘Yeah. We’ve made the demarcation lines a bit clearer. These sessions are part of a learning process for me, not the other way round.’
‘It’s a bit of an occupational hazard, I suppose. When you’re so used to co
unselling the kids in your care.’
Jamie chuckled. ‘Thanks for letting me off the hook. Although I suspect it’s a bit more to do with the fact that I reckoned that it was all about what Gill and Jon did, and that I didn’t bear any of the blame for what happened.’
‘I’m sure your counsellor didn’t say blame, did she?’ Anna was mopping up the water on the table.
‘No, you’re quite right, she didn’t. She said responsibility. More flour?’
‘Yes, just sprinkle a bit more on the board before you roll it out. It’ll stop it sticking... So what areas of responsibility have you owned up to? If you don’t mind my asking.’
‘No, of course not.’ Jamie thought back through the twisted strands of everything that had happened, and the beginning of it all seemed very clear now. ‘Gill and I met on a train. She was sitting opposite me, staring at me, and finally she asked if I was Jonny Campbell. Jon and I looked a bit more alike in those days.’
‘Oh...’ Anna’s face twisted into pained expression.
