Cathy had ordered a latte, which was very good, and Erica had a flat white. They’d ordered and quickly devoured cakes too, though Erica had joked that Cathy buying cake from Ingrid was a little like selling coals to Newcastle. Cathy had to laugh at that too, but the cranberry granola flapjack she’d tried had been squidgy and moreish, and she’d have happily shipped a whole load home if she hadn’t already had a tray of courgette cake made to Myrtle’s recipe cooling on a wire rack in her kitchen.
The first thing Cathy learned was that Erica had worked at a restaurant which had closed around the time her dad had become really ill with his cancer and so she’d taken the time to help her mum look after him. Her husband had been happy to support them both financially and had a job at a car manufacturing plant that paid enough for him to do that. Cathy liked this about Erica straight away; even though the situation was a little different from the one she’d found herself in as sole carer for her mum, it was still something they had in common. Since then, Erica hadn’t found another job, though she told Cathy she was thinking of retraining in something else – though she hadn’t decided what yet – and that was why she hadn’t rushed into another waiting job.
Erica also told Cathy about her two siblings – Michelle and Matthias – about losing their dad to cancer earlier that year and the ways in which they’d all coped (or not) with that. To Cathy, Erica’s situation sounded utterly heartbreaking.
‘Dad had just turned sixty,’ Erica said. ‘You hear about it all the time, don’t you? Men who have always been fit as a flea but then get caught by something totally unexpected that they don’t even know they’ve got until it’s too late. He never showed any symptoms and the only reason his cancer was discovered at all was incidentally during a routine wellness check. They gave him six months. He didn’t even last four. I think it was the shock – he couldn’t deal with being ill, and he couldn’t get his head around the diagnosis. None of us could. Matthias especially struggled, but then he’d had such a bad few years…’
Erica paused. She appeared to be weighing up how much she could say, and Cathy sensed there was something more to what she’d begun to divulge about her brother. But she seemed to think better of it and turned the conversation back to her dad.
‘Anyway… Dad seemed to get ill so quickly after that it was like he disappeared in front of our eyes…’
Instinctively, Cathy reached across the table for Erica’s hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
Erica gave a watery smile and shook herself. ‘These things happen, don’t they? We all have to go eventually.’
‘Yes, but it’s a shame we can’t all take the nicest way out. Falling asleep at a ripe old age and going with a smile on your face – what’s wrong with that? That’s the way we all ought to go if we’ve got to.’
‘My mum has always said that,’ Erica replied. ‘And I’m lucky – at least I still have her. Though she worries me so much at times. I don’t think she’s ever completely honest about how lonely she is; just tells me she’s an old war horse and that I shouldn’t bother myself about her.’
‘She knows that’s never going to happen, I’m sure,’ Cathy said. ‘She sounds lovely.’
Erica nodded. ‘She is.’
‘So, how long have you been married?’ Cathy asked. ‘Malcolm, isn’t it?’
‘You’ve got a good memory,’ Erica replied, drying her eyes on a napkin. ‘I’m sure I only mentioned him in passing at the coffee morning last week. It is Malcolm. About ten years now – second marriage. My first husband turned out to be a dick.’
Cathy burst out laughing. ‘So you got rid of him?’
‘Oh no,’ Erica said. ‘I wasn’t that smart at the time. I eventually discovered he was having an affair with the neighbour – clichéd or what? It took me five years to figure it out though. How stupid did I feel? And I looked even more stupid when I gave him the “it’s her or me” choice and he chose that brassy cow!’
‘Is he still with her?’ Cathy asked.
Erica shrugged. ‘Don’t know and don’t care. They moved away. If he is, I hope they’re very miserable together.’
‘Do you have children?’
The fleeting look on Erica’s face made Cathy wish she hadn’t asked, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come and she shook her head. ‘No – it’s just me and Malc. How about you?’ she asked Cathy. ‘Got a man tucked away somewhere you haven’t told me about?’
‘No,’ Cathy said. ‘I lead a very boring life. It’s just me and my shadow most of the time.’
‘It’s probably the easiest way to live,’ Erica said. ‘My family life is constant chaos even without kids.’
Cathy nodded silently. She could have told her how lonely she sometimes was but she liked Erica and she wanted her to ask her to coffee again, and she wouldn’t do that if she thought all she did was mope and complain.
‘So there’s never been anyone?’
‘Oh yes,’ Cathy said carefully. ‘I was engaged. It just didn’t work out.’
‘That must have been hard.’
‘It was; I loved him a lot. But like you said, these things happen.’
Erica shot her a sympathetic smile before reaching for her mug. Cathy didn’t want to talk any more about this; she was tired enough from having told Fleur and then thinking about it constantly since, going over and over moments and events in her head, things that had happened years before between her and Jonas that ought to have been well and truly forgotten. They had been, and would have stayed that way if he hadn’t decided to show up and drag them out from the depths of her memory again.
‘There’s another coffee morning at St Cuthbert’s next week,’ she said, keen to change the subject so she could stop thinking about Jonas. ‘Are you going?’
‘Another charity one?’
‘I don’t think so. Just a general meeting-up thing, I think. Are you going?’
Erica shook her head. ‘I don’t know… I spent the last one trying to avoid getting roped into going to church on Sunday. Iris must be God’s top recruiter. And they’re all a bit…’
‘Old?’ Cathy asked, raising her eyebrows with a faint smile.
Erica grinned. ‘I’m glad you said it.’
‘But they are all really nice and I feel a bit bad never turning up again when they were so kind and so keen for us to go back for the next one. Besides, it would give me a good excuse to bake lots of things and force-feed them to people.’
‘I don’t think you’d have to force-feed them to anyone,’ Erica said. ‘You’d have to use force to keep me away from your cakes.’
Cathy couldn’t help but laugh at this. ‘Iris has been trying to persuade me to go to church too. I wouldn’t mind so much once in a while, but I feel that if I go once I wouldn’t be allowed to stop going, and I don’t want to be tied to a promise like that.’
‘I don’t have time for stuff like that on a Sunday even if I wanted to go,’ Erica said. ‘There’s just too much going on.’