Calla Lily, Part 2
Episode 3 | Still There
In the previous instalment of Still There, Cassandra reveals the horrible news to her husband. She and Paul negotiate a delicate errand — a trip to comfort the grieving widower, using a new mode of transport Cassandra doesn’t quite trust.
'We have arrived,’ the RoboTaxi said. ‘Would you like to book a return journey?'
'I'll decide later. Thank you,' Cassandra said, gathering her bags. The door beeped and slid open.
‘Have a good day, Mrs Wood,’ the RT said. 'Remember to collect your belongings.’ Perhaps it sensed the weight of the portrait on the floor or detected the box with its cameras. 'The door will remain open until all personal items have been removed.'
She'd failed to consider this part. If she’d needed Paul's help to get the portrait into the vehicle, she’d need someone’s help to get it out again. Her first interaction with Jack today could not involve her asking him to lug this parcel, weighty in too many ways, out of a bloody taxi. She’d been stupid, too precipitous in running to his side, but there was no going back now. As awkward as it might have been for Paul to come, she wished he were there now.
'Help with something, love?'
Two men paused from polishing the windows of a tall Georgian house: Hogarth’s, a private members’ club. Beeping wheeled boxes often did this job now, extending their spindly arms skywards to squirt and squeegee, but Hogarth’s upper windows were likely too high. In any case, Soho was known for providing comforting anachronisms for people who needed them. Sometimes she’d met Olivia or Jack at Hogarth’s without telling Paul, naughty detours on the way back from seeing her parents, doubly daring because Hogarth’s was a shielded space where mobile phones were useless. For half an hour, forty-five minutes, she could disappear off the map. Olivia and Jack would lift expensive drinks in exotically shaped glasses. Here's to you, coming out to associate with us scoundrels. The candlelight was real rather than smart, and the wax dripped onto the tabletops.
The last time she’d seen Olivia there, for a lunch preceding a planned shopping trip that never happened in the end, Olivia hadn’t been herself.
The workmen climbed down from windows dark at this time of day, as though the club itself were sleeping it off after a riotous night. She stepped aside and hovered nervously by the vehicle as the men carried the box to Jack’s door. 'It looks like all your items have now been removed,' said the RT. ‘Please, use the external sanitiser for a safe onward journey. Hope to see you soon.'
‘Goodbye,’ she replied absently as she held her palm underneath the recess in the door, the winter air and evaporating alcohol cooling her hands twice over. As she walked shakily up the steps, the air was crisp with premonitions of snow.
Jack and Olivia’s house was old-school and tactile, free of keyless entry systems, with a burnished brass knocker and a bell shrill enough to penetrate the thick oak and startle visitors. But Jack didn't need the bell today, and he flung open the door before she could press the button.
The dark circles under his eyes stood out starkly against his pale face, and streaks of salty sediment ran over his high cheekbones to his chin. Despite these depredations of grief, the aura of elegance that had ever been his talent was intact. She’d never seen his bare feet before. They were beautiful and perfect, like something painted by Botticelli.
'Cassandra,' he croaked. 'You're here.' He pulled her to him, the knit of his jumper pressing hard into her cheek, his smell filling her nostrils.
Whenever Jack ran short of his signature scent, Olivia would call Cassandra to meet her for a shopping trip. Sitting next to her friend at the counter, lifting samples to her nose, Cassandra would struggle to imagine Paul spritzing himself with anything so exotic. Olivia would swing her feet like a child on her tall seat, watching aproned perfumiers squeezing oils of pine, ambergris, and patchouli from tiny droppers. Personalised labels emerged tongue-like from the mouth of a tiny printing machine, to be affixed to the heavy glass bottles. Each time, Olivia would request the inscription 'Captain Jack' and a pirate emoji, and Cassandra would roll her eyes.
She couldn’t fathom his applying scent on such a day, but perhaps after so many years it had become part of the natural smell of his skin. Her phone vibrated, and she knew that Paul would want her to check in. She opened her eyes to start disentangling herself, but then froze as she saw it: a long strand of Olivia’s hair, shining like a thin copper thread, clinging to her widower's jumper.
Cassandra jerked and recoiled, but Jack’s grip only tightened. Her phone vibrated again, and she wondered whether Paul could somehow see them together on the doorstep. She craned her neck to look behind her, but the RT and its hidden cameras had gone, and she swivelled back to face the hair.
Maybe they shared clothes, Olivia padding about the house in knickers and her husband’s jumper. Maybe the hair had caught there during Jack’s desperate attempts to save her, or after those efforts had failed. Once he knew she was dead, he’d said, he’d lifted her inert body from the floor, carried it to the bed. The scene in her mind was like something out of Wuthering Heights.
The idea of Olivia as a mere mass of lifeless flesh was excruciating, and if Jack had not been holding her, Cassandra would have bent double with the pain. But as her emotional reflexes twitched to push the grief away, she heard Eleanor’s voice in her head. Her erstwhile therapist, the one she had visited after her father died, had always talked about accepting the full range of emotions, even the horrible ones. It's okay to not be okay. Lean in and see what your body is telling you.
Still in Jack's arms, she leaned in to see what wisdom lay inside her roiling gut.
It wasn't grief after all. It was envy.
Photo by shao H on Unsplash
Olivia’s funeral proves psychologically and sensorily challenging, and Cassandra becomes the centre of attention, in a way she doesn’t anticipate or want.
About the Author
Elaine Kasket ventures into new territory with Still There, her first novel. Known for her nonfiction work, she's now exploring the boundaries between memory, technology, and human connection through fiction. This serialised novel is being released exclusively on Substack, with new installments dropping every Tuesday and Friday. Join the journey from the beginning, and subscribe to make sure you don't miss a single episode.
