Her memory of the previous night’s conversation had a dreamlike quality, so much so that Cassandra was not sure of it. But whatever the reality status of meeting Alex had been, she had a feeling that it wasn’t good to dwell on it. She would banish thoughts of it from her mind with a day of clearing out the loft.
Her joints stiffened by rheumatoid arthritis that had attacked cruelly early in life, her mother had steered clear of the loft’s rickety ladder for years. Low-ceilinged and dark, it was reasonably cosy even in winter up there, under the deep thatch of the roof, warmth radiating from the hot-water tank. The dangling ceiling light blew when Cassandra pulled the cord, so she threaded an extension flex through the hatch from the hall, plugged in a table lamp, and set it on the floor.
In the pool of light she’d created, she settled onto a stack of old cushions, covering them with a towel against the dust, and got to work. Most of the boxes were labelled wrongly. She photographed the contents of some of them for her mother, relabelled lids, and distributed categories of things into piles. Keep. London. Discard. Unsure.
Transforming disorder into order was satisfying work. Along the way she encountered detritus shed by her younger self and allocated it to one corner. What she didn’t chuck she’d take back with her, shuffling her past to some other location.
Tucked under the lowest bit of the ceiling was a pile of canvases from her Art and Design A-levels, wrapped up in a burlap shroud. Shimmying the fabric down, she revealed the picture of a redheaded girl, modelled on Olivia, floating on her back in a pond with her hair fanning out on the water’s surface. The feedback form from her instructor was still attached to the back.
Your technical skill is excellent, but you are encouraged to show greater independence of mind in developing your own ideas and painterly 'voice'. This piece relies rather too closely, in style and subject, on John Everett Millais' 'Ophelia'.
She'd been aggrieved by the comments, but it was true. The upturned hands, the colouring, the model’s facial expression all recalled that Ophelia, singing her way towards being drowned amongst the reeds.
John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, 1851-2
Moving on, she uncovered a collection of childhood gifts she’d made for her mum and dad, Mother's Day and Father’s Day cards with potato-print decorations, shedding their decades-old glitter, all wonky handwriting and charming misspellings.
In a wooden box with a sliding top that had once held some special bottle of wine, she found pictures and folded notes from her school days with Olivia and Verity. Blow-ups and fallouts were inevitable with a three-person best-friendship and the hot-headedness of adolescence, but she hadn't recalled just how much conflict she’d had with Verity. Every piece of correspondence hinted at some fresh spat, juxtaposing oddly with the photos, which showed only smiles and hugs. Olivia, always the peacemaker, pleaded for sense and forgiveness, played both sides, reminded them of the important things in life. Boys come and go, friends are forever.
The curling prints in the wine box were from her cheap point-and-shoot camera, from a time before everyone had smartphones, but most of the photos in the loft were taken by her father. Plastic cases of slides and a carousel slide projector from his university days in the 70s. Generations of equipment, a veritable photography museum housed in battered bags. Binders fat with hole-punched plastic storage sleeves, with their rows of negatives. Contrasting with the chaotic, mislabelled jumble of the rest of the loft, her father's photos were scrupulously organised. Flipping through one binder, Cassandra was unsurprised to see sheets labelled 'Olivia Abbott’. Nothing was labelled 'Cassandra', not in this set. Perhaps in another box, or already stored downstairs on bookshelves in her father’s study.
Clicking open the jaws of the metal rings, she held one of the sheets over the lamp, revealing Olivia dressed as the teenaged Princess Elizabeth for sixth-form drama, her hair tucked under a Tudor headdress, fat pearls encircling her throat above a square-necked gown. The line of her up-tilted chin was sharp, her full lips curved, her gaze straight into the camera. Lower down, a shot taken from the back, in what looked like a cape with a textured collar, maybe fur. The garment, Cassandra saw, had slipped off Olivia’s shoulder, exposing the bare skin beneath. Snapping the binder shut, she returned it to its box.
As 17-year-olds in Sussex, she and Verity lounged around one another's houses, made an occasional attempt to finagle drinks in The George, caught the bus to the seaside and sometimes failed to catch it back. Olivia, though, seemed to prefer sitting at the kitchen table with Cassandra’s father to running around with the girls. She'd show him her latest work, and they'd talk f-stops and ISO. Sometimes they'd go out on shoots together. Her dad had embraced Olivia like a second daughter after her own dad’s death, seemed more excited by her photography than Cassandra's painting. Perhaps he'd preferred her company too. They had something in common, and Olivia was Olivia, after all.
The loft was nearly finished. Often the branding or style of a container provided a clue about the vintage of its contents, but the surface of the last box was unlabelled and unmarked. Strapping and masking tape encircled it many times, and this thoroughness made Cassandra hesitate. She pulled it towards the mound of cushions and sat down with it. She listened, but the house was quiet. Her mother must be busy with her own work in her father’s old study.
The tape on the inner box yielded easily too, uncovering stacks of letters addressed to much younger versions of her mother, some bearing her maiden name, Edwards. The handwriting on all of them, though, was the same -- bold, slashing, inky, not her father’s. Many were Air Mail, light as feathers, American eagles on their stamps. Her mother was living and breathing downstairs, but in that moment the yellowing paper made them seem too historical for it to be a true invasion of privacy.
I know you better than anybody, and so I also know we're over, and if we're over, you're over. The real you is over. You’re going to be sorry. You made your bed. Fucking lie in it.
Cassandra had never imagined that such drama could lie in her mother’s past. Although she had no idea who the man might be, she was amazed at how familiar he sounded, how she was nearly hearing the words rather than reading them. Numbly she slid another sheet from its envelope, noticing that there were circular marks, like tear stains, on the paper.
You think you can finish this single-handed? You think this means I’m gone forever? Don’t be too sure, Daphne. Wait for it.
Another envelope was of thicker paper, its surface corrugated with small bumps, which proved to be desiccated rose thorns, still razor sharp at their tips. A confetti of torn paper fluttered out amongst them. When Cassandra reassembled them like a puzzle on the dusty attic floor, they proved to be two documents. One was a black-and-white photograph of her young mother with a dark-haired man, his mouth full of perfect American teeth. The other was her own birth announcement, ripped into six pieces. THORNFIELD. 3rd July, Royal East Sussex Hospital, to Daphne (nee Edwards) and Martin Parsons, a daughter, Cassandra Cecilia.
There was a letter with it all. How dare you fucking send me that, Daff? You couldn’t even bother to write a letter with it? Am I supposed to congratulate you? I’m not going to do that because you've hammered the last nail in our coffin.
Staring at these fading, ragged-edged artifacts in the dim lamplight, Cassandra’s mind whirled. Before meeting her father, and perhaps for some time after, her mother had had a more complicated life than she’d imagined. She’d been with this passionate, perhaps even cruel man, and it had all gone sour.
Somehow, she’d gotten out, had found happiness with Cassandra’s peaceful, kind father, who loved tending the flint-walled garden, conquering the Saturday Times crossword with his wife, and returning from London every weekday to the peace of their village. He would sooner have sliced off his hand than raised it in violence to anyone. As a teenager, Cassandra had bemoaned and mocked the lack of excitement in her parents’ lives, the almost platonic nature of their deep companionship, but now she saw it with fresh eyes. Her mother had been rescued, had escaped.
At first she thought the paper at the bottom of the box was blank, just a lining, but there was a scribble in the lower left corner. Summertown, Summer. On the reverse was a nude woman reclining on her back on a bed, the multidirectional pencil strokes illustrating the tangling of the sheets, the disarray of the pillows. She had one arm flung over her head, and the other was lying across her body under her naked breasts. Whether she was sleeping or merely spent, it was a distinctly post-coital scene, and her mother, young Daphne, was the model.
Cassandra imagined this young American man in a cheap folding chair in a student flat, watching and drawing. Perhaps he was the first of the couple to wake on the morning after the night before, sitting in the student flat, watching his lover as she dozed or slept. Perhaps she was awake, conscious of him concentrating on her, of his obsession. How did she feel about him?
Paul had always treated her as his own, but Cassandra did not know what it might be like to be possessed in this other way. Perhaps ‘escape’ was not quite the right word. Perhaps, a relationship that provoked her mother to send this man an announcement of the birth of her child, after they’d already parted ways, was rather more complicated.
She wished they could talk about it, for discovering what they shared made her feel less lonely, but she did not yet have the courage to fully confess.
Incautious of ordering everything as she’d found it, she returned the photos and letters to the box, closed the lid on this strange history, and was suffused with an odd energy that felt almost like fury. Standing up so quickly that she knocked her head on a roof beam, she stomped to the corner where her cloth-wrapped A-level paintings lay and dragged them towards the hatch on the floor.
Luka Savcic on Unsplash
Crocuses poked through the earth next to the drive back at Abbeygate Lane, little points of colour that had still been sleeping in the ground when Cassandra left for Thornfield. That spot was sunnier, but in a few weeks in the shadier back garden hundreds more would push their heads through the soil. If she were to return to her studio, they would be visible from her windows. She pulled the emergency brake too hard, jerking the car out of its slow roll.
Flush's toenails clacked rapidly on the encaustic tiles as she ran to Cassandra, jumping up to paw her waist and turn her wide doggy smile upwards. Paul emerged from his office at almost as rapid a pace and embraced her.
‘My darling,’ he murmured. ‘My darling. Welcome home. I’m working, but…come. Come.’ He pulled her by the hand to the sofa in the front room and sat close to her, clutching both her hands. ‘Okay,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘I’ve been a pillock, I know that. The whole thing was extraordinarily upsetting, she was your best friend, you were devastated, as were we all. You got caught up in the whirlwind — you were in an impossible position. What Jack does is hardly your fault.’
‘I genuinely think he didn’t mean anything by it,’ she said, tentatively. ‘And there’s nothing to fear from him. Our only connection is through Olivia. He was beside himself, anyway.’
‘He could have acted a bit more like it,’ Paul huffed. ‘But never mind that. Sweetheart, you’re home, and that’s the point. And I’ve been an absolute bastard. But listen, I’ve organised something for us — a long weekend in Florence. What do you say? The Uffizi? All the greatest hits? Your favourites? Titian? That other one with the woman on the half shell?’
She nodded, smiled, but still she looked downwards; she often felt shy during their reconciliations. He put his fingers under her chin and tilted her face up to him, as he always did.
‘All okay?’ he ventured.
‘All okay,’ she said.
Paul brought in her luggage from the back seat, but he didn’t think to look in the boot, where she’d put the canvases. When she went out herself and struggled them through the door, he looked up from his coffee in surprise. ‘What the hell are those?’ he said. ‘Did your mother foist some rubbish from the loft on us?’
‘Not rubbish,’ she replied. ‘They’re mine.’ She pulled the cloth to the side to reveal the girl floating on her back in the water. He got up and walked over for a closer look, studying the model.
‘Looks like Olivia,’ he said.
‘I suppose it is,’ she replied.
‘Where are they going to go?’ he asked, looking vaguely around. ‘Not in the house?’
‘They’re not that bad, are they?’ she said, trying to sound lighter than she felt.
‘I didn’t say they were.’
‘But no,’ she continued. ‘I thought I’d take them out to the studio.’
‘Why bring them home in the first place just to stash them in the shed?’ he wondered, sounding genuinely confused.
‘I don’t know,’ Cassandra said. ‘I’m reconnecting, I guess. Reconnecting with my former self. My work.’
When he didn’t offer to carry the canvases to the studio, she did it herself.
She made an effort that night, cooking him what she knew he’d like, roasted lamb with new potatoes and rosemary, grilled root vegetables. Uncorking an expensive Cabernet Sauvignon, she lit candles at the proper table, not the kitchen island where they often ate. He surprised her as she was laying the cutlery, sneaking up behind her in his soft-soled slippers and encircling her waist so quickly that she jumped.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ he whispered, ‘I’d think you were trying to seduce me.’
Dinner was nearly done and Paul was at least two glasses in when she served him the lie.
‘I had a session with Eleanor when I was in Thornfield,’ she said, although she had not seen her therapist in at least a year.
His eyebrows elevated in surprise. ‘Eleanor,’ he said, reaching for the bottle and upending the last drops into his own glass. ‘I haven’t heard that name in a while. I thought you were feeling better.’
‘I am,’ she said. ‘With the other things. The anxiety and depression, and everything about Dad. But with Olivia…’
‘Ohhh, sweetheart. Of course.’ He leaned in to put an arm around her neck and give her a wine-suffused kiss, before sitting back in his chair again to regard her in the candlelight with concern and compassion. ‘It makes sense, your feeling shaky.’
‘Shall I…?’ she suggested, pointing at the wine. He picked up the bottle and peered at the label for a moment in the dim light.
‘Go on then,’ he agreed. ‘But maybe the 2018 one this time? The Bordeaux? Thanks, lovely.’
She took her time opening the bottle in the kitchen, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth.
‘Anyway, it was a good session,’ she said, sliding back into her chair. ‘She had some helpful suggestions for making sure I don’t backslide.’
He looked sceptical but did not yet protest.
‘I remember that it wasn’t really good for us when I’m not feeling my best,’ she said quickly. ‘I remember I wasn’t always able to be as available as I want to be. Do you remember?’
He closed his eyes, nodding emphatically. ‘I remember,’ he affirmed. ‘No one wants that. So, what were these helpful suggestions?’
‘Exercise, first of all,’ she said, knowing how Paul would respond.
He immediately offered the Peloton in his office, saying he could create a separate account for her workouts, but she said Eleanor had suggested exercise in fresh air and nature as being better for grief. Now that spring was here, she wondered about being outside, using a road bike.
She wouldn’t get the same stats as on the Peloton, he said. She replied that it didn’t matter.
It was dangerous, he said. She replied that it was sweet of him to be so protective of her.
She trod delicately through the next part. She described stumbling upon Olivia’s likeness in her teenaged artwork, and the photographs of them both from their childhoods in Thornfield that she’d come across in her mother’s loft. She talked of the waves of grief they’d provoked, of how much she’d wept after her walk across the Downs to Monk’s House.
Paul squirmed, uncomfortable.
‘So, you see how important it is that I’m talking to Eleanor,’ Cassandra said. ‘If that could happen to Liv, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to me. Any time. And what would I have to show for myself?’
‘Don’t say that,’ Paul broke in, sliding his hand across the table to grip hers. ‘You’re amazing, you’re beautiful. You have, and will continue to have, a wonderful life. I’ll make sure of that.’
‘I know, honey. But Eleanor says that I need to process this. To prevent going downhill.’
‘Process,’ he repeated. ‘Oh gawd, what does that mean? Sorry, Cassie, sorry, I’m listening. You know I don’t get this stuff. But I don’t like the sound of downhill. I’m listening. Go on. What does processing entail?’
‘Eleanor said that processing could mean different things for different people,’ she said, carefully, ‘but specifically for me, she wondered if starting to paint again could be a way forward. Art can be very therapeutic, apparently.’
‘Hm. I’ve heard that,’ he said, putting his knife and fork on his plate. ‘Shall we clear these?’
She took their dishes and cutlery into the kitchen and loaded them into the dishwasher before returning with creme brûlée, the caramel sauce oozing tantalisingly on the plates.
‘Bloody hell, what have I done to deserve you?’ he enthused, turning his face up for another kiss. ‘Mm, this is a bit luscious. But I was going to say, Cassie, it is the case that you have quite a lot of art in your life.’
‘I needn’t stop with my tutees of course,’ she said. ‘But that’s art history, and it’s teaching, and apparently the most effective thing is to get stuck in, you know, get your hands dirty. Create. So, Eleanor was suggesting that I get back in the studio. I thought I could make the space nice again, maybe even get it set up so I could do my tuition out there, too. The guest room’s a bit rubbish for working in.’
Paul had started to look a bit sleepy. He chucked his spoon onto his dessert plate with a clatter and held his arms out. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘If it makes you happy, Cassie, it makes me happy.’
She leaned over and fastened her mouth onto his for a long kiss, and afterwards she stayed forehead to forehead with him for a time.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for always supporting me.’
She knew it was what he needed to hear.
In the next episode, having found a way to put some distance between herself and Paul, Cassandra looks for someone to confide in.
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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.
