he liked them and it was a welcome addition to the curling-at-the-edges cheese-spread sandwich his mum sent him with every day. This isn’t a cute boy-meets-girl story though; we struck up a genuine friendship, as in ‘oh, you’re someone like me’ rather than ‘oh, you make my stomach feel like a washing machine’. I liked knowing he’d be waiting for me come lunchtime, that I could rely on him to make me laugh even if I’d had a crap morning. And then Freddie joined the school, Jonah’s new desk neighbour because their names followed each other on the register, and within a couple of weeks two became three around the oak tree at lunchtime. Freddie Hunter blew into my life and swept me up in his carnival of colour and laughter and noise. And with him my cool rating went up and I no longer needed so many of my lunchtime conversations with Jonah. Which is a good thing, really, because three is inevitably an odd number, and never more so than when two of the three become romantically involved. Freddie probably felt caught between us sometimes; both of us vying for his attention and resenting the other when we didn’t get it. We made it work though, somehow, over the years, because our friendship mattered too much to lose. And now it’s just the two of us again, and I honestly don’t know how we work any more. I’ll always care for Jonah – he’s been part of my world for too many years to not be important to me. But the accident sits between us, the elephant always in the room.
‘I’ll leave you to it then.’ He digs his car keys out of his jeans pocket. ‘See you around.’
I watch him silently as he nods at Freddie’s headstone and strides away along the avenue of gravestones. But just as I’m about to sit down, he swings around and comes back.
‘There’s this thing tomorrow morning at the school,’ he says. ‘You could, you know, come, if you like.’
I stare at him, perplexed. ‘Thing?’
He shrugs. ‘You know, a workshop type of thing.’
‘You’re not selling it very well,’ I say, half smiling because I don’t know what else to do.
‘It’s a grief workshop, okay?’ His words come out in a rush, scorn-laden, as if it pisses him off that they’re leaving his mouth. ‘Mindfulness, that sort of stuff.’
‘A grief workshop?’ I say it in the same tone I might use if he’d asked me to bungee jump or sky dive. Jonah isn’t generally the type to focus on his inner chakras, or whatever they do at mindfulness workshops. I expect this kind of stuff from Elle; it’s a surprise from Jonah.
‘It’s being run in the main hall.’ He couldn’t look more uncomfortable if he tried. ‘Dee, one of the new supply staff, is a trained yoga and mindfulness teacher. She’s offered to run a session if there’s enough interest.’
Dee strolls into my head, shiny-haired and bendy with an ever-ready smile that borders on pious. I catch myself being unkind for no reason and wonder if that is who I am now, bitter like over-brewed coffee.
‘I’m not sure it’s my kind of thing.’ I soften the rejection with an apologetic smile.
‘I’m not sure it’s mine either,’ he says, sliding his sunglasses on. ‘It was just an idea.’
I nod, and he nods, and after an awkward moment of silence he turns to walk away again, but then he stops and turns back for a second time.
‘The thing is – I think it might help.’
‘Help with what, exactly?’ I ask slowly, even though I think I know what he means. I wish he’d carried on walking rather than coming back a second time, because I can feel this conversation straying towards dangerous ground.
He looks skywards, thinking before he speaks. ‘This,’ he says, stretching his arm out towards Freddie’s headstone and beyond. ‘Help with handling all of this.’
‘I’m handling it my own way, thank you,’ I say. The last thing I want to do is sit in a room full of strangers and talk about Freddie.
Jonah nods, swallows. ‘Told you,’ he mutters, but he’s looking at Freddie’s stone rather than at me. ‘I told you she’d say no.’
Oh, hang on just a minute. ‘You told Freddie I’d say no?’
Pink spots fire up on Jonah’s cheekbones. ‘Was I wrong?’ He isn’t someone who generally raises his voice; he’s the natural mediator in any argument. ‘I told him I was going because I thought it might be