He sluices more paint into the roller tray, and I wait, watching him carefully tilt the tin back without dripping any paint down the side.

‘Marigold keeps saying they’ll move back and set up in London,’ he says, clearing his throat. ‘But it’s been over a year. And the visits are getting less and less often.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.

‘S’all right. You didn’t mean any harm. You’re just a bit – you know – direct in how you say things.’

‘Mm. I get “forthright” a lot in appraisals at work.’

‘Yeah?’ His voice lightens a little. ‘I get “good in a crisis”. Code for “too laid back”.’

‘Whereas “forthright” is what they say now they’re not allowed to call women bossy.’

‘Doubt anyone would dare call you bossy,’ Jackson says. ‘Except Betsy.’

I snort. ‘I’m sure Betsy’s said worse than that.’

‘You just need to give that lot time to get used to you.’ He shoots me a wry glance. ‘What did you expect? You swanned into Hamleigh with your city shoes and your big ideas, like this is small-town America and you’re a New York bigshot and we’re all in one of those Christmas films …’

‘I did not swan! And I’ve been borrowing my grandma’s shoes ever since I got here. You, on the other hand, Mister Not In My Town, with your devil dog and your big truck, scaring off my boyfriend …’

‘I scared off your boyfriend?’

‘No, I’m just kidding.’ I shouldn’t have said that – Ethan would hate that I had. ‘I just mean, you know, you’re pretty intimidating yourself. Everyone here hangs on your every word. You are unbeatably nice.’

The grin widens. ‘Unbeatably?’

‘I mean, unbelievably. Not unbeatably.’

The grin is still there, but he lets my Freudian slip slide. We switch over so I can do the edges on his side.

‘Listen,’ Jackson says after a moment, ‘your theme for May Day. It was better than mine.’

‘Oh, no,’ I begin, then I stop myself. ‘Yeah, it was, actually.’

‘I feel a bit bad about how that went. I sort of, you know, played the daughter card a bit.’

‘You also had a secret tropical cocktail session without me. And made me dress up as the Easter bunny and skip around looking like a twat.’

Jackson laughs. ‘I wasn’t trying to make you look like a twat. I thought you’d like to take part in an important Hamleigh tradition.’

‘And you wanted to get back at me for winning Dr Piotr over to team medieval theme. Not that that lasted long.’

His eyes turn shifty.

‘I’m right! I knew it!’ I swipe at him with my paintbrush; he dodges surprisingly nimbly, grinning.

‘I’m not proud of it,’ he says, dodging my brush again. ‘Oi!’

I get him on the arm, a big smear of pale green. He brandishes the roller at me and I raise an eyebrow, bouncing on my toes.

‘Just you try it.’

He’s a lot quicker than I expected him to be. He gets me right on the nose – I squeal indignantly.

‘I didn’t think you’d go for the face !’

Jackson shrugs, still grinning. ‘The perfect attack, then.’

I lift my top to wipe my nose; as I drop it again, I see his eyes flick away from the bare skin of my stomach. I clear my throat. This is getting a bit silly; I turn back to the wall, sobering up.

‘So anyway,’ Jackson says, following my lead, ‘I wanted to ask how open you would be to merging themes.’

I turn back to him, staring. ‘Tropical Medieval? That is literally absurd. What are we going to do, falconry with parrots? Jousting with bananas?’

He looks thoughtful.

‘No!’ I say. ‘It’s ridiculous!’

‘All right,’ he says. ‘How about medieval themed, but with cocktails?’

I squirm. Gah. It’s so anachronistic! It’s so messy!

Jackson looks amused. ‘It’s just a village fete – who’s going to care if it’s not perfect? And it’s the only way you’ll get Basil on side. Turns out that man loves a mango daiquiri. Besides, we’ve already booked the cocktail-makers.’

‘Fine. But you have to get up in front of all of the committee and declare that you give my theme full support because it is much better,’ I say, brandishing a finger.

‘Apart from how it doesn’t have cocktail stands.’

I growl. Jackson grins, dimples showing.

‘It’s a deal,’ he says, stretching out his hand. I clasp it, feeling the wet paint between our fingers.

‘Just so you know,’ I say, ‘you’re going to have to be May King, and I will be ensuring that the outfit is totally ridiculous. Revenge for the bunny ears.’

He snorts at that. ‘Ah, come on, I did you a favour, giving you the Easter bunny job – it’s pretty much a Cotton family tradition,’ Jackson tells me as we get started on the next wall.

I wrinkle up my nose. ‘Don’t tell me Grandma wears that outfit.’

‘Not your grandma. Your mum’s done it, though – and Carla, once.’

‘Carla? Seriously? I never knew that.’

‘When she was … seventeen, maybe?’

‘Tell me,’ I say, painting forgotten, because suddenly I’m hungry for it, this news about my sister, like she’s still out there in the world, surprising me.

‘Your grandma roped her into it, I think. You must’ve been at uni. I was doing teacher training, back for the holidays, and I bumped into her when she was out hiding the eggs. She looked at me absolute daggers. “You breathe a word of this to anybody,” she said, “I’ll tell everyone you smoke behind the allotments.”’

I laugh, delighted. His impersonation of Carla is brilliant. He smiles back at me, blue eyes catching the sunlight again.

‘She launched into it then, how it’s all a Christian appropriation of a Pagan ritual or something, you know how Carla was about that sort of thing, and then around the corner comes Ursula – she must’ve been six or so, then – and suddenly off Carla skips, bunny tail flapping. She wanted the kid to think she was the Easter bunny. Preserving the magic. Kind of like you did, for Samantha.’

I breathe out slowly, my paintbrush suspended in mid-air. It’s easy to forget, when you’re missing someone, that they’re more than just the person you remember: they have sides to themselves they only show when other people are around.

In the last few weeks I’ve spoken about my sister more than I have in the last year put together. In Hamleigh, people mention Carla without blinking; at home my friends stutter over her name, watching me carefully, afraid to say the wrong thing. I’ve always appreciated how Ethan will steer people off the topic if we’re out for dinner – he says he knows talking about Carla will hurt me.

And yes, it does hurt, but not like I thought it would. The more I talk about her the more I want to, as if there’s a dam in my brain somewhere with cracks forming and the water’s getting through and the faster the flow, the more the dam wants to break.