Polly was bemused by all the attention but at least she looked reasonably happy. She had most of her family around her and Granddad Ger-Ger was making that silly noise that always made her giggle.

I raised my camera and clicked away as Simon and Marti blew out her birthday candles and whisked the cake off to the kitchen to be cut. Then Edwin lifted his niece in the air and 'flew' her back to the rug for a game of 'Knock down Uncle Ed's tower'. Mom and George sat on the sidelines laughing.

In the midst of the ensuing mayhem, the phone rang.

Everyone else was busy and I was standing next to it, so I answered it.

"Hello?"

Nothing.

I wondered if it was one of those computer-generated calls designed to test whether the phone line was active. I was just about to hang up when a voice spoke.

"Can I speak to Marti, please?"

And then I knew.

"Marti!" I called in a strangled voice. My sister appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"What's up?" She asked and then looked at me properly. I obviously looked ill because she was at my side in an instant.

"Casey?"

I handed her the phone. "Derek." I said quietly by way of explanation.

Her eyes widened, as well they might. For the first time in fifteen years, I had just heard Derek's voice.

She took the receiver and turned unconsciously from me.

"Hi D!" She said with false cheeriness and walked back towards the kitchen. On the way, she tapped Lizzie on the shoulder and made a signal towards me. Lizzie caught the look on my face and the next thing I knew I was being propelled up the stairs to my room.

But not before I heard Marti say quietly. "Yes, Derek. It was."


"Are you okay?" Lizzie said as I washed my face in the bathroom.

I nodded. "Yes. Just a little unnerved that's all."

Lizzie snorted. "Unnerved? I though I was going to have to perform CPR. What got you so shocked? Who was on the phone?"

"Derek." I said, using his name for once. Lizzie whistled.

"Oh Casey." She exclaimed sympathetically.

"What? It's perfectly acceptable for him to phone here. It's his family too."

"Yes…but…hell Casey! How awkward!"

I dried my face and led the way back to my/Derek's room so that I could re-apply my make-up.

"We're grown adults, Lizzie. I can handle a three second phone call."

Lizzie perched on the bed. "It didn't look like that from where I was standing."

"It took me by surprise. That's all." I chuckled. "I think it must have taken him by surprise as well. He took a massive pause before he spoke."

"I'll bet. Did he sound the same?"

I looked at her. "Did he sound the same to you when you last saw him?"

"That was only a year ago. It's been fifteen years for you."

"I think he sounded the same. The last time we spoke he wasn't Derek." I admitted quietly. Lizzie slipped an arm around my shoulders.

"I wish I could turn back the clock." She said, pressing a kiss in my hair.

I laughed humourlessly. "How would that change anything? I'd still make the same decision."

Lizzie looked at me in surprise. "Really?"

I nodded. "It was a choice between us and our family. How could I choose anything else?"

"Derek thought you should have chosen differently."

"That's because Derek, as per usual didn't think it through."

Lizzie dropped her arm. "Casey. He said was in love with you. You told him you felt the same way. Even I can see how you breaking it off twenty four hours later would hurt him badly."

I grimaced. "Well as Mom very carefully pointed out to me. Derek Venturi doesn't do love or commitment. I was on a hiding to nothing. And Mom was right, he didn't last a month before he was dating someone else."

Lizzie grew angry. "Mom had no right to interfere."

I sighed. "Lizzie. I don't blame her. She saw me entering into an ill-advised relationship and she warned me off. That's what Moms do."

"She warned you off a relationship with Derek! Her own step-son, and incidentally, the one person we all knew you should be with."

"And he may very well have dated again soon after, but that doesn't mean you didn't hurt him badly." Marti said from the doorway. "Very badly."

"What did he want?" It was Lizzie who asked, not me.

"To wish Polly a Happy Birthday." Marti said simply. I could tell from her expression she was not happy with what she had overhead Lizzie and me talking about.

"Look girls. Please let's not argue about this. It's water under the bridge, okay? It all happened a decade and a half ago. Derek and I tried a relationship and it fell at the first hurdle. Mom was right to raise her concerns. Obviously, I wish there had been some way to keep the friendship he and I had, but I understand why he left. I don't blame him at all." My voice trailed off.

Marti sighed.

"Casey. I'm really pleased that you have forgiven Nora for her little pep-talk. It's nice that someone has. Because I never will. She's my step-mom and I love her to pieces but what she did was wrong." Marti turned and left the room.

Lizzie got up and went to shut the door.

"What about you, Lizzie? Do you forgive her?"

Lizzie took a deep breath. "The injury to me was only second hand. It was a mutual decision for Ed and me when we saw how mom felt about you and Derek. We kept our friendship."

Liz was right. No one else knew that a relationship had been brewing between her and Edwin too. But when Mom stepped in to offer me her 'helpful' advice about Derek and I broke the relationship off, the resulting trauma caused Liz and Ed to reconsider their relationship. It stopped before it had even started.

Fortunately for them, they at least had managed to remain friends.

Although sometimes when it was only the three of us in the same room I would catch them looking at each other in a way which made me wonder if they were really happy with the way things had turned out.


"Hey Ed!" I said sitting down beside my youngest step-brother. He grinned and slung an arm around me. It was a move that thirteen year old Edwin would have cut his arm off before making.

Time changes a lot of things.

"How's my favourite step-sister?" he asked.

"I heard that!" A voice came from the kitchen and we both laughed.

"I'm good, Ed. How is 'New York's most eligible bachelor?' I saw the article in Newsweek."

He chuckled. "If I actually went around calling myself that you could sue me for breach of contract."

Edwin, like me, lived in New York. In fact, he lived five blocks from me. We saw a lot of each other and had become quite close. We had the brother-sister relationship our parents had dreamed of. He was one of my closest friends.

"You make all the secretaries in our office swoon."

"Aren't three of them male?" he countered.

"What's that got to do with anything?" I grinned.

We chatted on for a while about some of our mutual friends and an up and coming gallery opening he wanted me to accompany him to. When George and Mom were busy with Polly, however, he leaned over.

"So…you talked to D then?"

I shook my head. "No Ed. I said 'hello' and at that point I didn't know who was on the other end of the phone. All he said was 'Can I speak to Marti, please?'"

Ed sighed. "Some days I want to shove his teeth to the back of his throat."

Which was complete bull because Edwin and Derek were close still. They emailed often and occasionally met up to watch a baseball game.

This was why I could only do the trip back to London a couple of times a year. It was because everything became raw again. Even Ed who I could see for the whole of the rest of the year in New York and he wouldn't mention Derek at all felt compelled to discuss him when we were back in the family home.

It didn't take me long to excuse myself and have an early night.


I was going home the next day, back to New York. Edwin and I were making the journey together – he'd insisted on upgrading my ticket for me, although I made good money with my job as a literary editor for the biggest publishing house in New York. When I got back to my room in my parents' house I picked up my suitcase and started to repack.

Over the years, I had become good at packing. For a while I had toyed with the idea of being a travel writer and there had been a couple of years of back-to-back trips to exotic places. But I had missed home, so these days the only trips I made were between Canada and New York.

I laid the clothes gently but efficiently into the small space, brushing a hand over them to rid the fabric of creases. In the process, I accidentally knocked a ball of socks onto the floor and they rolled under the bed.

I knew that Mom had been struggling to do the housework with her arthritic hip, so George had started paying someone to do the heavy stuff for her. As I wriggled under the bed to retrieve my socks I sneezed with the dust and noted that the cleaner obviously needed to be shown the extension attachment on the vacuum cleaner. I waded through the dust and grabbed my socks, and started to pull myself out.

That's when I saw it.

A tiny corner of paper wedged in between some under bed storage boxes full of jumpers Mom would never wear again. I pulled it and the paper came away easily into my hand. It was a photograph and as I straightened up and sat on the edge of the bed I could hardly breathe. It was a photograph of me and Derek.

The only photograph of us together; as a couple.

I remembered it being taken as if it were yesterday. One of our friends at university had used Derek's camera and Derek had pulled me onto his lap and folded his arms around me possessively.

"Mine." He had said in my ear. It had tickled and I had turned to look at him in surprise.

The photograph was of us looking at each other.

It was obvious we were in love.

There had been two copies of this picture. Derek had written on the back of mine. His scrawl said.

It took me four years Casey, but no one can resist the Venturi charm for long. I'm yours now. I love you. X

On the back of his, I had written:

I love you too, Moron.

X

I smiled at the memory. I had lost my copy of the picture at some point when I moved to New York. I had turned the house and my apartment upside down looking for it. This copy must be the one Derek had. He must have discarded it years ago. It looked quite fresh as though being under the bed had been good for it, but it couldn't have been there for the whole fifteen years because of the new bed.

I turned it over expecting to see my handwriting. And froze.

It took me four years, Casey…

The hand writing was Derek's. This was the photograph I had lost. I frowned. How the hell had it wound up under Derek's bed? I sat for a long time puzzling, but mainly just looking at last on a picture I had truly missed. I could see the rise and fall of the strokes which formed those important words which had meant so much to me then.

I love you.

I reached across to the tissue box to wipe my eyes and glanced at the clock. It was getting late and I had an early flight.

The picture was mine, so I slipped it into my reading book, placed it in my vanity case, and went to get ready for bed.