Page 30 of One Last Gift

Climb to the sky and see the unknown.”

Linda laughed delightedly. “I love it! Oh my gosh, the rhyming!”

Cassie smiled again. “He tried to stop doing that one year, and I basically had a fit.”

Linda chuckled quietly. “I remember. Do you know, when he was little, he used to ask me for help with the rhymes?”

“Really?”

“Oh yes, he’d sit in the pub after school or when Claire was busy—he’d pick times when you were out of the room or off with Hazel—and we’d go through all the possible rhyming words together.” Cassie could imagine it: a young Tom sitting across the other side of the wooden bar during the closed times, before it opened again at 6 p.m., pen poised over paper, frowning in concentration, his floppy blond hair falling into his eyes. The fact that Tom was gone and now soon the pub would be too hung in the air between them.

Cassie cleared her throat. “There’s a P.S., too.” He did this sometimes, when he thought she might need extra help.

“Oh?”

“P.S. I’ve always liked the number thirty-two. P.P.S. Once you’re there, I hear the afternoon tea is exquisite. Especially when you order from Rose.”

“I can hear Tom’s voice when you say that, you know.”

The sadness in Linda’s voice made Cassie’s own throat tighten. “Me too,” she whispered, blinking back tears that were always so close to the surface.

Then Linda said, a little incredulously, “He’s always liked the number thirty-two?”

Cassie couldn’t help laughing. “Apparently so.”

“Well,” Linda said, in a bolstering tone, “have you figured it out then?”

Cassie hesitated. “I think so.” We’ll stay close this time and go up high. It had clicked in the middle of the night, though she’d then spent the rest of the time she couldn’t sleep mulling over whether she’d gotten it right—because the idea of going there and being wrong…well, she didn’t want to put herself through that. And she didn’t want to let Tom down like that, either. But she hadn’t been able to come up with anything else, and it just felt right. I talked about taking you…She took a breath. “I think…I think it’s the Shard.”

“The Shard!” Linda exclaimed. “How glamorous.”

Exactly the word Cassie had used when she’d come down to London to visit Tom. She’d met Tom at London Bridge, near where he and Sam had been living at the time. She’d been full of nervous anticipation—she and Hazel were planning on moving to London together after university, and she’d wanted to see it, get a feel for it. Tom had met her at the station—and brought along Sam, much to her dismay, given she was still hurting after the skiing incident.

They’d passed the Shard as they walked from the station, and Cassie had stopped, looked up. It seemed to encompass how London in general felt to her—big and imposing and daunting.

“I’ll take you up there one day,” Tom had said, slinging an arm around her shoulder. She’d smiled at him, just as Sam had come up along Tom’s other side.

“Sure you’d be brave enough, Cass? It’s pretty high up.”

She’d taken the classy route, sticking her chin in the air and not retorting, refusing to engage with him, even though it did look pretty high up, and she was kind of glad that Tom didn’t suggest they go up right away, because then she’d have to pretend not to be scared in front of Sam. Sam had fallen behind as she and Tom kept walking, catching up with them a few moments later. He’d shrugged when Tom had looked at him. “I was going to see if we could go up now, but you have to have a booking.”

“Another time,” Tom had said.

Since she’d moved to London, Tom had talked about going there a few times, how cool it would be to go to one of the bars, pretend they were some fancy, rich Londoners and look down on the rest of the city with a cocktail, but it was just one of those things that you talked about and never actually did.

And now, he was sending her up there, and she knew, because of what he’d written in the clue, that he knew it would be pushing her out of her comfort zone. He’d have known that she’d have to brave it, if she wanted to get the next clue. Which she did. Now that she’d opened it, now that she’d broken that first barrier, something in her had sparked. She needed to get it right, needed to find the next one. She wanted to follow the trail, find out what it led to. Even more than that—she knew that it was what Tom would have wanted. He’d gone through all this effort, had laid things out for her, and he’d have wanted her to go through with it, no matter what. So that’s what she’d do. She’d go to the Shard, height be damned, and she’d find that next clue.

The spark that had lit up last night intensified, as her mind latched on to the purpose of that. And somewhere inside her, the old echo of childish excitement that these treasure hunts used to bring on flickered.

Chapter Fourteen

Cassie took a breath as she came to a stop outside the pointed glass building. It was so big. Why had she never appreciated just how bloody huge it was before now? She felt tiny next to it, dwarfed into insignificance. The Shard stood majestic in front of her, spring sunlight glittering off its glass panes. At the bottom, the glass pyramid gave way to a smaller glass foundation, the edges of the rest of the pyramid propped up by white stone pillars, so that it gave the impression that some of the building was held up on stilts. Cassie eyed the pillars suspiciously—could they really support such a massive glass structure? One that she was about to go up, nonetheless? Her heart jumped nervously at the thought.

She bit her lip as she glanced up to the very top of it, the peak offset against a bright blue sky—a sky that promised more sunny days to come. I’ll take you up there one day. Tom’s voice echoed around her mind. It seemed he was sticking to his word, even now.

With that thought, the determination returned and she squared her shoulders as she marched inside, getting the lift up to the thirty-second floor. The hint had been obvious, once she’d figured it out—there was a restaurant, The Oblix, on the thirty-second floor, and afternoon tea was, according to Google, one of their specialities. She watched the little TV screen at the top of the huge lift count the levels as they shot up—incredibly fast, in Cassie’s opinion.

She felt her nerves mount as they hit floor thirty, and slipped her leather jacket off, tucking it under her arm. Smart-casual, the dress code had said when she’d googled the restaurant. So she’d opted for a nice green top over black jeans, hoping that her black pumps would qualify as smart enough.