Joanna Cannon

An exclusive short story by the author of coming-of-age bestseller The Trouble With Goats And Sheep

JAM TODAY

Summer arrived in small pieces. It settled into the planters on the patio and edged its way across the lawn. In the afternoons, I heard it hiding in the birdsong and in the shouts of children across the fence, and it spread itself in pools of light across the sitting room floor when my back was turned.

It was very different to life in the city. In the flat, summer always entered without warning. You awoke one day to rooms that were smaller and more suffocating. Tiny windows refused to open wide enough. The lack of a garden, once met with indifference, became a focus of resentment. The journey to work, along pavements ironed with heat and littered with tables and tourists, was marginally preferable to being sealed into the sweet stench of the London Underground.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind? Being here?’ my mother said.

We sat on the terrace in early-morning sunlight, before the temperature of the day stole our chance. Over the past few weeks, she had asked me the same thing many times, and in many different ways. Did I miss the theatre? The galleries? Wasn’t it a nuisance, not being able to buy a pint of milk after 7pm? My hay fever must be much worse out here, mustn’t it? Isn’t the internet terrible in the countryside compared to a city?

‘Of course I don’t mind. I’ve told you, it’s fine.’ And it won’t be for ever. The words waited to be spoken, but it was always so much easier to walk around them instead.

‘Do you know what you’re going to do with your day?’ I said. ‘It seems a shame not to make the most of the sunshine.’

‘I’m not sure. Potter about the house, I suppose. Sit in the garden. You?’

I halved my to-do list and gave her an edited version. ‘I worry about your job,’ she said. I squinted at the laptop screen and tried to adjust the angle away from the sun. ‘That’s one of the best things about being freelance, Mum. It means I can sit here with you and still work.’ ‘What about the worst things?’ ‘Not being paid,’ I mumbled into the keyboard. ‘Answering emails when everyone else is out enjoying themselves.’

‘And it means you don’t really get to make the most of it,’ she said. I looked up. ‘Make the most of what?’ ‘The summer.’ I frowned at her then stared at the garden, which had become fattened with the season. Not an inch of space was wasted. Every pot, every planter, every tiny piece of ground was filled with something, and all the colours stared back at me as though someone had given God a new set of felt-tip pens. My mother could tell you a story about each flower. Which garden centre she and Dad had visited to buy it. When it was planted. Why it was planted. Even though my father was no longer here,

he had left a calendar of memories for her in the soil, and with each season she would revisit them one by one. ‘There’s so much of it,’ I said. My mother smiled. ‘I know. Then we’ve got the fruit. It’s fit to bursting in there.’

There was a patch of ground beyond the lawns, hidden away through a latched gate. When I was a child, I would refer to it, very grandly, as the orchard, and I’d spend hours inside its walls, reading, hiding, daydreaming, stretched out on velvet grass under branches heavy with plums and pears. As I grew older, though, the orchard appeared to shrink. My daydreaming no longer seemed to fit inside, and my bedroom became a hiding place instead. The world beyond the latched gate was abandoned and long forgotten.

‘Strawberries, apples, gooseberries, rhubarb,’ my mother was saying. ‘All lying there, going to waste.’ ‘That’s such a shame.’ ‘It is,’ she said, ‘but that’s the problem with summer, isn’t it? Everything is ripe all at once and so much of it isn’t appreciated. You only remember how good it tasted when it gets to winter and all the branches are bare.’

‘I suppose so.’ I stretched back on the wooden seat and felt its warmth creep into my skin. My mother sat straight as a rod, trying to fill out the space she once occupied, but the slope of her shoulders and the hollows of her face gave her body’s secrets away.

I watched a bumble bee drift by, pausing for just a moment as he passed.

‘I’ve decided what I’m going to do with my day.’ My mother’s fingers laced together with the announcement. ‘You have? What?’ She turned to me and smiled. ‘We’re going to make jam,’ she said.

I clicked open a new window on the laptop. ‘If you want some jam, I can pop some on the online order.’

‘I don’t want to buy jam, Claire. I want to make jam. I want us to make jam. Together.’

I looked into her eyes. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘The doctor told me I should enjoy the next few weeks, and I would very much enjoy making jam.’

I closed the laptop, because there were times in life when you just had to admit defeat.

We hadn’t made jam together since I was a child, when my mother used to watch me like a hawk to make sure I didn’t scald myself. When she knew how much sugar gave just the right sweetness. When the kitchen was warm and filled with conversation. When the world smelled different.

While she retrieved pans and jars from the depths of the cupboards, I was given the task of harvesting the fruit.

‘Not too ripe, Claire,’ she shouted through the window. ‘Nothing too soft.’

I lifted the latch. It felt awkward at first, like visiting a neglected friend. Difficult and hesitant. Trying to slide back into the space where you’d left.

After a while, though, it was as though I had never gone. So much so that I fully expected a small girl to peer from behind one of the trees, holding a copy of Little

Women, wondering who had intruded into her secret world.

Memories were strange like that, I thought as I pulled at the fruit. Sometimes it felt as if they were just waiting for you, ripe and ready to be found again. I hadn’t been there very long at all, but when I looked down, I’d filled both baskets.

‘You did well.’ I walked back into the kitchen and was met with my mother’s approval. ‘Apples, strawberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants. We’re going to have a field day.’

We did. We washed and simmered, stirred and set. The kitchen filled with the warm smell of summer fruit, and I watched my mother like a hawk to make sure she didn’t scald herself. She handed me a spoonful to taste. ‘Do you think this needs more sugar?’ she said, and the answer was lost in the tightness of my throat.

It took all afternoon but, by the end of it, we had 10 jars filled with the most delicious jam you could ever wish to taste. ‘There’s too much!’ I said. ‘Nonsense. There’s never too much. You can eat this in two years’ time if you store it properly.’ She caught my gaze. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll store it properly. I promise.’

‘But we need to write the date on each one.’ She opened a drawer and, as if by magic, produced a strip of sticky labels. ‘When did you get those?’ I said. ‘Oh, last week. Or the week before. Just on the off-chance.’ She smiled. ‘We can’t have all that fruit going to waste. It will be winter before you know it, and we’ll wish we’d made something for safe-keeping.’ She handed me a pen. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You write them. It would be much nicer if it was in your handwriting.’ And so she did. We stood together and stared at our achievements. A row of hard work and laughter, and an afternoon that seemed to sail by far too quickly. ‘A job well done,’ I said. ‘Indeed.’ My mother folded her arms. ‘Although I suppose it means you’ll have twice the emails to deal with tomorrow?’

I stared at the jars, ready to be opened whenever it may suit. Summer, preserved.

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I thought we might go out somewhere tomorrow. Make a day of it.’ ‘Really? Anywhere in particular?’ I hesitated. ‘How about a garden centre,’ I said. ‘We could have a look round and then maybe eat some lunch? I know we’re overrun with plants…’

She laughed. ‘We are, but that’s the best thing about a garden. No matter what you’ve grown there, you can always find room for more flowers.’

‘The words waited to be spoken, but it was always so much easier to walk around them’