Beneath Beautiful

by Allison Rushby

  Cameron swiveled quickly in his seat. “You keep looking at something down there. What is it? That house? Down below?”

  Caught out, Cassie wasn't sure how much to tell him. “That was our holiday house. Our family's. That's how we know Derwa. She was our neighbor, I suppose you'd call it.”

  Cameron turned back to face her. “So your family doesn't own the house anymore?”

  “No,” Cassie said slowly. “We haven't for some time now.” She replaced her glass slowly on the table, then decided she may as well tell him. He probably knew, considering he'd known about her father. He'd obviously done a little research on her background. “We sold it. When my mother died. We hadn't been there for years, anyway.”

  “I'm sorry,” Cameron said. “About your mother. I lost my own father young. Alcohol.”

  Cassie nodded, but said nothing, and tried to quell the sickening feeling she had that she shouldn't have brought him here and opened up to him so readily. But there was something inside her that knew that if she'd chosen anywhere else, he would have seen through her in an instant—that it was all or nothing if she wanted to work with Cameron Callahan. It heartened her as well to see the cracks in his charisma the longer she spent in his presence. Underneath the glossy resin and slick PR was a real person. A person with a history not so unlike her own.

  “I'm going to sound completely pretentious when I tell you this, but I'm going to say it anyway because I think you'll understand. I bought my sister a beach house a few years ago. You see, when I was small, all these kids used to come back to school after the summer, and they'd write about how they'd been to summer camp and to the beach for the day and all kinds of things and my sister, Erica, and I . . . we never had anything like that. Not that I think every kid should have a beach house, and the area I came from, well, they weren't wealthy families anyway . . .” He paused to shake his head. “. . . this is coming out all wrong.”

  “No,” Cassie interrupted. “I know what you mean. It's not about that. It's about the memories. Every child should have a memory like that. I don't think people comprehend how important family traditions are. Even the smallest ones.

  Cameron took another sip of his wine, but continued to watch her closely.

  “You know one thing I love about my brother-in-law? Every Friday, he brings something home for the children. Some sort of treat. It's nothing big—a book, or a sweet, or a little magazine. But they love it. So much. He always manages to find something. And he never forgets.”

  “They're very lucky.”

  “They are.” Cassie turned her glass in her hands. “Luckier than both of us, by the sound of it. It's strange, though—both our parents . . . alcohol . . .” She trailed off, leaving the words unsaid.

  “I don't know,” Cameron replied. “How else do you become a tortured artist? And I'm sure you could count quite a few friends of yours whose parents have significant problems with booze, even if they didn't take things as far as ours did.”

  Cassie held up three fingers to represent the three parents she knew like this. “Fully functioning, but still . . . Sad, really.” She took a deep breath. “So . . . you bought this beach house. With a big wad of cold hard cash.” She smirked, changing the subject to something more palatable.

  “Yes. I backed up my car and shoveled it out the trunk right after the auction ended.”

  The pair laughed.

  “But you can't go back, can you?” he continued, after a while. “It's not the same.”

  “No.” Cassie held her breath and his gaze for a moment, before adding. “Sometimes I'm not sure why I come here. I always dread it raining. Back then, the days it rained—and there were plenty of them—we'd be stuck inside. Together. My parents always ended up screaming at each other about something or other. I can remember a lot of days where both Jo and I were dying to get on the train and go back to our boarding school.”

  “Did it upset you? When they sold the house?”

  Cassie's gaze flicked over to Cameron's, wondering exactly how much he knew. Strangely, she felt her guard coming down. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was because she was beginning to see that now undeniable correlation between their equally unstable childhoods. “Oddly, yes,” she answered him. “Even though I didn't have a lot of happy memories about the house, I loved Polperro itself. And it was what we did, you know? That was our tradition, even if it wasn't the cheeriest of ones. The thing was, the house had been in my mother's family forever. Her aunt had left it to her. When she died, I think my father sold it mainly to piss her family off. Which it did. Greatly. So, mission accomplished there.” A moment or two of silence passed, in which Cassie felt herself become braver. “I did read your father drank. Like my mother.”

  “Like a fish,” Cameron said. “Though there wasn't the screaming that you've mentioned. You can't argue with someone who isn't there emotionally.”

  “I wonder if that's better, or worse?” Cassie mused.

  “Similar, but different, I'd say,” Cameron offered. “Finally he drank so much that he wasn't really there physically, either.” He exhaled sharply. “Boarding school sounds like it was the perfect refuge. I wonder if I would have done better at school if I'd boarded. I failed Art, you know. My teacher hated me. But then he also hated Art, so that could also have been an issue.”

  Cassie laughed. “I read that—that you'd failed. I love that. I think it happens to a lot of people. I know several writers who almost failed A-level English.”

  “But you went to Cambridge . . .”

  “Yes,” Cassie replied as Derwa pushed open the wooden doors with her back and entered with dessert. “I was a terrible swot. So was my sister.”

  The pair looked on as Derwa entered the room fully, carrying two plates.

  “Tell me that's what I think it is, Derwa.” Cassie eyed the little pots greedily that sat on top of the plates.

  “It is.” Derwa placed the pots of blackberry and apple crumble with clotted cream before each of them.

  “You simply have to make room for this,” she told Cameron as Derwa disappeared. “I wouldn't be completely lying if I said it's the reason I still come down here.”

  Cassie hovered outside her bedroom door, her hand on the doorknob. “Breakfast at eight,” she told Cameron, who immediately laughed.

  “Seriously? You're thinking about food already? I can barely move.”

  Cassie shrugged. “I make sure to pack my second stomach when I come to Norfolk. Anyway, breakfast at eight, and I hope you brought a waterproof jacket with you. Black, of course.”

  “Actually, I did. Wellies, as you'd say, and a waterproof jacket. I've been shamed by too many English friends on country weekends for wearing 'inappropriate clothing'.”

  Cassie raised her eyebrows. “I'm impressed. You'll need them where we're going. Especially the wellies.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “It is.” Cassie grinned.

  “Well, thank you for a lovely evening. Free of chips and baked beans.” Cameron stepped forward to kiss her on the cheek. As he did so, his hand brushed her opposite hip and she instantly wanted his touch to become firmer, even while she knew there was part of her that wanted the exact opposite, which made no sense at all. Before she could think about this too hard, however, Cameron had pulled back once more and was headed for his own room.

  After a quick shower, Cassie settled in to bed with the copy of a trashy magazine she'd pinched from her sister before she took off with her car. She laughed out loud when she came to picture of Gwyneth out with her kids on Primrose Hill, then covered her mouth with her hand. In the silence that followed, she could hear Cameron on the phone. And then, after that, she could hear him in the shower. She lowered the magazine, the thought crossing her mind that she could get up and very quickly and easily enter his bathroom. The thought terrified her and thrilled her in equal measure. What would he do? What would he say? She closed her eyes momentarily, and tried to imagine what he would look like in the shower.


  After a while the water stopped, and Cassie's eyes flickered open again. She heard him moving around the room, then quiet.

  Magazine still lowered, she listened for some time, unsure what she was listening for. Was she waiting for Cameron to creep into her room? She knew he wasn't going to do that, just as she would never have entered his bathroom. Absentmindedly, she wondered why that was? What stopped two people being together? Or forced them together extremely quickly? Why had she had those one-night stands at university, while others had been more about the relationship right from the very start? Pondering this, she turned her bedside light off.

  But she listened carefully until she finally drifted off to sleep.

  Cassie sat at the small oak table, the matching oak beams looming above, and drank in the rare sunshine at the window of Derwa's familiar, cozy breakfast room.

  “All done?” She polished off her second cup of tea contentedly as Cameron folded his copy of the Guardian.

  “Quite done.”

  “You can't squeeze in another twelve eggs, another slab of bacon?”

  “When my agent tells me I'm getting too fat again, I'll blame you.”

  Cassie snorted. “Fighting words. I'll have you know, I also have an agent. And my agent can beat up your agent any day.”

  Cameron laughed. “My agent's female, and not much over five feet tall. But I bet my ass she could still take out your agent. Seriously, she could have taken out Mohammed Ali in his day if she needed to.”

  “I'll take your word for it,” Cassie said, a picture of her own agent in her mind—male, and rather short, with glasses. “But I'd still be careful of my sister, if I were you.” Cassie thought back to the phone call she'd made to Jo that very morning and her five thousand questions about what had happened in the twenty-four hours since she'd left Primrose Hill. Cassie sighed. “Anyway, quit showing off about your agent, go and welly up, and meet me at the car in ten minutes.”

  Leaning against the Mini, Cassie laughed when Cameron finally appeared. Black waterproof jacket, black scarf wound around his neck, black Hunter wellies and black aviators. “I don't think you'll need the sunglasses,” she told him. “This is England, remember?”

  “Better?” Cameron removed them. Cassie didn't want to admit it, but the man looked good. Which was quite a feat in a waterproof and wellies. He carried a spare set of normal shoes. He had that knack that some people had of being able to throw almost anything on and look great in it.

  “Come on, then,” Cassie said, gesturing toward the passenger seat. “I hope you like steps!”

  “Tintagel?” Cameron twisted around in his seat, reading the sign. “As in, King Arthur? That's where we're going?”

  “That's where we are.” Cassie nodded, shifting down a gear. “Though it's pronounced Tin-taj-el—the locals like you to get it right. While you buy their overpriced but very tasty fudge . . .”

  “That's tourism for you,” Cameron replied.

  Cassie parked the car and the pair made the long, steep way down to the castle entrance, though the name was rather misleading—there was no castle to speak of. What there was included a whole lot of stairs, some stone ruins and a dark, sandy, pebbly beach far, far down below.

  After watching the short film about the site in the information centre, they began to make their ascent to the ruins. Up one flight of wooden stairs, then another and another, across a bridge, up more stone stairs, and more stone stairs again.

  “You're trying to kill me, aren't you?” Cameron said, when they were almost at the top.

  “Maybe.” Cassie grinned.

  But then they were there. On top the world. As they picked their way through the stone ruins, Cassie paused now and again to take in the view, despite being pushed to and fro by the wind.

  “Now, come on,” she said, turning to Cameron at one point. “You've got to admit it's gorgeous.” She looked back out again at the sea, stretching as far as the eye could see, the green hills surrounding them, and the waterfall down below that pulsed onto the beach.

  He tried to look unimpressed, but then couldn't help smiling slightly. “Okay, okay, it's gorgeous. I'll admit it.”

  Cassie glanced up at the sky, full of ominous dark clouds. “I think it's going to rain. We should keep moving.”

  So, they did, crossing the green fields on the top of the world, passing through the ruins and the few other visitors. Then they headed down again. Right down, this time to the beach itself, scrabbling over the steep rocks in their wellies to get there.

  “This way.” Cassie pointed and started over yet more rocks, pausing for a moment near the waterfall so that Cameron could have a closer look. “In here.” She kept going when he was done.

  “In there?” He paused at the cave entrance. “What were you in another life, a mountain goat?”

  “Oh, come on, old man. It's not that bad.”

  “I'm used to tripping around art galleries, not tripping about on rocks. Christ, I do sound old, don't I? That's it; I'm going in . . .” He stalked past her, making her laugh as she followed behind him.

  “It's fine. You can go right in. There are rock pools, but they're never very deep.”

  They got about halfway into the cave before it truly darkened, with only the thick shaft of light from the entrance to guide them by. It seemed darker than usual and Cassie stopped to look at the patch of sky she could see outside; it was becoming increasingly grey. In front of her Cameron twisted around, aware that she had paused. “What's the . . .” He began, before his right foot slipped out from under him and he fell.

  “Oh, God. Cameron. Are you all right?”

  He'd landed backside in a puddle, and Cassie hopped down onto the rock below to kneel beside him. By the time she got halfway down, however, he was already springing his way up again.

  “Holy crap, that's cold.” He grabbed his backside with one hand and onto Cassie, who was standing on the largest rock, with the other. “Wet and cold,” he added, his breath coming fast. “Very wet and very cold.”

  There was a pause where they looked at each other before bursting out laughing. As they wound down, Cameron took one of Cassie's hands and guided it to the back of his wet jeans. As she was stretched around him, their bodies tightened together, as did Cassie's lungs. “Maybe you shouldn't do that,” she managed to say, at the last moment, pulling her hand, but not her body, back. “Just . . . I don't really know what we're doing . . .” She finally got up the courage to state the obvious.

  “I didn't fall over on purpose so you could feel my soggy wet freezing-cold ass, if that's what you mean,” Cameron joked.

  “I'm serious.” Cassie's eyes didn't move from his. “Is this more than. . .” She had no idea how to put what she was thinking into words.

  “More than what?” He focused in on her, unblinking.

  She glanced away, feeling her face heat up. “Oh, I don't know. I don't know! What do you want from me? What is this . . . thing?” She turned to wave one hand back and forth in the small space between them.

  Cameron paused for a moment or two before answering. “Does it matter? I'm having a good time. Are you having a good time?”

  Slowly, Cassie nodded.

  “Then why worry about it? What good would a label be?”

  “Spoken like a true artist,” Cassie told him. “I'm a writer, remember? I like a good label.”

  Cameron chuckled slightly. “What's interesting is that I can do this . . .” He pulled Cassie closer toward him, and her breath caught once more as she felt his arms encircling her waist. “Or even this.” His face approached hers, his breath warm on her face. “And it's fine, isn't it? It's good. Nothing bad is going to happen. No one's unhappy. I'm not unhappy. Are you unhappy? Do you feel taken advantage of? Is there something you'd like to do to me in return? If there is, you should, you know. It's all entirely up to you.”

  “Ah . . . I . . .” Cassie stammered, wondering for all the world if she was going to have to call her sister tonight and c
onfess to having done something unexpected in a cave with Cameron Callahan. Because she wanted to. God, but she wanted to.

  “Well, good then.” Cameron stepped backwards, putting a stop to Cassie's straying thoughts. “Everything's right with the world.”

  Cassie was silent and confused as they exited the cave, mulling over what had just happened. What she didn't understand was whether she was in control, or Cameron was? She couldn't tell. However, outside on the beach once more, Cameron's phone rang, interrupting any further conversation they might have had.

  “Right, right. Okay. Yes, I know it's all about the timing. It always is, isn't it? No, not now. I'm busy. Get Marianne to call me in an hour, and we'll arrange things.” And, with this, he ended the call. When he'd done so, his eyes lost no time in finding Cassie's. “I've got to go back. To New York,” he offered. “I don't suppose you'd consider coming with me?”

  “It's going to be fine. I think. I hope . . .” Cassie paused in diving through boxes to turn her head to look at Jo who was standing in the doorway of the spare room.

  “I'll pray for you,” Jo replied, only half-joking.

  “I don't know what to say.” Cassie stood up properly now, seeing her sister's concern. “Only that it will be all right.”

  She knew that Jo thought this was all too sudden. And it was too sudden. It felt like only five minutes ago that she and Cameron had driven down to Cornwall. They'd spent two nights before coming back again, making the return journey after breakfast this morning. Was that much time really long enough to “get to know each other”? Cassie didn't know. She didn't know anything anymore, except, maybe, that she needed to do this—to sit for Cameron.

  “And how do you know that? That it will be all right? I mean, you'll be in New York. It's harder for me to come to your rescue in New York if I have to. . .” Jo trailed off.