by Karen Swan
Chapter Two
Twelve hours and sixteen minutes later, she was already lagging behind, wishing she was in Paris instead. They were running round the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, and all Cassie could think about was getting back into her warm, soft truckle bed and lying in the recovery position. The training watch, which was attached to the heart-rate band beneath her bra, was bleeping and flashing red numbers at her, practically screaming at her to stop – something Kelly’s trainer Raoul was clearly never going to do.
She did, and watched dismally as they began to pull away – again.
‘Guys! Guys!’ she panted, bending forwards so that her head was practically on her knees. ‘You go ahead!’ she gasped, waving them on.
Kelly rounded back, jogging on the spot, a vision of perpetual energy in her silver and blue running kit. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, we’ll wait,’ she smiled, looking over at Raoul, who apparently whipped all the top catwalk models into shape and was looking distinctly underwhelmed by Cassie’s geriatric attempts.
‘Kell, you’ve been running for quarter of an hour now and your body isn’t even aware it’s moving yet!’ Cassie wheezed, tottering over to the nearest park bench. She began greedily drinking her water like a bottle-fed calf. ‘You’re doing the marathon in two months, for heaven’s sake. You’re hardly going to keep to your training schedule if you have to keep waiting for me to catch up. Honestly, I’m fine. You go on.’
Kelly looked unconvinced. ‘But how will you get back?’
‘I won’t. I won’t move from here. You can collect me on your way back.’ She sighed feebly. ‘I might just have recovered by then.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Please . . . just go?’ Cassie pleaded, using her arms to lift her legs on to the bench and then turning so that she could lie out flat. ‘I’ll be fine . . . Oh God, that feels good!’
‘Tch! First morning in Manhattan and you’re already sleeping on a bench in Central Park.’
‘Just keeping it real,’ Cassie said, closing her eyes and dropping an arm languidly across her face. The sun was bright already in the cloudless sky, although the September air was cool and some of the leaves had just started to turn, the incipient yellow tint spreading through the tree canopies like a fever.
‘Well, I’ll be back for you. Don’t move from here,’ Kelly said, her voice beginning to fade as she jogged back to Raoul.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Cassie mumbled, mainly to herself. Her heart was still galloping like a Grand National winner, and she could already feel the telltale heaviness in her muscles. Tomorrow was going to suck.
All around her, she could hear New York waking up. The drone of traffic on the periphery of the park was becoming as constant as waves, and stalls selling bagels, hot dogs and pretzels were setting up. The smell of frying onions drifted over and Cassie sniffed like a Bisto kid, feeling her own hunger begin to awaken, though it would do her no good to get an appetite going – Kelly had decreed she should go without carbs whilst she was here and cut back on red meat. For someone who’d never dieted in her life and was used to eating what she liked whenever she was hungry (which admittedly wasn’t usually between meals), the very idea of restriction and prescription tasted bitter.
The Japanese food had been delicious last night – Kelly had laughingly found some cutlery for her when Cassie had ably demonstrated her tae kwan do skills with the chopsticks – but that was because it was freshly made with high-quality ingredients. She’d have said the same of spaghetti aglio e olio, or roast beef with Yorkshire puddings and hot horseradish sauce. Just buy quality, cook simply, eat in moderation. That had always been her mantra.
Then again, she thought, as her body wheezed and ached after the few paltry minutes of exercise, it wasn’t as if she was a paragon of physical beauty. Sure, she was slim, but she had no muscles, and what she did have was soft and untoned. She’d nearly fallen over when Kelly had padded round the apartment in her underwear, showing a stomach that was so defined Cassie would have been able to do brass rubbings on it. Absently, Cassie prodded her own tummy. It yielded without resistance. It wasn’t fat, just spongy. Neglected. Unloved. Unworked.
With a burst of resolve, she swung her legs round off the bench – and straight into a runner (he was going way too fast to be called a jogger). It was like sticking a spike into a spinning wheel – there was an almighty clatter as he flew through the air, landing badly on a bin before slumping to the ground.
‘Oh my God!!’ Cassie cried, running over to him. The man was lying face down, his chest pushed away from the ground slightly in a half push-up as he tried to catch his breath. There was an arrow of sweat between his shoulder blades and his dark blond hair was damp. She could see his knees were bleeding.
Cassie crouched down. ‘Oh-my-God-I’m-so-sorry,’ she gabbled. ‘I didn’t see you coming.’
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ he muttered, rolling himself over into a sitting position and pulling up his shirt. Cassie rocked back on her heels at the sudden sight of this stranger’s torso – so tanned and muscled compared with Gil’s anaemic, hairless chest, like chicken flesh, and every bit as soft as her own. Her eyes followed the wriggle of hair that stretched from his waistband up to his chest, and saw there a faint purple bruise – in the shape of a New York City bin – imprinting itself and gathering colour like a teenage blush.
‘That’s my fault,’ she gulped, pointing at it.
‘Yes, it is,’ the man said, dropping his shirt and looking at her for the first time with cold eyes. ‘What the hell were you think— Cassie!’
Cassie stepped back in surprise. ‘Henry!’
‘I don’t believe it!’ he bellowed, his grumpiness forgotten. ‘What are you doing here? Apart from taking out passing strangers.’
Cassie laughed and helped him stand up. ‘Oh, you know . . .’ she began, then suddenly faltered. It was the first time anyone had asked her that since the party. The first time anyone who knew her and Gil had asked her that . . . and she wasn’t prepared for it. To all the other nineteen million strangers in New York, she’d be able to say she had just moved here, that she was starting a new job, living with a friend. But Henry knew her. He knew Gil. He’d been there when she’d met him. He’d kissed her the night she’d met him . . .
‘I . . . I . . .’ She looked up at him helplessly, completely unable to shake off the paralysis that wouldn’t let her say the words.
Henry stared at her, concern mounting. She could see him reading her panic. ‘Is Gil here?’
Cassie shook her head, and she didn’t need to say anything else. As the tears started to fall, he enveloped her in his arms so that New York receded and she was back in a place of safety, back in her past – a past that preceded Gil. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she heard him say, the words rumbling and deep in her ear, which was pressed against his chest.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she sniffed finally. ‘It’s all very fresh still.’ She pulled back to look up at him properly. The last time she’d seen him – Suzy’s little brother – he’d been eighteen with a bad haircut and at the end of some vicious growth spurts that had seen him grow twelve inches in two years. Knocking six foot four, he wasn’t so little now. There had been little indication back then of the imposing man standing before her now – athletic, with a shaggy haircut that stopped just above his lashes, and bright blue eyes so inquisitive and keen. She had always got the impression that he saw so much more than other people. If he’d been a superhero, his power would have been X-ray vision. Hers would have been invisibility.
‘Have you seen Kelly?’ he asked.
‘Yes. In fact, I’m staying with her for the next few months, just till I . . . you know, get back on my feet.’
‘Sure . . . She’s a good friend.’
‘I’m so lucky to have her. I don’t know what I’d do . . .’ Her voice cracked and she stopped, biting her lip hard. She had to get a grip. ‘I’m sorry . . . exercise unhinges me.’
He laughed.
‘No. No. The city’s not my thing.’
‘I remember,’ she said, smiling, feeling safe as her thoughts were cast back to her past again. Her abiding memory of him was of shinning up and down trees. ‘Trees.’
He nodded. ‘And ice.’
‘Ice?’
‘And jungles.’
‘Jungles?’
‘And mountains.’
‘Mountains?’
‘And the bottom of the sea on occasion, too.’
‘Jesus! Exactly what is it that you do, Henry?’
‘Well, there’s not technically a job title for it, but I’m basically a freelance explorer. I guess you could say I’m a botanical bounty hunter.’
‘A what?!’ She’d been expecting banker or accountant or something.
‘I go looking for rare specimens in the most inaccessible places in the world – so the Amazon, the Arctic cap, up in the Andes . . . that kind of thing.’ He shrugged.
Cassie stared at him. ‘Why?’
‘Sometimes for rich collectors, but pioneering research mainly. All kinds of industries hire me – beauty, oil, car manufacturing. A lot of scientists believe that there are remedies in plants and flowers, not just for health benefits, but for other things as well.’
‘But cars?’
‘Sure. They’re looking for ways to run cars without tapping into the existing fuel supplies, so they’re investigating whether algae could be developed as a biofuel, for example. And now, with the Arctic cap melting, it’s not just shipping routes that are opening up. We’re discovering previously unknown plants that have been protected by the snow and ice and which were once inaccessible to man.’
‘How do you even become a . . . a . . . one of those?’
He gave a small shrug. ‘I’ve got BScs in Biology and Marine Biology, and a Master’s in Zoology.’
‘That’s a lot of ologies. And so you’ve – what? Basically been all over the world? The very top, very bottom and all around?’
‘Pretty much. Saw more of Borneo than I wanted to when I discovered a new species of giant slipper orchid and got chased through the jungle by Abu Sayyaf bandits.’
‘Oh my God!’ she cried, appalled. ‘Were you okay?’
He held his arms out and looked down at himself. ‘As you can see, a happy ending.’
‘I bet you haven’t been to the North Pole, though,’ she teased.
‘Sure. I’ve been there three times and the South once. I was on the expedition where they discovered the lost world in the Dry Valleys. Fourteen million years old. Can you believe it?’ He shook his head in amazement.
‘Not really. Your poor mother!’
Henry chuckled, baffled by her response. His mother wasn’t what most women thought of when he told them he battled the harshest conditions on earth as a living. The alpha-hunter image tended to have a devastating effect on women. ‘My mother?’
Cassie slapped a hand across her heart in pity. ‘She must never sleep for worrying that you’re going to be mauled by polar bears or shot by pirates—’
‘Or be used as a skittle by speeding penguins,’ he quipped.
‘Don’t joke! It all sounds so dangerous,’ she chided.
‘So’s crossing the road in this city,’ he said.
‘It’s not the same thing. There must be peril at every turn – disease, hypothermia, even just getting lost . . .’
‘We navigate by GPS. It’s all done by satellite now.’
‘Well, what if the satellite, I don’t know, stops working?’
‘Like it runs out of batteries?’ He laughed. ‘You worry too much, Cass. But thanks for the optimism. Maybe you could be the mascot on our next expedition!’
‘You’re going away again?’
‘Next year. That’s why I’m here, actually. Trying to drum up sponsorship. I’ve been invited to join an Arctic Biodiversity Assessment for two months next spring.’
She shook her head, aghast. ‘Why has Suzy never mentioned any of this to me?’
‘Why would she? I don’t suppose I feature much in your conversations,’ he said, laughing lightly. ‘Although I’m sure they’re all the poorer for it.’
Cassie shook her head, trying to absorb the scope of his world. His horizons, his adventures, his memories were literally global.
‘Wow. And to think I thought it was a big deal coming here.’
‘Your first time?’ he asked.
‘My first time anywhere. I haven’t even crossed the border into England since Gil and I got . . . married.’
There was an awkward silence as Cassie attempted to sustain the impression of someone who was absolutely fine.
Henry rescued them both. ‘Well then, seeing as this is your first time here, I hope you’ve drawn up your list,’ he said, changing tack.
‘List?’ she repeated blankly.
‘Yes. You know, the one you have to draw up every time you go somewhere new, of all the things you’re going to do, places you’re going to see. A bit like the “Things to Do Before You Die” list, but less ambitious. You don’t need to bungee jump off Trump Towers, for example.’
Cassie giggled. ‘So you mean like having tea at the Waldorf – that kind of thing?’
‘Precisely. Something that gives you the New York experience.’ He folded his arms, waiting to hear about her planned cultural adventure.
‘Hmmmmm.’ Cassie pursed her lips and thought. And thought. And thought. And slowly began to panic. ‘Ummmmm . . . Hmmm . . . Yes, tricky.’
And it was. She wasn’t here as a tourist or an executive. She was a refugee. On the run. She was here because her friend had taken her in, and of all the options open to her, it had been as far away from Gil and Wiz as she had been able to get. Drawing up a list and getting the lowdown on the Big Apple wasn’t flashing up on her radar yet. Hell, she’d been here less than a day.
‘Okay, I get the picture,’ Henry chuckled. ‘Tell you what, I’ll write it for you. I’m an expert at these things, even if I do say so myself. I draw one up for every place I go to.’
‘You do?’ Of course he did, she instantly chided herself. As one of the last true explorers of the world, he probably managed to turn even a weekend city break into a great odyssey.
‘Sure.’
The sound of springy feet slapping the pavement like Riverdancers made her turn. Kelly and Raoul were back from their ‘light’ run.
‘Hey!’ Kelly beamed, spotting Henry, then his bleeding knees. ‘Ooh. What happened? Some nutter?’
‘Yeah,’ Henry laughed.
Cassie rolled her eyes. ‘Ha-ha.’
Kelly looked between the two of them. It was clear that Cassie had been crying again. She walked over and linked arms casually with her, giving her a little squeeze.
‘How long are you here for?’ Kelly asked him.
‘Just a couple of days. I’m in with Breitling next week. Thanks so much for putting a word in for me, by the way.’
Kelly shrugged. ‘Hey, what’re big sisters for, right, Cass?’ Technically, he was Suzy’s little brother – only by eighteen months, although that was like the distance between the earth and the moon when they were children – but as they’d all grown up like sisters, they all regarded Henry as their own little brother.
‘Breitling’s one of my clients,’ Kelly explained to Cassie. ‘I suggested they talk to Henry, given that National Geographic have given the go-ahead on the documentary now. It’s a good branding exercise for them – after all, extreme conditions are their USP. And with the boy looking like that –’ she reached up and patted his cheeks like a doting mother – ‘what’s not to love? I’ll see if I can muscle in on the meeting too,’ she said, winking at him.
Cassie smiled, nodding. Wow. Television as well. His star was rising – she could see it, almost like a vapour trail. It was hard to remember him as the little brother they’d forced
to be their baby when they played Mummies and Daddies, and who they’d performed mock surgeries on when they played Doctors. And – oh God, she remembered now – they’d all paid him fifty pence to let them practise kissing on him (not Suzy, of course – the thought grossed her out), which, given his rigid terror, meant they graduated on to boys their own age with all the technique of having snogged windows.
Poor man. It was a wonder he seemed so normal.
‘Well, we must get together before you go,’ Kelly said, lunging into some elastic stretches. ‘Tomorrow night?’
‘Sounds good.’
‘I’ll put our names on the door at the usual, shall I?’
‘Great.’ He smiled at Cassie. ‘You’ll like it,’ he reassured her.
‘Okay,’ she said, smiling back.
‘Is Lacey with you?’ Kelly asked.
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Great. Then it’ll be the four of us.’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Who’s Lacey?’ Cassie asked, looking between Henry and Kelly.
‘Henry’s fiancée.’
‘Oh!’ She looked back at him. ‘Congratulations, Henry.’
‘Thanks.’
‘When’s the wedding?’
‘Next summer. After I get back.’
‘Great. Great. That’s great,’ she nodded.
‘Well, I’d better go. I’m in a rush – as you probably saw from the comfort of the bench,’ he chuckled.
She went to smack him on the arm, but he dodged out of the way, laughing, already out of reach.
Chapter Three
‘Why won’t you tell me where we’re going?’
‘Because it’s classified. Today’s itinerary is on a strictly need-to-know basis.’
‘But I do need to know.’
‘No you don’t,’ Kelly said, striding ahead with her arm out. A cab screeched to a halt beside her. ‘Get in,’ she commanded.
Cassie sighed and slid along the seat.
‘222 Broome, between Lafayette and Broadway,’ she said to the driver. ‘And don’t take Park. They’re still digging up around East 14th and traffic’s a bitch.’
