by Karen Swan
But she was falling behind life’s curve, the proverbial hare: the girl who’d been first off the starting blocks and married at twenty-one, had fallen asleep by the road, while everyone else was already passing over the finishing line. They had gone on without her: Suzy, Kelly . . . Would Henry too?
She watched as the gulls followed a fishing boat down the estuary, wheeling in the sky before diving for mackerel in the wake, screaming noisily and drowning out the black choughs cawing in the treetops. This, then, was the soundtrack to the place Henry had told her about so often.
He knew and loved this place well; he’d grown up to the summers here. This view had been his as a child, his long, bare brown legs running down the bald footpath as Hattie and Ed, his late father, struggled after with towels and bags, his love of the sea nurtured, no doubt, on this very stretch of water.
She sat there until the chill began to set in, watching the wind running over the long grasses like a child playing Duck, Duck, Goose, fat clouds scudding towards the horizon like skimming stones. She rose, knowing she ought to get back. She hadn’t left a note explaining where she was and there was every chance Velvet would decide to be her alarm clock, making a bolt for freedom when Suzy took her out of her cot and bursting through the doors to see Auntie Kiss-Kiss and negotiate a story in bed together. If they found she wasn’t there . . .
She walked through the churchyard with slow steps. Some white and purple flowers from a recent wedding still clung to the church door, scraps of confetti marbling the damp blades of grass. It was a wildly beautiful spot to be married, the deep hedge providing an effective windbreak from the sea winds, and her hand trailed lightly over the moss-fringed headstones, their engravings in-filled with yellow and white lichen. She stopped as her eyes fell to a pair that were visibly newer than the rest: ‘Here lie Phillip and Emily Warrender, beloved parents of Gemma, taken too soon. October 2006.’
A fire, Suzy had said. She hadn’t said that they’d been buried here. Was it so surprising that Gem would want to spend more time here then? Cassie bit her lip, feeling a rush of sympathy for the child left behind, even now – nine years later – looking for love, roots and stability. Looking for home.
She stepped through the deep lychgate, onto the path, and was immediately sent flying as something jabbed her hard in the side. She fell onto the grassy bank with a cry.
‘Oh shit!’
She looked up in confusion as much as pain, to find Luke staring down at her in horror, the sharp nose of a surfboard pointed in her direction under his arm.
‘Cass, I didn’t see you until . . . Are you OK?’
She rubbed her ribs – the board had scored a direct hit – but she couldn’t check for a bruise without lifting her T-shirt and clearly that wasn’t going to happen. ‘I’m fine.’
He offered her his hand and helped her back to standing, although she made a point of snatching her hand away. He flinched at the gesture, a pause opening up. ‘What are you doing out here at this time, anyway? It’s not exactly your favourite time of day.’
Her eyes flickered irritably to his. Even just a throwaway line like that was privileged information, a personal detail he had no business using anymore – precisely the kind of thing that would trip them up in front of the others.
‘You’re not jet-lagged too, are you?’ he smiled, even though he must have known it was highly unlikely she would have left the country since seeing him at the party last week. Unlike him. He’d probably flown to Haiti and Tokyo since then.
‘Just enjoying the view,’ she said in a surly voice, refusing to smile back.
Gently, he set his board down on the path. She looked back at him, taking in properly the sight of a wetsuit rolled down to his hips, his sand-coloured T-shirt wet at the hem. ‘Since when did you learn to surf? You’re a New Yorker,’ she said with as much scorn as she could muster.
‘Pirelli calendar,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘There’s so much damned waiting around on these tiny tropical islands.’
‘Huh, bummer,’ she muttered, with a sarcasm that he didn’t miss.
His head tipped to the side as he scrutinized her, his eyes tracing her ridiculous tan lines, which were now on glaring display – she had left her sunglasses in the bedroom – and which had only faded overnight by a few degrees to Schiaparelli pink. ‘Look, Cass, about last night—’
‘Oh yes, congratulations, by the way.’
‘What?’
‘You and Amber. She’s beautiful.’
He looked stumped by the comment, baffled by her wide-eyed insincerity. ‘Thanks.’
‘How long have you been together?’ She was guessing two weeks.
‘Since November.’
Eight months? She couldn’t keep the surprise from her face. ‘Oh.’ That was far longer than any of his other relationships. Longer than they’d lasted, anyway. ‘She must be special.’
‘Yeah, she is.’ He looked down at the ground, clearing his throat lightly. ‘Look, Cass—’
‘Well, you’d better watch out. One week – no, one day with Gem as Bridezilla and she’ll—’
‘Cass!’ His tone stopped her in her tracks. ‘I’m really sorry.’
She paused, too weary to keep up her exhausting patter of sardonic comments that fooled neither of them.
‘I’m sorry for what I did in Paris – it was a shitty thing to do, exhibiting the pictures in the show like that—’
‘Selling them was even worse! You profited from my humiliation.’
‘Actually, I gave the money to charity . . . It didn’t feel right.’ He had the grace to look sheepish. ‘I’m sorry for turning up here. I had no idea you’d be here.’
‘Oh, come on!’ she scoffed. ‘You don’t expect me to believe that?’
‘Look, I admit I barely know Gem and Laird. I’d never even met them before last week, but I got on well enough with him at the party, and Amber . . . well, she doesn’t have many friends, not proper ones anyway – you know what the fashion world’s like – so when she said she wanted to come . . .’ He sighed. ‘She needs to put down roots. We both do. We’re trying to build a new life for ourselves.’
Cassie blinked at him. This wasn’t the Luke she knew. Repeated apologies? Donating money to charity? Long-term relationship? Putting down roots? Surfing before breakfast?
He nodded, as if reading her mind. ‘I’ve changed, Cass. I’m not the man I used to be.’
She continued staring. He certainly looked the same – better, if anything, his year-round tan particularly burnished at the moment so that his hazel eyes seemed to glow brighter in contrast, his dark brown hair a little longer and wilder than it used to be, and he’d put on more muscle since her time with him. ‘A nation rejoices,’ she said defiantly.
He looked stung by the words – yet another slap-down – and she saw the expression change in his eyes from earnest, placid and benign to something darker and more familiar to her – a flicker of anger, of patience being worn thin, passions lurking just below the surface; but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. She still stood by what she’d said to him at the party – his betrayal had been unforgivable. It wasn’t good enough to turn up two years later with a surfboard and a hippy haircut and tell her he’d changed. What remained unchanged was the fact that his actions meant bastards like Beau Cooper could buy her naked image and hang it on a wall; call it art and throw cocktail parties where everyone could see it; hang it in the bedroom and stare into her eyes while he banged his girlfriends; meet her in the flesh and strip her bare with a knowledge and possession and intimacy that told her he owned her.
‘What does Amber say about it all? Does she know what you did?’
He hesitated before replying. ‘Actually, she doesn’t know about us.’
Cassie blinked in surprise. She’d been so certain he would have had to come clean behind closed doors. ‘Well if you being here is all so innocent, why would you lie to her about it?’
‘I’m not ly
ing about it, but where’s the good in telling her about you? It would only make her feel insecure, and she’s beginning to have a really good time down here. She thinks you’re great, and she says Suzy and Archie are like some kind of double act. Obviously if I’d known we were going to be seeing you, I’d have warned her.’ He stopped. ‘Actually, no, that’s not true. We just wouldn’t have come.’
The admission was unexpectedly painful for her to hear.
‘But as it was, I thought we both handled the situation well last night.’ He gave a light shrug. ‘No one would ever have guessed we made such a mess of things—’
‘We made a mess of things?’ But the momentary flicker of irritation she’d seen before had gone. The eyes looking back at her were as open and clear as a child’s.
‘What difference would it make anyhow? It’s water under the bridge, right? You’re engaged. We’re happy.’ He shrugged again.
Cassie stared back at him, her instincts and suspicions tempered by this continued chivalry, this persistent politeness that betrayed a new apathy about her. A little over two years ago he had offered her everything he had in New York, and when she had rejected him, his subsequent revenge in Paris had been as blinding as his passion. But now, here . . . even with the two of them alone, when there was no more need for play-acting in front of strangers, he was behaving as neutrally towards her as a stranger giving directions. The heat between them, the fire that had once made her so convinced they could never see each other again, it had gone out.
He raked a hand through his hair, his eyes watching the uncertainty in her features as she absorbed this new, passive dynamic. ‘Cassie, please, let’s not hate each other.’
She continued staring at him, searching for the trick, the sleight of hand that would reveal his ruse, but there was nothing that she could see or read in him that alarmed her.
Slowly, she turned, stepping back onto the path and making a point of waiting for him as he picked up his surfboard again. It was if not a peace treaty, at least a cease in hostilities.
They walked a short way in silence.
‘So, how did you and Amber meet?’ she asked quietly, glancing over. ‘Or do I even need to ask?’
No. She didn’t need to ask. He raised an eyebrow, giving her the answer without words. ‘She’s different, though. She’s the one who’s got me back on the straight and narrow . . .’ He stopped himself and she wondered what he had been going to say. Back on the straight and narrow from what? Her? Or was she inflating her ego to think that her departure had been quite that devastating? ‘But she’s sweet and kind, which is really saying something for NYC. And we make each other laugh. I can talk to her. It’s the simple stuff.’
‘Oh.’ Cassie couldn’t imagine him embracing the simpler life. When she’d been with him, everything had been very designed and stylized, international and top tier.
‘I guessed from Gem that Henry is Suzy’s brother, yes?’
She nodded.
He inhaled deeply, his ribs opening out like bellows. ‘Well, that certainly explains a few things. You guys go way back. That’s how he knew with the list in New York . . .’ He was talking more to himself than her, it seemed, his eyes on the horizon ahead. ‘Have you heard from him?’
She looked across at him, puzzled at how he talked about Henry so easily, as though he was a mutual friend of theirs. ‘No, not much,’ she mumbled. She knew it would infuriate Henry to know Cassie ever discussed him with her ex. ‘I’ve had one message, but it’s hard obviously, when everything’s being filtered through twenty other people first.’
‘Yes, of course. I can see how that could be . . . limiting.’
They paused as they got to the golf course again, both looking left and right to check for incoming balls before crossing the fairway.
‘I guess you’re used to him being away for long stretches, though, huh? Beau was saying about all the incredible expeditions he’s done. It’s such a boon for them to have him on the team.’
She couldn’t help looking back at him, searching for sarcasm or scorn, but he met her eyes with a guileless smile. ‘He’s very experienced,’ she agreed.
‘Beau said he was recently made a professor at the Explorers Club.’
‘A fellow, yes.’
‘That’s a big fucking deal. You know that, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you go?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Did you go to New York for the ceremony?’
‘Yes.’ She remembered the ludicrously extravagant Valentino dress, how it had felt walking across the hotel lobby, Henry’s hand in hers, the snowy polar bear standing guard above them all as everyone drank and laughed and talked and revelled in her fiancé’s daring. She missed him so much suddenly it hurt, and her hand instinctively covered her stomach.
He abruptly stopped walking. ‘So when was that?’
Cassie looked surprised. What did he care? ‘Around Easter, I think. Why?’
He gave a small laugh, jabbing his finger. ‘I knew it was you. I saw you getting a cab.’ She remembered the taxi sluicing past, his face a pale flash in the window. He looked back at her. ‘You were wearing red, right?’
She nodded, surprised he’d remembered that small detail.
He nodded too. ‘That’s always been your colour,’ he said after a moment. ‘It would have made a great image. Really . . .’ He remembered to walk and she quickly fell in step too. ‘Really striking with all the other colours, you know? That was what caught my eye. I wished I’d been quick enough to take a shot. It was like a Tiffany’s ad in motion – yellow cabs, tail lights, the red dress, your bright hair.’ He stared at her intently. ‘You were wearing red lipstick too, right?’
‘That’s right.’ How had he noticed that from a passing cab?
‘You never usually wear lipstick.’ He was reading her mind again. ‘Hell of a surprise seeing you like that, though. I wasn’t sure if you’d seen me too.’ His eyes were intent upon her, scanning her like a laser.
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ She wasn’t quite sure why she’d lied about it. What did it matter one way or the other whether or not she’d seen him?
‘Huh.’
They walked in silence past the hedgerows where the brambles were trying to rule supreme, Luke letting her go first on the narrow path before catching her up as they passed where the cows were grazing, the house just ahead of them now.
‘Well, I’m this way,’ he said as they got to the stile, indicating towards the side gate and the garden beyond for Snapdragons. He raked his hand through his hair again as another awkward silence began to stretch like a lazy cat. ‘So I guess I’ll see you later, then.’
‘I guess so.’
He gave one of his new, unfamiliar benign smiles and she watched as he walked off without a backwards glance.
She didn’t see Suzy standing on the terrace in her dressing gown, her hair blowing about her face and a large mug of tea in her hands. And as Cassie crossed the lawn, perturbed and unsettled, Suzy slipped back into the house, as silent as a shadow.
Chapter Seventeen
They made an unlikely four – Cassie, Suzy, Gem and Amber – all in Suzy’s car as she hooned around the tiny wet lanes the next afternoon, with the recklessness that only ever comes from the suicidal or the local. Suzy considered herself the latter, nipping down farmers’ tracks and green lanes in her Volvo estate as Amber tried not to whimper – the boot had already flown open once – and Gem laughed her head off. With the rain having set in for the day, they were on their way to a bridal boutique in Wadebridge, or as Suzy had said under her breath with a mutinous look in her eye, ‘Phase One’.
The town was large and sprawling, with supermarkets and ring roads and plenty of buses. They had passed several large bridal boutiques – Gem jabbing the windowpanes with her finger and pointing them out to her cousin – but Suzy kept repeating she’d found something ‘more bijou’ a
nd navigated her way away from the centre, towards a residential pocket at the back, where old stone terraced houses replaced the shops and the streets were narrow with free parking.
‘Here we are,’ Suzy said, pulling on the handbrake so hard it squeaked. Archie, Laird and Luke were in charge of Velvet this afternoon, a motley crew of men who looked utterly flummoxed by the proposition of entertaining the toddler for the afternoon, and the last she’d heard, they’d been doing a toss-up between bowling and crazy golf.
They filed out of the car, Amber standing in the middle of the road and looking at the boutique’s window display with ill-concealed horror.
‘Are you sure this is right?’ she asked. Kelly – in reply to some scurrilous overnight texts from Suzy – had told them that Amber had walked for Miuccia Prada, Karl Lagerfeld and Christopher Bailey, so Cassie reasoned she had probably never seen polyester lace before.
But if Amber was dubious, Gem was oblivious.
‘Oh. My. God,’ Gem said dramatically, pausing at the door. ‘This is, like, a seminal moment in every girl’s life, isn’t it?’
‘What? Coming to Wadebridge? You need to get out more, Gem,’ Suzy joked.
‘I mean trying on a wedding dress for the first time!’ Gem laughed, with an emotional tremble in her voice. ‘I’m warning you now I might cry. In fact, I probably will.’
Amber – seemingly forgetting her horror at the dresses and getting into the bridesmaid-slash-cheerleader spirit – gave an excited squeal, clapping her hands together and skipping lightly on the spot as a minicab hooted for her to move out of the road.
‘Fine. I consider myself warned,’ Suzy said with a tight smile, leaning heavily on the door and falling in. They all filed in after her, silence falling on them like the stiffened veils that had been thrown like poachers’ nets on the mannequins.
Suzy caught Cassie’s eye as their small group congregated in the middle of the room – she, at least, was clearly very pleased with what she saw. The small boutique – merely the width of one of the neighbouring terrace’s sitting rooms but extending right the way back to where the kitchen would ordinarily be found – was the pokiest, most budget-looking salon she had been able to find on her frantic Google searches and she was confident Gem wouldn’t be getting her much-hoped-for Cinderella moment in here.
