by Jenny Kane
Dora chuckled. ‘Don’t you believe it. It’s all a plot. We think Dan has the hots for you, so we thought we’d kick things off a bit.’
‘Dora!’ Abi and Beth exclaimed in unison, each stunned at Dora’s bullish approach, which had sent Cassandra bright pink.
‘Well, it’s true,’ Dora carried on regardless, ‘you need to dump that Justin, and get some good people in your life. Even if they are bossy, interfering good people like me!’
It was impossible not to feel affection for the old lady whose mischievous eyes twinkled at her across the table. ‘I appreciate the sentiment, Dora, but I suspect that I’m not Dan’s type. And to be honest he isn’t mine. I tend to avoid tattoos, I prefer a proper haircut and, if I’m honest, southerners. And even if Dan was my type, I’m not looking for anyone. Too much mess to sort out myself before I inflict my baggage on someone else.’ Not wanting to think about all the worries that awaited her once she returned to the house, Cassandra said, ‘Anyway, let’s not worry about my car crash of a life today. This is all about you and Stan.’
Jacob arrived with a tray of glasses and a jug of orange juice, followed by a preoccupied-looking Dan holding a bucket of ice and a very good bottle of champagne, and Max, who was bringing up the rear with a pile of menus.
Sitting next to Beth with as big a smile as she could muster, suddenly Cassandra couldn’t escape the feeling that she was somehow separate from everyone else at the table. It was as if she wasn’t actually there, but was watching them all from the wrong end of a telescope.
As Jacob poured Beth a generous serving of orange juice, Cassandra tried not to peep at Dan, who had been creeping into her thoughts far more often than anyone with tattoos and a services haircut had any right to do. Instead she added her belated congratulations to Beth.
‘Thank you. It’s so exciting, although having to drink juice and not champers is a bit of a blow!’
Stan pushed a glass in Beth’s direction. ‘I’m sure you could have a very weak Buck’s Fizz, Beth.’
‘Do you think it would be OK?’ She looked at Jacob, who shrugged. ‘Isn’t alcohol a total no-no when you’re pregnant?’
Dan picked up the champagne bottle. ‘Well, speaking with my medic’s hat on, a tiny amount as it’s a special occasion won’t hurt. I can do the honours if you like.’
‘Medic?’ Cassandra was surprised; even though he was in care work, the last thing she’d seen him as was a doctor or nurse. Had she got Dan wrong as well? Were the people skills she had always been so proud of, her ability to read people’s business requirements on sight, all been wrong?
‘I was a medic in the forces. Midwifery wasn’t exactly my field, but I’ve done the basics.’
Cassandra caught Dan’s eye, and for a second she saw that Dora could be right. There was a flash of something that could have been interest. A medic in the forces. She couldn’t help speculating on which one, and had to physically stop herself asking by clamping her lips together. The idea of Dan in uniform was doing things to her insides that were shockingly inappropriate for taking afternoon tea in a posh restaurant.
Oblivious to Cassandra’s internal battle, Beth, who could see Jacob was about to launch a whole heap of baby-related questions at Dan, put her hand up in the nick of time. ‘Before you drown Dan in a gory medical inquisition, Jacob, remember it is Stan and Dora’s afternoon. We’re supposed to be planning the perfect wedding.’
Jacob laughed. ‘I hadn’t said a thing.’
‘No, you hadn’t, but you were about to.’
The potter rolled his eyes. ‘Stan, mate, you’ll have to watch it. Live with them for five minutes and they can read your thoughts so well that speech is often rendered unnecessary!’
Opening his afternoon tea menu, Stan laughed. ‘You don’t have to tell me that, m’andsome. This old biddy had me sussed from the off!’
‘Cheek!’ Dora wagged a finger affectionately at her fiancé before she addressed the table as a whole. ‘I don’t know about you folk, but planning stuff makes me hungry. Do we go for a massive cream tea or do we go for the little bits of loads of different sorts of cakes on those three-tier stands, Miss Marple style?’
Cassandra read her own menu; her mouth was watering at the prospect, her stomach informing her she hadn’t eaten since a slice of toast at breakfast. ‘It’s like being in Claridge’s! Better, even; have you seen this list of cakes?’
Abi felt an unexpected flash of affection for her new neighbour. Two weeks ago she would have made the comparison sound inferior. There was no doubt that Cassandra had changed a great deal in a short time.
Beth’s eyes were wide at the choices available. ‘We ought to have a cream tea if this is to be a practice for your cream tea wedding reception, but. . .boy, I do like the sound of the tiramisu cake slices.’
‘They do sound delicious.’ Cassandra ran her polished fingernails down the food list. ‘Although a cream tea sounds good. I’ve never had one.’
The shocked silence around the table was so abrupt you could have heard a pin drop. Stan shut his menu with a decisive slap, making them all jump. ‘Never had a cream tea! That’s it sorted then.’
‘It is?’ Cassandra took a sip from her perfectly cooled champagne.
‘We will each have a single cream tea, just as a taste tester; plus we’ll have two tiers of cakes to share between the eight of us. Agreed?’
A chorus of ‘agreed’ floated around the table.
‘And,’ Stan went on, raising his glass of bubbly in a toast, ‘our new friend Cassandra will taste the scones first! Never had a cream tea! Honestly, girl, why didn’t you say? We’d have sorted that gap in your life ages back.’
Cassandra found tears prickling at the corners of her eyes as every friendly eye fell on her, and glasses were raised with Stan’s toast: ‘To Cassandra, a proper welcome.’
As the friendly waitress took their food order, along with a request for two giant pots of tea to dilute the alcohol a fraction, Cassandra gazed at the people around the table. Eight of us. Four couples. She experienced a dart of sadness. Except we’re not. And whatever Dora says, I have nothing to offer Dan. The spectre of Justin flared up again. Until she had got to the bottom of what was truly going on, then she would never be a part of any couple. Not with Justin, Dan, or anyone else for that matter.
Max raised a toast to the happy couple, and as everyone joined in, a ripple of laughter bounced around the table.
Cassandra looked at them all again. Her neighbour and her decorator, a care worker, a schoolteacher and a potter, a retired miner and, if Dora was to be believed, some sort of MI5 agent. And they’d taken her under their wing, even though she’d been far from friendly at first. Hostile even.
The sensation of being swamped began to grow again. Suddenly Cassandra wanted to run away, but if she left, all these good people would never understand why. Even they must have a limit on how many times they’ll be forgiving.
Stan was on his feet now. ‘Before the food arrives, I have one more favour to ask of you, my friends.’
All eyes were on Stan as he reached out and held Dora’s hand. ‘Sadly, my daughter Sally and my grandchildren, Pippa and Craig, are unable to make the trip from Australia to come to our wedding. And so, we would consider it a great honour if you, Abi, Beth and Cassandra, would be Dora’s bridesmaids, and if you, Max, would be so kind as to be my best man? And could you, Jacob, be a stand-in father of the bride, and Dan our usher – with Sadie’s expert help, naturally. Only if you’d all like to. There’s no pressure if you don’t fancy it.’
Cassandra felt her head begin to whirl. Bridesmaid? She hardly knew these people. This didn’t make sense. People weren’t this generous in real life – they just weren’t. She felt as though she was drowning, albeit pleasantly, in sugar.
She could hear the others agreeing and glasses being raised again, but her hand wouldn’t grip her glass, and her jaw wouldn’t open. She was vaguely aware of Max asking Dan if he’d rather live out of Chal
k Towers on his day off, rather than in the on-site flat, and Dan agreeing that an escape was on his list of things to tackle, when suddenly the world was covered in little dots of pale green light.
And then there was nothing.
Chapter Twenty-one
‘Well, that’s one way of getting to see Dan’s medical skills in action.’
Behind closed eyelids, the world began to stop spinning, and Cassandra was vaguely aware that it was Dora speaking, but she felt too embarrassed to open her eyes to see for sure.
‘Although personally I think I’d have gone for something less dramatic than swooning.’
Through the haze, Cassandra heard Stan respond to Dora, ‘Rubbish, woman. You’d have done something madly overblown that needed his direct attention; possibly even the kiss of life.’
‘True!’ Dora chuckled. ‘Ah, look. I saw an eyelid flutter.’
Cassandra could hear them clearly now. Did I really faint? She realised she was no longer sitting down, but was lying down. Where? Am I still in the dining room, or has Dan carried me to a bed?
Wishing she was back in the uncaring anonymity of London, where the chances of anyone even noticing she’d fainted in the first place were slim, Cassandra wanted to disappear. If a genie had arrived at that very moment, her first wish would have been to become invisible.
A smooth northern accent took command. ‘Dora, Stan, some space please.’
Dan. He was very close. Cassandra could feel his breath on her face. The fingers of one hand were stroking her fringe from her eyes, while the other picked up her wrist to feel her pulse. ‘Cassandra?’
Part of her wanted to stay there and let him keep stroking her forehead, the other part wanted to open her eyes and stare straight into his. Her semi-conscious romantic notions were cut in half by Stan saying, ‘How about we use a cream tea as smelling salts? We could waft clotted cream under her nose.’
Patience oozing from his tone, Dan said, ‘Dora darling, Stan, I love you both dearly, but right now I’d like you to go and sit with your other guests, eat your tea, and sort out your wedding. I will care for Cassandra.’
The sound of a door closing told Cassandra that the pensioners had done what they were told, and a few seconds later, Dan whispered, ‘It’s OK, Cass, they’ve gone, you can come back now.’
‘How did you know I wasn’t still out for the count?’ Cassandra opened her eyes, her face flushed with embarrassment that her deception had been so transparent.
‘Experience.’
‘At the risk of sounding clichéd, where am I?’ Pulling herself up on her elbows, Cassandra looked around, to discover she wasn’t lying on the four-poster bed of her dreams, but a rather worn beige sofa.
‘The hotel staff room.’
Swinging her legs around so she could sit up, Cassandra buried her head in her palms. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so ashamed in my life! What must they all think of me?’
‘They’re worried. I’ll go and tell them you’re OK. Abi was all for calling an ambulance.’
‘She was?’
‘Dreadful overreaction, of course, but you gave her a fright when you hit the table. I suspect you’ll have a bruise soon. Does it ache?’
‘A bit.’ Putting her hand to her forehead, she winced. ‘Worse if I touch it.’ Closing her eyes again, Cassandra muttered, ‘I have caused nothing but trouble since I got here. They are good people, and they’re all better off without me. Could you call me a taxi please? I’ll get out of the way, and then you can eat your tea in peace.’
Dan got to his feet, a cloud of anger crossing his usually serene face. ‘Will you sit down and stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself.’
Cassandra sat down with a shocked thump. She had no chance to argue as Dan continued. ‘You will sit there until I say otherwise. I am going to reassure your friends that you are alright, and then you and I are going for a gentle walk on the seafront.’
‘But. . .’
‘But nothing. Do what you’re told for once.’
The July sunshine shimmered against her bare arms as the sea breeze played against her face, and messed up her hair.
‘Here you go.’ Dan pulled a foil-wrapped parcel from the small backpack he habitually carried with him and passed it to Cassandra.
Unwrapping it, Cassandra she found herself holding her very first cream tea. Her mouth opened as she examined the scone heavily laden with clotted cream and jam, but then she closed it again. Every vestige of her businesswoman persona seemed to have deserted her. Nothing she could say would be adequate to thank the man sat next to her as he produced a flask of tea and two plastic mugs.
‘Not exactly the bone china we would have had in the hotel, but I don’t suppose there’s anywhere better to experience your first cream tea than to eat it while looking out to sea.’
‘I –’
‘Why don’t you just eat for a minute. Get some fuel inside you before you tell me what the hell is going on. I know I’m a total stranger, but as Dora, in her gloriously unsubtle way, is determined to get us together, then we might as well accept we’re going to be thrown together at every opportunity she gets. So if we do the getting to know each other bit now, then we can tell her to forget it and admit defeat. Yes?’
Cassandra agreed; not sure if she felt sad or relieved that Dan had basically informed her he didn’t find her attractive.
‘So,’ Dan launched in with his potted biography, ‘I’m thirty-five, born and bred in Manchester. I was a medic in the Army until five years ago. My last posting was in the combat hospital in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan.’
Dan didn’t so much as glimpse in her direction as he spoke. Cassandra wondered if it helped him to address the sea, as it crashed over Battery Rocks, rather than her. She was certainly regarding him with steadily increasing respect as he went on.
‘I should have stayed until the end. Until Britain pulled out of the region. I could have, but then. . .’ He dragged a head over his shaved head as if in exasperation, but whether it was with her or himself, she wasn’t sure, ‘you get to the point when you think nothing will touch you, nothing will ever break through the hard shell you encase yourself in so that you don’t go mad with grief for the soldiers and civilians that you treat every day, every night, all the time, endlessly. . .’
Not knowing if she was allowed, but instinct forcing her to anyway, Cassandra laid a hand on Dan’s leg.
Although he glanced at it, Dan didn’t remove her hand as he carried on talking, and Cassandra hoped he took some comfort in her touch. ‘I didn’t stay. People were in need of my help, but I didn’t stay.’
Dan was quiet for some time. The silence between them was only punctuated by the seagulls overhead and the crash of waves. Eventually, Cassandra said, ‘You are still caring for people though, Dan. Dora, Stan and the others would be lost without you. I haven’t been there much, but it’s obvious that you help make Chalk Towers a happy place.’
He turned to look straight into Cassandra’s eyes. ‘Even though I have tattoos, shave my head, and talk with a northern accent?’
Cassandra was mortified. ‘You heard me?’
‘I heard you.’
Swallowing her mouthful with difficulty, she asked, ‘Then why are you even talking to me? I’m horrible.’
‘You can be horrible. But anyone who has a laugh like yours can’t be bad through and through.’ Dan gave Cassandra a half-smile. ‘And anyway, I may have tattoos, a shaved head and a northern accent, but, on the other hand, you have extremely dubious taste in men, you’re always saying the wrong thing, and you are so posh you could give the Queen a run for her money.’
Cassandra didn’t know if she was supposed to laugh or get angry, but she was sure she wasn’t able to argue. All she did know was that Dan hadn’t moved her hand away. ‘May I ask you a question now?’
‘You can ask. I may not answer.’
‘Fair enough.’ Cassandra focused her gaze on a seagull that was hopping across the top of the s
ea wall opposite the bench upon which they were sitting, hopeful for scone crumbs. ‘What happened to make you leave the Army?’
Dan paused. ‘I’ll consider answering that if you tell me why you’re here. I’ve heard bits and pieces from Dora, but, with the best will in the world, she is not a reliable witness. Although,’ Dan sounded thoughtful, ‘I’m sure some of that is Dora lapsing back into her cover. She lived under it for so long after all.’
‘Her cover?’
‘Yes, you know. The eccentric daft biddy act. She was a spy. Didn’t she tell you?’
‘Well, yes, but. . .’
‘You didn’t believe her.’ Dan nodded. ‘I can see it would be a leap. OK, you talk first. Then I’ll tell you my bit.’
Abi glanced out of the window again as she sank her teeth into a succulent slice of raspberry tart. She could see Cassandra and Dan as they sat together on the opposite side of the road. Neither of them was looking at the other, they were staring out to sea. ‘Do you think she’s alright, Max?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m sure Dan can handle whatever Cassandra throws at him.’
Dora gave Abi a reassuring nod. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll do them good to have some time to chat.’
Beth couldn’t help but smile. ‘You’re a bit of a matchmaker, aren’t you, Dora?’
‘Yep.’ Dora poured herself another cup of tea. ‘When I was fourteen years old my mother told me that life was only worth living when you helped make other people happy. I believed her then, and I believe her now.’
‘Which is why I love you.’ Stan beamed at Dora. ‘Don’t worry, Beth; Dan is one of the good guys.’
‘But is Cassandra one of the good girls? I can’t decide.’ Max laid a selection of cakes on the two empty plates at the table. ‘Either way, we should save them some cake. Let’s get on with the planning, shall we? I don’t think Cassandra would like us talking about her.’
‘I was right, then.’ Dan packed the flask away and put his hand over Cassandra’s, squeezed it, and then quickly let go as he stood up. ‘You do have dubious taste in men.’
