Chapter 5
No one could quite believe Lily had turned down an offer of dinner at the cliff house.
Lily, however, had no regrets and was somewhat annoyed that her friend, sister, and cousins were more outraged at her refusal than at the invitation itself, considering she’d barely exchanged two words with the guy.
Even more regrettably, the noise Rosie and Kat made about it reached the ears of Lydia, who had just arrived home after a good couple of hours of drinking and flirting with Bob-with-One-Dog, only to discover his ex-girlfriend was arriving on the last ferry.
Lydia was declaring loudly that nobody ever got to know anybody properly by talking to them, when Casey jogged up from the beach and asked Juliet straight out, right there on the deck in front of everyone, if she’d like to join them up at the cliff house for dinner.
Confusion immediately reigned. Juliet mumbled something about the lasagna being in the oven, and Lydia interrupted her, shrieking, “LORD, yes, of course she’s free and don’t you worry about US! ”
Lily and Juliet made eye contact. Lily asked with her eyes, “Do you want to go? I’ll save you if you don’t!
” Very few people could stop Lydia in full flight, and not even Lily could do it every time, but there was no way Lily would let her mother force her cousin to go on a date she didn’t want.
But Juliet’s eyes responded, “Yes!” Within seconds, Jane was offering him a drink while Lydia shouted at various nearby daughters and nieces to “get him a chair, a glass, and for goodness’ sake get Juliet fixed up, she looks an absolute fright, she can’t go like that, he’ll think we’re BARBARIANS.
” She burst into braying laughter over the top of Casey’s protests that Juliet was absolutely fine to come as she was.
Jane rushed to find a suitably masculine beer while Lily whisked Juliet off to get her changed before Lydia said anything too obnoxious.
“Yes, that dress. No, you don’t need to do anything to your hair.
Yes, a bit of perfume. You look gorgeous.
Now go before she starts talking about her acting career.
” They got back to the deck just as Lydia was mid-story about how one time she spent a whole afternoon kissing strangers at an audition for a toothpaste commercial.
“Didn’t get the job, but I got a couple of drinks and a ride on the back of a motorbike! Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Juliet had never headed off so fast.
“Wait!” shouted Lydia. “You can’t go barefoot! Here!”
Lydia hopped madly on one foot as she yanked off her own wedge heels and thrust them at Juliet.
“We’re the same size,” she huffed proudly. “Go on, take them!”
Lily tried to stop this horrifying exchange, but the wedge heels were off and dangling center stage.
Lydia gushed, “Put them on, they do wonders for your legs, truly, put them on, PUT THEM ON!” So to shut her up, Juliet did as she was told and scurried away, practically pushing Casey before her down the path as he tried to shout back his thanks to Jane for the beer.
“Mum!” remonstrated Lily.
“What? She’s got cankles just like ours; I was doing her a favor.”
Lily retreated to the kitchen to take a breath.
She felt a sense of regret that she wasn’t going too, inspired mostly by the urge to protect her cousin.
She judged Casey to be safe—genuine even—and it seemed he really liked Juliet.
If Juliet liked him back, then Lily would be nothing but happy for her.
But what about his friends? And his sister?
She remembered Dorian’s cold eyes when she told him no.
She had to smile to herself as she flicked the oven off.
She’d turned down a movie star for the sake of a dodgy switch.
Just as Lily brought the lasagna out to the front deck, Casey reappeared, out of breath and clearly shaken. “I’m so sorry, Juliet fell on the steps. She’s twisted her ankle—badly—but she won’t let me call an ambulance. She says there isn’t one, but surely …”
A cacophony of loudly expressed concern and indecision erupted.
Jane wondered aloud whether to call the water police, water taxi, Fire-Chief-Steve, or nobody at all, and Lydia insisted that if there was no blood or a snakebite, she’d be fine.
Rosie and Kat clamored to go up to the cliff house to see, while Casey was still trying to get an answer to whether there was such a thing as a water ambulance or paramedic helicopter, like they have at the Grand Canyon.
“Stop it, Mum!” asserted Lily. “Aunty Jane, don’t call anyone yet. I’ll go up and see how she is and I’ll let you know. Rosie and Kat, sit down and eat your dinner. Casey, please, just wait. I’ll be right there.”
Lily grabbed her socks and sneakers and cursed her mother for causing yet another vanity injury.
Lily had dealt with a lot of them over the years—sunburned skin, infected ear piercings, blistered heels, and insect bites—sometimes Lydia’s, sometimes Rosie’s, sometimes her own.
This time, poor Juliet was the victim. The steps to the cliff house were steep, uneven, and rocky, and now Lily would be ascending them that evening after all, cankles at their absolute worst, because Lydia thought that legs were not primarily for walking but for attracting boys.
Lily followed Casey down the path and up the steps at a brisk jog and tried to calm him along the way.
“Accidents happen at Pippi,” she said. “This won’t be the worst one, and even if it’s bad, we can deal with it. The water police can get a boat here fast and an ambulance to meet it on the other side. But we won’t call them unless we have to.”
Casey breathlessly explained how he caught Juliet in his arms as she stumbled and fell, avoiding a greater tragedy, and luckily they were at the top of the steps so he was able to carry her into the house.
The conversation was all a bit embarrassing as both knew the stupid wedge heels were to blame, though neither said so.
Despite the clear emergency, Lily couldn’t help admiring Casey’s genuine concern.
She imagined that the moment Juliet fell into his arms must have been just a touch romantic.
Lily found Juliet draped on an enormous designer couch.
Her ankle had swollen up like a balloon and was bright red from ice packs hastily cobbled together from tea towels and novelty cocktail ice cubes shaped like billiard balls.
Cecilia hovered nearby making the right sorts of remarks and suggestions with little conviction, while Yumi stayed on the deck looking funereal and occasionally glancing at her phone. Dorian was attentive but quiet.
“We have to call an ambulance,” he said in a tone that Lily found unnecessarily authoritative. “Don’t worry, we’ll pay for it.”
“Money’s not the problem,” Lily shot back. “It’s the boat, the resources. The paramedics have to come up by water police. They cover the entire peninsula and we shouldn’t tie them up if it’s not a genuine emergency.”
“Truly, I’m fine,” Juliet insisted as she gasped with pain.
“I don’t like it,” said Casey. “Not one bit.”
A compromise was reached when Lily suggested they call the telephone nurse service, which they duly did, on speakerphone.
Everyone added a bit to the story, including Yumi, who came in especially to say clearly that Juliet had been wearing three-inch platform wedges at the time.
It was the first thing Lily had ever heard her say.
After some detailed description of the foot and the nature of the pain, the nurse concluded that it was probably a sprain, best to keep it elevated for twenty-four hours and see a doctor within forty-eight hours.
“I guess you’re not going home tonight, then,” said Casey in a way that suggested he wasn’t altogether displeased.
“If that’s okay,” said Lily, at which Casey and Dorian both assured her quite firmly that any attempt to move the patient was entirely out of the question, while Cecilia murmured her agreement as she tossed a salad.
“I’m starving. Can we eat already?” Cecilia said.
Casey looked to Lily. “Please join us for dinner. I’ll run back to get whatever Juliet needs from home.”
Lily was about to protest, but Juliet stopped her with one look.
Her red-rimmed eyes begged Lily not to leave her there alone in such a vulnerable state with people she didn’t know well.
Not yet. So Lily smiled, thanked Casey, and accepted the invitation gratefully, for Juliet’s sake.
She flicked a glance to Dorian and was relieved that he had the decency to smile briefly at her, in a way that was not triumphant or mean or at all like a potato on a stick.
Just in a way that suggested he was glad that the crisis was over and he understood and respected Lily’s decision to say no to dinner before and yes now.
“I’m so sorry,” said Juliet. “I don’t want to put you out.”
Casey reassured her she was welcome to stay as long as she liked.
The cliff house’s rustic beach-shack aesthetic—raw wood, breezy louvered windows, and shabby chic furniture—was just set dressing for all the space and luxury of a five-star resort.
With one suite farther up the cliff, another below, and three bedrooms on the main level, there was plenty of room for an extra guest.
“Oh! Yes, that’s a bedroom, isn’t it?” Cecilia said when Casey reminded her—upon his remarkably speedy return with a hastily packed bag for Juliet—that the smallest room was technically vacant, even though she and Yumi had festooned every available surface in it with clothes and accessories.
“The closet space here is so miserable,” Cecilia explained to Lily as she moved armfuls of designer wear off one of the single beds. “Can you, like, not put that there?”
Lily obediently moved Juliet’s small bag of belongings from the bedside table to her designated bed.
“I just don’t want her to lose her stuff, you know, in this mess. I’m so messy. It’s because I just don’t care about material things,” she explained as she fondled a watery-thin sweater. “See this, this is cashmere silk and I’ve practically ruined it. It really should be in its own bag.”
The beginning of dinner was awkward. Casey insisted on eating with Juliet on the couch to keep her company, and the two of them curled up in a private chat that no one else could hear.
The dining table seemed rather too vast for four, and Lily felt like she’d never sat with people less able to conduct a sociable conversation.
Yumi stared off into space, Dorian looked at his plate, and Cecilia checked her phone more than once.
“Oh look!” Cecilia squealed and thrust the screen at Dorian. “It’s Sigrid! Oh my God, she’s hilarious. Look, Yumi. That’s so her.” Her laughter subsided as she put the phone back down. “Dorian’s sister,” she explained to Lily. “We miss her so much.”
“She’s not joining you for Christmas?” Lily asked.
“No,” said Dorian. “She’s studying,” he added shortly, as though there was nothing more that could possibly be said on the matter.
“She is supersmart,” purred Cecilia. “Isn’t she at, like, Oxford or somewhere?”
“Cambridge.”
“It’s like Harvard for England,” she explained to Lily, who had to take a drink of water to keep from laughing. She didn’t dare raise her eyes.
“I could never, like, study,” Cecilia went on. “I was so glad just to graduate high school.” Cecilia looked to Dorian for signs of approval and received none. “I mean, of course, I love learning. But I feel like you learn more from travel. Don’t you think? Dorian?”
“I’m not in a position to say.”
“I’m taking a gap year to work and travel before I go to university,” Lily said. “My friend Nicola and I are actually going to the US.”
Dorian looked up at this and Cecilia visibly bristled.
“That is so awesome! Where are you going? LA? Oh, that’s so great, I know all the best places to go, you will absolutely love it.” Cecilia smiled, showing her teeth. “I can’t believe you’ve finished school. I thought you were, like, fifteen.”
“It’s because,” declared Yumi, “she doesn’t do her hair or wear makeup.”
An hour later, Lily helped a drowsy Juliet into bed, handing over a small pack of painkillers she’d managed to source, said her goodbyes with much alacrity, descended the steps to the beach, and breathed a sigh of relief.
What a debacle of a meal, just as she had foreseen.
Yes, Casey was charming and fun, and Lily was confident he would take care of Juliet and shield her from any awkwardness.
But the other three! Dorian, all guarded and taciturn, who took any kind of question as a personal slight.
Cecilia, fluttering around in front of him, constantly seeking his attention.
And Yumi, who was just rude. If that was what passed for fashion, success, and a movie star lifestyle, Lily wanted nothing to do with it.
Juliet, warm in the glow of Casey’s charm and slightly high on painkillers, shared none of Lily’s judgment. Despite her sprained ankle, she fell asleep thinking she’d never had a more delightful evening.