Chapter 22
22
C assie was woken up by – what else? – the chime of her phone alerting her to a message that the breakfast boxes stuffed full of viennoisserie would be arriving within half an hour.
She uncurled herself from the duvet and that was all it took for the memories of the previous night to come flooding back, and she wished that she was still asleep. Actually she wished she could be in a coma for the rest of the weekend.
Marc.
Marc!
Marc eating her out in a walk-in pantry.
Marc, her arch-nemesis, now fake boyfriend.
Marc, who’d still been DTF until Cassie had rejected him in the meanest, most spiteful way possible.
Marc who was currently asleep, his back to her, his breathing deep and even.
It had all really happened and sadly, wasn’t just a fever dream.
Cassie made a great effort to be quiet as she tiptoed across the room. She really didn’t want to wake Marc up. They needed to talk, although she didn’t have a bloody clue where to start, but she really wanted to schedule the conversation for after she’d had a fortifying cup of coffee.
In the bathroom, Cassie pulled on a swimsuit and over that, her yoga gear: high-waisted sports leggings and an open-backed yoga top with the words ‘Nama-Slay’ printed on the front. Last year her little brother Ryan had really leaned into buying her presents with the word ‘Slay’ emblazoned on them. Yet, this year, ‘Slay’ had apparently been cancelled and if Cassie dared to use the word in his presence, he’d mock her with an absolutely brutal, ‘OK, Boomer.’
Cassie braided her hair into two plaits and pinned them up. She looked fresh-faced and wholesome in the bathroom mirror. Appearances could be very misleading.
Marc was still asleep but Cassie only let herself sigh in relief once she’d left his room – their room – and was halfway down the stairs.
Perfect timing as there was the crunch of gravel outside and Cassie opened the front door to see a smiling woman with matching braids unloading boxes from the back of her pink van.
‘We’re both working the Heidi look,’ she said. ‘If you take these, then I’ll grab the rest.’
The biggest box contained Lucy’s birthday cake, which Cassie stashed in the fridge in the utility room. She arranged the breakfast pastries on a couple of platters, cut up fruit and poured granola into a big glass bowl, and was waiting for the kettle to boil when Marc suddenly appeared through the arch at the other end of the room and made her jump.
‘You should have woken me up,’ he said, walking towards her and running a hand through his hair, which was still tousled from sleep – or maybe still tousled from all the tugging that Cassie had done in the pantry. ‘Are you all right?’
Now that was a loaded question. Also, Marc was a lot less absolutely fucking livid than she’d expected him to be. ‘I’m trying to decide if I should make toast or let people do that themselves,’ Cassie prevaricated. Although, to be fair, her ‘all right-ness’ was currently dependent on delivering a successful breakfast buffet. ‘Should I decant jam and butter into little dishes? What do you think?’
‘I think that this isn’t a hotel and no one will judge you if they have to make their own toast or spread jam straight from the jar,’ Marc said.
This was good. They were speaking to each other politely. In fact, in quite a friendly way. Then Marc looked at Cassie and she looked back at him. It seemed as if The Complete Works of Shakespeare were contained in that one shared look.
The kettle boiling was a welcome distraction. Cassie reached for a mug from the cupboard directly in front of her – there was no point asking Marc if he wanted one – and the jar of coffee that she’d included in the supermarket order.
‘I got your yoga mat out of the car,’ Marc said. ‘It’s by the front door and also, I don’t want to start another fight, I really don’t, but how can you drink that muck?’
Cassie paused from dropping a heaped teaspoon of delicious freeze-dried coffee granules into a mug. ‘I like what I like and also, that thing,’ she gestured at the coffee machine, which was taking up a hell of a lot of counter space, ‘terrifies me. I bet you bought a bag of fancy coffee beans from your new best friends at that roastery we went to yesterday.’
‘Of course I didn’t.’ Marc grinned and held up a small brown paper sack that he’d been hiding behind his back.
Then as Cassie sipped her coffee, which had taken her mere seconds to prepare, she watched Marc fuss and faff about with grinding beans and warming milk and tending to the gurgling, hissing machine like it was a fractious newborn. On the one hand, it was actually quite sexy to see someone, Marc, do something that they so obviously enjoyed, and do it well. On the other hand, it was also very irritating, because, Jesus, it was only coffee.
All Marc had to show for all that effort was a tiny cup of espresso. ‘The first of many,’ he protested when Cassie pointed that out. ‘I’m just getting started. Is that all you’re having for breakfast?’
Cassie had half turned away from him because although she was an adult woman who owned her sexuality, she didn’t want to eat a banana in front of him. Not after last night. ‘I can’t exercise on a full stomach.’ She nibbled the end of the banana in the least coquettish way she knew how.
‘Me neither. It seems a pity that you’ve laid on this lavish breakfast banquet and you’re just having a banana and all I’m going to have is at least another two cups of coffee.’
Cassie wished they could be like this all the time. Chatty, smiley.
Maybe they could, but first she had something to say.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said, making sure to look Marc straight in the eye. ‘I behaved like a right twat.’
‘Which particular bit of last night are you apologising for?’ Marc asked lightly as his face said something else.
‘The last bit,’ Cassie explained, her chin tilting upwards because yes, she was apologising, but she hadn’t been entirely in the wrong. ‘I’m not going to have sex with you, it would be a really bad idea, but I could have told you that in a much nicer way.’
Marc folded his arms. ‘And the whole fake-dating debacle?’
‘I’m not apologising for that. It felt like the right thing to do at the time.’ Cassie paused to ponder. ‘It still does, unless you really can’t face it.’
It was Marc’s turn to consider things. ‘I’m sure we can muddle through.’ He was still looking intently at Cassie. ‘Do you want me to apologise for what happened in the pantry? Because I could say sorry, but I don’t think I am.’
‘Well, OK, that’s very honest of you,’ Cassie said, finally looking away again because she was hot just thinking about what had happened only a few metres away from where they were standing now. His fingers in her, his mouth on her. If Heather hadn’t interrupted them …
‘But I am sorry for trying to chance my luck later,’ he said and unlike Cassie, he didn’t seem even remotely embarrassed. ‘You’re right. Fucking would just complicate things. There are already too many secrets.’
Cassie needed this conversation to end sooner rather than later. She could process and pore over what Marc had just said when she was on her own. ‘Can you keep another secret?’ she asked with a flutter of her lashes. She hadn’t meant to sound quite so flirty but then again, they were meant to be seeing each other.
Marc didn’t call her out on the flirting. Instead he faked surprise, a hand to his chest. ‘You’re asking me if I can keep a secret? Right now, I feel like I have a PhD in the art of keeping secrets.’
‘This is just a little secret in the grand scheme of all the other secrets we’re keeping.’
‘Well, that’s all right then.’
Cassie opened a corner cupboard, pulled out a saucepan and lifted its lid to reveal the surprise. ‘I can’t breakfast now but I’m hiding this for later. It’s a cruffin with pistachio cream inside,’ she explained.
‘A cruffin?’ Marc asked in the same way that Lady Bracknell might enquire about a handbag.
‘Half croissant, half muffin, though maybe it’s more like a flaky doughnut,’ Cassie mused.
‘You do remember that I’m half French and I consider that … that … that bastardisation of one of our greatest national dishes to be a hate crime.’
When Marc’s arm brushed against Cassie’s as he peered down at the cruffin, everything in her seemed to melt.
‘So, would you pop one in there for me too?’ he continued as if everything between them was fine. It wasn’t fine though. After last night, being this near to him felt like an itch that Cassie couldn’t and shouldn’t scratch. It would leave terrible scars. But she still leaned into him, so her hip bumped against his thigh. ‘I’m trying to keep this light, Cass.’
‘I know. So am I,’ she said.
Marc tucked a stray tendril of her hair that hadn’t made it into a plait behind her ear. ‘Then again, we do have to act like convincing lovers,’ he said, his thumb caressing the tender patch of skin behind her ear.
Cassie curved her body closer to his. As if they were magnet and metal and couldn’t keep apart. ‘As long as we both know that it’s not real …’
‘We will have to kiss sometimes. They’ll be expecting that,’ he whispered against her lips and—
‘Look at you lovebirds! Isn’t that a sight for sore eyes?’
They sprang apart as Russell and Lucy came towards them. Cassie didn’t know whether to be mad or relieved at the interruption but she decided to be relieved because the boom was back in Russell’s voice, his face relaxed, his expression teasing.
‘Sleep well, did you?’ he asked, Lucy beaming behind him.
‘Very well,’ Marc said, refusing to be drawn. ‘The two of you look like you had a good night’s sleep too.’
‘Yeah, we did,’ Lucy said with some surprise, as she hoisted herself up on one of the stools on the other side of the kitchen island.
‘But I’m still not up to a run, or even a gentle jog.’ Russell’s light faded a little. ‘I miss running. I also miss not lying to my friends.’
‘I have no problem lying to your friends. Let’s just keep it simple and stick with the pulled-muscle story,’ Marc said, as he fiddled with the coffee machine. ‘Do you want a coffee?’
‘A latte, please,’ Lucy said. ‘And no wanging on from you about how in France only small children drink milky coffee.’
‘I’m glad it’s not just me he plays the coffee snob with,’ Cassie muttered as she hunted for a butter dish in the cupboard nearest to her.
‘What you drink can only loosely be described as coffee,’ Marc said with that supercilious curl of his upper lip, which this morning no longer had the power to rile Cassie into a teeth-grinding, fist-clenching irritation.
Especially as both Lucy and Russell were looking at them with fond amusement as if Cassie and Marc were putting on a show just for them. Which actually they were. Cassie needed to remember that.
They were only doing this, whatever the fuck this was, for Lucy and Russell.
Later, Cassie would have to remind Marc that even if they were pretending to be in the first giddy flush of dating, swatting her on the arse with a tea towel was strictly forbidden. But not now because Kwame and Digby with their yoga mats, followed by Iris still in her flamboyant flamingo-adorned satin pyjamas, had surfaced.
Marc was in his element as he took people’s coffee orders and accepted their fulsome compliments for his hard work in keeping them caffeinated.
It was only when Heather and Davy made it downstairs that the flaky pastries and the freshly brewed coffee weren’t good enough.
‘I have bacon and berries for breakfast at the weekend,’ Heather said, instead of a breezy ‘Good morning’. ‘Crisp but not done to a crisp.’
‘And I’ll have a fry-up,’ Davy said, clicking his fingers in Cassie’s direction.
All Cassie’s good intentions to be kinder to Heather had been abandoned at the exact moment the previous evening when Heather had caught Cassie and Marc in a compromising position.
She could cook some bacon, it would take five minutes. But instead Cassie stared at Heather in a way that she hadn’t stared at anyone since she was thirteen and challenged Tamara Stirling to a fight over a spotty boy whose name she couldn’t even remember now.
‘Does Cassie look like a line cook?’ Anita enquired sharply before Cassie could fully regress to her aggy teenage self and tell Heather that she was going to fuck her up.
‘I was only saying.’ Heather gave a little laugh. ‘Goodness.’
‘No fry-up, then?’ Davy stuck his chest out. ‘But I’m a growing boy.’
‘If you want a fry-up, you’ll have to make it yourself,’ Marc said coldly. Cassie noticed that he wasn’t offering to make Heather or Davy a cup of coffee either.
After much debate and talk about how white sugar and refined flour were carcinogens, Heather selected a pain au chocolat and performatively left the chocolat on the side of her plate, with a shiver of revulsion.
Meanwhile Davy ate two croissants – one cheese, one plain – a pain aux raisins and was just zeroing in on a sourdough pretzel when Azad asked if he was planning to run on a full stomach.
‘I’ve run on a fuller stomach than this,’ Davy declared and demolished the pretzel in three bites. The running club left shortly after that.
‘Heather keeps a carb-free home,’ Lucy whispered to Cassie as they rolled their yoga mats out on the lawn where Astrid, a serene, graceful woman in her seventies, with beautiful, long white hair coiled in a bun, had arrived for their yoga class. ‘I can’t believe we share DNA.’
‘Did you all drink a lot last night?’ Astrid asked as Anita retrieved an empty champagne bottle that had rolled from the patio to the lawn.
‘Not excessively,’ Iris decided. ‘But quite comprehensively.’
‘Feeling a little fragile this morning,’ Digby added with a delicate shudder. ‘Can you be gentle with us?’
‘I’ll avoid Sirsasana li Padmasana then. That’s a tripod headstand with lotus legs pose,’ Astrid explained with a smile. Her back was as straight as a ruler as she sat cross-legged. ‘Let’s be kind to ourselves. Lots of stretching to get the blood flowing and we’ll finish with a short meditation.’
Cassie needed all the stretching out she could get. There had been a lot of driving yesterday, stuck in a car for hours, then a lot of running around. She tried to iron out the kinks in her lower back and felt her hamstrings protest as she went into downward dog.
The class finished with them all starfished on their mats as they listened to the sounds of the earth. Astrid said that once, when she’d really got deep into her meditation, she’d been able to hear the grass growing; ‘but that was at a Peruvian ayahuasca retreat so I might simply have been off my gourd.’
Cassie could quite easily have fallen asleep if left to her own devices, but Lucy and Iris were determined to swim in the sea.
‘Could we have a little dip in the pool instead? The pool that is heated to exactly twenty-eight degrees?’ Cassie asked as Lucy took the weak hand she proffered and yanked Cassie to her feet.
‘But it’s hot, properly hot for an August bank holiday weekend and the sea won’t be that cold,’ Lucy insisted. ‘Can I list the benefits of open-air swimming?’
‘Please don’t,’ Anita said because she wasn’t keen either. Heather had already hurried off after issuing a warning that there was probably raw sewage floating about and she could do without a dose of E. coli.
‘Now, dearest, sweetest Cassie, don’t shout at us but …’ Kwame trailed off and made a winsome face, which had Cassie instantly suspicious.
‘Why? What have you done?’ she asked, hands on her hips.
‘We haven’t quite sorted out our fancy-dress costumes,’ Digby said.
‘Which means you haven’t even begun to sort out your fancy-dress costumes,’ Lucy said, because she and Digby went way back.
‘Just a few things left to get so we’re going to push off to Brighton.’ Kwame tried another winsome smile. ‘’Cause the fancy dress is mandatory but the tennis isn’t, right?’
‘To translate: they’re going to Brighton for the day, will have a nice lunch while they’re there and will definitely miss the tennis.’ Lucy didn’t seem too cross about it, although this now meant that there’d be an odd number of couples for the tennis tournament. The logistics of it were already making Cassie’s head hurt.
‘They’d better be some bloody amazing costumes,’ she muttered.
‘Oh, they will be,’ Digby assured her. He was already backing away. ‘We’ll see you later this afternoon.’
‘Ladies.’ Kwame bowed his head like a visiting dignitary then took his leave too.
‘Honestly, they’ve had the itinerary and their information pack for weeks,’ Cassie said. ‘I sometimes wonder why I even bother.’
‘But I’m very glad that you do bother. So, are we swimming now? In the sea? You’ll be glad that you did, Cass.’ Lucy struck a muscleman pose. ‘It’s so invigorating!’
Cassie had already been far too invigorated during the last twenty-four hours.
But it was meant to be Lucy’s special weekend and Lucy was right about the temperature. It was mid-morning but the sun already felt quite fierce. This was going to be Cassie’s last chance to have a dip in the sea this year so she shoved her Birkenstocks on. Then she and Anita trailed behind Lucy and Iris, who were properly prepared with dryrobes and goggles.
‘Because they’re wild-swimming wankers,’ Anita muttered to Cassie as they approached the steps that led down to the beach.
Going down them, especially in Birkenstocks, was perilous. Cassie was relieved they hadn’t tried to do this in the dark with a lot of glassware.
However, once they were on the beach with the sun beating down on them, the water rippling enticingly and sand that sank beneath their toes, rather than the shingles and pebbles that mostly dominated this stretch of coastline, a heated swimming pool couldn’t begin to compare.
There were few things nicer than the English seaside when the weather was obliging; it made Cassie think of the summer holidays of her childhood. A bucket and spade for building elaborate sandcastles, sandwiches from home that were always a little bit crunchy thanks to her own sandy hands, and the smell of sun cream as her grandmother slathered her up like she was buttering a chicken for the Sunday roast.
The Proustian rush made Cassie feel quite giddy as she pulled off her yoga gear, then the four of them held hands and ran towards the sea.
It looked so blue, so light-dappled, like they were in the Mediterranean.
‘Woo-hoo!’ screamed Iris, as they plunged into the water.
‘Fuck me! That’s fucking cold!’ Anita yelped because they weren’t anywhere near the Mediterranean. They were up to their waists in the English Channel and it was bloody freezing.
Cassie tried to retreat but Lucy refused to let go of her hand. ‘Come on! Don’t be such a baby!’ she insisted. ‘Total immersion.’
Cassie tried to pull away with every fibre of her being. Turned out her fibres were as puny as the rest of her. ‘No further! I don’t want to get my hair wet.’
The water was up to Cassie’s neck. Her nipples now resembled frozen peas. She was going to have to do a wee just to warm herself up, like shipwreck survivors did when they were treading water in cruel seas and praying for a lifeboat. She’d seen a Netflix documentary about it.
‘Just give it five minutes,’ called Iris, who was experiencing a similar mutiny from Anita.
‘Is that how long it takes to develop hypothermia?’ Anita asked glumly.
‘Try breaststroke,’ Lucy advised as she finally let go of Cassie’s hand.
The thing was that she was in the sea now. She might as well make the best of it. So with her face still scrunched up with extreme displeasure and her head lifted up so her hair didn’t get wet, Cassie swam a few metres.
It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that good either, but she slowly swam over to where Lucy and Iris were frolicking, diving down, kicking up their legs then spluttering to the surface.
‘You’ll soon warm up,’ Iris said. Cassie had never realised it before but there was something of the games mistress about her. ‘You think this is cold? This is nothing.’
‘I’m swimming. I’m swimming,’ Cassie said, lifting her head even higher because she didn’t want to get sea water in her mouth, just in case Heather’s dire warnings about raw sewage proved correct. ‘But if you splash me, I’ll kill you.’
Anita had already gone back to the beach and was sitting there forlornly. Cassie swam to the wooden groyne that marked the boundary of the cove. By the time she swam back, she’d warmed up.
It would have been quite nice to float on her back and stare up at the wispy clouds floating across the blue, blue sky, but Cassie didn’t have hair-washing then the subsequent hair-drying and tonging on today’s to-do list. So she swam to the groyne again, trying to keep up with Lucy and Iris who were powering along like they were going for gold. Eventually, even they decided it was time to call it quits.
‘Energising though, isn’t it?’ Lucy asked as she strode out of the sea like Ursula Andress in Dr. No . ‘I’ll get you swimming in the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond one day.’
Lucy never would. Emma had swum in the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond once, got into difficulties and they’d had to send a rowing boat out to rescue her. Also, there had been fronds, Emma had reported. Fronds that had wrapped around her ankles in a very unpleasant manner.
Still, Cassie made vague noises of enthusiasm before collapsing onto the sand. There was a shout from above and she raised her head to see some distant figures running past. Three of them: Azad, Bill and Marc, who waved. Cassie waved back, though it was probably a collective wave and not just for her. Who knew what had happened to Davy? He was probably incapacitated after scarfing down all those pastries.
It would have been nice to stay on the beach, gently baking, and maybe even messaging one of the men to fetch them some ice cream, but they couldn’t muster up a single tube of sunblock between them. Cassie’s swimming costume was still damp so struggling back into her yoga gear was a workout in itself.
The walk back up the steps wasn’t just a workout. It was much worse than that. More like an ultra-marathon. Even Lucy was red-faced and breathing hard by the time they reached the top.
‘I need water and more coffee and I really hope there are some pastries left,’ she panted.
Once they were back at the house, Cassie realised there was nothing pressing on her to-do list. She could have another coffee, eat her pistachio cruffin and chat nonsense with her friends.
Azad and Bill were back from their run but Marc had carried on. ‘He tried to be polite about it but I could tell our little ten-kilometre loop had barely touched the sides for him,’ Azad said.
Davy came strolling in not long after that. ‘I stopped to have a slash behind a tree and then I couldn’t find you,’ he said, although Bill had already told them that Davy had lagged so far behind that in the end they’d abandoned him. To be fair, Davy didn’t seem to mind. ‘Where’s Heather?’
Heather had commandeered the morning room where she was FaceTiming loudly with her real friends.
Iris and Bill started preparing their picky-bits lunch and refusing all offers of help. Cassie knew she should have a shower and change out of her still-damp yoga gear but Russell was on the sofa opposite telling a story she’d heard many times before, about meeting Sean Connery in a curry house, and she wanted to fix this moment in her mind, so she wouldn’t forget it. The way that Russell always rubbed his hands together as he approached his punchline and shook with silent laughter after.
Then Marc stepped through the patio doors. He was hot, sweaty, even his hair was wet. He lifted the hem of his black running top to wipe his face and Cassie had to look away from that delicious strip of tanned skin, the muscles clearly delineated without looking ridiculously ripped. The dip on either side of his hips … that little trail of hair that disappeared into the waistband of his black running shorts.
‘Seen something you like?’ Lucy was perched on the arm of Cassie’s sofa and when Cassie forced herself to look at her friend – and anyway, Marc had pulled down his T-shirt now and was filling up his water bottle – she was grinning. ‘Also, is that a love bite on your neck?’
Cassie wished that she could tell Lucy everything. That was what you were meant to do with best friends. Tell them that you were seeing a man that you’d never liked in a whole new light. And oh, yes, actually I first shagged him sixteen years ago and now I’m pretending to fake date him to make you and your dying husband happy.
How could she tell Lucy any of that? Instead, she shrugged. ‘I burned myself on my hot brush last week,’ she said, which was the God’s honest truth, but Lucy clearly didn’t think so because she hooted with laughter.