Chapter 26
26
T hey decided to move into the huge lounge for the karaoke. By general consensus, it was agreed that it was better to do a quick clear-up now before they all got too incapacitated, rather than leave it until the morning, when they all planned to be very hungover.
Cassie tried to stand up but Marc tightened the arm he still had around her shoulder. ‘I need to make sure people are rinsing the plates before they go in the dishwasher,’ Cassie pleaded, but when she tried to explain how hard it was to budge streaked-on ketchup, Marc kissed the words out of her mouth.
Her gasp was swallowed up by his soft, lingering kisses. Over the ringing in her ears, Cassie could hear Anita giggling. She could tell from the way Marc’s hand tensed on her leg that he was holding back.
The thought of what he could do when he really let himself go made her shiver. But it, the kisses, the hand on her leg, it was all just pretend.
‘You’re cold,’ Marc said, standing up and pulling Cassie to her feet. He put his arm around her again as they followed the sound of laughter and chatter to the kitchen.
The clean-up was very much in progress, with Lucy supervising. She was currently more Captain von Trapp than Maria as she issued orders and wiped down surfaces as if the kitchen were her battleship. Cassie wouldn’t have been surprised if Lucy had whipped a whistle out of the bodice of her dirndl and given them all a call sign.
Marc pushed Cassie gently down on one of the sofas in the living room. ‘Sit here and do not lift a finger while I finish setting up the karaoke.’
‘Sir! Yes, sir!’ Cassie saluted Marc, unprepared for his wolfish grin.
‘You’ve never called me sir before,’ he drawled. ‘We should revisit this later.’
He held Cassie’s gaze and she knew that her cheeks were stained with red. ‘There will be no later,’ she muttered but Marc turned away as if he hadn’t heard her.
Cassie was saved from the inevitable five minutes of analysing every single one of Marc’s words, non-verbal cues and micro-expressions by a FaceTime call from Fleur, Joni and her brother Ryan, who was there for a sleepover, supervised by Russell’s parents.
‘We need to see Mum and Dad’s fancy-dress costumes,’ Joni announced without preamble. ‘They keep ignoring our calls. Rude!’
‘Do you want to speak to them or shall I just take a picture?’
‘Both!’ Fleur squealed.
The three of them were in full and very heavy make-up so no doubt they’d spent the day watching YouTube beauty tutorials and uploading clips of themselves dancing to TikTok.
‘I’ll go and find them but I will also be filming them during the karaoke.’
‘That’s why you’re our favourite,’ Fleur said.
Lucy and Russell were huddled over the laptop that came with the karaoke system so they could scroll through the catalogue of songs. They looked up as Cassie approached.
‘I have two people who want to talk to you,’ she said, turning her phone round so Fleur and Joni could see their parents in full Tyrolean garb.
A lot of whooping issued forth from her phone. ‘Are we allowed no dignity?’ Russell scowled, taking Cassie’s phone. ‘You horrible children, why aren’t you in bed?’
When Lucy panned down so they could get a good look at their fancy-dress outfits, the response was enthusiastic and very high-pitched.
It was quite some time before Cassie got her phone back. By then, everyone was gathered on the sofas, glasses in hands, and there was an expectant, very giggly atmosphere as Marc ran through the karaoke protocol.
Typically, he kept it brief. ‘You pick your song. You pick up a microphone. The words appear on the laptop screen. You sing. Any questions?’
‘On the itinerary, Cassie said that participation is mandatory,’ Azad said. He paused to cough dramatically. ‘Except I’ve got a sore throat.’
‘Mandatory as in you will be singing,’ Lucy said sternly. ‘No ifs. No buts. No wriggling out of it.’
Lucy really loved karaoke. Cassie did too. She’d once been told by a music teacher that she had near perfect pitch and for two years after that, she would sing wherever she went in the hope that she’d be discovered by a pop mogul and whisked away to a life of stardom. There had been much flouncing and door-slamming when her grandparents had refused to let her audition for Pop Idol . So it wasn’t a surprise that on any night out that involved booking a private room at Lucky Voice, Cassie would end up hogging the mic. It wasn’t one of her most endearing traits.
Now she tried to play it cool as she waited to look through the catalogue. Her showstopper was always ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and she and Lucy did a rousing duet to ‘I Know Him So Well’, but hopefully she’d have a chance to do more than two songs. A lot more.
‘Just one thing, guys,’ Russell announced, clinking his glass to get everyone’s attention. ‘We’ll be singing in our couples, so you might want to think about choosing a duet. Cassie and Marc have already called dibs on “Islands in the Stream”.’
Cassie and Marc had done no such thing. Or rather Cassie hadn’t, and from the sudden panicked look in Marc’s eyes as he checked the wireless microphones, he hadn’t either.
Russell raised his glass in a silent salute to Cassie because he was a shit-stirring bastard. When Cassie raised her middle finger he just laughed. She didn’t want to be sad, not tonight, but if this weekend was about making memories then Cassie wanted to carry this memory of Russell in his von Trapp brocade-curtain romper suit, absolutely in his element as he joked with Azad and Anita, in her heart for a long, long time.
She was startled out of her reverie by Marc sitting down next to her with a heavy thud and a heavy face. ‘I do not sing,’ he hissed at her.
This wasn’t a surprise. Everything he did, he did with such control, such ease. He might not call himself a disruptor any more but Marc was cool and karaoke was not cool.
‘It won’t be so bad,’ she said, patting his arm. ‘Yes, you’re going to look like a bit of a prat but—’
‘When I say I don’t sing, I mean I can’t sing,’ Marc confessed with a grimace. ‘You have to get me out of this.’
On the contrary, Cassie was now even more excited about the karaoke. Maybe if she heard Marc murdering the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers classic, all these complicated feelings that she didn’t even understand herself would disappear. She positively yearned for The Ick.
‘You’ll be fine. Have some more booze,’ she said helpfully.
‘There is not enough booze in the world.’
Marc didn’t even crack a smile when Cassie nudged him playfully. ‘I don’t mind doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Maybe you can just talk-sing?’ Another thought occurred to her. ‘You do know how to do the Electric Slide, don’t you? Like in the David Beckham documentary?’
He gave her a long, hard look. ‘You’re speaking. Words are coming out of your mouth but I haven’t got a clue what you’re banging on about.’
Oh yes, The Ick was imminent.
But first, Iris and Bill did a passable and very entertaining ‘Anything You Can Do’. What they lacked in hitting the right notes in the right order, they made up for with hammy theatrics.
Then Davy kicked it solo as everyone agreed they didn’t have the heart to wake up Heather. That was the official party line. It turned out that Davy was a bit of a dark horse, with a pleasing baritone that he used to great effect to serenade each of them in turn with a rendition of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’.
The real star turn was Kwame. Cassie might have almost perfect pitch but Kwame was classically trained. He’d been a chorister, had done a degree in singing at the Royal College of Music and two years in the chorus at the English National Opera until he decided that he’d prefer to be well paid, rather than poor but singing his heart out every night.
His performance of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ sent chills running down Cassie’s spine. Even Digby chiming in occasionally with very pitchy harmonies couldn’t ruin the magic. ‘Oh my God,’ Marc said faintly as Kwame hit and held the last exquisite note.
It was an impossible act to follow. Anita and Azad didn’t even try but mugged their way through ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ and Lucy and Russell attempted ‘I Got You Babe’, but abandoned it halfway through because they were laughing too hard to sing. Cassie tried to film them, but her giggles made her hands shake – the incongruity of their Sound of Music outfits and Lucy getting annoyed because Russell wasn’t taking it seriously was too much. Then Cassie wasn’t giggling any more and had to swallow down a sob as she carried on filming, not wanting to miss a second of her friends, arm in arm, heads touching as they sang the final refrain.
Another memory for the vaults …
‘I swear, Cass, if you get me out of this, I’ll give you anything you want,’ Marc muttered in her ear, as Kwame beckoned them to the microphones with an evil smile. ‘I’ll let you keep my credit card. Buy you a yacht …’
‘I don’t have any use for a yacht.’ Cassie got to her feet as Marc shrank back on the sofa. ‘Don’t be such a baby. And don’t forget the Electric Slide.’ She yanked him up with a groan.
‘You’re going to pay for this,’ he said softly as they took the mics from Kwame, but he made it sound more like a promise than a threat.
As the opening notes rang out, Cassie was already grooving. Then she stopped and glared at Marc as he missed his cue.
‘You have to sing Kenny’s part,’ she snapped at him.
He came in late and off key until it was time for them to sing together. The only way to get Marc to sing on cue was to pinch his arm and he was absolutely harshing Cassie’s mellow, which didn’t return until she got to sing the second verse solo.
It was one of her favourite songs. At every wedding she’d ever been to, and Cassie had been to a lot of weddings, the night usually ended with a big circle of guests surrounding the bride and groom as they all sang ‘Islands in the Stream’. Even Marc couldn’t ruin that.
Fortunately by the second chorus, he’d loosened up a bit or got the hang of where he was meant to come in. Although it could have been Cassie’s eyes promising him untold pain.
He talk-sang rather than sang, but by the end, he was even following Cassie’s lead as she bumped her hips against his, arms aloft. It was more of an Electric Shuffle than the Electric Slide, but Marc had made the effort, which was all Cassie wanted. By the last chorus, he was even smiling and leaning in close as they kind of harmonised with each other. She’d never thought of Marc as cute but he was being cute, his grin endearing, his eyes on her, as they sang the closing notes.
The Ick, alas, was nowhere to be found.
Cassie took a bow to the smattering of applause and was just about to put Marc out of his misery and pull him back to their sofa, when Russell held out his hand.
‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘We’re not done with you yet!’
‘Russ, no …’ Marc said, his arms round Cassie’s waist as if she were a human shield.
Cassie took pity on him. ‘Come on, hasn’t Marc suffered enough?’
There was a chorus of ‘no’s, which Cassie didn’t really mind. She was always up for a second song but Russell and Lucy had other plans.
‘Dance for us,’ Lucy called out, clapping her hands as the song from the Pulp Fiction twist contest, Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’ started. ‘Come on, dance!’
Everyone took up the chant. ‘Dance! Dance! Dance!’
It was textbook bullying. Just as well that Cassie liked to dance almost as much as she liked to sing. Marc was standing still and frozen in the middle of the room.
‘Do you know how to twist?’ Cassie shouted over the music, as she swivelled on one hip. ‘Just follow my lead.’
Marc didn’t follow her lead. Not even when Cassie did one of her favourite moves, holding her nose and twisting right down to the floor, like she was going underwater. Or the most famous bit of the dance from the movie when Uma Thurman and John Travolta dragged their hands across their faces, fingers scissored.
‘I can’t do this,’ Marc mouthed and Cassie shrugged helplessly because the clapping and the chanting wasn’t abating. ‘But I can do this .’
This was suddenly taking Cassie in his arms and holding her close as he finally started to move.
‘I’ve had nightmares that are quite similar to this, except I’m naked,’ he said in her ear.
‘You’ve had nightmares about me?’ Cassie pouted.
‘Those aren’t nightmares and in those dreams, we’re both naked,’ he purred, his hand tightening on her hip.
Before Cassie could react because no, he did not just say that, Marc twirled her away from him.
Then she was back in his arms and they were dancing so close together that it felt too intimate, even with everyone watching. Then Marc twirled her again and again, until Cassie felt quite dizzy.
‘Just hold me and dance,’ she said when she was back in his arms, but the song was coming to an end and it was time for a big finish.
Cassie clutched on to Marc’s arm, his shoulder, as he extravagantly dipped her, then held her like that and, despite the awkward angle, Cassie knew that she was safe. That he wasn’t going to let her come to any harm. Not when he could swoop down and claim her lips as the music faded away and she couldn’t hear anything except the pounding of her heart.
Then she was upright again, still holding on to Marc, who didn’t seem inclined to let go of Cassie either. ‘That’s quite enough of that now,’ he said sharply, which was at odds with the way he looked down at her. ‘We’re not performing monkeys.’
After that, predictably, the karaoke was the domain of the hardcore. Cassie, Lucy, Kwame and Iris singing showtunes until Cassie, who was really quite drunk by now, realised that she still hadn’t sung the song she’d bagsied when she was writing the itinerary.
‘We have to do “Cruel Summer”,’ she insisted as she scrolled through the catalogue. ‘Why haven’t they got “Cruel Summer”? What kind of two-bit karaoke system is this?’
‘We could do “Shake It Off”?’ Iris suggested but Cassie shook her head.
‘But it’s not Taylor’s Version! This is a disaster.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘We’ll sing along to “All Too Well” instead. All ten minutes and thirteen seconds of it.’
It was the quickest way to clear the room. As the four of them, drunk and swaying, gathered around Cassie’s phone, everyone else decided to head back outside.
It was a wise decision because there was a lot of very loud singing. A lot of passion when they got to the bridge. If Cassie hadn’t been holding her phone with one hand, then she’d definitely have done a double fist of pure emotion.
Wrung out from their performance, the four of them joined the others on the terrace where there was more champagne. More singing. A heated debate was raging as to whether they should fire up the barbecue again as there were a lot of sausages left and singing had made everyone ravenous, when Heather emerged from the house.
She was wobbling from side to side because she was still drunk. How on earth could she still be drunk?
‘Hello, fuckers!’ she shouted, which got everyone’s attention. ‘I want to sing a song too.’
‘Oh my God,’ Lucy muttered under her breath. She and Cassie were sitting on the low wall that divided the terrace from the rest of the garden.
Cassie patted her hand. ‘I should probably have checked on her. Maybe if we ignore her?’
‘That never, ever works. Why is she so determined to spoil everything?’ Lucy looked imploringly at Davy, who was standing nearby with a bottle of beer and what looked like zero fucks. ‘Davy, please …’
‘All right,’ he muttered, putting down his bottle with a beleaguered air. ‘Now, now, Heatherette. You’ve had a few too many sherbets …’
‘Oh fuck off, Davy!’ Heather started humming ‘The Stripper’ and nearly fell over as she attempted a bump and grind. ‘Look! I’ve still got it.’
She snatched off her wig and threw it at her advancing husband.
‘Come on, old girl, let’s get you to bed,’ he said, like he’d had a lot of practice dealing with drunk Heather and being sworn at.
‘I’m not going to bed. I’m going to show everyone that I’m still a powerful and sexual woman.’ Another bump and grind had Heather putting all her weight on her bad ankle.
It seemed to happen in slow motion. Heather’s shriek of pain, the way she went down like a sack of spuds, then burst into tears.
‘This is the worst fucking party I’ve ever been to,’ she sobbed. ‘I wish we’d never come. My real friends are much more fun.’
Lucy buried her face in Cassie’s shoulder, the force of her own sobs shaking her body. ‘I wish she’d never come too.’
‘She’s going to feel bloody awful in the morning,’ Davy said cheerfully as he and Azad got Heather to her feet and led her, still crying, from the terrace.
There was a hushed silence now, everyone embarrassed and not quite sure what to do. Cassie put her arms around Lucy and stroked her back as her friend quietly wept. Yes, Heather was an absolute menace and had ruined Lucy’s hen weekend, Joni’s fifth birthday and Lucy and Russell’s tenth anniversary, but Cassie knew what these tears were really about.
‘I can’t bear it, Cass,’ Lucy whispered. ‘I don’t know how to get through each day when my heart is fucking broken.’
Cassie rocked her like a small child. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s so unfair.’
Digby sat down on Lucy’s other side and leaned against her, his hand on her shoulder. Digby was the person who’d known Lucy the longest and although he didn’t know the real reason for Lucy weeping so desperately, his presence seemed to calm her.
‘It’s not like you to be a maudlin drunk,’ he murmured.
Lucy shuddered a couple of times, then sat up straight. ‘Sorry.’
‘Nothing to apologise for,’ Digby said, brushing Lucy’s pageboy Maria von Trapp wig back from her tear-streaked face.
Then Iris was kneeling in front of Lucy with some damp kitchen roll and Cassie shuffled along the wall to make room for Russell.
Even when Kwame and Davy returned and opened two more bottles of champagne, the mood was subdued. Subdued but in ridiculous fancy dress.
Cassie was relieved to see Marc walking towards her from the other end of the terrace. With their unofficial leaders, Lucy and Russell, out of action, sitting quietly with their arms around each other, Marc was the most grown-up person there. The designated adult.
He sat down next to Cassie and bent down to take off his shoes, then this socks. Which was random. And really weird. ‘We need to change the mood,’ he murmured for her ears alone.
It was a nice thought. ‘I think the only thing that will change the vibe is a direct hit from an overhead missile.’
‘Do you trust me?’ Marc asked, which was a loaded question.
Cassie decided to go with a half-truth. ‘Maybe.’
Marc let that register. Then he sighed as he shrugged off his suit jacket. ‘I was hoping for more enthusiasm but maybe will have to do. Take off your shoes.’
She was intrigued to know where Marc was going with all this cryptic vagueness. She toed off her ballet flats and when Marc stood up and offered her his hand, Cassie let him pull her up.
He didn’t give her any time for doubt, but started running, so Cassie had to run too even though they seemed to be heading straight for the swimming pool.
Correction, they were jumping into the swimming pool. Cassie screamed, half in shocked delight and half in horror because she really didn’t want to get her wig, and the hair underneath the wig, wet.
Her scream when they actually hit the water, which felt cold rather than heated to a temperate however many degrees, was even louder. They’d gone in at the deep end and Cassie was completely submerged, her feet scraping the bottom of the pool, until Marc, still holding her hand, pulled her spluttering to the surface.
‘What the fuck, Marc?’ Cassie gasped and he let go of her hand to smooth his wet hair back. He looked supremely pleased with himself. Cassie couldn’t let him get away with that. She brought her arms down hard to splash him in his stupid handsome face but he grinned and splashed her right back.
‘Are you two completely mad?’ Kwame was standing at the edge of the pool and already toeing off his trainers. ‘And room for a little one?’
Kwame didn’t jump but cannonballed into the pool, sending an arc of water through the air, which splashed the others who had followed him and were now taking off their shoes and generally seemed delighted by the distraction.
Digby was next, Anita, Bill and then, accompanied by wolf whistles and whooping, Azad took off his trousers and jacket. ‘It’s my best suit. It’s my only suit!’
He jumped in and was promptly pushed under the water by his loving wife.
Iris was hesitant, despite her love of wild swimming – and swimming didn’t come much wilder than this. ‘I love the gay abandon, guys, but I’m wearing vintage,’ she said. ‘You have to respect the vintage.’
‘Off! Off! Off!’ Cassie shouted.
‘Oh well, if you insist.’ She very carefully took off the dress, draped it on a pool chair, did a little shimmy in her slip and finally jumped in.
Only Lucy and Russell were left on the edge, both of them hesitant. They shared an anxious glance, which made Cassie wonder if this had actually been a really bad idea. Then Marc swam up behind Cassie and put his arms around her waist, holding her up as they both trod water.
‘Come on!’ he shouted encouragingly.
‘Yes! Last one in is a rotten egg!’ Digby clapped his hands. ‘Don’t be such pussies!’
The look that Lucy and Russell now shared was conspiratorial. Then they didn’t even take off their footwear, but jumped in holding hands.
An impromptu singalong to ‘Sweet Caroline’ was inevitable, then ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. Yes, it was incredibly cheesy but lovely too, even with the smell of chlorine and the chafing of wet clothes.
A fitting end to the evening’s activities. To go out with a splash and a ‘na na na na na na na na na’ rather than a whimper.
Then it was time to squelch back to their rooms.