Chapter 32
32
C assie continued to cry until she cried herself to sleep. An exhausted, comatose kind of sleep so that when her phone beeped imperiously, she had to struggle her way towards a thick-headed, swollen-eyed wakefulness.
She squinted at her phone in the now darkness of the room, the illuminated screen making her eyes water. Outside, it was still storming, the rain and the wind lashing at the windows.
She had a voice note from Lucy. Not unprecedented. But uncommon. Usually they messaged each other constantly throughout the day, unless the message proved to be so convoluted that they ended up calling.
But tonight, she’d sent a voice note. So it couldn’t be that urgent and Cassie could just go back to sleep, perchance to have some really unpleasant nightmares. But she was a millennial (an elderly millennial, Ryan said when he was trying to wind her up) and Cassie couldn’t ignore an electronic summons.
She switched on the bedside lamp then pressed play on Lucy’s message.
‘I’m going to have to speak quietly because Russell doesn’t know I’m doing this – I’m in the bathroom, because he says that I shouldn’t meddle. But I’m not meddling.’
Lucy sighed as if everything she wanted to say was in that frustrated exhalation of breath.
‘It’s obvious that things with you and Marc aren’t good. He was trying to pretend that everything was fine but he’s a terrible actor and you, when you’re in a sulk, there is no hiding it.’
Cassie couldn’t take offence because it was true. Despite her best efforts this weekend, she had the worst poker face.
‘I know there’s history between you,’ Lucy continued in a breathless rush. ‘Russell and I have always been convinced that something happened at our wedding. But ever since then, you’ve always been lowkey hostile with each other and it’s so frustrating to see. Because both of you are such good people.
‘Marc can come across as a bit of a dick sometimes but Cass, he can be so lovely too. Just think about it. Why would Russell and I love Marc so much, if he was a terrible person? He’s far from terrible. He has been so loyal to Russell, such a good friend to the four of us. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if you let him, he would love you in the way that you deserve to be loved.’
Lucy sounded close to tears and it was like a knife wound to the gut. The very last thing that Cassie had wanted to do was to cause Lucy any more upset and worry.
‘Life is unfair and it’s so fucking brief, gone in an instant, and all we can really do is cling on to love with both hands if it happens to come our way.
‘Marc could make you so happy, Cass. You just have to let him. I need you to do that for me. Because I only ever want what’s best for you and I’m trying not to be angry with you but I told you ! I told you, Cass, not to overthink things.
‘I’ve got to go. I love you even though you’re an utter twat.’
Cassie could hardly make sense of what she’d just heard. How much had Lucy had to drink anyway? She needed time to process, to think …
Or maybe she should take Lucy’s advice and not think but just feel …
Cassie tried to listen to her heart, but her heart was battered and bruised and wasn’t convinced that Marc even liked her, much less would ever decide that he loved her. Did she even like Marc? Could she love him? Would she let herself love him if the circumstances were different?
Besides, she wasn’t unhappy . Not really. But then, she could be happier.
This probably counted as overthinking.
Cassie wondered briefly what the difference was between simply thinking and overthinking. Then, as if her body was acting independently of her busy, busy brain, she stood up and walked towards the door.
She even opened the door and stepped out into the corridor to see … Marc coming towards her.
Her brain wanted her to retreat, to back away slowly, but Cassie kept moving forwards until she and Marc met halfway.
They both stopped, a ruler’s distance and sixteen difficult years between them.
Cassie had been staring at her feet but now she lifted her puffy face so she could look at him. If nothing else, she loved to look at him, even when he was sneering at her.
Except he wasn’t sneering at her. His expression was grave, as if he’d just received news that had smashed his world into dust.
Eventually one of them would speak but Cassie was sure it wasn’t going to be her. She didn’t know where to start. What to say. None of the words that she thought of – I, you, we – was the right one.
‘I’m sorry.’
That was a good place to begin, except Cassie hadn’t made a sound.
Marc took a step closer to her and held out his hands, palms upwards, as if he was doing penance.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m a fucking idiot.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Marc was many things, but not that. Cassie wasn’t exactly perfect either. ‘I’m an utter twat,’ she said, ‘if it makes you feel any better.’
‘You’re not and it doesn’t,’ Marc assured her. ‘You’ve been crying. Did I make you cry?’
There was no point trying to hide her red, blotchy face. Cassie shrugged. ‘I had a lot of things to cry about.’ She didn’t sound too far away from yet more tears.
‘Before, earlier, downstairs … Christ, why is it so hard to get my words out?’ Marc took a deep breath. His shoulders dropped as if he was making a concerted effort to find some inner calm. ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt you or goad you. I am so sick of always fighting with you. I don’t want to do that any more. I was trying to make up, to remind you of how good we can be.’
Marc looked and sounded so sincere: his brow was furrowed, his hair in disarray as if he’d been tugging on it.
‘But we’re not together,’ Cassie said. ‘That was just pretend.’ All the old feelings of rejection, of not being good enough, rose up in her again like mercury in an old-fashioned thermometer when the patient had a raging fever. ‘You don’t even like me.’
‘No … !’
Just as Marc was about to deny what Cassie knew to be true, the door just behind him opened and Iris stuck her very annoyed face out.
‘Some of us are trying to get some sleep. You have a room. You have two rooms. Can you go into one of them and shut the door behind you?’
Marc turned to her with a flat smile. ‘Will do.’
‘We’re so sorry. Of course we will,’ Cassie echoed.
‘Whatever you’re arguing about, it can’t be that important,’ Iris continued. ‘Apologise, have some of that noisy sex you love so much, then I don’t want to hear another peep from you until the morning.’
Completely unsolicited relationship advice given, Iris retreated, leaving Marc shuffling his feet and Cassie holding her hands to her inevitably flushed cheeks. She’d spent so much of this weekend with a burning hot face that it was a miracle she had any skin left.
‘Our … my room?’ Marc gestured down the corridor but Cassie shook her head. There were already too many memories trapped between those four walls.
‘Let’s go into the other room,’ she muttered.
Marc indicated that Cassie could lead the way. She could feel the back of her neck tingling as he walked behind her to her new room. Then he shut the door as Cassie wondered where best to sit to have this argument.
It was probably going to be an argument.
It was a pretty room, its walls painted an eau-de-Nil green, accented in the delicate chintz fabric of the padded headboard and the bucket armchairs, one of which Cassie sat on.
Marc stayed where he was, leaning on the door as if he didn’t have the strength to stay upright. ‘Why is the duvet on the floor?’ he asked. ‘And the duvet cover?’
‘I had problems putting them together.’ When Cassie smiled, it felt as if she’d only recently learned how to use her facial muscles. ‘I don’t suppose you’re an expert in making beds?’
His smile was just as tentative. ‘I’m painfully aware of how this sounds but I can’t remember ever having to insert a duvet into a duvet cover. I’ve always had a cleaner.’
Cassie couldn’t help a tiny and appalled ‘Wow’.
‘Yeah, I know.’ Marc gave a shaky grin and Cassie didn’t know what he had to be so nervous about – although she was feeling nervous, too. She’d stopped trying to operate on sheer instinct and was back to overthinking, which meant that she felt increasingly anxious.
She pulled her legs up so she could rest her chin on her knees and worry at her bottom lip. She could throw caution to the wind and tell Marc what was in her heart. What was the worst thing that could happen? He’d reject her, and people had been rejecting Cassie all her life. She’d get over it in time. She always did.
‘I don’t hate you, Cass. You always insist that I do but I don’t. I never have,’ Marc said suddenly.
‘Well, you certainly don’t like me very much,’ Cassie said dully. ‘Every time our paths cross, you sneer at me and always have some sarcastic little remark all good to go.’
‘That’s just self-defence.’ Marc pushed away from the door and walked over to the bed and sat on the end of it. ‘Because you always look at me like you wish I was dead. Now I understand why.’
Cassie really needed Marc to show his workings. ‘Why is that then?’
‘I can tell you why but first I have to apologise.’ Marc stared at the floor, then at the wall to the left of where Cassie was sitting, where a set of four bucolic prints by Eric Ravilious was hung. Everywhere but at Cassie.
‘I don’t even know what you’re sorry for,’ she said, although she knew what she wanted him to be sorry for.
He didn’t breathe in so much as shudder. ‘I’m sorry about what happened sixteen years ago. I’m sorry that I made you feel … what was it you said? I made you feel horrible and I’m so sorry for that. I haven’t even got anything to say in my defence. Back then, I thought I was the king of the world, untouchable. I was deep into my fuckboy era and proud of it.
‘So at weddings and parties, I’d hook up with someone, a distant relative or casual acquaintance who’d be taken out of rotation soon enough, and we’d both have a good time and then I’d never have to see them again. I wasn’t built for relationships.’
That sounded reasonable enough but it wasn’t at all how Cassie had remembered it. ‘I felt so used afterwards. When you didn’t come back.’
Marc nodded. ‘I get that and believe me, the absolutely withering look on your face as you told me to fuck off back to San Francisco the next morning is etched into my cortex. I often relive that moment when I’m wallowing in self-loathing. I shiver just thinking about it.’
‘I was really hurt …’ Cassie couldn’t explain it any better than that – and also she wasn’t going to apologise for it, because Marc had deserved it.
‘I’ve thought about that night a lot – hard not to when I get back to London a few years later and you haven’t been taken out of rotation, you’re someone I have to see all the time.’ Marc’s smile was positively mournful. ‘Why couldn’t you have been a distant second cousin?’
‘I’m sorry the stroppy girl who told you to fuck off was still hanging around.’ Cassie was aiming for a little bit of light humour but Marc shook his head.
‘That stroppy girl has become one hell of a woman. Everyone else could see it, except me,’ he said gravely, then stood up to take a few short steps so he could get down on his knees in front of her. She shifted back nervously in the chair.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Apologising. Grovelling. I don’t even know.’ Marc took hold of Cassie’s cold hands. She let him even as suspicion was writ large over every centimetre of her face. ‘That night, Cass. I always thought that it wasn’t that bad. Not really. I got you off twice and yeah, skipping out on you was a dick move but I never imagined … when you said today on the beach that you felt compromised … I’m so ashamed of myself. I really and truly am sorry for making you feel like that. No wonder you hate me.’
Cassie had been waiting sixteen years to tell Marc exactly how he’d made her feel that night. To confront him, to finally say her piece, that was all she’d ever wanted. But now that Marc was down on his knees, she realised that she’d also wanted – no, needed – an apology. If her heart and shoulders hadn’t been so heavy with all her other burdens, then Cassie was sure she’d feel the lightening of relief. Also, there was one point of order.
‘I don’t hate you!’ she protested. ‘My feelings about you have always been …’ she tried to find the right word, a collection of letters and syllables that would perfectly describe how seeing Marc could make her feel both swoony and rageful. All Cassie could come up with was … ‘complicated. Everything would be easier if I did simply hate you.’
‘You really don’t hate me?’ Marc asked quietly, one of her hands still in his, his eyes on her face, his features solemn.
‘No,’ Cassie admitted, because it was the truth. A truth that she’d hidden even from herself. ‘But I’d think back to that night and even though it was in the past, every time I saw you after that and caught the way you looked at me, I remembered how you made me feel. Inadequate. Not good enough. Or pretty enough. Or posh enough.’ She choked out a tiny, self-deprecating laugh as Marc scrunched up his face as if he was in pain.
‘Posh enough?’ he echoed in disbelief. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘Everything,’ Cassie said because even if that night had never happened, there was always going to be a huge divide between them. ‘Look, I’ve done all right for myself, but I’m still a girl from a council estate with five GCSEs and a Level 3 Diploma in Business Administration.’
‘You’re that and you’re so much more,’ Marc said, giving her hand a little shake. ‘It’s easy to be successful when you come from wealth, we both know that, but you’re entirely self-made. More than good enough, so pretty that all I want to do is look at you until it starts to get creepy, and you have more class in your little finger than the two duchesses I know.’
His words, the sincerity and conviction oozing from every syllable, and the rapt way he was gazing at her, suffused Cassie with a Ready Brek glow, which heated up her cheeks yet again and made her duck her head away from his scrutiny.
‘You don’t know any duchesses,’ she muttered.
‘I do; also a countess and a marchioness. I’m an irredeemable posh boy who’s had everything in life handed to him. No wonder you hate me.’ It was Marc’s turn for a self-deprecating laugh and to avert his eyes.
‘Not everything,’ Cassie reminded him gently. ‘I had my village and that’s a privilege too. And I’ve already said that I don’t hate you. Although there have been times when I’ve really hated your stupid handsome face. Usually when you’re smirking.’ She ran the tip of one finger along one of the cheekbones that made his stupid face so handsome.
‘Now that you’ve said that, all I want to do is smirk.’ Marc covered Cassie’s hand as she cupped his cheek. ‘And every time you’ve ever given me your best bitch goddess glare, it’s always felt like a declaration of war.’ His hand moved to Cassie’s chin to hold her still while his eyes burned into her. ‘Then at my engagement party you actually touched me, wished me well for my future. That was one hell of a headfuck.’
‘I did mean it. I wanted you to be happy,’ Cassie insisted, though if Marc had been happy with Camille then he wouldn’t be here now.
‘Camille didn’t love me and I didn’t love her and after two minutes with you on that balcony, we were doomed. I let myself remember that night, what we did, how good it was.’ Marc took hold of Cassie’s hands again, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘For weeks afterwards I couldn’t get you out of my head. I’d just celebrated my engagement but I couldn’t stop thinking about you.’
‘I’ve thought about you a lot too.’ Cassie shifted on the chair as she debated her next confession. The one that made her want to press her legs tight together – or maybe do the opposite. ‘That night. It wasn’t completely awful. Like you said, you did get me off twice. I have very fond memories of the … getting me off.’
‘You have no idea how many times I’ve fucked my own fist while I remembered how you tasted, how you felt,’ Marc said softly, so that Cassie wasn’t so much shifting in her chair as squirming. ‘These last two days have been magical, more than I ever dreamed of, and also – don’t take this the wrong way, but also …’
‘Also, fucking terrifying?’ Cassie suggested, because they finally seemed to be in sync with each other. ‘Is that why you gave me such serious cold shoulder last night? Even though we were sharing a bed, it still felt like you’d sneaked out while I was in the bathroom.’
‘Look at it from my point of view,’ Marc said. ‘I’d been honest with you, made myself vulnerable in a way that I rarely do, then you reminded me that you hated me.’
‘Because that’s always been my default position. That we don’t like each other. This weekend, like you said, I’d forced you into a corner …’ Cassie tailed off, then rallied. ‘Reminding myself, and you, that we didn’t like each other was a get-out clause. I thought that you’d want to get out of that corner soon enough.’
‘I’ve grown very fond of this corner. I think I’d like to stay in it for as long as I can.’ Marc lifted Cassie’s cold hand to his mouth to press a warm kiss to her knuckles. ‘Wasn’t there even a small part of you that thought we should give this a proper chance?’
‘No,’ Cassie said flatly, because she hadn’t allowed herself that fantasy. ‘I’ve given you the highlights about Alison, my mum, who from the moment I was born didn’t want anything to do with me.’ It would always hurt. ‘So it won’t come as any surprise that I have a pathological fear of being rejected. I don’t even know why I paid for a year of therapy when I already knew that.’
I’ve been in therapy for years to work through my feelings about being sent to boarding school at seven and having my marriage end after eight months in the most public and painful way imaginable.’ Marc sat back on his heels but instead of withdrawing completely from Cassie, he rested a hand on her knee. ‘Always better to absent yourself first before the other person has a chance to obliterate you from their life.’
Cassie nodded. Her heart was thrumming at a rate that felt positively alarming. ‘There are going to be some really dark days ahead for both of us,’ she said and Marc’s thumb was already there to brush away the tear that was about to begin its slow descent. ‘We both want to be there for Russell and Lucy and the girls and I think … I would like it if we could be there for each other too. So, that is, I mean, maybe we could agree that we’ll stick this out … together.’
‘Together is good,’ he said, his tone utterly sincere, as if each word was a solemn vow.
Cassie had come this far. She could manage to go a little bit further. ‘I did wonder if this was only about the sex for you.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, the sex was great, but it’s so much more than that,’ Marc said quickly.
‘Really?’ She couldn’t help the doubtful tone to her voice.
‘Yes, really. I want to show you something,’ Marc said, piquing Cassie’s interest, though she was immediately worried that it could be something bad. Though things had already been bad – they couldn’t get worse, surely. ‘And I need to get up because my knees are killing me.’
He rose with a grimace and a small groan, then held out his hand to Cassie, who let him pull her out of the chair then lead her to the bed.
‘Sit down,’ he said and when Cassie sat on the edge of the bed with an anxious glance up at him, he sat down next to her. Then he took out his phone. ‘Russell sent me this message about half an hour ago. Here.’
At first the words blurred in front of her eyes, then they became sharper, more in focus.
Russell: I doubt I’ll be here for your wedding but I’m going to tell Lucy to play this video on a big screen when they do the speeches. Why are you screwing this up? This woman is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Don’t be such a fucking idiot.
‘Oh God,’ Cassie murmured, pressing play on the attached video clip.
It was the two of them singing ‘Islands in the Stream’ and bumping hips because Marc hadn’t got the hang of the Electric Slide and kept going in the wrong direction. Cassie hadn’t even noticed at the time because she was too busy laughing when she wasn’t telling him off, but now she could see the way Marc was looking at her as she was singing: tender, amused, soft. It was a mirror for the expression on her own face as Marc was serenading her.
‘I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me like that before,’ Marc said. ‘And I’m pretty certain that I’ve never looked at anyone like that either. You always find a way to get under my skin, don’t you?’
Cassie looked up from the screen where the two of them were now captured twirling to Chuck Berry shortly before they ended their performance with an extravagant dip and kiss. ‘In a bad way or a good way?’
‘Honestly? It’s a bit of both.’ Marc fell back on the bed and after a moment of hesitation, Cassie let herself fall too, then rolled on her side so she wouldn’t miss the mix of emotions that played across his face. Hope mixed in with quite a lot of fear.
She could relate to that.
‘There was no video but Lucy just sent me a voice note. Summary was that you were actually a very lovely man and I needed to stop overthinking and being an utter twat.’
‘I still say that you’re not a twat, but you’re the noisiest thinker I’ve ever come across.’ Marc tapped a finger to the side of Cassie’s head. ‘Always so much going on in here.’
‘I’m sure there are going to be times when I’ll still hate your pretty face,’ Cassie said. ‘But Lucy’s right. You are kind of lovely and now you’ve let me in, I don’t want to find the way out.’
‘Would it be the worst thing in the world to keep this going?’ Marc asked, as he turned on his side so they were face to face.
‘Because of Lucy and Russell?’ If that was the only reason, it was still a good reason, even if—
‘And because maybe, and everything in me is cringing as I use this hackneyed phrase, there’s a chance we could be each other’s person.’
Cassie wriggled closer to him. ‘It’s amazing that even when you’re saying something romantic, you have to be an arse about it.’
‘It’s a gift, what can I say?’ Marc managed to sound flippant even as he put his arm around Cassie’s waist and pulled her closer still.
He flinched when Cassie put her ice cold hands on either side of his face. ‘You’re doing that thing where you use sarcasm to deflect your feelings,’ she told him gently.
‘Yeah, that’s more of a curse than a gift.’ He sounded so sad that she softly brushed her mouth against his to take some of the hurt away.
‘Well, I don’t mind keeping this going if you don’t.’ Cassie kissed him again, her lips as light as a butterfly. ‘You are quite good in bed so there’s that.’
‘I try.’ They were back to being flippant, their default position. But then he kissed Cassie’s forehead, her swollen eyelids, the tip of her nose and she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been made to feel so safe, so cherished.
Like she really was someone’s favourite person.