Chapter 14
14
I t was all ancient history now.
As instructed, Marc had fucked off back to San Francisco and Cassie had tried to get over that night. Chalk it down to experience.
But in reality, Marc had ruined her for all other men. After him, whenever she had sex with someone new, whether it was a very occasional one-night stand or something less temporary, she now knew what was going to work and what wasn’t. Penetrative sex was great but unless Cassie was getting some clitoral stimulation then what was the point? So, she’d either tell her partner what to do, or, more often than not, do it herself and every time she did, she thought about Marc.
Ruined!
Then, after three years, he came back to London to set up his own investment company, a home, to reconnect with old friends. Old friends being Lucy and Russell, by this time with a two-year-old daughter, Joni, and Fleur on the way, and Cassie, who was now much more than a back-table-at-their-wedding friend.
She, Lucy and even Russell were deeply entrenched in each other’s lives. They’d met each other’s families. They lived around the corner from each other. There wasn’t a week that went by without them seeing each other.
So it was inevitable that, despite their deep and fervent wish for the opposite, Cassie and Marc’s paths would cross again. At birthday parties and dinner parties and barbecues.
But Cassie wasn’t the same wide-eyed, impressionable girl she’d been when they’d met at the wedding. She was three years older and during those three years, she’d done a lot of growing up. There had been a few boyfriends, one of them semi-serious, and none of them had been allowed to treat Cassie the way Marc had treated her.
At work, she’d moved down two flights of stairs from the sales floor to editorial, where she was now executive assistant to Lorna, Skirt ’s editor-in-chief, which made Cassie the second most powerful person in the Skirt office. The promotion, the entry into another world, the new friends she’d made in that world and yes, the freebie premium beauty products, had given Cassie a healthy dose of self-esteem. She knew her own worth and she wasn’t going to let Marc Lacourt treat her like she was a whole ladder’s worth of rungs beneath him.
He was still so beautiful to look at, so charming with anyone who wasn’t Cassie, especially two-year-old Joni, that seeing him always made her heart ache a little. Just the sight of his mouth quirked upwards when he was talking to Russell, his long fingers caressing the stem of a wine glass, the faintest whiff of the heady leather and amber notes of his aftershave, and Cassie would have to catch her breath.
They never discussed what had happened at the wedding and they certainly never discussed how they were going to move forward. By unspoken agreement, they were civil to each other when other people were around and when, rarely, it was just the two of them for a fleeting moment, they were uncivil to each other.
It had been a pleasant change, these last few weeks, to have had something of a rapprochement, but it hadn’t been real. Just Marc being charming because he wanted something and now that Cassie wouldn’t give it to him, they were back to only being civil.
Barely even being civil.
As the weeks sped by and the bank holiday weekend drew nearer, their WhatsApp messages grew increasingly hostile. Cassie wished that she hadn’t invoked the spectre of that awful, fateful night because now it was all she could think about. That night which, even sixteen years later, was still both the best and worst sexual experience of her life.
However, none of this was really about Marc and the blight he brought to Cassie’s life. This was about getting on the train on Friday morning, primed and ready to put all her plans into action to give Lucy and Russell the best bloody weekend they’d ever known.
Marc wouldn’t even let her have that. The last flurry of messages a few days before the fateful weekend were a pretty good indication of how bad things had become between them.
Cassie: FYI: I’ll be arriving at the house for 11.30 a.m. The first of the deliveries comes an hour after that. I’ve staggered them at half-hour intervals.
Marc : What time do you want to leave London then?
Cassie: My travel plans aren’t any of your business.
Marc: WHAT TIME DO YOU WANT ME TO PICK YOU UP?
Cassie: It’s so passive-aggressive to use SHOUTY CAPS and what do you even mean? There is no picking me up. I’m getting a train to Brighton, then an Uber.
Marc: Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no point in getting the train when I have to drive down anyway.
Cassie: I’m good taking the train. I LIKE taking the train.
Marc: Well, you certainly enjoy acting like some kind of martyr. I’ll pick you up at 7.30 a.m. on Friday morning.
Cassie: That’s far too early.
Marc: You’d have to leave earlier than that if you were catching the train.
Cassie: You don’t even know my address.
Marc: You can behave like an adult and give it to me or I can get it from Russell. Your choice.
Cassie: Fine. I’ll see you Friday then.
Marc: Can’t wait.
Any joyful expectations that Cassie might have had about the coming bank holiday celebration were now gone. Marc had destroyed them. All Cassie could hope for was to get this weekend over and done with, with maybe fifty per cent of her sanity still intact. Then she’d never have to be in such close contact with Marc ever again. And amen to that.