Chapter 24
24
D espite the worry that was nibbling at the edge of her nerves, Cassie could only sigh rapturously as she slowly lowered herself into a bath that was a couple of degrees hotter than bearable.
It was a proper, deep roll-top bath and Anita had given Cassie the little bottle of fancy bubble bath from her goody bag. There was no point in having a bath without bubbles.
Cassie could feel the tension slowly ebbing away as she submerged herself up to her neck and leaned her head back. She focused on the silken water against her skin, the steady in and out of her breathing.
It was all working perfectly until Cassie heard footsteps in the corridor outside. Why was Marc coming back to the room even though it hadn’t even been twenty minutes, let alone an hour?
The footsteps faded away and Cassie’s heartbeat returned to normal as she faced the unwelcome truth that she had half hoped it was Marc.
She’d told one lie. A lie to make her two dear friends happy during their darkest hours and now it was going to lead to hopefully (because she wanted Russell to be around and shining his light for as long as possible) months of deception and subterfuge.
Cassie knew that if she indicated she was willing, Marc would happily, and skilfully, fuck her. Which was oddly validating, but in the cold light of day, and even in the sun-flecked late-afternoon light of the bathroom, having sex with someone who didn’t like you wasn’t good for your self-esteem or your self-worth. Cassie deserved better than that.
It was different for men, though. They could quite happily fuck about and keep their emotions in check.
Even though they’d been getting on quite well over the last couple of days, was that only because Marc had wanted to sleep with Cassie? Had he just been buttering her up when he’d been so helpful around the house? Just like he’d been friendly a couple of weeks ago to get her onside, so they could perform an intervention on Russell and bully him into having treatment that he didn’t want.
That made Marc look very bad; bordering on evil. He wasn’t evil. Annoying, yes. Arrogant, also yes. Autocratic, again very much yes – and also, wasn’t autocratic the same as arrogant?
The bath was no longer fulfilling its relaxing remit. Cassie hauled herself out of its now cooling depths and as she roughly, almost angrily, towelled herself off, she was no clearer in her mind about what to say to Marc when he arrived for their chat.
She’d probably start by drawing an outline of her body and pointing to the places that he could touch and the places that were completely out of bounds. Then she’d play the rest of the conversation by ear.
It was another half an hour or so before there was a gentle knock at the door and, it seemed to Cassie’s oversensitive ears, a voice that sounded positively indecent enquired, ‘Are you decent?’
‘Very decent.’ Cassie’s stomach churned as the door slowly opened.
Marc stood on the threshold, his expression dumbfounded for just a moment, before he schooled his features into something less surprised. ‘I was not expecting …’ he gestured at Cassie, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed, ‘… this.’
Cassie had used the time wisely. She was now transformed into Mrs Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction . It was the lowest effort fancy dress imaginable but still highly effective. A white tailored shirt, black cropped flares and the pièce de résistance , her hair pinned up and hidden away under a sharp, dark-brown bobbed wig. Her make-up was more dramatic than usual, and she’d forgone her bronzer so the deep wine red of her lipstick really stood out.
Now she was about to apply the finishing touch: Chanel’s Vamp polish on her nails.
‘This old thing,’ Cassie said breezily. ‘Literally, this old thing. All I had to buy was the wig.’
‘I’d have hardly recognised you,’ Marc admitted, as he shut the door. Even that decisive sound of wood on wood had Cassie’s heart skittering. ‘The karaoke system’s been delivered and it’s all ready to go. Talking of which, I need to hit the shower. I smell pretty ripe.’
He tugged his T-shirt over his head and though Cassie wasn’t going to have sex with him, she could still appreciate the way his abdominal muscles rippled.
It wasn’t even six and Cassie didn’t need to be downstairs for a little while, so as Marc took a garment bag out of the wardrobe, she tried to relax her posture as she said, ‘If you’re not too long, then maybe we could have that chat before we go downstairs.’
She’d been aiming for a studied nonchalance but it sounded as if her vocal cords were tied up in knots. No wonder Marc frowned.
‘I don’t need long,’ he said.
He was as good as his word. Twenty minutes later, after Cassie had employed a second coat on her nails then a clear top coat, he emerged from the bathroom in a sharply tailored black suit and snowy white shirt.
Marc was what Cassie’s nan would grudgingly call a ‘handsome bastard’ before launching into a lecture about the dangers of men who were blessed with more than their fair share of good looks. ‘They don’t have to try so hard and they know it. Far better to aim for a bloke who’s more homely looking. Less likely to break your heart.’
There was no way that Marc was going to break her heart but even so, he was very pleasing to the eye in jeans and a T-shirt, or even running gear, but in an impeccably cut evening suit, he was absolutely devastating. Cassie was reeling from a dizzy sense of déjà vu.
He’d been wearing a black suit and white shirt on the night that they’d first met, and that had not ended well. So she tried to hide her admiration and also her discomfort with a casual, ‘That’s a bit fancy for a barbecue, isn’t it? Also, it’s meant to be fancy dress.’
‘It is fancy dress,’ Marc said indignantly, shrugging off his jacket and placing it over the back of one of the armchairs. ‘We’re going as John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction .’
‘I said I was going as Uma. We didn’t have any discussion about what you were going as.’
Even if their friends didn’t believe that they were a couple, even if last night had never happened, there’d be no doubting it now when they turned up in their complementary fancy-dress outfits. It felt like even more lying.
‘I thought it was implied, and John Travolta was an easy look to pull together. I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up about this,’ Marc added – although if he’d really known Cassie, then he’d know that she could get worked up about anything.
She watched as Marc sat down to pull on black socks. God, he even put his socks on elegantly. ‘You’ve completely fudged the whole fancy-dress thing,’ Cassie said, because she’d been not letting things lie since the day she was born. ‘Your hair’s all wrong too. John Travolta had shoulder-length black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Have you got a wig?’
‘I have not,’ Marc said evenly.
‘Or a bootlace tie?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then you’re not in fancy dress. You’re just wearing a white shirt and a black suit.’
‘Cassie, really, does this matter?’ Marc asked in the same even tone, crossing his legs, and Cassie was sure that he wanted to sigh in a long-suffering way, but he managed to restrain himself.
Of course it wasn’t important. But it was easier to bitch about his complete lack of a fancy-dress costume than any of the things that were really bothering her, which were much harder to articulate. To say the words out loud. To ask the difficult questions when Cassie knew that she wouldn’t like the answers.
‘I just want everything to be perfect,’ she said weakly.
‘Nothing is ever perfect.’ Marc let Cassie digest that – although it wasn’t news to her – then leaned forward. ‘So, this chat. Shall I go first?’
Her muscles immediately tensed up. Even her toes, nail polish gleaming, were suddenly rigid. Cassie nodded.
‘I want to clear something up. A couple of weeks ago, I liked that we were getting on better, swapping “banter”’ – he accompanied his air quotes with a self-deprecating smile – ‘in the chat, maybe becoming friends. Because we haven’t ever managed a friendship, have we?’
‘Well, there is a history … when we first met …’
‘Let’s not go there just yet,’ Marc said and Cassie marvelled at how he could sound so calm, so in control, when her heart was going like the clappers. ‘When I came to see you at your office, the coffee and cake, none of that had an ulterior motive. I was just hoping we were in a better place. It wasn’t some evil master plan to get you onside.’
His gaze was steady, but that tell-tale muscle was pounding away just above his jawline and it made Cassie dread what might be coming next. ‘When I talked about us staging an intervention, persuading Russell to have treatment, I had the best intentions. I really did. Because if it was me, if I had everything that Russell had, so many people who love him, I’d fight. I’d throw everything at it and I just really wanted – still want – him to do the same. I need you to know that.’
Whatever resentments Cassie had been harbouring about their argument in Soho Square, she decided to let them go. To have them hover in the stillness of the room, along with the dust motes, then dissipate to nothing.
‘I get it,’ Cassie said, because now she did.
‘I’ve known Russell since we were both seven. I can barely remember a time when he wasn’t in my life. He’s so much more than a friend.’ Marc swallowed hard, as if he was having to force each word out. ‘I don’t know much about having a family but that’s what he and Lucy feel like. If … when he goes, nothing will be the same. I won’t be the same.’
Cassie had never known Marc allow himself to be so vulnerable and it was only fair that she return the favour. ‘The reason why I’ve accepted what Russell wants, why I got so angry with you, is because I’ve been here before.’ She wiggled up the bed to grab her now mostly empty, mostly flat can of Diet Coke, because her mouth had gone horribly dry. ‘My grandfather had an aggressive cancer with a really short prognosis which he refused to accept. He wanted all the treatment. The chemo, the radiotherapy, we even went private to get a second opinion. We all chipped in but my gran still had to take out a loan and forked out thousands of pounds for an experimental therapy, which didn’t really help. It just made him suffer for longer.’
Cassie would never be able to talk about this without her voice thickening, having to squeeze the words past the sobs that were bubbling up.
‘I’m sorry,’ Marc said. ‘That must have been hard.’
‘It was the most horrific thing that has ever happened to me.’ Cassie sniffed the tears away and didn’t even care about the snotty, phlegmy sound she made. ‘He maybe squeezed out an extra month, but it was a terrible month, and the months before that were fucking terrible too. The side-effects from the treatment, the infections, being in hospital more often than not. He was in pain and he wasn’t at peace because he was so determined to keep fighting.’
She took another swig of flat Coke. Marc was silent and respectful of the fact that Cassie wasn’t finished but that it would take her a little while to speak her truth. ‘I have so many great memories of him but they’ve been tainted by his last months. Marc, he was tormented, emotionally, physically …’
As clearly as if it had happened only hours earlier, Cassie could recall the last time that she’d spoken to her grandfather while he was still aware of what was going on. He was in a wheelchair, hunched in on himself in pain. A once robust, imposing man now shrunk in body and spirit, they were waiting to see his consultant and Cassie had asked if there was anything she could do. Did he need water? Would he be more comfortable if she slipped the cushion they’d brought with them behind his back? Should she ask the receptionist how much longer the wait would be? ‘You’ve always had such a kind heart, Cass,’ he’d said in the laboured croak which was how he talked now. Then, in the most despairing voice, ‘I just don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t bear it.’
‘It was the absolute worst,’ she now told Marc. ‘There were times when I wished that he would just die. I felt as if I was losing my mind. I was twenty-eight. Twice as old as Joni and Fleur but I could hardly cope. I wouldn’t want them to go through any of that. So do you understand now where I’m coming from? Why Russell has chosen to just have palliative care?’
Marc didn’t argue that it had been ten years ago and treatments had improved. Or that he knew the best doctor at the best hospital and it would all be different. He simply nodded. ‘Thank you for sharing that with me.’
Cassie tipped her head back and blinked rapidly. ‘I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry.’
She heard Marc stand up, then he was sitting down next to her. ‘Do you need a hug?’ he asked uncertainly.
‘If you touch me I will cry and I really don’t want to have to redo my make-up,’ Cassie said with another emphatic sniff.
Marc was touching her. His thigh, his arm pressed against hers, but instead of Cassie finding his nearness secretly arousing, now it was secretly comforting.
‘You’re all right.’ He made it a statement, not a question.
‘I am,’ Cassie confirmed. ‘It just still gets to me. He was only sixty-three. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s no age to go, is it?’
Marc didn’t point out that Russell was only forty-four, which was even crueller. Instead he said, with some surprise, ‘Your grandfather was sixty-three and you were twenty-eight? I think you got your maths wrong …’
That made Cassie grin, tears now retreating into the distance. It was another reminder that although they’d known each other for years, they didn’t really know anything about each other. Not the important stuff.
She hit him with the headline, which always made people gasp: ‘My mum had me when she was fifteen.’
Marc didn’t gasp but he let out a long, low whistle. ‘That must have been … tough.’
‘Quite confusing sometimes.’ Cassie leaned back on her elbows and wondered how much to tell him.
She’d grown up with a sense that she hadn’t been entirely wanted and that everyone had just made the best of the situation.
She was sure there must have been conversations about abortion and then, after she was born and Alison had immediately decided that motherhood wasn’t for her, adoption. Her grandparents had still been in their mid-thirties, although with three children of their own they’d decided that they were done with babies. But as her very prosaic grandfather had said, ‘One more puppy on the pile wasn’t going to make much difference.’ Her grandmother Sue had sounded a bit more sentimental when she’d told Cassie that ‘as soon as they put you in my arms, I knew you weren’t going anywhere’.
It had helped that Cassie had apparently been a very placid baby, and even if Alison had checked out and ten-year-old Dan was indifferent, then eight-year-old Emma was absolutely besotted with her new niece. As if Cassie was a Tiny Tears doll come to life solely for her own pleasure.
Most of Cassie’s earliest memories were of her special and tender relationship with Emma, who’d lift Cassie out of her cot so they could sleep together, despite Sue’s dire warnings about the dangers of smothering. Emma had kept a notebook to list Cassie’s early milestones, from first steps to first words to first ice cream. Emma’s friends were similarly obsessed and always popping round ‘to have a go with the baby’.
It had been a happy childhood but an odd one. Now, Cassie shrugged. ‘It took a village and all that. Alison, my mum, got married to this amazing guy when I was twenty and then they had Ryan, who we all adore. I think it made her re-evaluate a lot of things. She’s never really been a mother to me but we have a much better relationship now.’ She sighed. ‘Families are really complicated.’
‘Your dad?’ Marc asked.
Cassie shrugged again. ‘Got shipped off to family in Ireland. I’ve connected with some cousins through Facebook but I’ve never been in contact with him. Can’t really see the point now anyway.’
It had used to hurt but now it didn’t. Not really. A year ago, she and Kwame had been to see a revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman . When Willy Loman had said that he ‘still felt kind of temporary about myself’, it had been like a small incendiary device going off in her head. It was almost exactly how Cassie felt about herself but she’d never been able to find the right words to express it.
‘It does sound like you have a lot of love in your life, though,’ Marc said gently, which was also true.
‘I’ve never been in any doubt about that.’ Cassie sat up straight. Now they seemed to be even closer and it felt right to rest her arm on his shoulder. ‘What about you? Were you raised by a village?’
Marc’s laugh was entirely without humour. ‘By staff, mostly. It’s quite hard to talk about my formative years without reverting to stereotypes. French father, who was a charming but largely absent presence. Would much rather spend time with his latest girlfriend. English mother, who coped with his infidelities by presenting a very chilly exterior to the world.’ He shrugged. ‘It was quite a relief to be packed off to boarding school at the age of seven.’
‘That must have been … tough.’ Cassie echoed his own words.
‘Not at all.’ Marc flashed his teeth in an approximation of a smile. ‘I learned how to completely repress all my emotions at a formative age. Probably why I’m so successful at establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships.’
Cassie immediately thought of Marc’s eight-month marriage. From the way Marc’s lips tightened, she wondered if he was thinking about it too.
‘You don’t think that you’re lovable?’ she asked, because in all her panic and ongoing existential crisis, Cassie never blamed anything about her situation on her lovability, but rather on a series of unfortunate circumstances.
Marc raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s what the evidence suggests.’
Cassie shook his arm. ‘You don’t give yourself enough credit. I’ve got to know you better these last few weeks and I …’ Where to even start?
He smiled. Not a tenth-generation smile like before but one of his smirky, sly smiles that nobody could love, although lately it had been having quite a … stimulating effect on Cassie.
‘These last few weeks you’ve wanted to plunge a knife into my back.’
‘Of course I haven’t!’ Cassie snapped reflexively. ‘Not your back. I wanted to look you in the eye when I stabbed you through the heart.’
She hadn’t meant for things to get so dark. But Mark laughed as if he was genuinely delighted. ‘I’m keeping you away from all sharp utensils.’
Cassie made a show of checking the time on her imaginary watch. ‘I haven’t wanted to kill you for approximately the last twenty hours. And during those twenty hours there have been moments when I quite liked you.’
Now his smile needed to come with a parental advisory warning. ‘I bet you did.’
‘I’m not talking about that. ’ Although they really needed to talk about that . ‘You’ve changed for the better over the years. For one thing, you’re not calling yourself a disruptor any more.’
‘And you used to be a real people-pleaser,’ Marc remembered, which was fair. He knew better than anyone just how much of a people-pleaser she’d been. ‘Though even then, but especially now, you have a very low tolerance for suffering fools.’
They lapsed into silence, charged, not with sexual tension, but with all the things they couldn’t say or hadn’t quite worked out. Cassie’s arm still rested on his shoulder, their bodies touching, so close that she could see that he was a week away from a haircut.
If they were silent then they couldn’t talk about the fucking massive elephant in the room.
As usual, Cassie was rescued by the chime of her phone. One, two, three times.
Three plaintive messages from Russell, which made her grin, and when she showed them to Marc, he smiled too.
Russell: Have you got our fancy-dress costumes?
Russell: Should I be terrified?
Russell: Because I am terrified.
‘OK, looks like I’m needed elsewhere.’ Cassie patted Marc’s thigh, all that hard muscle. So hard. ‘Good chat.’
It had been a good chat. Not the chat that Cassie had been expecting and dreading. She still needed to talk to Marc about boundaries and wrong touching. But that could wait. She’d need a couple of drinks first.
Cassie stood up and stretched, noting the way that Marc’s eyes were suddenly fixed on the pale sliver of belly now exposed.
‘Should he be terrified?’ he asked as Cassie retrieved a taped-up carrier bag from a shelf in the wardrobe.
‘Oh yes. He should be very, very afraid.’
‘It’s odd but when you’re being evil and it’s not directed at me, it’s actually quite …’
Cassie raised her eyebrows. ‘Quite what?’
But Marc shook his head, eyes gleaming. ‘I’ve already said too much. If I say anything else, it will only encourage you.’