Chapter 28
28
C assie had never even imagined that she would have sex with Marc again.
She certainly would never have entertained the idea that the aftermath of the sex would be so … civilised.
They got up from the floor, wincing as aches in their sixteen-years-older bodies made themselves known. Cassie retrieved her towel and tucked it around her again as she hurried to the bathroom.
‘I’m just going to …’ It wasn’t necessary to finish the sentence, just shut the door behind her.
Then she had another shower. Washing all traces of Marc from her skin and when she emerged in the same black lace-edged camisole and sleep shorts as the previous night, this time he gave her an appreciative look.
If Cassie had been a more forgiving woman, maybe she wouldn’t have pretended to be shocked to see Marc sitting on the edge of the bed in boxer trunks.
But she was someone who still bore a grudge so she did a double take, hand on her heart. ‘Wow! You’re still here,’ she gasped. ‘That’s unexpected.’
‘I guess I deserve that,’ he said evenly, although Cassie liked to think that he looked maybe a little ashamed. ‘Do you feel better for getting that out of your system?’
‘Not sure.’ After everything that had happened between them in the last few hours, it felt like a cheap shot. Had it made things awkward again? Or maybe it was the sex that had made things awkward.
But when Marc came out of the bathroom to find Cassie already in bed, he seemed relaxed and shot her an easy smile. As soon as he got into bed too, under the covers this time, he curled himself around her and that felt … nice. Very, very nice.
The energy between them was still so intense that Cassie regretted her earlier words. She didn’t want to sever this connection. Not now. Not when he was running his fingers through her still damp hair.
‘I can’t even feel happy for five minutes without remembering that some day soon, Russell won’t be here. Then the happiness disappears,’ Marc suddenly said, his breath ghosting across the back of her neck.
That wasn’t why she shivered.
‘I feel like all the colour will be gone from the world,’ Cassie said. She wasn’t usually so articulate or poetic, but when she was with Russell, it was like being enveloped in a glow of golden energy. ‘I try to tell myself that he’ll live on in our memories but Russell … he’s just one of those people who’s so good at living.’
‘People will say he lived life fully but that’s not much of a comfort.’ Marc tucked his arm around Cassie’s waist. ‘It’s just a meaningless platitude.’
‘But if you look at what Russell’s going to leave behind, it’s a lot more than most people achieve,’ Cassie said, because she’d been trying to take some comfort from what Russell’s legacy would be. ‘His work: the books and the TV programmes and the podcasts. He left his mark on the world. And I see so much of Russell in Fleur and Joni, so that’s some kind of comfort too.’
‘It just seems so unfair that some people live to a hundred and some people die very young or in the absolute prime of their lives,’ Marc sighed. ‘Does that sound too fanciful?’
‘Not at all. My first job was at a funeral director’s and I had those same feelings all the time. It also makes you think about your own mortality.’ This was the kind of conversation that you could only have in the dark. It was the conversation that Cassie had been desperate to have ever since she’d found out about Russell’s diagnosis but she’d never imagined that Marc would be her confidante. ‘If I die tomorrow …’
‘You are not going to die tomorrow.’ Marc’s loose embrace tightened.
‘Hopefully I’m not but you just don’t know. Lucy and I have a friend, Esme, from our Skirt days. She was at a hen party, had an accident while she was getting out of a taxi and a week later, she was having brain surgery.’
‘Did your friend die?’
‘No, except she can’t make a fist with her left hand any more,’ Cassie mused. ‘But her whole life changed in the split second it took one angry cyclist to come out of nowhere and knock her to the ground. People die all the time. Without warning.’
Marc kissed the delicate patch of skin just below her ear. ‘You are not going to die anytime soon. You’re going to live to be a very old, very imperious lady.’
‘I’d love that,’ Cassie said wistfully, though she couldn’t imagine a time when she’d finally have zero fucks to give. That the fuck well would have truly run dry. ‘But if I did die quite soon, then I’d have absolutely nothing to show for it.’ It was strange saying the words out loud, having thought them for so long. ‘I don’t have a partner and no prospects on the horizon, which means I’m probably not going to have kids …’
‘Do you want children?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. But I want that to be my own decision. Not a decision forced on me by circumstance and the absolute fuckwits I get matched with on the apps.’
Cassie felt rather than heard the low rumble of Marc’s laughter. ‘I hate the apps.’
‘You’re on the apps?’ If Marc was on the apps and they’d never been matched even when they’d been in the same room, then that was proof of what Cassie knew for certain: they were absolutely incompatible, even if she was currently in his arms.
Unless Marc was only on that special app for very rich and/or very famous people.
‘All I really want is to be someone’s favourite person. It shouldn’t be that hard.’
Marc pressed a kiss to Cassie’s shoulder. ‘It really shouldn’t.’
‘But it is, so I’m a certified spinster of the parish. I’ve never been anywhere. I’ve never done anything.’ She huffed in frustration at her sad little life. ‘The one thing I’ve ever achieved, starting my own business, I managed to fuck up.’
‘You didn’t fuck it up,’ Marc said, lightly pinching Cassie’s hip in admonishment. ‘The pandemic happened. I know I’m going to sound like some mawkish, inspirational quote on Instagram accompanied by a picture of a tree or a waterfall, but you’ve achieved the most important thing in life . You love and you’re loved. You’ve got that village, Cass.’
‘You’re loved too,’ Cassie said immediately, reflexively.
‘It’s sweet that you think that but no, not really.’ Marc said it lightly as if he weren’t bothered at all, because he always talked a good game.
Cassie tried hard to think of who might love Marc – the caring, generous, strangely perceptive Marc, not the iconoclastic disruptor with a perma-sneer. ‘Lucy and Russell?’
‘Thank God for Lucy and Russell,’ Marc said.
‘Did you love your wife?’ As soon as the words were out there in the world, Cassie wished that they weren’t.
There was a silence that dragged on and was about two seconds away from becoming excruciating instead of merely awkward, when Marc said, ‘I wanted to. I mean, I really fucking tried.’
‘And did she love you?’ Cassie already knew the answer but maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe those five minutes in the guest bathroom of his Battersea penthouse apartment with the wraparound views had just been Camille playing a part, rather than baring her soul to three people she didn’t know.
‘I’m not stupid. I knew that she was marrying me for my money,’ he said slowly. ‘But I hoped that wasn’t the only reason. It turned out that it was. Her old flame or new husband, whatever you want to call him, has an art gallery in his one-hundred-room chateau just off the Bois de Boulogne. I can’t compete with that.’
‘Why would you want to? I mean, it’s so tacky.’ Cassie snorted even though someone who loved absolutely irredeemable reality TV shows and was secretly partial to a Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodle wasn’t the best judge of what was tacky or not. It had to be painful for Marc to dredge this up, but there was one last thing that Cassie had to know. ‘Were you sad when it ended?’
Marc rolled onto his back so Cassie felt suddenly bereft and quite cold without the weight and heat of him pressed against her. She’d probably gone too far with the deeply personal and invasive questions.
‘Sad. Angry. Full of doubt, which I compounded by making a couple of bad business decisions and losing a lot of money.’
Cassie ‘hmm’ed sympathetically. She could relate to that. She was sure that while she’d lost thousands, Marc could well have lost millions. Still, it was all relative.
‘Losing the money didn’t really matter. That wasn’t important.’ Spoken like someone who still had an obscene amount of money. Marc rested his hand on Cassie’s belly because he still had her unspoken permission to touch her where he wanted. ‘But losing someone who I really tried to love … The failure to love and be loved back, it was fucking devastating.’
She’d never heard Marc sound so raw, so honest. Maybe now was the time to talk about what had happened sixteen years ago and see if they could move past it.
‘I know that we’re hardly even friends, more like sworn enemies, but I’m so sorry that happened to you. You didn’t deserve that,’ Cassie said as Marc rolled over again so his back was to her. She reached out her hand in a comforting gesture but her fingers had barely grazed his skin when he flinched away from her touch.
‘It’s late. Instead of all these true confessions, we should try and get some sleep.’
Cassie retreated to her side of the bed and rolled herself up in the duvet. She felt stung by his sudden withdrawal, though it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. They were sworn enemies, even though they’d currently suspended hostilities. Despite the fact they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, despite the fact that they were already grieving for someone they both loved very much, too much had happened in the past for them to ever really be at peace with each other.
God, he’d never once apologised or even come close to saying sorry and just like that … Cassie was angry with Marc all over again. If only she could be one of those people who let things go, instead of poking and prodding so the wound never really healed.
Next to her, Marc was silent. He might have been asleep or, like Cassie, he might have been wide awake and ready for a long night of staring up at the ceiling for hours.