Chapter 30
30
B y the time Marc came back downstairs, Cassie had stress-drunk a third coffee and had a bad case of the jitters. Not just because she hated arguing with Russell but also at the sight of Marc in jeans and a soft black V-neck cashmere sweater over a white T-shirt, looking as stupidly handsome as ever. Then she thought of the difficult, confronting conversation that they absolutely had to have today, and her heart started properly thudding. She couldn’t even blame it on an excess of caffeine.
‘Have you managed to talk some sense into this fool?’ Marc said, glancing at Lucy, who was biting her thumbnail, then Cassie, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘No, of course you haven’t.’
‘It’s fine,’ Russell said airily. ‘Christ, it’s not like I’m an invalid.’
There were so many things that Cassie knew Lucy wanted to say. She wanted to say them too. Like, remember the night you spent in A she was going to move her stuff to the room that Heather and Davy had vacated.
She was halfway across the lawn when she felt the first pinpricks of rain. By the time she limped up to the patio doors, it had progressed to a deluge of slanting sheets of water and her hair was wet, her hoodie soaked, as she rapped impatiently on the glass.
Iris opened the door, and Anita was ready with a towel. Digby and Kwame had made a start on lunch and there was already a delicious aroma of garlic and herbs wafting around the kitchen.
Cassie had thought she wanted to be on her own to lick her metaphorical wounds but she was pleased to be cocooned in the warmth of the busy kitchen and the attention of her friends. A mug of tea was placed in front of her along with a fudgy chocolate brownie bought in Brighton, while Azad tended to her non-metaphorical wounds with ice for her knee and antiseptic wipes and plasters for her fingers.
Marc was nowhere to be seen and Cassie was quite happy to stay where she was, listening to the easy conversation around her and occasionally holding up her plastered fingers forlornly whenever Kwame and Digby asked for volunteers to peel vegetables or make a quick roux for a Sunday roast that clearly had as many side dishes as Christmas dinner.
The rain had set in for the day; the garden was a green blur as Cassie sat on the window seat and chased raindrops as they trickled down the glass.
Then she saw a dark form coming towards the house. Indistinct at first, then taking shape as Lucy and Russell, under a gigantic golfing umbrella, came nearer. Cassie jumped up, wincing as her tender knee twinged, to open the patio doors. She steeled herself to smile, to act as if the sight of Russell’s grey face was nothing out of the ordinary, except …
‘Oh my goodness, something smells good!’ Russell exclaimed, as he stamped his feet on the coir mat. ‘I’m starving.’
He wasn’t grey but pink from their race across the lawn. Although Cassie was still sure that he was thinner, frailer, with each passing day, their friends didn’t seem to notice.
‘Had a bath, he’s much better,’ Lucy whispered in her ear as she gave Cassie a quick squeeze.
‘I’m glad.’ Cassie was glad but it was getting harder and harder to reconcile this version of Russell, now leaning over Digby to investigate what was bubbling away in the pans on the range, with the other, less vigorous version who was becoming more and more familiar.
There would be a day, maybe quite soon, when Russell wasn’t going to bounce back. Before, all those weeks ago, when Cassie had first been told that Russell was dying, it had seemed impossible to comprehend. Not Russell, when he was always fizzing with energy, with life; but now his diagnosis, the terrible prognosis, was becoming only too believable.