Chapter 31
31
I t was the kind of Sunday Cassie could never have imagined when she was younger and wondering who she might be when she grew up.
A country house. Engaging, interesting friends. Flicking through the Sunday Times and the Observer supplements (her grandparents had taken the Sunday Mirror ). The frequent pop of the champagne cork because, incredibly, they still hadn’t drunk all of it.
Then there was a quite legendary Sunday roast served only two hours late, which featured a leg of lamb studded with rosemary and garlic, a beetroot Wellington as a veggie option, sausages and chicken drumsticks left over from the barbecue and a mouth-watering array of side dishes. Goose-fat potatoes, cauliflower cheese, red cabbage, honey-glazed carrots and parsnips, green beans with flaked almonds, and the plumpest, crispest Yorkshire puddings.
They were all settled in the cosy living room and no one wanted to change location to the formal dining room. Digby and Kwame arranged the dishes on the kitchen island and everyone grabbed a plate and helped themselves, then found a spot on one of the sofas.
It all looked delicious but Cassie had no appetite. Not even for a Yorkshire pudding soaked in gravy. She was worried, desperately worried, about Russell. But she also wished – how she wished! – that she’d never pretended she and Marc were together. They never had been and they never, ever would be. That was why her mouth was dry, her stomach felt as if it was lined with hopping frogs and the food, lovingly crafted by Digby and Kwame, who weren’t bashful about receiving compliments, might just as well have been Turkey Twizzlers and oven chips.
Marc, who’d been absent all afternoon, appeared just before the food was served, to much good natured-teasing. ‘I don’t cook,’ he’d protested. ‘Couldn’t tell one end of a potato peeler from another. But I can open another bottle of champagne, if anyone needs a refill.’
He was charming and seemingly in good spirits. Not even a little bit destroyed by anything that had happened earlier.
Cassie was quite adamant that she wasn’t going to play the devoted girlfriend any more but as she took a plate, Marc was suddenly next to her, his arm sliding firmly around her waist so she was anchored to him. ‘You go and sit down, darling,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘I know exactly what you like.’
She could hardly fling herself away and cry, ‘Get your filthy hands off me!’ – or she could, but of course she didn’t want to make a scene. Fake dating was one thing, but fake dating as that one couple who lived for the drama was quite another very, very annoying thing.
So she could only nod in agreement and Marc’s grip on her softened and became more caressing, his thumb resting comfortably in the dip of her waist. That was torture itself but when Cassie purposely chose a seat in the corner of one of the sofas, Iris and Bill taking up the rest of the space, Marc soon appeared with two plates and an ingratiating smile on his face.
‘Bill, do you mind if I turf you out? You and Iris must be so bored of always sitting next to each other …’
‘So bored,’ Iris agreed happily.
‘… and I don’t get to sit next to Cassie nearly enough,’ he continued smoothly, smile still in place but his eyes flashing a warning at Cassie.
‘I don’t want to stand or sit in the way of you two lovebirds,’ Bill said, damn him, getting up to offer his seat to Marc.
It was a big sofa. They didn’t even have to touch each other, but Marc sat down so close to Cassie that there was no escape. She had the sofa arm on one side and his hard thigh pressed against hers on the other.
‘You’re ridiculous,’ Cassie whispered as quietly as she could, given how enraged she was. She was even more indignant because being so close to him that her breath ruffled his hair, close enough that she could bite down on his earlobe if she fancied that instead of a roast potato, still felt intoxicating. ‘I already told you that I’m not doing this.’
‘Yes, you fucking are,’ he whispered. Then he sat back with a grin that Cassie didn’t like and didn’t trust. ‘Come on, Cass, clear that plate. You need to keep your strength up.’
‘Can you keep it down tonight?’ Iris asked wearily. ‘Surely you’re not going to be doing it two nights on the trot?’
‘Once a week is industry standard,’ Digby added. ‘Unless it’s a birthday.’
‘What can I say?’ Marc shrugged. ‘We’re in that infatuated stage. Can’t keep our hands off each other.’
‘Not that the infatuated stage lasts forever,’ Cassie said.
‘Oh, please! Everyone can see how perfect you are for each other,’ Anita scoffed. ‘Even stirs my sceptical and wizened old heart.’
To pay her back for speaking truth to power, once Marc was finished eating, he put a hand on Cassie’s knee – not even the injured one, so she could flinch away – and an arm around her shoulders.
Cassie expected one of her cynical, always-with-the-mocking friends to make gagging noises, but the gagging noises never came. Digby and Anita, on the sofa opposite, even shared an indulgent look and nudged each other. Only Lucy didn’t seem to be buying what Marc was trying so hard to sell. She stared at the two of them like they were a particularly thorny cryptic crossword clue that she couldn’t quite figure out.
‘You’re laying it on way too thick,’ Cassie muttered.
‘Just keep smiling.’ Marc turned his head to kiss Cassie’s cheek, his lips scalding her skin. Then there was a gentle tug on her ponytail.
It was as if there were a trip-wire connected to her clit and every time Marc gave her ponytail a tiny jerk, she could feel it pulsating away between her legs.
From the smug smile on his face, Marc knew that too.
After dinner, there was still no escape. Cassie knew that if she fled to the room she was sharing with Marc, he’d come to find her. He was in that kind of mood; relentless, tormenting. Cassie supposed it was effective when he was tech entrepreneuring but to be the sole target of Marc’s manipulations made her feel like a small, unprofitable company that he was planning to asset-strip. Not in a fun, sexytimes way either.
They all agreed to a small window to digest dinner before pudding. Anita wanted to play Monopoly, though she was banned from playing Monopoly after an incident on a similar Sunday afternoon in 2019 when Bill had landed on free parking. He’d been awarded the pot of money accrued through parking fines, Super Tax and various other penalties. Anita, who was almost bankrupt apart from one house on Old Kent Road and one on Whitechapel Road, had upended the entire board in a fit of pique.
‘Cluedo? Let’s play Cluedo,’ she cajoled in the face of zero enthusiasm.
‘It’s a literal case of love the player, hate the game,’ Russell said, ever the voice of reason. What were they going to do without him as their eternal referee? Always able to mediate squabbles without ever making anyone feel that they were the guilty party. ‘We’re watching a film. But first we’ll spend at least twenty minutes arguing about which film. Then we’ll serve pudding before we watch it.’
Choosing a film only took five minutes. ‘It’s a rainy evening so I want something in black and white, funny, romantic, not heavy,’ Lucy said.
‘ Bringing Up Baby ,’ Iris said immediately. ‘Cary Grant. Katharine Hepburn. A leopard. What more could anyone need?’
Cassie couldn’t sit, pinned between Marc and the sofa arm, for an hour and forty-two minutes. Not with him constantly touching her and tugging on her bloody ponytail, as everyone looked on in fond amusement.
‘I’ve got a headache,’ Cassie heard herself announce. ‘I think I’m going to bow out of the movie. I should probably have a nap.’
‘I’ll join you,’ Marc said immediately.
‘I don’t think poor Cass is going to have much of a nap if that happens,’ Kwame said with a wink.
It wasn’t a lie about the headache. Her head was throbbing almost as much as her knee. ‘I’ll take a couple of Nurofen and sort out pudding, then see how I feel before the film starts.’
‘Oh, don’t go,’ Lucy said, her face pulled into a frown. ‘Why don’t you sit quietly and I’ll sort out pudding? What is pudding, by the way? Though I don’t know how anyone can still be hungry …’
Bill shrugged. ‘I mean, I could manage something sweet.’
Lucy couldn’t sort out pudding because pudding was the birthday cake that had been delivered yesterday morning with their breakfast boxes and stashed in the fridge in the utility room. It was a surprise.
Cassie tried again. ‘I’m happy to do pudding, as long as someone else can make coffee.’
Marc’s hand tightened on Cassie’s knee. ‘Well, coffee is my thing.’
‘The perfect team,’ Russell said with a grin, as Marc stood up then held his hand out to Cassie, who had no choice but to let him pull her up.
Then, determined to make her suffer even more, he wouldn’t let Cassie walk to the kitchen unmolested but put his arm round her waist again.
As soon as the kitchen island was between them and their audience, Cassie pulled away from his touch.
‘Cassie,’ he said, his voice low and urgent. ‘Come on …’
She ignored him and dived for the sanctuary of the utility room, sure that he would come after her, even after she slammed the door shut. Cassie paused, heard Marc call out, ‘So, who wants what?’ and allowed herself to breathe out. To wriggle her shoulders as if she could shake off her demons that easily. Then gather herself.
She was able to gather herself to the halfway point, which was as good as it was going to get. Cassie carefully removed the cake from its box. It was another Lucy favourite: a lemon and elderflower cake, roughly and rustically covered with buttercream on the sides and ‘Happy Birthday, Lucy!’ iced in a loopy cursive on the top.
Cassie had already secreted a cake stand, candles and matches in the utility room on Friday because she was that organised. Now she waited with one ear pressed against the door until she heard the coffee machine gurgle into action yet again.
She lit the four candles she’d placed on the cake – forty would have been overkill – nudged open the door and slowly walked back into the kitchen.
Marc was staring at the coffee machine like it was about to impart the meaning of life, but as Cassie walked past him, he shifted his gaze to her, then sighed.
For someone who loved singing, Cassie couldn’t muster up a passable ‘Happy Birthday’, but luckily Kwame was the first to see her coming with her precious flaming cargo held aloft and did the honours, the others quickly joining in.
‘Oh my goodness!’ Lucy exclaimed, her face flushed with delight. ‘It’s not even my actual birthday for another two weeks.’
‘You don’t have to have any cake if you feel that strongly about it,’ Digby said as Cassie placed the cake on the coffee table in front of Lucy.
‘But you must make a wish,’ Iris said firmly. ‘It’s bad luck if you don’t.’
The delight was instantly wiped from Lucy’s face and she gripped Russell’s hand tightly as she leaned forward to blow out the candles.
Cassie knew exactly what Lucy was wishing for because she’d wished, daily, for the same thing ever since that awful Friday evening at the beginning of July.
She bit her bottom lip as Lucy and Russell’s friends, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead, cheered as the flame of each candle was extinguished.
There was a flurry of activity as the cake was whisked away to be cut and plated. The coffee was ready. Another bottle of champagne was opened. Cassie’s headache had upgraded itself to thumping.
She’d had more than enough coffee for one day, and couldn’t face any more alcohol, so she poured herself a glass of water and gulped down the tablets. Then she approached the sofas where everyone was now assembled, looking expectantly at the big TV as Azad tried to log in to his BBC iPlayer account.
‘Sorry to be such a baby …’ Cassie pulled what she hoped was a suitably contrite face. ‘I think I need to sleep this headache off.’
‘But it’s our last night together,’ Lucy protested. She looked absolutely devastated. As if her whole happiness depended on Cassie being in the same room as her. ‘We’ll all budge up, you and Marc can have a sofa to yourself. I’m sure he won’t mind if you want to stretch out.’
‘How could I mind that?’ Marc asked in a silky voice, as Digby obligingly joined Lucy and Russell on their sofa. ‘You can use my lap as a footrest.’
Was this agony ever going to end? After the day they’d had, that moment on the cliff steps when Cassie had thought all hope was lost, there was no way that she could refuse Lucy anything. Cassie tucked herself into the smallest space that she could at the other end of the sofa.
Marc patted his thighs. ‘Ready for a foot rub?’
Cassie shook her aching head. ‘I’m good, thanks.’
‘Oh, come on, Cass,’ Russell protested from the sofa next to her. ‘Never look a gift massage in the mouth.’
‘And be quick, film’s about to start.’ Lucy pointed the remote at Cassie as if she could bend Cassie to her will by pressing the red button.
‘I don’t bite,’ Marc muttered, looking for all the world as if he were the one suffering here.
With a sigh, Cassie uncurled herself and wriggled around so she could stretch out her legs, then lift them up so her feet rested in Marc’s lap.
His hands immediately settled around her ankles and Cassie was tempted to tell Marc that she was suffering with a nasty fungal infection.
‘I wouldn’t,’ she said, as Lucy pressed play and the RKO Pictures ident appeared on the screen: a flashing radio tower and Morse-code beeps. ‘My feet are dirty. Horribly, horribly dirty.’
Marc lifted up Cassie’s right foot. ‘Looks pretty clean to me. I’ll make a note to wash my hands afterwards.’
If Cassie had been in agony before, now she was experiencing torture. Exquisite torture. Marc was so good with his hands. She knew that only too well. But as he gently stroked the bony upper part of her foot, which probably had a proper name but it had been a long, long time since Cassie had done GCSE biology, his touch was comforting. Which was hard to bear when it was an entirely false kind of comfort, solely for the benefit of their audience.
Considering that Bringing Up Baby was meant to be one of Lucy’s favourite films, she continually kept glancing over at Cassie and Marc as if the two of them were far more captivating than the screwball antics of Grant and Hepburn.
Cassie barely looked at the obnoxiously large TV screen. She lasted for half the movie, but when Iris asked for an interval because she needed a wee and a willing person to mix negronis, Cassie made her escape.
‘Let me go,’ she hissed at Marc as the lights, which had been dimmed, brightened.
‘Everything will be better if you stay,’ he said in a quiet voice. He turned to look at her, his face not set in tight, angry lines, but soft and pleading.
He was a much better actor than she was. Cassie yanked her feet free, swung her legs round and stood up so quickly that the room spun. ‘Guys, this headache, it’s not getting any better.’ Cassie pressed her fingertips to one aching temple. ‘I’m going to bail and get an early night.’
‘Are you sure?’ Lucy pouted. Cassie loved Lucy and she had a free pass right now, but also Cassie kind of wanted to kill her best friend. Just a little.
‘Quite sure,’ Cassie said, having to climb over first Marc’s legs, then Russell’s on the sofa at a right angle to theirs, because neither of them even attempted to let Cassie squeeze past.
She was almost out of the room when Marc didn’t just catch up with Cassie but body-blocked her from slipping through the archway. His hands were on her again, on her shoulders.
‘Don’t go,’ he said quietly, his eyes intent on her face so that if anyone was looking at them, and Cassie could guarantee that they definitely had some fascinated spectators, they’d think that Marc was the very definition of the devoted boyfriend.
If only they knew the ugly truth.
‘Please leave me alone,’ Cassie begged just as quietly. ‘I told you, I can’t do this any more.’
‘But you have to,’ Marc said, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Christ, is being with me that much of an ordeal?’
‘Yes! You don’t like me but you’d still fuck me and it’s messing me up. Last night …’ Cassie tailed off as she realised they still had an audience.
‘I don’t know why you keep saying that,’ Marc said, his eyes now blazing and not bothering to keep his voice down.
‘Because it’s the fucking truth! Why are you still touching me?’ Cassie had gone from a whisper to a scream in eleven words. But it worked because Marc took his hands off her pretty damn quickly, his arms falling to his sides.
‘Cass, please …’ he said. ‘Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk about this.’
‘Let’s not,’ Cassie said flatly, free at last to head for the stairs. ‘And don’t you dare come after me.’
Marc didn’t come after her. It seemed as if Cassie’s words had finally penetrated his thick skull. But she still ran up the stairs like the hounds of hell were at her heels.
Once she was inside their – no, his – room with the door firmly shut, Cassie didn’t waste any time. She packed her bags, and was just about to flee to the sad little attic room with its flimsy bunk beds and spooky vibes, when she again remembered that there was now an empty room on this floor.
If Cassie was going to be miserable, then she could be miserable in a king-size bed with pocket-sprung mattress and ensuite bathroom.
Davy and Heather had left the house that morning under something of a cloud, so it was no surprise that it looked as if a major weather event had occurred in their room. As Cassie surveyed the mess – the pillows and duvet scattered on the floor, the sheet half pulled off the mattress, dirty plates and cups on the bedside tables – she wondered if she should petition the Met Office to name their next storm after Heather.
The bathroom was just as bad. Damp towels in a heap on the floor. A tap still running. Dear God, no! Someone hadn’t flushed. It was a yellow warning, rather than a brown, but Cassie still retched as she wrapped loo paper round her fingers then pulled the chain.
Cassie was completely in the mood for some very angry cleaning. There was a linen cupboard further down the corridor and, muttering furiously under her breath, she collected clean towels and fresh bedding. No way was she going to sleep on a sheet that had known the touch of Heather and Davy. Especially if, contrary to all the evidence, they were still into each other enough to have sex.
Ugh! It was a thought too awful to contemplate.
It was only slightly cathartic to wrestle with a fitted sheet instead of wrestling with her many demons. She yanked each corner into place, swearing if any of them threatened to make a bid for freedom. Next, she was unnecessarily rough with pillows and pillowcases.
Then it was time for the big guns. One king-size duvet and one king-size duvet cover. She sat down on the bed, the duvet draped over her knees, and inserted her hands into the duvet cover until she was gripping the top two corners, which she fitted over the duvet. Then with a firm hold on the top edges of both duvet and cover, she’d stand up, give them both a good shake and the two of them would be in perfect harmony. Place on bed, another good shake. Job done.
It wasn’t rocket science. Cassie had been making her own bed since she was ten and she changed her bedding once a week because she wasn’t an animal. That meant in her lifetime, she’d probably fitted duvets and duvet covers together more than one thousand four hundred times.
But this evening she kept losing the top corners of the duvet, or they wouldn’t fit neatly into the top corners of the cover. It was as if she’d lost the use of her opposable thumbs. Cassie’s swearing and muttering intensified with each attempt until she finally succeeded and stood up to shake the recalcitrant bedding into order.
Something wasn’t right. The duvet was lumpen and wouldn’t lie flat in its silky-smooth Egyptian-cotton cover.
Cassie’s shaking became more frenetic, her attempts more frantic, until she realised that hello, hi, she was the problem, it was her.
She’d put the duvet cover in widthways and not lengthways. Like she was some kind of rank amateur when it came to making a bed.
‘Oh for fucking fuck’s fucking sake!’
Cassie wrenched the two apart, heard an ominous ripping sound and then threw the duvet in one direction and the cover in the other and why was she crying? It wasn’t worth crying over a spilt, or split, duvet cover.
But still she cried. Collapsing back on the bed so she could curl herself into the smallest ball and cry like her heart was breaking.
Because it was. Breaking for Russell and Lucy. For all their friends downstairs who didn’t know that this weekend was as much a goodbye as it was a celebration.
But mostly Cassie cried because her heart was breaking on her own behalf, which made her feel so guilty that she cried even harder. She hadn’t closed herself off to the possibility of love but she’d started to prepare for the possibility of no love. Had told herself that it would be a relief when there came a time that she could delete all the apps and never have to go on another blind date with a man whose profile had managed to hide the fact that he was a total sociopath.
Yet somehow, this weekend she’d willingly fallen into bed with a man who hated her. A man who’d treated her so terribly in the past. Using her all those years ago, then making it obvious every time they were in the same space that Cassie was beneath him in every way. She wasn’t cool enough, or clever enough, or pretty enough.
But when Cassie really had been beneath Marc, his body pressing down on hers, his mouth and his hands and his cock giving her so much pleasure, there was nowhere else that she’d rather be.
All those long, long nights of The Fear, when she’d wondered what was wrong with her that she couldn’t find someone to love. Until these last three days when a man that she thought she’d hated had turned her life upside down. Even though it hadn’t been real, to Cassie’s indiscriminate heart, it had felt real.
She wanted to hate him but she also wanted to mean something to him. This weekend, Marc had let her see a side of him that she’d only had glimpses of before. A man who was kind, thoughtful, indulgent, funny. The sort of man it wouldn’t be that hard to fall in love with if there was even an outside chance that he might love Cassie back.
But there wasn’t and he didn’t. It was all just hopeless.