Chapter 35
35
E ven though they were all on a clock, it was a long and leisurely breakfast. Going back for more toast until there was no bread left. Lingering over a last cup of coffee until it was time to bring their bags downstairs. To make sure that there were no champagne flutes floating in the swimming pool. And yes, to check three times that the barbecue hadn’t miraculously turned itself on overnight.
Iris and Bill left first, then Digby and Kwame, who’d managed to book a room in a very eclectic boutique hotel in Brighton to prolong the weekend one more night.
Then it was just Cassie and Marc, Lucy and Russell left standing on the drive, about to get into their respective cars and head back to London to whatever lay ahead, both good and bad.
But the bad seemed a long way away from the sound of birdsong and the faint lap of the waves as they danced along the shoreline. Marc was loading the last of their bags into the car and Cassie lifted her face towards the sun and watched a plane leave a vapour trail as it drifted across the clear blue sky.
‘I don’t want this to be over,’ she said, her words sounding like a sigh.
‘Me neither.’ Lucy pulled out her phone from her slouchy denim tote bag. ‘It’s not even eleven thirty. What time do we have to leave?’
‘Noon. Midday.’ They should get going. It was a long drive. Bank holiday traffic. Savita had already messaged to say that they’d run out of Dreamies and could she pick some up on the way home. Koita had clearly been mainlining them the whole weekend. So many good reasons to get on the road. ‘But I mean, if we were still here at twelve fifteen, I don’t think that they’d charge us for an extra day.’
‘Seems a pity to waste a sea view,’ Russell said as he leaned against the side of his car. ‘Shall we just take a few minutes?’
Marc closed the boot. He was wearing shades so it was hard to know exactly what he was thinking, though his lips thinned so Cassie imagined that he was probably thinking about what a nightmare the bloody Hanger Lane gyratory system would be if they dawdled.
Then he smiled. ‘I think we can spare the time, as long as you’re not planning on doing anything crazy like abseiling down the cliff face.’
Russell shrugged. ‘Well, now that you mention it …’
There was no abseiling. Just a slow amble around the house and across the lawn until they came to the bench on the cliff’s edge. Russell sat down with a grateful ‘Ooof’. Marc indicated that Lucy should sit down next to him, but she shook her head.
‘We’re about to spend hours sitting next to each other,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You take the bench. I know the ground will be too hard for those old bones of yours.’
‘You’re all heart, Luce,’ Marc said but he sat down next to his best friend, nudging Russell with his elbow and they both smiled, their body language relaxed and comfortable.
Lucy perched on the arm of the bench next to Russell, and Cassie kicked off her Birkenstocks so she could feel the grass, lush and green after the previous day’s rain, tickle the soles of her feet. She was wearing jeans and what she called her Frida Kahlo top, a loose-fitting black cheesecloth smock with puff sleeves and colourful embroidery. Nothing that would stain as she sat down on the grass and rested her back against Marc’s legs. Immediately his hand stroked her hair, which she was wearing loose, twisting a strand of it around his finger.
Then the four of them were silent. Each lost in their own thoughts but still very much four people who’d always be bound together after years and years of sharing each other’s joys and sorrows, of in-jokes and the long, convoluted story of the time that Russell and Marc had run the London marathon and Lucy, eight months pregnant with Fleur, who was mostly resting on her bladder, had managed to wangle her way into the famous green Cabmen’s Shelter at Temple to use the loo.
Sometimes you didn’t need words to express your love for someone. It was Russell’s hand resting briefly on Cassie’s shoulder as she shifted position. It was Lucy leaning against Russell’s side as she watched two seagulls circle overhead. It was Marc not mentioning the bank holiday traffic, which had to be killing him, and the way he smiled faintly when Cassie licked the back of her hand to confirm that yes, her skin tasted of salt because that faint sea breeze was still fulfilling its remit.
Cassie’s heart was full. It had been a weekend like no other. She felt as if she’d experienced every emotion and probably even some that only the Germans had words for. But it was now, these few precious, peaceful minutes, that she knew she’d come back to over and over again.
Though it was hot, the sun fierce without the benefit of the shade from the graceful trees that bordered the garden, after yesterday’s storm, there was also a suggestion of crispness in the air.
It felt like the last day of summer. Swallows ready to fly south for the winter and new school uniform hanging up on the wardrobe door.
It was both an ending and a beginning.
There was a sadness that had already seeped deep into her bones at the thought of living the rest of her life without Russell, her beloved friend Russell, in it.
Yet now there was also a giddy sensation, a heightened sense of exhilaration at the thought of this new, unexpected thing with Marc. But to call it a thing made it seem ordinary, maybe even fleeting, when it felt like it was extra ordinary and maybe, after such a long time coming, built to last. She was even excited at the prospect of spending three hours in a car with him – longer if the Hanger Lane gyratory system did them dirty.
The joy wouldn’t cancel out the grief, and vice versa. They were two opposing states of being that Cassie would get used to but she didn’t want to think about anything except right now, this garden, these three people who had her heart. She wished she could capture this moment, freeze it in time.
Then a sharp breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees and Cassie shivered. Marc combed his fingers through her hair again.
‘We should go,’ Russell said reluctantly. ‘I don’t want to, but …’
‘I know.’ Marc’s hand tightened in Cassie’s hair, then relaxed. ‘But it’s not goodbye. Not yet.’
‘Not for ages,’ Lucy said tightly but she was getting to her feet. ‘Cass, shall we do one last sweep to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything.’
Cassie knew for certain that she hadn’t forgotten a single thing but she also knew, without needing to be told, that Lucy wanted Russell and Marc to have a few minutes alone, just the two of them.
Then there was no putting off the inevitable. The four of them gathered on the drive again, ready to say their goodbyes.
‘What did we ever do to deserve friends like you?’ Russell asked, throwing his hands up.
‘Clearly something very bad,’ Marc said.
‘Maybe to deserve you but Cassie is an angel,’ Lucy insisted, her arm tight around her friend. ‘Honestly, thank you both for this weekend. You’ve given me memories that are going to last a lifetime.’
It seemed to Cassie that everything, even the most innocuous words, were now shot through with grief. A lifetime could last for decades or it could be so suddenly and cruelly cut short.
‘It was a great weekend,’ Cassie said firmly. ‘Even the shit bits – no names but I’m thinking of Heather and Davy – were all right because they made the good bits even better.’
‘You do know that Heather will find a way to make my funeral all about her,’ Russell said.
Cassie felt foreboding flicker through her. ‘Don’t, please,’ she begged.
Russell held out his arms and drew the three of them in so they stood in a circle, arms around each other. ‘I have to laugh about it because I’m out of other options and we all know I’m right about Heather.’
‘She’ll rock up in full widow’s weeds,’ Lucy said, as if Heather’s funeral behaviour was something she and Russell had already discussed.
‘Yup, black lace mantilla, and she’ll howl all the way through the service,’ Marc added.
‘Crying so hard but not hard enough to make her mascara run,’ Cassie noted and the four of them took a moment to contemplate Heather allowed to run amok at the wake.
‘But anyway, enough of that – it’s been the most heavenly weekend,’ Lucy said. ‘Just, thank you both. We love you so much.’
‘Beyond words,’ Russell agreed. ‘And it makes … things a little more bearable knowing that … Marc, you’ll be there to look after my girls.’
This time Marc didn’t counter with a sarcastic reply. ‘You know I will.’
Russell pulled the three of them in even closer. ‘And Cassie, she’s also one of my girls. You have to look after her too.’
Cassie blinked back tears as Marc kissed the top of her head.
‘Always,’ he said.