Chapter Twenty-Three #2
‘It’s fine. You’d just won a tournament, of course that was your priority.’
‘Also . . .’ he said.
‘Also what?’
He sighed. ‘I guess my head was a bit all over the place after the other night. I kept remembering what you said about us being friends, after I’d pretty much just laid everything on the line. I thought maybe you weren’t that into me.’
‘Wasn’t it obvious? Of course I’m into you, even if sometimes I wish I wasn’t.’
‘Why would you wish that?’ he asked.
I swallowed. ‘I don’t know. Because I’m not your type?’
‘You’re totally my type.’
‘Because tennis will always come first?’
‘It won’t, Ava. It doesn’t.’
‘You’re just saying that.’
‘What happened between us the other night – it meant something to me,’ he said, reaching for my hand.
I shook him off. ‘In that moment, sure. Just like the other nights you’ve spent with women that you never wanted to see again afterwards.’
‘What women?’ said Marcus.
‘Do I really need to spell it out?’ I said, getting frustrated now. ‘You might not read your press, but everyone else does, and there are countless photos of you with models and actresses and Zuzanna Kaczmerek and rich girls in bikinis.’
‘Because these are the people I meet, Ava. When you’re in a scene like this, that just happens, and it’s not something I crave or need.
In fact, what I really crave is normality – I just want to be a normal person who happens to be quite good at playing tennis.
To be doing normal things with normal people. ’
I spotted a Tube station up ahead and leaned forward in my seat to speak to the driver.
‘Could you drop me here, please?’ I asked him.
He flicked on his indicator and began to pull over to the kerb.
I couldn’t have this conversation in the back seat of a car when I felt all hemmed in and on the verge of being over-emotional. And despite everything, I didn’t want to make Marcus feel bad, not when he was in the middle of playing the most important tournament of his life.
‘Ava, please,’ he said. ‘It was easier to keep women at arm’s length, and it was fun for a while, I’ll admit it. But that was then. It’s different with you. I find myself wanting to be with you all of the time. Running away from this hasn’t even crossed my mind.’
I swallowed. I could feel my resolve going, and it couldn’t – he was saying all the right things, but the evidence spoke for itself. He’d let me down at the wedding and he would let me down again and I Could Not Do That to Myself.
‘I’ll leave you to focus on your game,’ I said.
The car came to a stop and I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the door almost simultaneously, desperate to get out of there so that I could get my emotions under control again because suddenly I didn’t trust myself to say or do the right thing.
Marcus was stony-faced and looking straight ahead as I slammed the door behind me.
I tried to put his grim expression out of my mind’s eye as I crossed the road towards the entrance to the Tube station, blinking back hot, angry tears.
The worst thing was, it felt like I didn’t even know exactly what it was I was so angry about.
It was only then that I noticed Cassie. She was standing outside a pub in her work clothes, with her phone in her hand.
What on earth was she doing in this part of town?
I was just about to call her name when a man came up from behind her, spun her around and lifted her into the air.
She laughed as he kissed her, eventually returning her to the ground, where they continued to beam at each other, talking softly, intimately.
It took my mind a few beats to catch up with what my eyes were seeing, because something was very wrong.
The guy she was kissing . . . it was unmistakably Charlie.
‘Cass?’ I said.
She casually glanced around at me, taking a few seconds to register who I was. Then a look of pure fear flooded her face.
‘I thought you were at Wimbledon? Mum said.’
Which was when he looked at me, too, with a face like a lost puppy. Charlie. My Charlie. Kissing my sister.
‘Does one of you want to tell me what’s going on?’ I asked, my voice sounding as though it was coming from somewhere outside of my body.
This couldn’t be happening. I must have only thought I saw them kissing.
She wouldn’t do this to me, and neither would he.
He didn’t like Cassie. He said she was hard work and annoying and demanding.
He said he liked me because I wasn’t like her, I was strong and independent and I went after what I wanted.
‘I can explain,’ said Charlie, already sweating in one of his stupid polo-neck sweaters.
‘Are you two . . . ?’
Charlie and Cassie looked at each other. Cassie started to cry.
‘Will somebody tell me what the fuck is happening here? Cassie, is this the guy you’ve been hanging out with? Is this who you’ve been seeing?’
Her voice was painfully small. ‘Yes.’
I wondered whether I was going to be sick, because I felt like I was. I felt like I’d been knocked sideways.
‘How long has it been going on?’ I gasped.
‘Ava, it wasn’t while we were together,’ said Charlie, putting on the gaslighty tone he used sometimes when he wanted to convince me that something I was saying was madness.
‘Is that why you ended things with me?’ I asked him. ‘To be with her?’
‘No!’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like that. Cassie reached out to check on me after the break-up and—’
‘You contacted him?’ I said, turning to Cassie, incredulous. ‘You instigated all of this?’
Cassie started crying harder. It was a tactic she used when she didn’t want to answer people’s questions anymore and I wasn’t falling for it, not this time.
‘You’re both awful people,’ I said, spitting out my words, although I would have chosen better ones if I’d been able to think straight. ‘You’re welcome to each other.’
I worried about Cassie almost all the time and wanted the best for her, even at the expense of my own happiness sometimes, and now it had been thrown right back in my face.
There were so many things I didn’t understand – had she always been into him?
And had he always fancied her, because honestly, it hadn’t seemed like it.
Was it serious? And if so, had they ever planned to tell me?
I turned around, stumbling back in the direction of the Tube.
‘I’m sorry!’ screamed Cassie, running after me, making a scene and causing people to turn to see what the commotion was.
Fine, let Cassie explain herself in front of these strangers, because what could she possibly say to excuse what she had done? My chest was rising and falling as I tried to catch my breath, to think about what I could ask her before she had a chance to talk to Charlie and get their story straight.
‘When did you start liking him?’ was my first question.
‘I don’t know!’ wailed Cassie, still crying. I wished she’d stop. She was trying to make me feel bad for her and there was a risk of it working, despite everything.
‘Tell me exactly when,’ I insisted.
She shook her head, exasperated. ‘I couldn’t put an exact date on it. A few months ago, maybe. After he broke up with you.’
Charlie ran up behind Cassie, seemingly unsure what to do for the best. This summed him up entirely – gutless. And he’d be hating this playing out in the street, making him look bad. Good!
‘And what about you, Charlie? Because I’d never realised you’d been harbouring feelings for my sister. You’d certainly never given me that impression,’ I said, spinning around to face him head on.
I wasn’t going to hurt her by spelling out what he’d said, but he used to be out and out mean about her.
‘I . . . look, it came as a shock to me, too, okay?’
‘Were you ever planning to tell me?’ I demanded to know, looking from one to the other.
‘Yes!’ said Cassie, slightly more enthusiastic at the prospect than Charlie looked. ‘Of course. I wanted to see if it was going anywhere first, because I didn’t want to upset you, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ I said snippily. If that was her objective, she’d failed miserably, hadn’t she?
‘And it is going somewhere, Ava,’ she said. ‘I know it’s not ideal, and I’m sorry, I really am. But me and Charlie have just clicked. And you’ve got Marcus now, so why does it matter?’
‘Do I really need to explain?’ I said, feeling like screaming myself. ‘It’s not that I want Charlie, far from it, you’re welcome to him, Cass. What’s hurt me more than you can ever know is that you would go behind my back and do this to me. You knew how upset I was about the break-up.’
‘I didn’t! You didn’t seem like you were even that bothered, even Mum said so.’
‘Because I didn’t want you both to worry!
’ I shouted. ‘Because I think about you in almost everything I do. Do you know, I even felt bad that I’d broken up with Charlie because I knew how much you’d enjoyed having him around recently, even if you hadn’t really hit it off at the start, and I felt as though I’d taken that away from you.
Little did I know that this was how it would turn out! ’
For one brief moment, seeing Cassie’s big, fearful eyes so full of tears and yes, at least some remorse, I almost backed down. My sisterly instincts hadn’t gone completely – and I didn’t trust Charlie to look after her.
‘Please don’t hate me,’ she said in a tiny voice.
Hate. I remembered using that word in jest to describe what I had once thought about Marcus, but I didn’t think I’d ever truly hated anyone for real, not even wild-eyed, pathetic Charlie.
God, it had been Cassie in those photos on Instagram then, cavorting in the Cotswolds around the same time I flew to Monte Carlo, mere weeks after our break-up.
I turned and walked away, feeling a tug of guilt despite myself. When I glanced over my shoulder, Cassie was crying in Charlie’s arms. Maybe it was time that I let other people look after her. It didn’t always have to be me, and it wasn’t always my job, especially not now.
‘Ava!’
For some reason, Marcus was still here, standing by his car, looking concerned. He half ran towards me.
‘What’s happened?’
I kept talking to a minimum because I couldn’t trust myself not to start sobbing, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be about him or Cassie or Charlie or all of the above.
‘Can you please drop me home?’ I said simply.