She was depressed, of course. That was obvious. Less obvious was why. After all, she had ended the relationship. Stephen had merely denied knowing her. Which was fine, perfectly understandable, in fact; part of her had thought so even as she had endured the drill of his blank gaze on his parents' doorstep and the chilling charade that had followed. It was only later, in the taxi back to the station, getting out her phone to tell Elizabeth that Stephen was alive and well and she would travel back to London alone, that the crushing panic had set in. He had wanted her to think him dead. It was calculating and sick, the behaviour of a monster. She had loved a monster. Her prince had been a frog. Thinking it through, recalling the tension and controlling deceit, it seemed to Cassie that Stephen had deprived her not only of her dreams for the future but, worse still, of what she had believed about the past.
When Serena phoned that evening to ask about the trip, Cassie had done her best to sound upbeat, taking refuge in exclamations of relief and gladly switching subjects to satisfy her sister-in-law's curiosity about Elizabeth and Keith. There had been something between the two but now they were just friends. Wasn't life extraordinary with its twists and turns? She had then shifted to the logistics of dismantling the wedding, insisting that she would handle it herself and joking that the bridesmaid dresses might make a luxury bed for Poppy. Afterwards she had rushed up to her computer and – within ten minutes – printed out a hundred and fifty copies of the words ‘This is to inform you that the wedding between Cassandra Harrison and Stephen Smith will now not take place. All gifts will be returned to John Lewis. Thank you for your patience.’ The envelopes had taken far longer, but she had stuck at it until they were done, aware all the while that, while her right hand might continue to steer the pen, a paralysing numbness was creeping round her heart.
The web looked finished but the spider still hadn't settled. Cassie rolled on to her stomach to watch, resting her chin on her fists. Closing her eyes, she became aware of her hip-bones pressing into the carpet and the taut emptiness stretching between. She remembered suddenly that she had been lying in a similar position, sketching dress designs when her period had started, and Keith asked if she liked grilled tomatoes. She had felt so desolate and he had been so kind that she had found herself explaining how the desire to become a mother had blossomed out of the tragedy of her niece. Darling little Tina… Cassie dropped her forehead to the ground as the waves of loss rippled through her, not for her niece but for her own never-to-be child. On the carpet last time there had been hope. Now there was nothing, nor ever would be again.
Cassie staggered to her feet, clutching her stomach, then fell against the wall, crushing the web and, for all she knew or cared, the little spider with it. She had hated the numbness but wished now that it would return. Instead there was pain, not just in her stomach but in her back, her legs, her heart, her mind. She reeled round the room, wanting but not managing to cry, while a lucid part of her wondered if the celebrated agony of childbirth could hurt as much as this small private agony of her own bereavement.
As the gleaming walls of the sitting room closed in, Cassie fled upstairs, across the landing, past the mess of her unmade bed and into the bathroom. Opening the cabinet above the basin, she pulled out the little gadget for testing her fertility and dropped it into the bin. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she was appalled to see that she looked well – face flushed, eyes shining, long hair tumbling down to her shoulders in its pretty white-blonde curls. Cassie leant closer to the mirror, tugging at the skin on her face, seeking evidence of the ugliness exploding inside. It was wrong, surely, to look so good and feel so bad? Furious suddenly, forgetting the pain, she lunged into the cabinet for her nail scissors and hacked at her hair until the basin was full of long tresses and the sharp pink triangle of her face at last had nowhere to hide.
When the doorbell rang she dropped the scissors and stumbled out of the bathroom. Not Stephen, surely? Please let it not be Stephen. Ducking past the window, Cassie tiptoed out on to the landing and leant over the banisters. The bell rang again, more insistently. Reminding herself that Stephen had keys, should he choose to use them, Cassie backed along the landing and into the study, vowing silently to change the locks or maybe, better still, to move. Living here was part of the problem, she saw suddenly, the reason she had got into such a state.
Stephen's study was cold and quiet. Cassie leant against the window to catch her breath. In the garden she could make out the skeleton of the tree, its bare skirt of branches trembling in the wind. Sidling away from it, feeling calmer, she eased her-self into the desk chair to wait a little longer. Sitting thus in the dark, with only the rush of her own breath for company, it was a few moments before she noticed that the desk had been cleared. No notebooks, no laptop, no pens or pencils. Turning her head slowly, as if fearful of frightening herself with any sudden movement, Cassie noticed that the desk drawer was open. Open and empty. So he had been to the house. But when? That day? A week ago? Cassie started to shake. Maybe it had been that day. Maybe he was still there.
When the phone on the desk rang Cassie lunged for it with both hands.
‘Darling, I'm freezing my bollocks off on your doorstep – are you going to let me in?’
‘Frank?’
‘Who else, sweetie? We agreed, remember, however many days ago it was, that I would call by for a spot of tea and sympathy. Except I've brought champagne and smoked salmon instead… Open the door, there's a good girl.’
‘No, Frank. I'm not feeling well.’
‘You gave that fiancé of yours the boot – of course you're not feeling well. When I broke up with Clive I cried solidly for six months. I know it was a long time ago but I still remember it as if it was yesterday. Breaking up is ghastly, darling, however it happens. Now, do let me in before I catch pneumonia.’
To Frank's credit, he let out only the briefest cry of horror at the sight of her. The next minute Cassie found herself being pulled against the soft wool of his overcoat while he issued clucking reprimands about the sieve-like state of her brain. Feeling safe at last, as if she had thrashed her way through a state of near-drowning to an unlooked-for shore, Cassie clung to him, weeping properly at last and wailing thank-yous. Frank steered her into the sitting room, eased her into a chair and told her to cry her heart out while he found some glasses.
By the time he returned Cassie had found a box of tissues and was sufficiently composed to apologize. ‘It just… all of it… tonight… on top of me.’ She patted her chest. ‘Couldn't breathe.’
‘Of course you couldn't. Horrid business – horrid. Don't speak, darling, just drink.’
‘Frank, I will drink – but first could you, would you mind – I know I sound mad but would you search the house for me?’
He raised two symmetrically plucked eyebrows, genuinely perplexed. ‘Search it? What for, exactly?’
‘Stephen,’ Cassie whispered, flicking her eyes over her shoulder. ‘I think he might have been here, maybe even today. I can't help being afraid that –’
Frank set his glass down and stood up. ‘Say no more. You blow that pretty nose and I'll take care of everything. He took of his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Though could I perhaps ask a favour in return?
‘Of course,’ Cassie murmured, dizzy with exhaustion.
‘Could I have a go at your hair?’
‘My –’ Cassie let out a cry. She had forgotten it. She put her hands to her head, feeling air and then the shredded ends of her handiwork with the scissors. Her princess tresses, her crowning glory. ‘I don't know why, I just wanted – She broke off, still too close to the distress to explain it.
Frank crossed the room and patted her head. ‘Now, I'm going to tell you a secret, but you have to promise to keep it until you die. And that is,’ he took a deep breath, ‘in my other life, before Rupert, before Clive, before all of them, I was a hairdresser. A bloody good one, though I say it myself. So let me sort this lot out, okay, darling? We'll aim for Mia Fa
rrow in the seventies – deliciously gamine, okay?’
Ten minutes later he returned, declaring that he had checked under every bed and behind every door and brandishing a pair of kitchen scissors, a bowl of water and a towel, draped waiter-style across his forearm. ‘No vermin of any kind – I've looked everywhere. And now to work.’ He set down the bowl and pulled out a small tortoiseshell comb from his back trouser pocket. ‘And while I work we're going to talk about where you'll go to get away from all this. It's perfectly clear to me that you can't stay here, not if you're going to chop your hair off every time you think that man of yours is coming back to get you.’
‘He's not my man,’ murmured Cassie, smiling weakly as her improbable saviour danced round her shorn head, making appalled faces and waving his comb. ‘Nobody is anybody's, not really.’
Purring through the muddy darkness in the heated cocoon of his car, Peter allowed himself to think about Delia, constructing a tantalizing, wonderful fantasy in which she announced that a pied-á-terre simply wasn't enough and moved herself and her physiotherapy practice to Ashley House. During their affair he had talked to her often and lovingly of the family home, wanting her to know and love it too, lamenting on several occasions the impossibility of taking her there. He pictured her now, waking and stretching in the big four-poster, or subsiding into one of the glorious lion-footed cast-iron baths, or strolling through the garden, her green almond eyes wide with pleasure and admiration as he pointed out the broad, beautiful boundaries of the surrounding land.
Coming up behind a lorry, Peter took his foot off the accelerator with a tut of impatience and glanced into the rear-view mirror. As it was so late, the motorway had been pleasantly clear ever since he left London. It had made him wonder whether he shouldn't drive the commute more often. The soft bounce of the car wheels flying along the smooth Tarmac had soothed him, easing him away from painful flashbacks of his meeting with Helen to the infinitely more appealing vision of a life with his lover. But maybe more than a vision, decided Peter, fiercely, pulling out to overtake the lorry. If one wanted something badly enough, one got it – he had always believed that. So surely – The hoot of the car horn was so sudden and loud that Peter reacted instantly, swerving back inside his lane. His car, for a few brief, terrifying seconds, tipped on to two wheels, then righted itself. The other car, which he had not seen and which had hooted, tore on past up the dark streak of roadway. Peter, his heart thundering, hands sliding on the wheel, slowed again to catch his breath. He was tired, distracted. He needed a break. Seeing the neon sign of an eatery – one of the modern concrete boxes he normally despised – he signalled carefully and turned off the motorway.
Five minutes later, nursing a strong, bitter coffee at a small Formica table in the over-lit glare of the café, still trembling a little from his misjudgement, Peter felt as if he had been rudely awoken from a dream. Delia had not called and never would. She had not loved him and never would. For understandable reasons, Helen did not love him either. Peter folded a little paper napkin while he allowed his thoughts to return to their encounter that evening, pressing tidy creases with his fingertips as the square grew smaller and fatter. Helen's sneering savagery had been shocking but, most unpleasant of all to Peter, he had been outwitted. He should have expected such a response, been more prepared for it, instead of backing out of the house like a – stranger like one of the sad creatures he saw so often in court, rolling over to let life crush them, born victims. He looked about him, taking in his surroundings properly, noting the thin scattering of tired, hunched figures at the other tables. The place was vile. The coffee was disgusting. He did not belong there.
Peter screwed up his napkin, dropped it into his coffee and strode out into the night. He belonged to a better world, a better life. There were worse things, after all, than failed marriages. He would be fair to Helen, but he wouldn't let her walk all over him. He was stronger, worth more, than that. He had status and, thanks to hard work and astute investments, he had wealth – more than even Helen knew. And then, of course, there was the house, the jewel in the crown, as Helen had called it, which he had resisted once but which he could see now had always been meant for him. It was almost, he mused, pulling cautiously on to the motorway, as if Fate had intervened. Serena's grand design again. Well, maybe she had a point. An hour before a car might have killed him, but it hadn't. Nor would a messy personal life get the better of him either. Chaos was for other people – for Charlie, Serena, the hapless Ed, Cassie, Elizabeth, stumbling around as they always had. His destiny was different, better. He could feel it now, pulling him south, pulling him home. Commuting, having the girls at weekends, forging a peace with his son, visiting his mother, it wouldn't be so bad.
By the time he had embarked on negotiating the deepening pot-holes in the lane leading to Ashley House, Peter felt sufficiently – defiantly – reassembled to resolve that his first act on resuming ownership of the estate would be to get the lane properly resurfaced. It was ridiculous, after all, to risk gashing the undercarriage of expensive vehicles every time one undertook a journey, and all for the sake of some quaint notion of rural beauty. There was nothing particularly rural or beautiful about mud and ruts. And the trees and hedges on either side needed a good pruning too, he decided, hating how the trailing branches clawed at the windows, like scaly fingers on scaly hands, trying to pull him into the murky dark.
Given the lateness of the hour, Peter was surprised to see a light on in the drawing room. Surprised and pleased. A nightcap, the solace of company – it was exactly what he needed. His pleasure increased at the sight of Charlie lying on the sofa, propped up by several cushions, a glass of Scotch in one hand and a book in the other. ‘I've been waiting up for you,’ he said, putting down the book and sitting up.
‘Have you? My goodness! Well, thank you… thank you very much.’
‘How did it go?’
‘Hang on, I'll fix myself one of those.’
‘So it went well, then?’ Charlie called after him. When there was no reply he set down his glass and ran his hands over his face. It had been a long day. Waiting on the sofa with his book he had fallen asleep several times. Once, he had woken to find his mother standing next to him in her worn yellow dressing-gown with her hair loose. She had smiled tenderly and ruffled his head as if he were a little boy, as if she still knew all of his churning thoughts. Maybe she did. It was hard to tell, these days: she seemed contented enough, but said little, almost as if she was deliberately withdrawing from them in preparation, perhaps, for the real leave-taking, now a few weeks away. Peter had been too distracted to do a proper job of talking her round, and now it was too late. She had waved the piece of paper at him and Serena that afternoon, the ink of her signature still glistening. A colonel had died and his rooms were hers, if she wanted them. They were being redecorated and would be ready for occupation in January. Heady still from his and Ed's visit to the lawyer, Charlie could think of no better response than an encouraging hug, much as he had given each of his daughters when they had launched themselves back into their lives the month before.
Peter came back in with a large glass of malt, which he set down on the mantelpiece. Turning his back to Charlie, humming quietly, he extracted the largest of the pokers from the set of brass fire irons parked on the hearth and began to stoke a glow from the smoking pile of ash. ‘That lane needs cutting back, you know. If it had been done a couple of weeks ago we could have used the brushwood for a bonfire. Do you remember the November bonfires we used to have?’ He put the poker back in its slot and turned to smile at his brother. ‘Old Sid took such pride in building them, each year's bigger than the last. Dad was like a kid with the fireworks. Do you remember, Charlie?’
‘Of course,’ said Charlie, softly, delighted at this evidence of such high, positive spirits. ‘And Helen?’ he pressed. ‘How was she?’
Peter picked up his glass and swilled the whisky, which gleamed like molten honey. ‘Helen was… well, very well indeed.’ H
e nodded to himself, took a sip from his glass and let out a loud, satisfied sigh. ‘And what about you? Did the lawyer earn his or her hourly fee?’
Charlie wished he could borrow some of his brother's easy manner. He cleared his throat. ‘Yes, he did.’ He coughed. ‘It turns out that only Ed is financially liable for his predicament. That is to say, the assets of the family are irrelevant. Jessica is entitled to nothing beyond what Ed can afford – in other words, some of that five grand Dad left him. I suppose neither you nor Helen could possibly have known – family law isn't your field, is it?’ Charlie had clasped his hands together and was staring hard at Peter, willing him to guess the direction in which this new information had taken him and Serena that afternoon, talking it over with Ed, some of Pamela's flapjacks and cups of tea. His brother remained poised, one elbow on the mantelpiece, his face set in unwitting yet comical likeness to the sombre expression on the face of John Harrison in the portrait above. He looked at Charlie at last, smiling absently. ‘Good. That will take the pressure off, then.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Charlie stood up, responding to a dim need to be more on a par with Peter's tall, imposing frame. He felt too short – too wide – next to his brother. He always had. ‘It's allowing Ed to have a complete rethink about university and so on. To put it crudely, the longer he defers getting a job the less he will have to shell out, and whatever he can provide will be purely as maintenance for the child. When it turns eighteen he'll be off the hook. Jessica herself is entitled to nothing. I know I sound callous – obviously we'll make sure the baby is provided for – but my first priority has to be Ed. The point is, Peter, this new understanding of our position, you must see that it changes everything.’ Charlie watched his brother carefully, aware all the while of the cool stare of their father blazing from the wall.
The Simple Rules of Love Page 49