Sian was a little confused, but smiled. There seemed to be no need to comment; Mrs Cassidy didn't pause for more than an instant. 'Do sit down, Sian. We can't talk while you loom over me.'
Sian backed to a chair and sat, her hands in her lap.
Mrs Cassidy considered her shrewdly. 'Being jilted at the last minute like that was a terrible blow to William's pride, of course, but I think he was lucky. If he had married Annette, it would have been far worse for him in the long run, that's my opinion—not that he asked for it, but then William never takes any notice of what anyone else thinks.'
'I see you know him well!'
'And I see that you do,' his aunt nodded, smiling. 'I'm very curious. I have been ever since I first heard about you. I couldn't quite make up my mind whether William wanted to kill you or see more of you.'
Sian turned crimson and looked away, her heart racing.
'Whatever it was, your effect on him was interesting,' said Mrs Cassidy. 'And the media are obviously intrigued, too.'
'That was his idea,' Sian confessed hurriedly. 'He wanted them to think that we… that…'
'Yes, I see; typical. He's horribly intelligent—it can be quite annoying.'
'That's true,' said Sian, struck by the observation.
'So he wants the press to think there's a romance between you?' Mrs Cassidy thought aloud, smiling. 'Well, then, let's put some more fuel on the flames, shall we?'
Sian stared, bewildered.
'Will you spend the weekend at my home, Sian?' asked Mrs Cassidy. 'Of course, William will be there. I'm giving a garden party on Saturday in aid of charity, and you and William will have a much bigger audience than usual for your little soap opera. That you're staying with his aunt should be a very convincing twist, and they'll soon forget Annette and the wedding that never happened.'
Stunned, Sian didn't know what to say. She got a friendly smile as Mrs Cassidy rose.
'I… it's very kind of you… but…'
'Talk it over with William,' his aunt said, on her way to the door.
Leo was hovering outside, no doubt trying to eavesdrop. Sian didn't think he had heard much, though, because he had a frustrated look as Mrs Cassidy swept past, giving him a gracious nod.
'Please come, Sian,' she said over her shoulder as she went. 'It should be an eventful weekend.'
When she had vanished into the lift, Leo grabbed Sian and hustled her back into his office. 'What was all that about? Weekend? What did she mean?'
Sian detached herself and rubbed her arm where he had held it. 'You don't know your own strength! I shall want danger money if you do that again.'
He glowered. 'Oh, sorry, sorry—what did she want?'
'She invited me to stay for the weekend, as it happens,' Sian told him in a lofty tone, secretly amused by his excitement.
'Well,' he said, rubbing his hands together. 'This is one scoop the others don't get. Now, listen, I don't want it getting out. Don't tell a living soul.' He sat down behind his desk, frowning. 'I'll let Paul cover it, of course—the gossip column should have it. Could you get him into the house?'
'Are you out of your mind? I only just met the woman, why should she let me bring gossip columnists into her home? And anyway, this has gone far enough—who cares if I stay with William Cassidy's family or not? Nobody's interested.'
'Oh, yes, they are!' Leo protested loudly, red in the face. 'That drama at the wedding made him big news, and you helped do it. A romance between the two of you makes great reading. His publicity people have worked like slaves for years to get his name into the papers on one pretext or another— he can't complain now just because it doesn't suit him. You can't pick and choose your publicity. If you've made yourself a public figure, you have to take what is thrown at you.'
Sian had said all that herself on many previous occasions, about other people. She had never expected to be on the receiving end, or to see it from this less comfortable angle.
Leo calmed down a little when she was silent. Leaning back, he openly assessed her from head to foot. 'Mind you, I can't quite see…'
'What?' she asked, bristling.
'Oh, nothing,' he said hastily, confused by her belligerence.
'What he sees in me?' accused Sian, and he made horrified noises, shaking his head.
'Good heavens, no, of course not—I mean, why shouldn't he fancy you? A lot of men like blondes, and you aren't too bad. I mean, you're very pretty, of course, I'm sure a lot of men… well, some in the office have said… that is…' He broke off, breathing heavily, red about the neck. 'I don't know what I mean! You've got me in a state now.'
Sian laughed and told him, 'Serves you right! And I am not smuggling Paul into Mrs Cassidy's house, nor am I writing a story about my weekend with the Cassidy family.' She made for the door and Leo bellowed behind her.
'You'll do as you're told or find another job…'
Sian slammed the door without replying.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sian expected to hear from Cass again before too long, and sure enough he rang her that evening. Sian had been on tenterhooks ever since she'd got back to her flat, waiting for a ring at the doorbell, but it was almost nine in the evening when the phone made her jump out of her chair, and she was so startled that she stared at it numbly for a while before running to snatch it up.
'Hello?'
'Sian?'
His voice sounded far too familiar and her knees went weak. 'Oh, hello,' she said, swallowing and checking hurriedly on her reflection in the window nearby, as if he could actually see her. She had spent some time after getting back from work in making herself look good. Just in case he came round, she had thought defiantly in excuse, because she wasn't planning on going out and had no real reason for dressing carefully, but Cass wasn't catching her unprepared again, so she had put on a pale green linen dress which gave her a cool, contained air. At least if he did appear she would be ready to deal with him.
'How are you?' he asked, as if they hadn't met for weeks, and strangely enough she felt that, too. It seemed a long, long time since breakfast.
'Fine,' she said without betraying that, because he was capable of using the knowledge against her, and Sian did not intend to let him guess he had any effect on her at all. 'What do you want now?' she added crisply.
'Are you in one of your aggressive moods again?' he asked, and laughed, as though she amused him. 'A pity I can't be there to deal with you.'
'Deal with me?' she repeated irately, and he laughed again.
'But I've had to go to Glasgow.' Sian immediately felt depressed. 'Oh,' she said when he paused for comment, and he went on, his tone wry.
'Business will keep me up here until Friday at the earliest, but I'm going to get to my aunt's place for the weekend if I have to move heaven and earth. You'll be there, won't you?'
Glumly, she said she didn't know, she wasn't sure.
'Promise me!' he said, and she scowled, although he wouldn't see that, either.
'Just so that you can keep the gossip columns happy? Why should I?'
'Why are you so cross?' he asked, his voice hardening, too. 'What's happened?'
She didn't want him to start guessing, to work out that for some peculiar reason she was feeling low because he had gone away.
'Nothing's happened,' she said, forcing a brightness into her voice. 'I'm not cross, not at all. But I do have a life of my own, you know, and you and your insistence on a romantic smokescreen aren't making my life too easy at the moment.'
There was a silence, then he asked tersely, 'Is this all about that guy?'
'Guy? What guy?' She was bewildered.
'The one we ran into in the restaurant.'
'Oh, Louis!' She was at once embarrassed and it sounded in her voice. 'No, of course not.'
'Hmm,' said Cass. 'Sure about that?'
His pressure made her snap. 'What's it to do with you, anyway—even if it was Louis that I was thinking about? I've helped you out to distract the other papers and stop t
hem writing about Annette, but there is a limit. I have a right to a private life of my own.'
'Very well,' Cass said shortly. 'I accept that, but will it hurt to spend a weekend with my aunt? One more favour, then I promise I won't ask again.'
She sighed audibly. 'Oh, all right.'
'Thank you. I'll see you at the weekend, then. Goodnight.'
The click made her start; she put the phone down herself and stood at the window looking at the darkening sky, feeling melancholy, and angry with herself because there was no reason why she should feel that way. A week ago, she hadn't known a thing about William Cassidy; she had been busy every waking hour out on the water down at Poole, sailing and enjoying the sun and wind. Her mind had been carefree. She had put behind her all the anger, uncertainty and confusion she had gone through when she and Louis had split up. She hadn't been in love, of course, but breaking up had been painful, all the same, and once she was over it she had told herself it would be a long, long time before she got tangled up with another man. She had been so sure that she had learnt her lesson, yet here she was in just a few days swinging wildly between inexplicable highs and lows, and all because of a man she hardly knew!
She had never thought of herself as weak-willed or man-mad. In fact, until now, she had always been able to put her career first—why else had she quarrelled with Louis? He had known he came a poor second and he had resented it—but where William Cassidy was concerned it was always her job that seemed to be running second and Cass who got his way, and Sian was baffled and bewildered.
What's the matter with you? she asked herself, prowling around her shadowy flat and feeling more lonely than she had ever felt in her life.
He snaps his fingers and you come running— why? He asks you to let yourself be used as a smokescreen to fool your own colleagues—and you meekly do it. He rings to say he's at the other end of the country and you sink into a black depression.
Glowering into the mirror, she asked her reflection, 'What's wrong with you lately? How does he talk you into it? What hold has he got over you?'
But her green eyes evaded their own reflection, slid aside guiltily, because she didn't need to ask the questions, she knew the answer in her heart, even if she wished she didn't.
It was very late before she fell asleep, and she dreamed all night; in the morning she was shadowy-eyed and her head ached. Worse, she remembered dreams, and her face was hot whenever she thought about them.
She hadn't known that her imagination was so powerful or so vivid; she wished she could forget the dreams, but they hung around her mind like smoke, the fumes sweet and suffocating.
The one positive side of it all was that she could go into the paper next morning and tell Leo that Cass had gone away and she would not be seeing him that week. Leo was suspicious at first. 'Oh, yeah? Where has he gone?'
'Glasgow,' she triumphantly informed him, and the grey reality of the destination convinced him.
'Glasgow?'
'Glasgow,' she repeated, watching his face fall.
Leo looked over the other papers, drumming his fingers on the desk. 'They all have columns on you and Cassidy! What did you two do last night?'
'I don't know what he did,' Sian said coldly. 'I went home, watched TV and went to bed.' She paused, meeting Leo's eyes. 'Alone,' she added in an icy voice.
'That's not what it says in the Echo.'
'They're lying rats.'
'That's a fact,' Leo said, laughing. 'Oh, well, you'll be seeing him this weekend, won't you?'
'Possibly.'
Leo glared. 'You told me…'
'Oh, yes, I will see him,' Sian said on a sigh of irritation.
'And you won't tell a soul?'
'Not a soul.'
'And you'll write the piece yourself?'
'Yes.'
He let her go, then, and Sian beat a retreat with a face like thunder, for the first time in her life wondering if she had picked the right career. This wasn't what she had gone into journalism to do— she hated gossip columns and trivia, she hated chitchat and back-biting and bedroom whispers. She wanted to write about the real world out there; she liked travelling, meeting new people all the time, uncovering corruption in local councils, hearing stories of courage and kindness, human grit and self-sacrifice. That was the ordinary world she had been dealing with—William Cassidy and his affairs were the tinsel of newspapers. Why else had he employed a whole team of publicists to get his company and himself into the media? Leo was right when he said that Cass deserved what was happening; he had invited the press into his life, he couldn't turn round now and kick them out.
She had only just sat down at her desk when she got a phone call. 'A person-to-person call for you,' the operator on the newspaper switchboard said in her flat, bored voice. 'Will you take it?'
Sian's heart beat fast and hard. Dry-mouthed, she asked, 'Who's calling?'
'A Mrs Jennifer Bush from a Poole exchange.'
Sian's traitorous heart slowed again. 'Oh,' she said, then, 'Yes, put her through, will you?'
Jenny sounded breathless. 'Hello, Sian.'
'Hi, Jen—how are you? Anything wrong?'
'My neighbour just showed me yesterday's paper,' Jenny said, and Sian pulled a face.
'Oh.'
'Sian, what's going on?'
'Nothing, Jen—don't get excited. Its all nonsense, honestly.'
'But you never even mentioned him!'
'Look, take no notice of anything you read in the papers. I barely know the man—they're making it all up.'
Jen wasn't easy to convince, and Sian asked her urgently, 'You won't mention this to anyone else, will you? I mean, if my parents should get in touch, or anyone from the family? If they hear about it and ring you, tell them what I said, it's all invention.'
Her parents were in New Zealand, visiting her elder brother, and had been there for months, but Sian was used to them being away for long periods because her father had been in the Air Force, often based overseas, and Sian had gone to school in England, boarding for months at a time and only seeing her parents during the long summer vacations. She had learnt to be independent very early; she had learnt how to be tough and think for herself, and those lessons had stood her in good stead when she became a reporter.
Sian knew that her parents wouldn't worry about her if they heard that she was seeing William Cassidy, but she didn't want to face probing questions from anyone, and her family might be made curious by the newspaper gossip.
The rest of the week was uneventful. Sian worked in the office, or was sent out on stories, mostly around London, although once she got as far as Brighton, and spent a wistful afternoon by the sea. When she phoned in her copy, she strolled around the town, admired the Prince Regent's palace with its domes and cupolas glittering in the sun, like something out of an Arabian Nights' fairy-tale, but didn't go in because she preferred to walk by the sea. A veil of mist hung far out over the milky horizon; the sky held all shades of gentle colour from lavender and grey, and the light was tremulous, shifting; now in sun, now overcast, matching Sian's low-key mood.
She knew something irrevocable had happened to her. She might joke with friends as usual, argue and swap professional chitchat, manage her working day with her old efficiency, but she wasn't the same person she had been a week ago. Her world had spun helplessly into a new orbit, she was in hiatus, waiting—but for what?
She couldn't bear even to think about it. It was irrational, but she kept hoping that, if she ignored it, it would go away, this strange, drifting, volatile mood. She had been quite happy with her life. She didn't want anything to change. Why was this happening to her?
On the Friday, the pulse of time altered and she found herself watching the clock, nervously anticipating, wondering if Cass would get back, working out the route by which she would drive to his aunt's house in Buckinghamshire. She had had a note from Mrs Cassidy, confirming the invitation and suggesting when she should arrive. A hand-drawn map had been helpfully included
, and Sian thought she shouldn't have much trouble finding the house.
She promised Leo that she would phone in some copy that weekend; at least giving a story about the garden party, which, as it was for charity, was presumably very much a public event. Since Mrs Cassidy had cheerfully stressed that the press would be there, Sian saw no reason why she shouldn't do a piece on that.
She left London at five-thirty and took some time to disentangle herself from the usual homeward-bound traffic jam, heavier than usual since it was the start of the weekend. Eventually, though, she was out of the suburbs and driving through the green belt surrounding London: a half-rural, half-suburban landscape. Sian much preferred the Hampshire countryside in which Cass lived.
At last, though, she began to drive through a richer landscape: green and fertile, softly folded meadows and wheatfields, round hills and gentle valleys in which lay old cottages of faded red brick or black and white Tudor timbering, set in cottage gardens of peonies and red rambling roses climbing round the door, gold and white sweet-scented honeysuckle flung everywhere over wall and fences. The colours assaulted the senses: delphiniums in deep blue spikes, clove-smelling double pinks, huge white cabbage roses, glorious, glowing orange marigolds. Summer hung there in delirious riot, and as twilight began to descend birds flew calling across the deep-sunk lanes through which she drove; there was a heavy, damp sweetness from the woods— grass and wild garlic, hogweed and woodbine.
Sian drove slowly, her eyes darting everywhere. She didn't know this part of England and had to keep consulting the map she had open on the passenger seat beside her.
Drawing up at a crossroads in the middle of a village she tried to read the ancient signpost. A white-flannelled cricket game was still in progress. Across the smooth green the pale figures ran to and from the wickets. Sian sat listening to those archetypal English sounds—so much a part of summer— the little thud of the ball hitting the bat, the running feet, the sleepy desultory clapping, the voice raised in protest, the clatter of teacups from the little wooden pavilion where the women were washing up during these closing stages of the lazy ritual.
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