by Emily Elgar
15
Cassie
Cassie sits at Jonny’s old pine kitchen table, the surface almost completely covered in scraps of paper, handwritten sums in pencil, receipts and invoices. She planned on bringing it all home with her, but it had started raining and it just felt easier to stay at Jonny’s rather than hauling everything down the lane in the rain. Besides, they keep most of the equipment – the sterilisers, jam pans – at Jonny’s now. There’s more space and Jonny doesn’t mind the mess like Jack.
OK, where to start?
She picks up a torn piece of paper, an ‘I owe you’ written in Jonny’s billowy hand, for some money he took from the jam jar full of coins they jokingly call ‘petty cash’ to pay for breakfast one morning. He’s doodled in pencil at the bottom of the page, more of a sketch really. Cassie stares at it and recognises her own ear, slightly indented at the top. April always called it a ‘pixie ear’. Strands of hair float around her ear, and she recognises the small diamond studs Jack gave her on their wedding day. She lifts her hand to stroke the fleshy drop of her lobe between her thumb and forefinger. Jonny doesn’t miss a thing.
Cassie, concentrate!
She puts the scrap piece of paper back down on the table and pulls her laptop out of her rucksack. Jack’s been on at her for ages about starting some sort of financial spreadsheet to keep track of all the Farm Jam money. She reckons they’ve made around two grand this summer, her and Jonny. Not bad for what was supposed to be just a hobby, a way of getting involved in the community, meeting people. She’s not sure she can account for all that money now, not since they’ve gotten into the routine of going to the pub after most events, eating whatever they want and drinking expensive wine.
How different things could have been; she’d be around seventeen weeks by now, thinking about buying prams and baby names, not trying to decide between the Shiraz or the Pinot Noir.
She gets up and flicks the kettle on.
Right!
She opens Excel on her computer, and various boxes flash up at her, asking to be updated. She cancels them all. Maybe Jonny was right; she should have gone to meet the ‘Pick Your Own’ farmer to talk about taking on their waste raspberries instead of Jonny. He’d probably build them a financial template in half an hour. But she’d felt fractious and cold this morning, the change from summer to autumn in her bones, and she wanted to cave it up. Staying in Jonny’s warm cottage with Dennis snoring in his basket was much more appealing than going out in the rain to look at soggy raspberries.
She must be hormonal. She makes a cup of tea. Jonny always has camomile, her favourite. She flicks the radio on.
The free-template table options on the screen in front of her blur. Maybe she’s going about this wrong. She should first organise all the scraps of paper and then try and figure out how to record them on the computer. She closes her laptop and moves it to the end of the table. Jack would take the piss if he saw her faffing like this.
Over the last month, his weekdays have become a complete mystery to her. He usually leaves before Cassie’s awake. A damp towel from his shower and already-hot water in the kettle from his first coffee is the only proof he was home at all. He spends his days in site meetings, talking about things like steel reinforcements and sewage connections, and speeding up to London to meet potential new clients. Everyone wants to do building work in summer so it’s always the busiest time for him. He usually doesn’t come home until after 9 p.m. She’s quiet in the evenings, especially after an event, pretending to be more sober than she feels. Charlotte thinks it’s good they’re both busy. She hugged Cassie for a long time when they told her; Charlotte said miscarriage is sometimes sadly part of having a baby.
They just need to keep trying she said.
Cassie’s organised the papers into a pile and taps the bottom edge against the table, a pretence at order.
Her feet feel chilled on the stone floor. She lifts them to her chair, rubs them, but it doesn’t make any difference.
Dennis raises his head from the basket as the stairs creak under Cassie as she makes her way up to Jonny’s bedroom in search of socks. She’s worn some alpaca ones of his before, a gift from Lorna a few years ago, when they were still in love. She opens a drawer and sits on the unmade bed to roll them on.
Dennis is waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. She picks up the pile of papers again.
Right. Now she’ll divide it into income and outgoings.
But she remembers she hasn’t replied to a text from Nicky that came through earlier that morning. Can’t wait to see you, what time will you be home? xxx, her friend had written.
She was coming down from London tonight for the weekend, a long overdue catch-up. Cassie thought about calling her a few times since the miscarriage, but Nicky was in New York for a whole month over the summer, partly for her new job as Executive Assistant to a self-made web entrepreneur and partly for a holiday. It didn’t seem right crying over the phone when Nicky was finally on the up and, besides, Jonny had been there for Cassie.
She types, Me too! It’s been forever, home about 6ish. What time does your train get in? Text Jack, he said he’d pick you up after work xxx The message makes a whoosh sound as it sends.
Laying the two piles of paperwork in front of her, she opens her computer again and chooses a template, one that separates the rows into dates, starting from today and counting back.
God, is it really the middle of October already? She scrolls down the document, counts eleven weeks since the miscarriage. She hasn’t told Jack that she’s spoken to Marcus on the phone a couple of times. Neither of them mentioned the argument. He sounded better on the phone, but she still should find a time to go and visit him. Even bringing up Marcus’s name still makes Jack thunderous; she knows Jack blames Marcus for the miscarriage. She can’t be arsed having that argument again, trying to defend Marcus to Jack. He just needs time. Nothing bad has happened to him since he was fourteen, it’s understandable the miscarriage shook him up. Staring at all those neatly rowed days and weeks since her miscarriage, Cassie realises her last period was an unfeasibly long time ago. Cassie looks at the calendar on her phone. The hair on her body rises and her skin prickles as she realises she’s completely neglected to keep track.
Oh my god!
She has to get home, get home before Nicky arrives so she can do a pregnancy test, find out for certain one way or the other. She doesn’t know whether she’s thrilled or terrified, or both? She pulls on her walking boots she left on the back doorstep.
‘Sorry, Dennis, you’re staying here.’ His tail drops as she holds him back and closes the door in front of his nose. She puts the spare key back in its place under the mat; she’ll message Jonny later to explain that she had to dash off.
She pulls her hood up, the rain patters loudly against the thin shell of her bright-red waterproof. She decides to go along the lane; it’s the quickest way, the stream bubbling like a cauldron by her side. She keeps going over the dates again and again in her head. Each time she’s at least three weeks late.
How had she not noticed?
Cassie knows there are a couple of tests left over from last time in their en-suite. It’s only 4.30 p.m., far too early for Jack to be home. He hasn’t been back before 7 p.m. for weeks so she’ll run straight upstairs, do the test and know either way before he collects Nicky from the station. Perfect.
The rain is getting into its pace, flowing freely, hitting the earth rhythmic as a metronome. She steps over a couple of newly made puddles as she turns into their driveway, breaking into a little jog at the end of the drive. There’s a light on in the sitting room. Strange; she’s usually good at turning everything off. As she gets closer, she sees a figure move like a ghost downstairs. The windowpanes have tiny vertical rivers of rain running down them; the person’s image is distorted and stretched by the water. As she gets closer, she recognises Jack’s broad outline.
He must be ill; there’s no way he’d be home otherwise.
Through the steady fall of rain she watches as her husband sits back on the sofa. He slouches back as the sofa gently folds around him, crossing his right leg over his left and ruffling his hair. He raises a bottle of beer to his lips, his mouth curling around the rim, smiling at someone sitting next to him who Cassie can’t see. He hasn’t looked so relaxed in months.
He can’t be that ill if he’s having a beer, Cassie thinks primly. She’s close to the window now. She pulls her hood down off her head and feels the rain wet her crown like a baptism. She’s about to lift her fist to knock against the window, but she pauses because the person sitting next to Jack is stroking her husband’s leg with beautiful long white fingers. Jack looks down at his leg and interlaces his fingers with the woman’s. She pulls him towards her and he gives in easily. Cassie watches, paralysed, as they come together in a way that looks inevitable, the pressure too great to not put their lips together, for his hands not to hold her face as he kisses it, her red hair cascading between his fingers like lava. He’s kissed Cassie like that so many times. She touches her face, almost expecting to feel his hands there, where they should be, holding her face, not holding Nicky’s. Cassie can’t move. It’s as though her mind has been cleaved clean away from her body. She watches them push and pull against each other, watches as her friend smiles behind her kissing mouth and her fingers fall to Jack’s fly, like they’ve been there before.
Cassie’s heart dilates and contracts painfully, like the organ itself has been thumped hard. The force shoves her backwards, and she grips the window frame to stop herself falling.
The movement catches Nicky’s eye. Her head raises, away from Cassie’s husband, and her hand whips away from his fly. Her red hair flows down her back as she sees Cassie, and she says one, short word before Jack turns.
His face is blanched, already pale, eyes made round, cartoonish with shock. He leaps up as though the sofa is suddenly burning him and comes close towards the window. He’s shaking his head and he keeps saying her name over and over again, a cloud of evaporation frills around his palm as he places it against the cold glass.
But Cassie isn’t looking at him. Through the rain-streaked window she’s staring at her best friend who is now standing perfectly still in the middle of the sitting room, and Cassie can’t stop staring at her because Nicky’s body must be possessed by someone, something else. This can’t be the same person who slept in the same bed as Cassie for a month after April died, because her mouth, which used to call Cassie her sister, was just kissing her husband.
Cassie watches as Nicky’s lips make the shape of Cassie’s name again and then she turns away from the window and she runs as fast as she can back into the weeping day.
16
Alice
I’m running, my feet rhythmic and steady on the tarmac. My body feels taut, energetic, as if I could run for ever. The lane narrows and becomes foggy and I see a figure in front of me, another runner, just a few yards ahead. I can’t see her face; it’s a woman with a bouncy, blonde pony tail. The small, wiry-haired dog – the same one in her Facebook photos – trips around her feet, and then I know who it is.
‘Cassie!’ I call out.
She stops in the middle of the lane, slowly turning around, which is when I see that her face is all wrong. Her features are frozen like a death mask, her mouth twisted in a noiseless scream, her skin a flawless grey. Her eyes are only half open, red veins like weird lace lattice the whites of her eyes; I can’t see the iris.
Our room is pitch black, the bed sheets clammy with my sweat. I turn on my bedside light and David stirs but doesn’t wake.
Jesus.
5.40 a.m. I try closing my eyes. They burn with exhaustion and my body aches for more sleep, but it’s no use. My mind is cracking like a whip, so I grab my dressing gown and pad downstairs.
I’ve always loved the peace of early morning, the privacy of being the only one awake. As if the dial has been turned down on the world, the early morning feels like a suspended space, a pause, a chance to catch up with myself.
Without turning on any lights, I stare out of the kitchen window. The morning sky is still a deep indigo. It’s freezing outside, the lawn covered in petrified, icy blades of grass. Something – a rabbit, perhaps – has left a sweet little trail of paw prints heading into the leylandii bush; Bob will enjoy trying to flush it out later.
I know some nurses struggle not to bring work home with them, but it’s never been an issue for me. As soon as I step out of my uniform, I strip my day, and other people’s pain, off with it. I never thought it was unusual; most people live in at least two worlds. But it’s different now, with Cassie. I want to stay close to her, like the survival of her baby is a good omen, as if some of her magic, just a tiny bit, might rub off on me. I pour myself a glass of water and go back upstairs to the study; I turn the computer on, the light from the screen stark, cold in the dark room.
I open Facebook and search through Cassie’s friends. There’s no Jonathan Parker or Jonny Parker; either he’s not on Facebook or he’s deleted his account. All of Cassie’s photos have been posted by other people, mainly Jack in the last two years and, before then, by someone called Nicky Breton.
I look at the older ones, the ones posted by Nicky. This is the Cassie I don’t know so well. Her face is fuller, more girlish in the photos, her skin’s even, taut with youth, and her hair is buttery and long, falling either side of her face. Her clothes are different in the older photos; they’re colourful, made from natural fabrics, tie-dye and floaty, the kind of clothes people buy at festivals.
One of the photos of Cassie and April is a close-up of their faces. They’re both staring at the camera like they’ve been told to be serious, but they look too giggly, like trying to be serious makes them laugh. They have the same eyes, blue with nuggets of hazel. April is wearing a bright-blue headscarf – maybe she’d just started chemo – and strands of Cassie’s hair dance like sprites around her face. In the background there are slick rocks, jagged as incisors, a foam of white water around them. The two of them look like they belong there, by the sea.
I scramble, a Facebook amateur, to the more recent photos, stopping at the now-familiar photo Jack posted of Cassie decorating the tree, her hair bobbed and smooth. People have left comments like ‘Wow!’ and ‘Beautiful!’ underneath, but there’s nothing from Cassie, no thanks or acknowledgement. I zoom in on Cassie’s frozen face, just a foot away from my own; she’s almost to scale on the screen. A cold pebble forms in my throat as I stare at her. She looks different to me now. I remember what Jess said about her smile looking fake. I can see it now. In the photo, Cassie’s wearing the sort of smile that must make her jaw ache. She’s flexed, rigid, as if she’s grinding her teeth. She looks like she’s holding onto her smile. I imagine it falling away as soon as the camera was lowered. There’s something mildly intrusive about the photo, the glint in her eye like a secret.
The cold pebble drops down into my thorax. I remember what Jonny said when he came onto the ward. What was she scared of? Of Jack finding out the baby wasn’t his? Or of Jonny finding out the baby was his? Has Cassie been lying? Playing the doting wife but messing around with Jonny? I think about her baby. I pray again that I’m wrong, that Jonny isn’t the father. A mum in a coma and a dad in prison? I don’t want that for Freya and I don’t want that for Jack.
Without warning, my phone vibrates in my dressing-gown pocket.
‘Hello?’ My voice small in the dark morning.
‘Alice?’ Sharma’s accent sounds thicker over the phone.
I retie my bathrobe around me. He sounds disconcertingly close.
Without waiting for me to respond he asks, ‘Have you seen the Sussex Times this morning?’
‘No, what is it?’ I move the little arrow wildly across the screen, guilty suddenly, as if Sharma can see me snooping around Cassie’s life. I shut the pages down.
‘Just have a look and come in as soon as you can, will you? I’m on my way now.’ He does
n’t say goodbye before he hangs up and he didn’t say anything in Latin. Something must be up.
The headline, Local Celebrity in Coma: Pregnant, seems to leap off the page and slap me. I have to read it twice. I scan the article. I’m not interested in most of it; I go straight to the bit that means something.
‘A source close to Cassandra Jensen who wishes to remain anonymous …’
I sit heavily in the chair. They’ve used her real name, they know about Juice-C, and the article mentions Buscombe, and a ‘Jonathan Parker’, described as a ‘close friend’ (I imagine the journalists winking at each other when they chose that phrase) and a known local drinker who has been charged with driving under the influence and attempted manslaughter. It feels like catching myself talking in a mirror. A familiar story but framed all wrong. The cold pebble seems to twist and turn; it makes my whole chest ache.
I don’t realise I’m muttering ‘shit, shit, shit’ until Bob’s strong black nose pokes up in the crook of my arm.
‘Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good. What’s up?’ David walks into the study just in his boxer shorts. He puts his hand on my shoulder and frowns at the computer screen. I stare with him.
‘God. How horrific.’ He turns towards me. ‘Is she one of yours?’ and I feel a twist of guilt for not telling him about Cassie, guiltier still for not telling him I’m pregnant.
I blink my eyes, forcing them to focus.
‘So this is why you haven’t been sleeping. God, I didn’t even know this was possible. Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I can’t tell you everything about my patients, David,’ I snap, irritated to be interrupted when I want to read the article again.
‘Yeah, but this? You tell me about the guy with the religious-nut wife, the patient who has no visitors, but you don’t tell me about a pregnant woman in a coma?’