by Karen Swan
Cassie swallowed, instantly stricken with remorse as she saw two swollen tears slide silently and defiantly down Suzy’s reddened cheeks. Suzy never cried. She was Boudicca, her warrior friend.
Suzy brushed the tears away angrily with the backs of her hands – as though she had let herself down – turning as she got to the door. ‘Well, I’ll tell you this for nothing, Cassie. Maybe everything in my life is wrong at the moment, but I know as sure as an egg’s an egg that I’m not wrong about you and him.’ And she stormed out of the room, sucking the air out with her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The lagoon lay slick and still, like an unblinking turquoise eye, as the sea frothed against the other side of the rocks that encircled it like a wall, the cold Atlantic Ocean several feet lower than the pool now, as the tide continued its race out towards the horizon. Their soft and pale bodies looked vulnerable against the scarred black rocks, which rose in a circle from the water, all of them leaning into the serpentine stone and trying not to scratch themselves against the thick encrustations of mussels and limpets.
Cassie and Archie were wearing their new wetsuits, but Laird and Luke were in long board shorts, and Gem and Amber were in just their string bikinis. Suzy was still on the beach with Velvet – the rocks being too perilous for the little girl to navigate – and all their bags.
Cassie wished she had stayed with her, even though they hadn’t spoken now for three whole days, Suzy pointedly leaving the room every time Cassie entered it. But as much as Suzy’s silence was terrifying, Cassie would still rather brave that than this. The sight of the azure water – from twenty feet up – was beautiful; the cold crush of wet sand beneath her feet would be so much more soothing than the scaly damp stone, and rips of terror leaped through her every time her toes lost purchase on the sheer rocks.
But she couldn’t leave. It had taken her twenty minutes to get up here and the only way back down was through the air. This was the bridge Henry had specified on the list – the bridge (it turned out) being a narrow strip of rock that formed the upper arc of a vast, hollowed-out cliff on one side of the lagoon – and she had to jump from it, or, as Laird had said, ‘tombstone’. Obviously that did not sound good, and although he said it with his signature laid-back smile, Cassie couldn’t help but wonder whether Gem had relayed to him her ‘strong’ words on Sunday.
Even if she hadn’t, he surely couldn’t have failed to register the tension simmering between all the women: in addition to ignoring Cassie, Suzy – for reasons unknown – was barely able to adopt a civil tone with Gem; Gem kept shooting Cassie death-stares, and Amber had yet to look at Cassie at all. When Cassie had asked whether she’d like a coffee at the cafe earlier, as they’d sat on the grass and waited for the tide to fully recede and expose the beach in the cove below, Amber had studied her nails and muttered that she’d ‘rather die’. Luke had overheard – she could tell by the way his head had angled back slightly, towards them – but he had neither said a word nor looked at her – in fact, this was the first time she had even caught sight of them since the ill-fated weekend – and she wondered how many different ways Amber was making him pay for his so-called treachery.
‘How are you feeling?’ Archie called up and across to her. Bless him, he appeared to be as oblivious as ever to the bitter politics that were on the verge of erupting in the uneasy group. It had been at his insistence – after examining the best combinations of tide times, wave height and weather forecasts – that they had all travelled down to the Lizard peninsula today to watch Cassie enact the last remaining order on the list before they entered the countdown to the wedding and – to quote Arch – ‘things would get stressy’.
‘How do you think I’m feeling?’ she shouted back. ‘I’m going to bloody kill him!’
Archie laughed. ‘Don’t blame you! I wouldn’t want to be where you’re standing! I think I can feel another heart attack coming on just looking at you.’
‘Me too!’
‘You must be at least forty feet up!’ he hollered.
‘Stop talking now, Arch!’
‘Are you going to jump?’
‘No! But I will start throwing rocks at you if you don’t shut up!’
She looked down into the water. Laird had estimated the depth at around eighteen feet, and it was so clear that even from this height, she could make out bright orange spider crabs, the size of dinner plates, scuttling across the sandy floor.
Everyone had agreed she had to go into the pool first, not only because it was her list and her challenge, but also it was more important to keep the water clear given the height she was jumping from. There was only one submerged rock in the water, to the right of where she stood, but as long as she jumped outwards, she would clear it easily. Nonetheless, Laird had solemnly agreed with Archie that the sand shouldn’t be eddied about, with the net result that the five increasingly hot and bored faces, twenty feet below her – and they were still twenty feet above the water themselves – were turned towards her, waiting for her to find the courage to jump.
Behind them all, from her superior vantage point, Cassie could see Suzy and Velvet running in and out of the shallows, hand in hand. Unlike the way the sea slammed onto the abrupt rocks of the lagoon, the water was lapping gently onto the beach, and she watched as Suzy lifted Velvet, swinging her into the air – the toddler’s legs flying out behind her, her face tilted to the sun – before gathering her close and nuzzling her neck, the little girl wriggling with laughter. Her best friend and her god-daughter, two of the people she loved most in the world and who would become family, if she could just find the courage to make that leap too. But the question of what would happen to them all if she didn’t – couldn’t – hung over her like a threat. Already they were fracturing under the strain. She and Suzy were estranged because the words ‘I do’ sank like concrete blocks in the pit of her stomach.
It was a moment before Cassie realized a tear was slinking down her cheek, unseen, unbidden, and she felt a sudden rush of white-hot fury at herself course through her veins. Why couldn’t she do it? Gil could. In three days’ time, he was drawing a line under their life and history together that even the divorce hadn’t been able to achieve. It was one thing to end a marriage, quite another to embark on an entirely new one. Why couldn’t she just put her foot forward and take that next step too? It wasn’t that she wanted Gil back – he was nothing compared to Henry –and it wasn’t that she didn’t love Henry enough. She just didn’t want to feel . . . trapped or owned again. She didn’t want to relinquish her freedom.
‘You can do it, Cass!’ Luke called up, breaking her trance. ‘Don’t over-think it. Trust your instincts.’
Amber’s glossy head jerked up – at the easy (and revealing) way he’d called her Cass? – and Cassie saw Gem gently place a sympathetic hand on her arm. Her gaze fluttered back to Suzy and Velvet momentarily – had she ever been more isolated? – and it hit her for the first time that maybe the freedom she craved wouldn’t take the sexy, selfish, indulgent shape she expected were she to hold on to it. She would lose Suzy, Arch and Velvet for sure if she lost Henry – they came as a package; they were already family. First dibs. She would be free, but she would also be alone.
Adrenalin spiked in her bloodstream, a tingling rush flaring through her limbs as she looked down to the cool, still pool. Henry had tricked her – there was no other way down from this ledge – and she knew exactly what he was trying to teach her: she had to jump. She had to face her fear and ball it up and step into the unknown anyway.
She put her hands on the rock behind her and pushed her bottom away so that only her feet and hands kept contact with the cliff face. She just had to trust in herself, her own ability. She could do this. She looked to the horizon and inhaled, ready—
‘Fuck it!’
The girl’s voice and then a sudden splash made Cassie look down; a vortex of white water had opened up in the middle, the crabs lost from sight, the sand, the rock . . . But she couldn’t
see what or who was in the water. There was no time. The abrupt movement was all it had taken to unbalance her from the shallow lip and she slipped, the rough surface grazing her skin like a cheese grater on silk as she began to fall through space, her arms and legs flailing wildly as she screamed.
Time warped, splitting and stretching, as the blueness rushed at her and, beneath it, the rock.
‘No! Cass!’
The first touch was like stone, her skin burning up as the tense water held, just for a fraction of a moment, before it splintered beneath her weight, unyielding and unforgiving as she hit it side-on and went in. Almost immediately she heard two explosions above her, but she couldn’t see past the bubbles; there was no colour down here, no light, just the breathtaking shock of the cold, the fire of her skin, pressure screaming in her ears as water filled her nose and mouth – there had been no time to catch her breath or to take one, no time to push away or jump out, and her airless body plummeted down through the water, straight towards the rock . . .
Her arm . . . Something had her arm, jerking her away in a violent whiplash motion, away from the rock and back into blue space. She felt skin on her skin, hands on her arms, and in the next instant she broke through the surface, coughing and spluttering, gasping for breath, barely aware that she was being held up, powerful legs that weren’t hers propelling her through the water back to the rocks.
The water peeled from her face as her body was slipped through its silky embrace – smooth and acquiescent now – droplets in her eyes fracturing the vista into split screens as the rock wall drew closer. She could see everyone screaming, but she couldn’t hear them. Laird and Luke were in the water beside her, manoeuvring her onto a shallow shelf; Amber, she saw, was clinging to a half-exposed rock on the other side of the pool, her hair wet, dark and slicked back like a kelpie, terror in her eyes as she watched the drama.
‘Are you OK? Are you all right?’ Luke was asking her. ‘Cassie!’
‘She’s in shock, mate. We need to get her out of—’
‘No. I’m OK,’ she protested as the wracking coughs subsided, her eyes falling to Archie. He was pale, halfway down already from his previous perch, leaning as far as he dared from the rocks to see her, desperate to just jump in – like the others must have done, she realized – but his older, weakened body warning otherwise.
‘Cass, did you hit the rock?’ Luke was asking, urgency in his eyes, his eyes roaming her face, looking for signs of injury.
She frowned. It was so hard to know what exactly had happened, to break it down from sensory experience to factual recollection. She had slipped and fallen . . . Her eyes travelled back up to the bridge. She had fallen all that way? She shook her head. ‘Something knocked me out of the way, I think.’
Luke grabbed Laird by the shoulder and squeezed him hard.
Laird shrugged. ‘Surfers and rocks – you learn to act fast, mate. It was lucky this pool’s still. It would have been almost impossible to grab her in the surf.’
Luke looked back at her. ‘So then you’re not hurt?’
‘Well, I didn’t say that,’ she groaned. ‘My skin hurts like hell. I feel like I’ve been whipped and then pickled.’
Laird grimaced. ‘Yeah. You may bruise – you went in badly, although thank God you’ve got your wetsuit on. That’ll have saved you some bruises for sure.’
‘But you’ve not got any numbness, any—’
‘Luke, I’m OK.’
‘Really?’
She managed a faint smile. ‘You’re worse than my mother.’
‘Listen, you didn’t just have to see that. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.’
‘I’ll second that. It was way worse for us,’ Archie said, reaching them all finally and grabbing her hand to kiss it fiercely. ‘I thought I was going to have to tell Henry you were now an omelette.’
Cassie laughed, a growing sense of euphoria beginning to rush through her as her nerves caught up with her body and realized the danger had passed. She was actually OK. She had fallen forty feet onto water that had felt like concrete and she had survived. She wasn’t going to do it again anytime soon, of course – like, in this lifetime – but she had done it. One more thing to tick off the list. OK, so strictly speaking she hadn’t jumped off the bridge – she hadn’t made that leap that Henry had wanted her to make; she had slipped and fallen in . . . But it would still count, right?
‘Well, now this is more like it,’ Archie murmured as he lay on his stomach, his hands resting below his cheeks and his eyes firmly closed.
‘Mmm, I think we’re belly-boarders at heart, Arch,’ Cassie replied in the tone of voice more usually reserved for one of Bas’s iconic Indian head massages, as the heavy swell of the ocean intermittently rolled beneath their boards, leaving the two of them drowsy with inertia. ‘I’m exhausted. I want to go to sleep.’
‘You always want to go to sleep,’ he mumbled, just as sleepily.
Somewhere behind them – in the thick of the action – Laird was catching the waves that they were supposed to be netting, but after half an hour of failed pops, Archie had dubiously and ominously pleaded ‘a strange feeling’ in his chest, and no one was pushing Cassie into anything after her fall earlier.
They were back at Polzeath for a ‘sunset surf’, as Laird had put it. In all honesty, Cassie had had more than enough of the beach for one day but she desperately didn’t want to go back to the house. Suzy still hadn’t really spoken to her, even after she’d heard the horror of Cassie’s ‘tombstone’ attempt becoming all too literal – the most basic, mumbled platitudes without any eye contact didn’t count – and Amber’s apology for jumping the starter’s gun had been as truculent and insincere as a grounded teenager’s.
Cassie allowed her eyes to close. She was beginning to ache all over from the fall and it had been a long afternoon. The adrenalin buzz that had buoyed her in the moments afterwards had ebbed away to leave an antsy and fragile shock. They had travelled for almost two hours to get to the cove and she hadn’t wanted everyone to have to get straight back into the cars on her account, so she had sat quietly on the sand, applying a wet towel as a cold compress to her red and bruised skin as everyone began playing hide-and-seek in the labyrinthine tunnels that meandered through the double-sided headland to both beaches. They weren’t anywhere deep enough to have been useful to smugglers in times past – the fact that they were completely submerged during high tide also rendered them useless – but what started as a game for Velvet had soon morphed into an adults’ version, as Gem and Amber – quickly forgiven, it seemed; certainly more quickly than Cassie had been forgiven for her ‘lapse in judgement’ – dodged in and out, wild-eyed and as frisky as ponies, with Laird and Luke in hot pursuit, the girls’ squeals and giggles of delight as they were invariably caught echoing back to the beach.
Cassie had pretended she hadn’t noticed that she was the odd one out – the gooseberry – choosing instead to go off for a solitary walk on the outer headland, a large, grassy outcrop that became an island at high tide. And when she came across Amber and Luke kissing in a remote nook, she silently turned and pretended she hadn’t noticed that either.
Her life seemed to have become a hologram of itself, she thought, as she and Arch bobbed in easy silence; it felt flat and spectral, everything in it that she’d always felt so certain of – her foreverness with Henry, her sisterly tie to Suzy, her contempt for Luke – now suddenly unpinned and unanchored, ready to drift away from her.
‘You’ll have to be careful how you tell Henry you fell from the bridge. He’s going to be wracked with guilt,’ Archie mumbled, sounding half asleep. Cassie had visions of both of them drifting out to sea like toddlers on lilos and having to be rescued by the RNLI.
‘Why?’ Cassie asked, lazily opening one eye like a dozing cat. ‘It’s not like he pushed me.’
‘No, but he’ll hold himself responsible for making you do it.’
It wasn’t guilt Cassie knew he was going to feel; it was di
sappointment. ‘He didn’t march me up there at gunpoint either.’
‘True.’ There was a small pause. ‘Maybe I should march Suze up there with a gun and make her tell me what’s going on with you two.’
Now both eyes were open. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, not you too,’ he groaned. ‘Don’t deny it – spare me that. It’s so obvious you’ve had a fight – even I can tell it, and we all know I’ve got the emotional intelligence of a jellyfish. Not to mention the muscle tone.’
Cassie laughed at the unexpected joke and he winked.
‘Come on, spill. I heard her crying in the bathroom earlier and she tried pretending it was the Epsom salts. And you and I both know my wife only ever cries when we’re out of cava.’
‘Is this why you dragged me out here?’ she moaned, as a particularly large swell rose beneath them like a sea monster rising from the depths. ‘You want to be our mediator.’
‘More of a hostage negotiator. I’m not letting you back on dry land till you meet my demands.’
She chuckled. ‘I see.’ Cassie was quiet for a long moment. How did she tell Archie – not just Suzy’s husband but Henry’s best friend – about Amber and Gem and Suzy’s baseless suspicions? He hadn’t been at the festival – he hadn’t seen how innocent it all was, but maybe he’d think there was no smoke without fire?
She decided to go for the catch-all explanation. ‘It’s just everything getting on top of her, that’s all – she’s really worried about Hats—’
Archie shot her a stern look.
‘Fine,’ Cassie sighed. ‘Gem and I had a little contretemps in the yurt yesterday morning and Suzy decided that, for the first time in her life, she was on her cousin’s side. Her cousin whom she cannot bear and also is not now talking to, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Her side? What are we, eight?’ he asked wryly.