Summer at Tiffany's

by Karen Swan

  ‘Yes, right.’ Cassie looked down, reaching for the dressing-table stool and sitting on it carefully. She felt giddy again and realized she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. ‘I remember these.’ She picked up a pair of silver cufflinks and rolled them in her palm. ‘Dad always wore these.’

  ‘They were his favourites,’ Edie said, watching her from the bed. ‘I bought them for him when I was pregnant with you. I think he’d have worn them with his pyjamas if he could.’ She chuckled softly, enlivened and saddened at the same time by the memory.

  They were quiet for a little while.

  ‘While I’ve got you all to myself for a bit, tell me why you and Suzy aren’t speaking.’ Edie held up her hand quickly. ‘And don’t bother trying to deny it. It was as obvious as a punch in the face, last night.’

  Cassie put the cufflinks back in the travel bag, feeling her hands begin to tremble. ‘I’ve been an idiot.’ Her voice was quiet, her eyes glued to the faded green carpet.

  Edie waited for her to explain.

  ‘You remember Luke?’

  Edie frowned. ‘You mean the American you went out with before Henry?’

  Cassie nodded, biting her lip, waiting for the penny to drop. Her mother had been here with their group for two days now. Sure enough, her frown gradually deepened again. ‘You don’t mean the one—’

  Cassie nodded. ‘Going out with Gem’s bridesmaid.’

  ‘That’s him?’ Edie asked in astonishment, before her expression changed. ‘Oh, Cass, no.’

  Cassie bit her lip, her hand inadvertently tugging against the bangle again. ‘Henry and I were having problems. Well, just one, actually, but it’s a big one. He wanted to get married and I . . . just didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Edie’s hands fluttered and folded above her heart.

  ‘He basically issued me with an ultimatum before he left: we get married or we split up.’ Cassie looked at her pleadingly. ‘I wasn’t trying to make things worse, but Luke just—’

  Edie sighed. ‘Luke just turned up, saying all the things you wanted to hear, I imagine.’

  Cassie nodded miserably. ‘But it was true, some of it. Our relationship hadn’t run its course. I was off on a year-long adventure back then, running my life to a timetable that took no notice of the fact that we were happy together. I left him behind simply because we ran out of time, and I told myself that he was just a rebound. But then when he came back and everything felt the same between us, I started thinking, What if he wasn’t?’

  Edie shook her head patiently. ‘That’s just the fear talking, darling. No one who’s ever seen you and Henry together could doubt that what you and he share is the real thing.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not saying what you and Luke shared wasn’t wonderful too, and no doubt just what you needed to start moving on from Gil, but, darling, he’s not Mr Right. He was – and will only ever be – Mr Right Now.’

  ‘And Gil’s getting married today as well,’ Cassie said quickly, a sob punctuating the end of the sentence before she could stop it. Her eyes shone suddenly with tears. ‘Mum. I think I panicked.’ Her hand covered her mouth, as though the very words were dirty.

  ‘I think you did too,’ her mother agreed, her eyes soft. ‘Does Henry know about any of this?’

  Cassie’s mouth turned down. ‘No.’

  Edie nodded. ‘Well, do you know what I’ve always believed is the best thing about your past?’

  Cassie shook her head.

  ‘It shows you what not to bring into your future.’ She smiled, leaning forwards and resting her elbows on her lap. ‘You can learn from this, Cassie. It doesn’t have to have been for nothing.’

  Cassie sniffed. ‘You think so?’

  ‘Of course! After what you went through? I think it’s only to be expected that you’d get a case of cold feet.’

  ‘Nooks thinks I should steer well clear of marrying again.’

  Edie rolled her eyes. ‘Well, with the greatest respect, she would say that.’

  Cassie frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Henri – her father – was a terrible rogue. Just terrible! He cheated on poor Camille more times than any of us could count. I mean, I know the French believe in turning a blind eye to that sort of thing, but everyone’s got their limits. He humiliated her, flaunting his girlfriends in her face.’ Edie tutted. ‘No, it was beyond any of us why she stayed with him, and now look – Anouk’s got commitment issues of her own. Quelle surprise!’

  Cassie was quiet. She had never known any of this before. Hers and Suzy’s, Kelly and Anouk’s parents had all been friends – it was how the girls had met in the first place – but she had been a child, oblivious to the undercurrents and sexual politics at play in their parents’ social set. To her mind, Anouk’s father had simply been the sharpest-suited man in the group, who made them laugh by blowing the smoke from his Gitanes out through his nose like a dragon and always carried a pack of cards in his pocket.

  ‘I suppose—’ Cassie began.

  A sudden scream downstairs made them both gasp, their faces turned towards the door, ears pricked as the sound of raised voices in the kitchen were muffled by the thick carpets.

  ‘Oh God, what the hell’s happened now?’ Cassie whispered, running to the door and looking out into the hallway.

  ‘Cassie!’

  She froze as she heard Suzy holler her name, stood motionless on the landing as the sound of heavy footsteps drew closer, quickly, on the stairs, almost dropped on the spot as a rangy, long-legged figure in a navy-and-red sailing jacket cleared the top step.

  Henry stopped, like he’d run into a glass wall, at the sight of her. His face was bearded and sunburnt, but that only served to make his eyes brighter, his teeth whiter . . . He looked more alive than she had ever seen him; he seemed to glow, almost, like an angel.

  She gasped. Was that what this was? Was this a trick of her mind? Was this what happened when sleeplessness and fear combined?

  He seemed to read her panic. ‘Cass.’ The word was as real as a touch.

  ‘You’re here,’ she quailed, scarcely able to believe what her eyes were showing her, one hand to her mouth, the other held out to touch him, still half expecting it to pass through him like a mirage. But he took her hand and placed it to his chest; she could feel his heart pounding – almost as quickly as hers – beneath her palm.

  ‘If not duffer . . . won’t drown,’ he said, stepping in closer and cocooning her face with his rough hands, kissing her tenderly, feeling how she shook as the adrenalin took charge, disbelief morphing into relief.

  ‘You’re not a duffer!’ she laughed, tears splashing from her eyes.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he laughed back, looping his arms around her and twirling her on the spot, both of them laughing, faces nuzzled into the other’s neck as they revelled in their touch and smell all over again.

  He lowered her feet to the ground, his eyes boring into hers. ‘But, Cass, you were right about the rest of it. I will never not listen to you again, oh, She Who Must Be Obeyed.’

  A sound behind her made him look up – stiffen up, straighten up. ‘What’s he doing here?’ His voice was suddenly cold and hostile, all levity gone.

  Cassie turned to see Luke standing outside her bedroom, his hand still on the handle as he closed the door behind him.

  She saw how Luke froze too, as he took in the sight of Henry – action man, adventurer, hero returned – his arms around her. Cassie noticed he was wearing his linen flak jacket – the one with the big pockets that he always wore on jobs – his jeans, his charcoal suede Prada trainers. For someone who had spent the past two weeks in a wetsuit or T-shirt and shorts, he looked suddenly overdressed. And very urban.

  ‘H-his girlfriend, Amber, is Gem’s bridesmaid,’ she said quickly, fear thinning her voice as she kept her eyes upon Luke in a silent plea. Would he spill their secret? Was it going to be a case of if he couldn’t have her, no one could? Would he try to ruin their relationship out of spite
? Because if their history was anything to go by, she wouldn’t put it past him. ‘Well . . . was going to be,’ she mumbled into the vacuum when neither man spoke.

  Henry looked from Cassie back to Luke, back to Cassie again. ‘Cass, what’s going on?’

  ‘It’s nothing, honestly. His girlfriend’s Gem’s bridesmaid.’ She put a hand to her heart as if trying to stop her heart from leaping out. She needed to get away from here, away from Luke. This was all too much to deal with at once and she felt dizzy again. ‘Can we talk about it downstairs? I need to sit down and eat. If I don’t eat, I’m going to pass out.’

  Henry looked back at Luke, his body battle-ready.

  ‘Please,’ she insisted. ‘Let me just enjoy the fact that you’re back.’

  Reluctantly, Henry dragged his eyes off Luke. ‘Come on, then,’ he mumbled, leading her towards the stairs, but she could tell from the feel of the tension in his body that his hackles were up. She knew he was on the scent.

  Twenty minutes later she had eaten a sausage sandwich and drunk two large mugs of tea and felt thoroughly sick. But she didn’t care. Henry was back. He was safe and he was here and they had all come alive again – even Gem. The noise in the kitchen was rowdy, the windows steamed up, and the hob extractor was on max to cope with the kettle being boiled repeatedly and the smoke coming from the bacon and sausages that everyone kept forgetting to turn. Poor Bas had been almost overlooked in all the excitement. After a night’s stopover at the Pimlico flat, he had unwittingly travelled down on the same train as Henry, but not knowing which carriage opened exactly opposite the exits (unlike Henry) had meant he’d been last, not first in the taxi rank, arriving at the house amid screams and cheers more suited to Halloween night. Cassie knew she needed to have some time alone with him too – he had already transmitted his latest heartache to her with a sad face – but he’d have to join the queue. She had Kelly to connect with too. And as for Suzy . . .

  Henry was sitting at the table beside Cassie, his hand over hers and Velvet on his knee. Edie and Hattie were sitting on the other side, with Suzy and Archie at opposing ends of the table, Suzy surreptitiously letting Rollo sit in her lap and thinking no one could see as she stroked him. Anouk and Kelly were supposedly busy tidying away the dirty dishes, but they had been wiping the same spot of worktop for five minutes now, their eyes glued to Henry as his energy radiated around the room like a comet, bouncing off the walls. Gem was sitting on the arm of the small armchair by the window, eyes closed like a basking cat’s as Bas undid her cornrows and treated her to one of his special head massages. Cassie didn’t know where Luke and Amber were, but she thought she could guess. She hoped, anyway . . .

  Henry was in full flight about the travesty that was the trip, things really coming to a head when Henry had caught Beau tossing his beer cans overboard. ‘The whole thing was just a beard. He never gave a toss about pollution in the oceans; his old man had disinherited him till he did something “worthwhile” and “gave something back”,’ Henry said, shaking his head. ‘Bringing me in – the pro-explorer – at the last minute, gave it all the whiff of respectability. Did you know he even tried to get off at the Solomon Islands when we stopped to get more water and supplies, saying he’d catch us up in Hawaii!’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Archie muttered. ‘What a pillock.’

  ‘You’d have killed him, Arch. I honestly think you would.’

  Archie drew himself up and puffed his chest out a little ‘Probably, mate,’ he nodded earnestly. ‘But that’s enough about him. What about the typhoon? You must have been bricking it, weren’t you? What happened to the boat?’

  Henry looked puzzled. ‘Mate, what are you talking about?’

  ‘The big, wet, windy thing that tossed you about four days ago?’ Archie prompted with a laugh.

  Henry laughed too, but he still looked confused. ‘Well, yeah, but . . . I’d already left the boat by then. You know that.’

  ‘We didn’t know that.’ There was a long silence. ‘How would we have known that?’ Suzy asked.

  ‘Because Beau spoke to Inmarsat and got them to email you saying I was coming back. I heard him doing it myself. For all his uselessness, he did do that.’ Henry looked around at the faces intent on him, their most hysterical reaction to his homecoming seeming disproportionate now that he thought about it. ‘Are you saying you didn’t get the message? You thought I . . .?’ His eyes fell to Hats, Suzy, Cass – their darkly shadowed eyes his silent answer.

  Archie looked uncharacteristically stern. ‘So when was this?’ he frowned.

  Henry thought. ‘What’s it now? Saturday? Wednesday, then. We’d docked at the Marshall Islands because we’d been warned the typhoon was coming, and that’s when I told Beau I wasn’t getting back on board. The whole thing was a farce. I didn’t want my name attached to it. I just got the next flight back to San Fran and then back here.’

  ‘But we never got any email, did we, Arch?’ Suzy said, reiterating the point.

  Archie shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. No gadgets down here. I’m de-stressing, doctor’s orders. No emails.’

  ‘But hang on!’ said Suzy suddenly, remembering the very thing Cassie had been meaning – and persistently forgetting – to ask Arch herself. ‘Henry’s list. You got that from the little internet cafe in the back of the village store.’

  Henry looked surprised. ‘Are they doing Wi-Fi up there now?’

  Cassie watched the panic rise in Archie’s face. She knew as well as he did that there was no internet cafe in the village store.

  ‘Uh . . .’ Archie stammered.

  ‘Did you get my emails?’ Henry asked Cassie, leaning in to her.

  Plural? Cassie’s stomach lurched as she shook her head. ‘Why? How many did you send?’

  ‘Every other day . . . ?’ He frowned, his expression darkening. ‘Inmarsat were supposed to be forwarding everything on.’

  ‘Well, Arch has been checking in at the store every other day to get our personal emails and there was never anything, and certainly nothing that suggested you were disembarking, was there?’ Suzy asked her husband.

  He shook his head vehemently. That, at least, wasn’t a lie. ‘Absolutely not. God knows, it would have saved us all a lot of heartache if we had known.’ He squeezed Suzy’s hand tightly, reaching over to kiss her cheek.

  ‘Christ, I can’t believe you all thought I was caught up in that typhoon. If I’d had any idea . . .’ he murmured, pulling Cassie closer to him and kissing the top of her head. ‘But I don’t understand it. I heard Cooper do it. There’s no way Inmarsat wouldn’t have forwarded the information. All hell will break loose when I report this back.’ Henry’s eyes were distant, his mouth set in a flat line.

  He didn’t notice that Cassie was stiff in his arms. She thought she might understand it. An ugly truth was beginning to form in her mind: ‘Beau was doing a favour for a friend ...’ Cassie had thought Amy was referring to Henry, giving him a job when he was on his uppers; but what if that friend had been someone else entirely, someone who would benefit from having Henry out of the picture for a while? Someone she knew from personal experience had a souped-up laptop with super-boosted Wi-Fi . . . someone who wouldn’t want her to hear from her fiancé and might benefit from destabilizing them further?

  She placed her hand across her mouth as a wave of nausea rose up inside her. Luke had planned it all from the start. There had been nothing ‘fated’ about their reunion after all; he had played her, manipulated her. She had been a damned fool to think he could ever change. Part of her wanted to think the best of him, to think he couldn’t possibly have wilfully kept something like this from her, from them all.

  But instinct told her he had. He had known Henry was on his way back; he’d realized he had only a tiny window of opportunity and he’d taken it. And when the news of the typhoon had come through on the news the next day, he’d chosen to keep quiet, to let them all suffer and weep as he held his nerve, trusting she would get back before Henry, that
he’d snatch her away with hours to spare.

  ‘Are you OK, Cass?’

  She turned to find Henry’s eyes upon her, concerned, attentive.

  ‘Too much sausage, darling?’ Edie asked, handing over a napkin.

  ‘Or is it the nausea?’ Henry winked, his tone instantly more playful as he picked up her hand and kissed the back of it tenderly.

  She gave a wan smile. ‘Just too much high emotion, that’s all. I haven’t slept properly either.’

  ‘I guess it’s to be expected?’ He squeezed her fingers, his eyes bright, that dazzling smile plastered all over his weather-beaten, handsome face.

  She smiled back at him, perplexed as she sensed he was talking in riddles.

  ‘Is there . . . something you’re trying to tell me?’ she asked.

  ‘The other way round, more like,’ he grinned, leaning in to kiss her on the lips.

  She shook her head, aware of a murmur rustling around the table. ‘Huh? Sorry, you’ve lost me.’

  He swallowed, his eyes burning with emotion. ‘The baby?’

  ‘What?’ she echoed, thunderstruck.

  ‘We’re having a baby!’ he laughed.

  ‘We are?’ she asked in astonishment.

  ‘Oh, darling!’ Edie shrieked, jumping up and almost sending the teapot flying.

  ‘Oh good God!’ Hattie cried at the same time, both women throwing their arms round each other and spontaneously bursting into tears. ‘Happy dance, Edes! We’re going to be grandmothers!’

  Everybody laughed, Henry louder than everyone else. ‘Well, you’re supposed to be the first to know, darling, not the . . . not the . . .’ His smile disappeared as he registered her blank expression. ‘Wait, are you saying we’re not having a baby?’

  Cassie blinked, horrified and stunned. What was going on? ‘Henry, what on earth made you ever think we were?’ she asked.