Christmas at Tiffany's (52 page)

‘Oh, give it up, Cass! Of course I do! What do you think Henry yawned on about while you were on your honeymoon? Drove me round the bend.’

Cassie shook her head. ‘I had no idea it was common knowledge. I mean, it was just a drunken teenage thing. You know what it’s like – drunk on a hip flask and desperate to snog someone and not be deemed totally unfanciable.’

‘Henry’s never looked unfanciable,’ Suzy muttered. ‘
He’s
got great hair.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Cassie concurred, before comprehending the veiled insult. ‘Hey! What’re you saying?’

‘No, no – you’re right. You give good hair too.’

Cassie chuckled lightly.

‘I have to say, though, I never thought I’d see the day my brother became the condemned man. He just didn’t seem the type. He was always so restless.’

‘Condemned?’

Suzy rolled her eyes. ‘Now that he’s a few months off getting married.’

Cassie gawped at her. ‘But . . . I thought the wedding was off?’

Suzy gave her a quizzical look. ‘No. What on earth made you think that?’

‘He told me. Henry did. Horse’s mouth.’

‘Oh, classic Henry wind-up. Can’t believe you fell for it. Honestly, Cass, how long have you known him?’ she laughed, shaking her head.

‘Ugh, he’s incorrigible!’ Cassie exclaimed, diving back under the duvet again. ‘I’m
always
falling for his tricks.’

‘Come on,’ Suzy said, getting up and patting her prone form beneath the duvet. ‘Cuppa downstairs when you’re ready.’

Cassie grunted, but her thoughts had already flown far away. She was remembering something she’d been determined to forget – lying in bed in Venice, in that golden window of time after his drunken revelation and a few hours before Claude’s death had broken upon her. He’d been fast asleep, his lips ruby red and parted, his heavy, honeyed arm slung over her like a strap. She’d watched him sleep for almost an hour, too scared to move lest he should wake, and then . . . well, what then? She hadn’t known what to think, dare to hope . . .

It was all irrelevant. Whatever fanciful daydreams she might have allowed to peek through in the Venetian dawn were dead in the water now. She’d been too scared to stay and had made her escape downstairs as soon as he’d turned over. And now that he and Lacey were getting married after all, it looked like he’d made his.

In contrast to Anouk’s, which was sleek and minimal, and Kelly’s, which was so minimal it wasn’t even there, Suzy’s kitchen was as chaotic as a teenager’s wardrobe. Everything was towered in perilous stacks – white cups that sagged forward like old women, mismatched plates from great aunts and charity shops – and the warped wooden worktop looked like it had been mined from the Tudor Rose.

Cassie sat up on it, still in her pyjamas. She hadn’t changed out of them since arriving from Paris. They comforted her, even if Suzy was beginning to wrinkle her nose and look around suspiciously for dead mice whenever she walked in the room.

Suzy was sitting at the enormous farmhouse kitchen table, Mothercare and JoJo Maman Bébé catalogues at one end with Post-its fluttering from the pages. All around there were ring-bound folders full of other people’s weddings, other people’s happiness.

‘So . . . this week’s bride. Do we like her?’ Cassie asked, wrapping her cold hands around the mug. She wasn’t eating enough to keep warm.

‘Hate her!’ Suzy said vehemently, sloshing tea all over her paperwork. ‘As soon as she’s paid me, I forbid you to even so much as smile at her.’

‘Okay.’ She waited for the dramatics to be revealed.

‘Her theme is “Outback”, right? Groom’s an Aussie.
I
said, “Let’s take a cricketing angle” – famous link between the two countries, no? And I can see the best men in cricket jumpers, can’t you?’

‘Totally!’ Cassie agreed.

‘Just think, you could have the bride’s party as fielders; groom’s as batsmen; red and ivory colour scheme. And they’re getting married in St John’s Wood, for heaven’s sake – Lord’s country. Lovely.’

‘Lovely.’

‘Does she think lovely? She does not! She wants Crocodile Dundee, gold and green.’

Cassie waggled her head from side to side, considering the colours. ‘Not a
disaster
for a spring wedding. Bridesmaids and flowers should work, no?’

‘Aside from the fact that I hate anything gold at a wedding, in theory, yes, it should. But it’s got to be
Australian
gold, see? Any old yellow tulip won’t do. I’m having to colour-match marquee ribbons and buttonholes to some manky old rugby shirt I’m carrying around in my bag.’

‘Dead glamorous, your job,’ Cassie giggled as Suzy opened another file. She looked around the kitchen-office. Cuttings from magazines showing dress necklines and hairstyles were pinned to a noticeboard; swatches of fabrics for tablecloths and napkins were overspilling from the drawers of a dresser, and at least twelve different styles of wine glass were stacked on a slightly off-plumb shelf. It was mad to think that there’d be a high chair by the table and a bottle sterilizer by the sink in a couple of months’ time – and of course a cherub of a baby gurgling in a bouncy chair amidst it all.

Cassie had fallen in love with the little mews on sight, albeit through tears. It was her idea of a proper home – messy, noisy and full to bursting with the full-to-bursting lives of the people who inhabited it. Unlike her life – transient, rootless, undefined, lost again. She hadn’t even been able to consider what she was going to do now that she’d left Paris and turned her back on the opportunities at both Dior and C.A.C. All she’d known was that she couldn’t stay. She’d thought it was where her future lay, but too much had gone wrong, soured. Claude was dead and one of her oldest friends in the world had been revealed as a stranger to her. There’d been nothing to stay for.

‘I don’t suppose . . . Henry left anything here for me, did he?’ she ventured. She hated herself for asking. She’d been adamant that she’d wean herself off his influence.

‘Like what?’ Suzy replied without looking up. She was scribbling some notes down in a book.

‘I dunno. A list? Or . . . a packet of seeds maybe?’

Suzy looked up at her. ‘You mean more camomile?’

‘Yes, like that – except not. He changes it each time.’

‘Different herb, different city?’ she said, amused.

Cassie rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t think the last one was a herb, actually. It had tiny pink flowers – you know, kind of spriggy.’

Suzy shook her head. ‘My God, my brother’s rock ’n‘ roll! Live fast and die young, that one.’

‘So no ideas what it could be?’

‘Afraid not,’ Suzy said.

‘You are
so
not your mother’s daughter.’

Suzy put down her pencil to rub her tummy. ‘Nope. But I sure am Cupcake’s punching bag,’ she smiled. ‘Ooooh, feisty today.’ She rifled through a stack of books on the floor which was so high it was acting as a fifth table leg. She grabbed one, a thick hardback volume, and pushed it towards Cassie. ‘Here. Have a look in there.’

Cassie hopped off the worktop and picked it up. It was an encyclopaedia of flowers. She thumbed through it slowly, getting more and more confused. There seemed to be hundreds of pictures of pink spriggy plants.

‘Does the world really need this many identical plants?’ she muttered, before stabbing the page suddenly. ‘Oh! That could be it.’

Suzy looked up and read the words upside down. ‘Sweet Alyssum. Huh.’

‘Heard of it?’ Cassie asked hopefully.

‘Nope.’ She went back to her writing.

‘Hmmm. Well, I’m pretty sure that’s the one.’

‘Yeah? And what’s the point of that plant, then?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Cassie sighed. ‘I just don’t know why he sent them to me. Can’t you ask him for me? He won’t tell. I mean, the lists are just guides to new cities, but – what’s the link between New York and camomile, or Paris and Sweet Alyssum?’

Suzy scrunched her face up in concentration. ‘Maybe he . . . knew you wouldn’t be able to get a decent cuppa at Kelly’s . . . and that . . .’ She slumped her shoulders down. ‘No, I don’t know. I can’t make any connection. Sorry.’

‘Bizarre. And there’s no list or seeds here?’

‘Well, I suppose you
had
said you weren’t coming . . .’

Cassie narrowed her eyes. ‘I
knew
I was imposing on you. I’m in the way, a burden—’

‘Oh, be quiet! You’re not a burden, you silly moo. I’m delighted you’re here. Completely thrilled. It was what I wanted all along.’ She gave a wicked grin. ‘Because now it means it’s my turn to play with the Cassie doll.’

Cassie looked back at her nervously. ‘Come again?’

‘Go get dressed.’

‘No. I’m not—’

‘Get dressed! We’re going out.’ She got up slowly from the chair, moving like a stately galleon in full sail.

‘But where are we going? What are we going to do?’

Suzy patted her arm. ‘Oh, I think you know!’ she winked.

Cassie eyed herself suspiciously in the chair as the hairdresser performed acrobatics behind her with the mirror to show that – yes – look! – she really was blonde all over again. It wasn’t a trick of the light.

‘What do you think, Suze?’ she asked anxiously, whirling round in the chair as she pulled off the gown. She’d lost all perspective about what she was even
supposed
to look like any more.

Suzy looked up, and, for just a second, Cassie noticed how tired her friend looked. She made light of her workload and her clients’ neuroses, but Cassie knew Suzy fell over herself to deliver exactly the wedding they wanted. No request was too obscure for her to deliver on, no matter what she might have to do to make it happen, heavily pregnant or not.

‘Oh, Cass! You’re you again!’ Suzy exclaimed happily.

Cassie looked back at the mirror, her hands patting her head hesitantly. ‘Yes. I think I might be.’

They admired her familiar reflection. There had been no chopping this time. The stylized bob from Paris was growing out into a flattering mid-length cut that she really liked, and, more importantly, didn’t have to think about. Surprisingly, Suzy had been with her on that one. ‘There are enough things to think about without adding hair to the list,’ she’d said dismissively whilst texting a soothing assurance to her current bride that the colours of the dessert mangoes had been cross-matched with the napkins and approved.

‘Of course, you realize Kelly’s going to kill me now,’ Suzy said, pressing ‘send’. ‘She’s ordered the taupe bridesmaid dress because you told her you’d be brunette.’

‘But that was when I was intending to stay in Paris.’

‘Yeah, and who can keep up? She’s going to need to go for butterscotch now.
You
tell her.’

‘I’ll Skype her tonight. She can see for herself. She’ll probably be pleased anyway,’ she said, bouncing her hair up with her hands. ‘Back to Manhattan Cassie.’

Suzy stood up and squinted at her reflection. ‘That’s not Manhattan Cassie,’ she drawled, resting her head on Cassie’s shoulder. Cassie squinted too. Suzy was right. Manhattan Cassie’s hair had been a sunny, buttery colour. It had been a high-maintenance Disney princess look that Bas had lovingly tended on a round-the-clock basis and which Luke had fallen for, hook, line and sinker. This dye-job was darker, less flashy. It allowed roots.

‘This is London Cassie, a bit . . . slummier,’ Suzy said, nodding. ‘I like it. Feels real.’

‘Mmm,’ Cassie said, not quite sure what to make of being called ‘slummy’ when she’d just spent two hundred quid for the pleasure. Her bag began to vibrate across the floor and she picked it up, rooting around for her mobile. She checked the caller as they walked over to the reception desk.

Anouk. Again. She let it go to voicemail.

‘So what now?’ she asked casually as she handed over her credit card. God, she needed the divorce to come through soon. She pledged to ring her solicitor for an update when she got back to the house. She was racking up a horrific overdraft.

Suzy shrugged. ‘What d’you feel like?’

‘What?’ Cassie gasped, slapping a hand above her heart in mock horror. ‘You mean you’re not going to insist I have every hair on my body waxed off? Or soak me in oil until I feel like a chip? Or have my fat bits hoovered up?’

Suzy gave a squeamish look. ‘Why on earth would I do any of that?’ she asked, opening the door and walking out into the Pimlico sunshine. Cassie had scarcely recognized the place when the taxi had dropped her off from Waterloo. The last time she’d been in Pimlico – nearly eleven years ago – it had been a ghetto of dry-cleaners and tailors. Now, antiques boutiques, interiors shops, upscale organic markets and chichi delis littered the pavements, and it could rival St Tropez for café culture.

Cassie decided to bite her lip rather than spill the beans on what their friends did in the name of beauty. She thought they were crackers, both of them, but they had shared these in-the-know rituals with her as favoured intimacies, and it would be a breach of their trust to publicly satirize them. ‘God, listen to yourself,’ a voice in her head jeered. ‘You won’t even breach someone’s trust over a
beauty procedure
. Little wonder you’re such easy pickings.’