Christmas at Tiffany's (58 page)

‘Hey, did you manage to release the padlock?’ he asked, leaning over her shoulder to see if the charm was there. She was vividly aware of his lips just inches from her neck.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. She still played with the necklace absent-mindedly when she was reading or concentrating on something, but her fingers couldn’t get used to the missing padlock. ‘No. I forgot. Because of Claude.’

‘Yes. Of course,’ he said, moving back and sliding his hands down her arms. ‘Well, I expect it’s still there.’

‘I know it is. Nothing will get it off.’

‘You could still contact Tiffany’s and see if they can issue you a replacement key. Did you find out the serial number?’

Cassie shook her head.

‘Well, Anouk can always get it for you,’ he said, smiling, as he finished, and she remembered that he still didn’t know what had happened between them. ‘Come on, then.’

Cassie went to pick up the towel again.

‘Leave it!’

‘But Henry,’ she hissed. ‘I do
not
want to walk in front of everyone in this thing.’

‘We’re here for some wild swimming. Towels are not allowed.’

Cassie narrowed her eyes, but he just grabbed her hand and towed her along like a tugboat. She could feel absolutely everyone’s eyes on her.

‘Now, do your best not to swallow the water, okay?’ he said as they walked on to the floating platform.

‘You mean the water’s not
clean?
’ She looked down into the dark water.

‘Clean enough, but it’s not chlorinated or anything like that.’

‘I rather like my swimming pools chlorinated,’ she mumbled nervously. ‘Preferably with bright turquoise water and roman statues all around the sides. You know, properly fake.’

Henry chuckled.

‘Is it cold?’ she gasped. She’d been so preoccupied with the swimsuit and dark water, she’d forgotten all about heat.

Henry turned and dived in. Just like that. No preamble. No psyching himself up. Just did it.

He surfaced with a smile on his face, his hair slicked back and eyes closed. So that’s how he looks in the shower, her mind flashed. ‘Not too bad,’ he called up. ‘You try.’

Cassie bit her lip and stood at the side, looking down into the depths. She couldn’t see the bottom. She shook her head. ‘I . . . I don’t think so.’

She looked back at Henry and found him staring at her, his eyes walking up and down her body with blatant masculine interest, and she was so panicked that she jumped in too. Just like that. No preamble. No psyching herself up. She needed to hide and she hadn’t brought the towel. When she broke the surface, though, she was gasping with shock from the cold and all thoughts of what had made her jump in fled. It was
freezing
.

‘Oh. My. God,’ she chattered, treading water as Henry swam around her.

‘The only way to warm up is to move,’ he called over. ‘Come on.’

He set off, his powerful arms like rotary blades cutting through the water. She swam in his slipstream and quickly realized she was easily able to keep up for once. It was years since she’d last swum, but she’d been in the swimming club at school and had a natural style that made the years fall away. She quickly found her rhythm, synchronizing her breathing with her arms, and crossed the water effortlessly, happily.

Within a few minutes, she couldn’t care about the temperature or the fact that she couldn’t see the bottom – a growing exhilaration built within her as she swam nearer to the banks, beneath the willow trees that dipped their tendrils into the water, and near the reeds. Then she turned and swam in the opposite direction, out of Henry’s wake now, lost in the moment and her own body’s rhythm. She liked the peace that came from controlling her breath, the heat that came from pushing herself, and she wondered why she hadn’t come back to swimming sooner. Possibly because Gil couldn’t swim, she supposed.

After a while, without particularly noticing where she was in the pool, she turned on to her back and just floated, forgetting everything – even Henry. She let the other bathers’ exertions in the water rock her gently, and she basked in the sunlight, unaware of the way it caught her costume as she bobbed along.

‘You never told me you were a mermaid,’ Henry said quietly, and she opened her eyes to find him floating next to her.

‘You don’t know everything about me,’ she replied enigmatically.

‘Clearly not,’ he said, staring at her, and she remembered how his eyes had scoured her when she’d been standing on the side. She stared up at the sky, watching the clouds drift, aware of a change in the atmospheric pressure between them. There was a subtext to their words, questions in their eyes. She was beginning to wonder whether he hadn’t forgotten Venice after all, whether what
hadn’t
happened had stayed with him as it had with her. And yet neither of them said anything. He was engaged to be married, and only a missed whisper testified to the ambiguity of their friendship.

‘You’re a natural. Some people really don’t take to wild swimming,’ he said after a while, and she could tell that he too was staring up at the clouds now.

‘I didn’t think I would. I’ll never forget the time I was swimming in a river when I was about nine and a snake skimmed past me.’

‘I can see how that could put you off,’ he conceded.

‘I’m loving this, though. I think I could definitely do this again.’

‘I know some great ponds further up the Thames in Berkshire that would blow your mind.’

‘Well, I’m game for that. We could take a picnic and see if Suzy and Arch want to come too. And Lacey too, of course,’ she added hurriedly.

‘Yes.’

An older woman in a sturdy turquoise costume and pink swimming hat with rubber flowers glided past doing a majestic breaststroke and gave Cassie a sniffy up-and-down with her eyes as she passed, and Cassie realized that, as she floated on her back, her golden breasts rose out of the water like queenly treasures. So much for hiding in the water.

She ducked her legs down so that she was treading water again. Henry looked across at her.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, his voice deep and relaxed.

‘Racing you to the bank,’ she replied, and set off in a sleek crawl.

‘Hey!’

He raced after her, but her refined technique meant he couldn’t close the gap between them and she kept her lead. She wanted to giggle with delight, but she kept her composure and sliced through the water. She was just about to put a hand to the steps when she felt his fingers close round her foot and drag her backwards through the water towards him so that she slammed against his chest.

She could feel his heart hammering behind her.

‘That’s not fair,’ he panted in her ear. His breath felt warm against her neck. ‘You had a head start.’

‘Maybe,’ she said breathlessly, ‘but you’ve got a height advantage.’

Stretching past her from behind, he had one hand on the handrail of the step, and one arm clasped round her stomach, which was practically bare. She suddenly grew very aware of her body’s movement against him. She felt his fingers spread against her skin slightly, and her muscles tensed beneath them. She was just wondering how it was possible to feel so hot under water when a yell alerted them to a teenage boy running down the platform, closely followed by four others, and then he made a flying leap and did a bomb entry into the water.

‘Time to get out,’ Henry muttered, releasing her.

She climbed the stairs as quickly as possible, horribly aware that he was probably staring at her bottom, and that the teenage boys had stopped their charge down the ramp and were noticing her barely-there costume.

‘You have some not-so-secret admirers,’ Henry said, nodding towards them as she clutched her arms across her chest, as much to hide herself as to keep warm.

She got back to the rug as quickly as possible, almost diving under the cover of the towel again, whilst Henry just stretched out and air-dried in the sun. He closed his eyes and was asleep within moments, just like he had been that night in Venice.

She watched him for a bit, nervously, worried he’d suddenly open his eyes and catch her out, but he was properly asleep. She gazed at the slow rise and fall of his chest, remembering how it had felt pressed to her back in the water, at the way he slept with his palms up, his body language utterly open.

Life felt so easy and charmed and golden with him, somehow. To hell with it! She threw off her towel and lay down next to him in the ridiculous costume. She closed her eyes as the sun pounced on her like one of its golden maidens, and felt herself finally succumb to the other thing she’d been resisting all day – sleep.

It was mid-afternoon when they woke, and she was immediately grateful for the sun lotion Henry had insisted upon slathering on. The pond was absolutely jam-packed now, with hardly a patch of grass free and scarcely a cubic inch of water either.

‘We’ll get going after we’ve had lunch,’ Henry said, opening the hamper and passing over one of the distinctive vintage china plates Suzy had been collecting for years and some mismatched silver cutlery. He handed her a small wine glass and poured some red wine from a half-bottle.

‘Aren’t you having any?’

‘Can’t. I’m driving,’ he said.

Then he opened a parcel wrapped in greaseproof paper and string and took out some rare fillet of beef, pre-sliced, a small waxed cardboard box of potato salad (wrapped in what appeared to be vintage wallpaper) and a cloth-covered jam jar filled with beautifully pink beetroot horseradish.

‘Are you serious?’ Cassie gasped as the chic little picnic was revealed. ‘Whatever happened to soggy sandwiches and a Twix?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t pretend to have made it myself,’ he admitted.

‘Don’t tell me – you’ve got a friend . . .’

‘Yeah, Zara. We were at university together.’

‘For which ology?’ Cassie teased.

Henry grinned. ‘She’s just set up a vintage catering company, so I asked her to do this hamper for us. She left it in the car at about five this morning, on her way to Wimbledon.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured, taking in the lovingly prepared spread. She looked up at him. ‘It never ceases to amaze me what people can do with food. I mean . . .’ She held up the jar of horseradish . . . ‘This just makes me so
happy.
Crazy, right? To be made happy by a sauce.’

‘Not in the least,’ Henry replied, watching her. ‘Zara would be delighted to see your response. She could have just packed it all in Tupperware with paper plates and plastic cutlery, but she’s got a bit of style, a sense of ceremony about things. I think you’d like her.’

‘I
know
I would,’ Cassie said, cutting the beef. It was cooked to perfection.

They ate happily, ignoring the covetous glances of their neighbours stuck with packets of crisps, and then packed up to get ready for the ‘final leg of the list’, as Henry called it.

The Flying Tomato – his name for the car – stayed north, taking them past high stuccoed townhouses, through Regent’s Park and across the top of Hyde Park before finding a tiny parking space that only a classic Mini, motorbike or cat could have fitted into.

They were in Notting Hill now. She’d been here several times before, meeting prospective brides with Suzy, but had only ever passed through. They ambled lazily down the Portobello Road. The wine, sleep and sun (not to mention climbing all those stairs and the wild swimming) had left her deeply relaxed. She was in her element, talking first to one stallholder, then another. Henry tagged along, thoroughly bemused.

‘You’re not a department-store shopper, are you?’ he asked as she deliberated over a vintage flour sifter, even though she had no kitchen of her own.

‘Nope. I’ve not set foot in a supermarket since cooking with Claude. I think it’s really important to support independent enterprises. I’ll take it, thanks,’ she said to the stallholder, handing over the cash.

‘Mmmm,’ Henry hummed thoughtfully, as they started walking again.

‘What?’ she asked, her curiosity piqued by his tone.

‘Well, I just wonder whether it would be worth you meeting up with Zara.’

‘Your vintage catering friend? Sure, I’d love to.’

‘No, I don’t just mean as a social thing.’ He stopped walking and looked down at her. ‘She needs someone to come in on the business with her. It’s too much for her to cope with on her own, and you’d be perfect.’

Cassie’s eyes widened. It would be a dream opportunity! And a lot more realistic than the one Claude had proposed for her. Catering for picnics – albeit fine ones – was much more within her capabilities. At least to begin with.

‘Oh, but I don’t . . . well, I can’t bring any financial investment. At least, not
yet
. And she’d need that, wouldn’t she?’

Henry shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. She only mentioned it to me the day before yesterday when I placed the order.’ He narrowed his eyes slightly. ‘What about the divorce settlement?’

Cassie looked away. ‘Oh . . . it’s not finalized yet.’

‘What? Ten months later? I thought you weren’t contesting anything?’