Christmas at Tiffany's (59 page)

‘Not the estate, no. I had to sign a pre-nup, and I’m very happy to receive what it states. It’ll be more than enough for me to start up somewhere.’

‘So what’s the problem then?’

‘Gil won’t back down on the reasons. He doesn’t want it to cite his “unreasonable behaviour”. He wants it to be “irreconcilable differences”.’

‘What! Are you bloody kidding? He does what he did to you and then refuses to admit what he’s done?’ Henry had gone red in the cheeks and his jaw twitched angrily.

‘It’s fine – really, Henry. I’ll sort it out. My lawyer’s on the case.’

‘Oh, I’m sure! And meanwhile it’s costing you three times what it should, all because he doesn’t want it written down in black and white for the world to see.’

Cassie sighed and looked down at the sifter in the brown paper bag. She understood why her friends got so agitated about this. Kelly, Suzy and Anouk had all reacted in the same way. But they didn’t seem to see that their reactions upset
her
even more.

‘Unless . . .’

She looked back at him. ‘Unless what?’

‘Unless he’s just using that as an excuse.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe it’s the ideal stalling tactic. He knows you’re not driven by money, but that you do have a strong sense of justice. Maybe he’s using it as an excuse to stop the divorce going through.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Why not? Have you spoken to him? Have you seen him since that night?’

‘Well, no. I . . . There’s nothing to say.’

‘Not for you, maybe. But what if you read it wrong? What if he never wanted to leave you?’

Cassie fell silent. There was a strange logic to his words. She’d assumed Gil’s bullishness on this point stemmed from pride, from not wanting to sully the family’s good standing. Was Henry right? Had she left before Gil could explain? Could there be another explanation?

She swallowed hard, determined not to relent now, not after everything she’d done to get over him. And it didn’t seem likely, anyway. He and Wiz had a child together. There was nothing ambiguous about that. ‘I’ll get my lawyer to step up the pressure,’ she said finally.

Henry look unconvinced.

‘Are we going in here?’ she asked. They had stopped outside a building with a vertical blue sign and ‘Electric’ written on it in dot matrices.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a cinema?’

‘The oldest in London. And unlike any other.’

He picked up the tickets he’d reserved earlier and, having bought another bottle of wine – ‘I can have two glasses now,’ he said – they went through to the auditorium. She saw what he meant as soon as they walked in. The white walls with blood-red plaster panels and velvet curtains were familiar enough, but she hadn’t expected the wide leather armchairs with footstool and tables instead of the velour flip-up seats that made your head itch.

‘Where are we sitting?’

‘Over here.’

He led her towards the back of the theatre, beyond the back row to a nook where a couple of small sofas were nestling.

‘Cosy,’ she said approvingly.

They sat down, the lights still up. The film wasn’t due to start for another few minutes and he poured the wine. ‘If I start to snore, just jog me awake,’ she smiled, looking at her large glass before taking a sip.

‘So, have you enjoyed your London list?’ he asked, stretching his long legs out, and she felt his thigh muscles relax and rest against hers.

‘Yet again, you managed to put a twist on everything. I don’t know how you do it.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘Thank you. It’s meant the world to me.’

‘Glad to have been of assistance,’ he said.

‘But will you write it down for me?’ she asked. ‘Only I’ve kept the other ones. I reckon I’ll get them framed, ready for the day when I have a downstairs loo to call my own.’

‘Sure. I’ll do it now. You got any paper?’

‘Uh . . .’ She looked around her. ‘Oh, use that.’ She handed him a white napkin from the table.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to one day frame
that
?’

‘Well, it’s not as if the other lists were particularly illustrious. New York’s is on a piece of notepaper and Paris’s is a postcard.’

‘Okay,’ he said, sitting up. ‘Excuse me, have you got a pen?’ he asked an attendant who was showing people to their seats in the row in front. ‘Right . . . so, first one: “
Whisper a secret in St Paul’s Cathedral”.
It’s cheaper than seeing a shrink, and you can unburden yourself of any secrets that are making you unhappy.’ He looked up at her with a sardonic expression. ‘Such as your pressing and debilitating phobia about cats.’

Cassie gave an embarrassed shrug.

‘“
Two, go wild swimming at Hampstead Heath
”.’

‘Dressed in a gold swimsuit. Go on, add that,’ she ordered. ‘That was the worst bit of all.’

‘You looked like a goddess,’ he laughed. ‘They’ll be talking about you there for years – the golden mermaid in Hampstead’s sylvan glades.’ Cassie smacked his arm and he laughed even harder. ‘You did, though.’

‘“
Three: buy something vintage at Portobello Market”.
’

‘I love my sifter,’ she cooed. ‘I’ve been looking for one of those for years.’

‘“
Four: catch a classic at the Electric, and five . . .” ’
He stopped speaking but carried on writing.

‘What are you writing? What else have I got to do? I thought this was it.’

She leaned over to see what he was writing, but the lights went down and music blared from the speakers and she looked up to see the red curtain reveal the screen, which was flickering into life with the film board’s ratings certificate.

He handed her the napkin and she squinted to see what it said.

‘
Stay in London, no matter what.’

It was close to midnight by the time Henry dropped her at the door, and the combination of a nineteen-hour day, too much sun and far too much wine had had a soporific effect on her. She yawned as Henry put his key in the door.

‘Henry, you are truly exhausting to be around – but also the most fun I know,’ she smiled, resting her head against the wall.

‘Fun?’ He looked down at her, his expression intense and as inscrutable as ever. ‘You make me sound like a Butlin’s rep.’

The thought of Henry in a coloured coat dancing on stage with foam dinosaurs made her giggle lazily, as if her body was too tired to find the energy to laugh.

‘Okay, okay then – you are the most . . .
exciting,
’ she giggled, leaning in towards him teasingly. But as she did so, she saw something flash in his eyes – determination, desire, recklessness. It was a look she’d seen before, in Venice, and a current charged between them, pulling them inexorably towards each other so that she suddenly found herself in his arms, their mouths open, their bodies desperate. He rolled her against the wall, pushing up against her, pinioning her with his arms, his leg pushed between hers as they tried to push their bodies into one.

It was nothing like their first kiss ten years previously. It was the kind of kiss that stripped away inhibition and fear, the kind of kiss they’d spent all day avoiding, the kind of kiss that had spent ten years on simmer and suddenly shot past boiling point, the kind of kiss that left her panting and wet and desperate for more.

But she wasn’t going to get more. Henry suddenly let her go, just as the door opened and Suzy flung it wide.

‘Oh, it’s you two!’ she said, not appearing to notice that Cassie was holding the wall for support, her breath rapid and her lips a crushed, wet pink. ‘I thought I heard the keys in the door. What are you doing standing out here?’

There was a pause as Cassie tried to catch her breath, her cheeks flushed not with embarrassment but desire. Henry was looking at her as if he was Samson to her Delilah – shocked, weakened . . .

Suzy rolled her eyes impatiently at their silence. ‘Have I interrupted something?’

‘No!’ Cassie said quickly.

‘Fine, so are you coming in, Henry, or what? Because Archie wants to you to listen to him do his reading for the wedding. He’s got no idea what he’s saying.’

‘Uh, no,’ Henry murmured, his eyes never leaving Cassie. ‘I should go. I just wanted to . . . drop Cassie back. It’s been a long day.’

‘You’re telling me. What time did you sneak out? I was up at half six, thanks to Cupcake using my bladder as an exercise ball, and you were gone by then.’

‘Yeah, well . . . I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said, bounding down the steps, making his escape again.

Cassie watched him curl himself into the Flying Tomato like Houdini.

‘And are you going to stand out there all night too, or are you coming in?’ Suzy asked, holding the door wider.

‘Yes, yes, uh . . .’ she murmured, shuffling into the hall. She could scarcely believe what had just happened. She had just had the kiss of her life. He had literally taken her breath away, and then just taken off. He was driving back to his fiancée this very moment. How could he kiss her,
like that
, and then go back to Lacey? What was wrong with him? What was wrong with her? Why did he always end up rejecting her?

‘What were you two talking about, anyway?’ Suzy asked, watching Cassie shake her head mutely.

‘Just this and that. Not much – you know.’

Suzy hesitated. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Tired.’

‘Sure. Do you want a cuppa?’

‘No, I think I’ll just go straight to bed,’ Cassie murmured, picking up the post on the hall table and walking off towards the bedroom. ‘See you in the morning.’

‘Yes, see you,’ Suzy said, watching her go.

Suzy was distracted when Henry knocked just after ten o’clock the next day.

‘Morning!’ he beamed, kissing his sister on the cheek and loping down the hall towards the kitchen. He noticed the spare-room door – his room, Cassie’s room – was still shut. ‘Has Arch left yet? We can go over his reading now, if he likes?’ He poured them each a cup of tea from the pot that was brewing on the side.

He handed one to her, noticing for the first time how pale she looked. ‘Wassup? Hey, are you all right?’ he asked, suddenly concerned. ‘Is it Cupcake? Have things started?’

‘No. It’s not me,’ Suzy said, shaking her head. ‘It’s Cassie.’

‘Cass! What about her?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Gone? What do you mean she’s
gone
? Gone where?’ he repeated, putting his cup down on the side and rushing through to the bedroom.

The bed was made, the curtains drawn so that the sunlight was puddling in pools on the floor. He saw that some of her clothes were still draped across the back of the chair. And then he saw the note on the pillow.

‘No!’ he shouted angrily.

‘I know,’ Suzy said, pacing anxiously. ‘And she’s not picking up her mobile. I just don’t understand it. She’s spent the best part of a year avoiding any kind of contact with him. Why would she suddenly go and see him now, without any kind of notice?’

Henry didn’t reply, and Suzy narrowed her eyes at him. She knew her brother too well. ‘Henry?’

Henry slumped down on the end of the bed, recalling their conversation at the market. ‘I told her he was probably stalling because he doesn’t want to divorce her.’

‘You said
what?
’ Suzy screeched. ‘Henry! How could you?’

‘I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t bloody intend for her to go running after him. I was trying to help.’

‘How? By giving her false hope? It’ll send her straight back to square one again,’ she countered crossly. ‘This is the last bloody thing I need,’ she said rubbing her tummy. ‘Cassie falling apart again, just when she was pulling her life together.’

‘I wasn’t . . . Shit!’ He dropped his head into his hands. ‘We were just talking, and I couldn’t
understand
why he should be delaying it.
He
was the one tarting around. You’d have thought he’d be happy to simplify his life.’ He gave a shout of exasperation. ‘What a total fuck-up!’

Suzy sank on to the bed next to him. ‘It’s that all right. You’ve sent her straight back to him.’

Cassie stood in the room where her marriage had ended, waiting for her husband to appear. The housekeeper, Mrs Conway – delighted and then panicked by her surprise arrival – had sent word to the estate that she was back and Gil was to return to the house.

She stood by the desk, a stranger now in her own home. She didn’t like to sit in the chairs to wait, or to read a magazine. She just traced the tartan wallpaper with her eyes and rehearsed the various speeches she’d run over and over in her head on the train up.

But the voice – when it came – wasn’t the one she’d been expecting.

‘Cassie.’

She looked around. Wiz was standing in the doorway holding a vase of freshly cut flowers. She was wearing skinny blue jeans and a red silk camisole –
the
red silk camisole Cassie had worn in the campaign for Bebe Washington. The colour clashed slightly with her hair, and Cassie could see the white elastic strap of a very plain bra beneath. Cassie knew she’d worn it better, and that it would be improved immeasurably with a black or pink satin bra strap on show.