Summer at Tiffany's (34 page)

‘Can you get a Wi-Fi signal down here?'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you got a laptop?'

‘Of course. What's going on?'

‘I need to borrow it, your laptop.'

He tipped his head down, trying to get her to slow down. ‘Cass, slow down. What's wrong?'

‘I don't have time to explain. I'll tell you everything after, but can you please just help?'

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Come on, then.'

They jogged through Snapdragons's garden – so much smaller than Butterbox's, but more densely stocked with foxgloves and delphiniums – Luke propping the surfboard against the wall by the back door and letting them both in to the house.

It was quiet in there, and dark. The primrose cotton curtains had been left drawn in the sitting room – ‘to keep the room cool' – and Luke ran silently and swiftly upstairs to get his laptop from the bedroom.

‘Amber's still sleeping,' he said quietly, one finger raised to his lips, as he came back down again moments later. He handed it over to her with a questioning look.

Amber was still sleeping? It was almost eleven o'clock, but Cassie didn't have time to care. She took the computer from him and opened it hurriedly on the pine kitchen table, clicking cluelessly on various icons on the desktop. It went to email.

‘Uh, Cass, if you could just tell me what it is you need, I can get it for you,' Luke said quickly, angling the laptop away from her. ‘Is it about Henry? Has something happened?'

‘
Henry?
' Cassie echoed sharply, before catching herself and giving an apologetic sigh. ‘No. It's Kelly. And it's an emergency,' she added. ‘I need to Skype her.'

He cleared his throat, quickly typing on the keyboard before turning the laptop back towards her again. ‘Be my guest. But it'll drive you nuts – I'm warning you now. There's not enough bandwidth for video.'

‘But you said you had Wi-Fi!'

‘And I do. But you need more for video. Certainly more than you can get here.'

Cassie slapped a hand to her forehead. It wasn't enough just to talk to Kelly. She had to see her, scrutinize her. She couldn't necessarily rely on her friend to tell the full truth at a moment like this. Kelly was a master of disguising her emotions. ‘I'm fine', coming from her, covered everything from bored to breaking point. ‘I need to see her. It's really important, Luke.'

His eyes examined her with his expert appraisal, taking in her rising panic. ‘Then you need to go to Rock. That's where I've been chatting with my agent most days. They've got a good connection in the cafe in the deli. Decent coffee too. You know it?'

She shook her head. Suzy had been doing all the deli trips, enjoying being able to push Velvet along the pavements in her pushchair. ‘But I'm sure I can find it,' she said quickly, straightening up. Rock wasn't a big place. How long would it take to cycle there? Some of it was uphill. Ten minutes? Maybe slightly more?

Dammit. Why was everything so slow down here? It had been twenty minutes, already, since she'd got the text and Kelly had potentially been missing all night.

‘Luke? Baby, is that you?' Amber's voice – croaky with sleep – drifted down the stairs.

Luke's eyes met Cassie's, the room seeming to become smaller somehow.

‘Come on, I'll drive you,' he whispered after a moment, lifting the laptop off the table and grabbing the keys to the Jeep. And together, as silent as thieves and feeling just as guilty, they crept from the house.

The screen stayed white until the fourth ring.

‘Oh, hey, Cass,' Kelly said, a note of drowsy surprise in her sleep-addled voice as she tossed her hair off her shoulder. ‘How's it going?' She frowned. ‘What time is it?'

‘How's it going?' Cassie echoed in a shrieking whisper. ‘Kell! I just picked up a text from Brett telling me you'd gone missing! How do you think I'm going?'

‘Oh.' There was a long pause as Kelly disappeared from the screen suddenly, and as the walls in the background changed from charcoal to Prussian blue, Cassie could tell that Kelly was getting up and walking out of the bedroom. ‘I'm sorry. He totally shot the bolt on that.' Kelly rolled her eyes as she set the laptop down on the kitchen counter and gave a big yawn. She looked pale, even though the Hamptons summer season was already in full swing.

Cassie blinked at her, her heart rate climbing even higher at this anticlimactic explanation than it had after reading the text.
He shot the bolt?
That was it?

‘Kell, I just about had a heart attack! Where were you?' she demanded, hands splayed.

Luke, who had been advancing with two coffees, caught sight of her body language and did a quick about-turn back towards the speciality pasta section.

‘The Jitney was delayed and my cell was dead. Honestly, talk about overreact. I'm so mad with him. He called, like, everyone.' She leaned in closer to the screen. ‘You see now what I mean, though?' she whispered. ‘
Way
too protective of me.'

‘But everything's still OK? The baby's . . . ?'

Kelly glanced behind her quickly, to check they were still alone. ‘Everything's
fine
, Cass.'

There it was – the word: the one Cassie had known she'd get, the one Cassie had known she'd have to see Kelly's expression to understand. She stared hard at her friend's beautiful, pale, fine-boned face. ‘But you're at nine weeks now.'

‘I know.'

‘I thought—'

‘I know,' Kelly nodded, her mouth drawing into a thin line. ‘It'll be any day now.'

Cassie sighed, the finality of the fact like a punch in the face, and slumped slightly in the seat now that her adrenalin was allowed to ebb away. ‘I just wish I could do more to help. I feel so useless being so far away from you.'

‘We have these sessions.' Kelly gave a tiny shrug and tired smile, but Cassie pulled a face – what help could they really offer?

She saw Luke glance across and, seeing her less frantic, begin to make his way over. ‘I'm so sorry I haven't called before now. There is
no
Wi-Fi. Like, none. And Suzy's banned everything electronic from the house. She's terrified Arch will start working on the sly and his stress levels will go up again.' That reminded her – she'd have to ask Arch where he'd downloaded the list.

‘That's fair enough. So where are you calling from now, then?'

‘The cafe in the deli. Lu—' Cassie stopped short. She had been
that
close to saying Luke's name, and Kelly had been closer than anyone to Luke and Cassie's relationship in New York. She wouldn't believe in their born-again friendship any more than Suzy had initially, and Cassie didn't have the energy to explain. ‘I just got lucky with a superspecced laptop.'

Kelly seemed to accept the explanation at face value. She was too sleepy to be suspicious.

‘So Archie's doing well?'

‘Better than that. We're learning to surf and he's already standing up!'

‘Jeez, is that safe?'

‘Doctor's orders – sort of.' She shrugged. ‘Let's face it, Suzy wouldn't let him anywhere near it if it wasn't safe.'

‘True. But whose idea was it to try surfing? The temperatures in the Atlantic our side are enough to give you a heart attack.'

‘Henry's, actually.'

Kelly looked astonished. ‘Is Henry there?'

‘Ha! I wish. In spirit only. He's written me a list.'

‘Oh, of course he has!' Kelly laughed lightly, scratching her head with red manicured fingers. ‘So what have you got to do this time?'

‘Well, the night before last he had me rowing the Camel estuary in, like,
a storm
, with a bunch of strangers.' Well, it had been windy . . .

Kelly shook her head. ‘You're crazy. I don't know why you go along with it.'

‘You try saying no to him.'

‘Well, we all know
you
can't!' Kelly quipped, with a dirty laugh.

Luke had reached the table and was standing on the other side, out of sight of the laptop. Cassie hoped he hadn't overheard.

‘Here,' he murmured, putting down her coffee.

‘Thanks,' she said quietly, her eyes flicking up to his briefly.

‘Who's that?' Kelly asked.

‘No one,' she said quickly.

‘Well, it had to be someone.'

‘I mean, it was just the . . . you know, the guy behind the counter.'

‘Oh.' Kelly yawned again. ‘Listen, it's still dawn here and I'm wiped. I better get back to bed before Brett realizes I'm not there and sends out another search party.' She gave an ironic wink.

‘Sure. Listen, I'll try calling you tomorrow, OK? And call me if there's anything in the meantime.
Anything
at all. Now that I know about this place, I can get over here in a few minutes and we can talk face to face.'

‘Sure thing. And remember to let me know about meeting up next week,' Kelly smiled, blowing her a kiss and quickly disconnecting before Cassie even had a chance to push back that there was a chance Kelly could still be pregnant next week and therefore wouldn't fly.

‘The guy behind the counter?' Luke asked with a wry smile as he sat down at the table too, forcing her to slide along the bench.

‘Well, what else was I going to say? I couldn't very well tell her it was you.'

‘Why not? Aren't we allowed to speak to each other anymore?'

She tutted. ‘You know what I mean.'

He was quiet for a moment. ‘Yeah.'

They sipped their coffees for a while, watching as a young mother walked in with her mini-me twin eight-year old girls in tow, all three of them wearing navy-and-red Breton-striped dresses.

‘So, everything all OK now?' he asked.

‘Yes, emergency diverted.' She gave him a grateful smile. ‘Thanks for your help.'

‘No problem. Although you gotta tell me what the emergency was. You did promise.'

She sighed. It was true, she had. ‘Brett texted me last night saying Kelly hadn't come home. He was worried about her.'

Luke stared at her. ‘And . . . ?' he prompted.

‘And the Jitney was late,' she shrugged.

Luke exhaled incredulously. ‘You're telling me that you and him both had a massive freak-out because the bus was late getting back from the Hamptons?'

‘It's not that simple. I thought something had happened to her. I had good reason to believe that—' She stopped mid-flow, realizing she had said too much.

‘Go on.'

She blinked back at him. She'd promised not to tell. ‘It's nothing.'

‘Cass, you wouldn't have come looking for
my
help if you could have possibly helped it—'

She blushed wildly, mortified that he'd read her awkwardness around him so accurately. His eyes – hazel brown and as steady as an eagle's – held hers and for a moment it was like time warped. They were no longer sitting in a cafe on the north coast of Cornwall – alternately polite and scratchy with each other, unable to establish a safety zone – but in a bar in Manhattan, his hand on her thigh and his lips by her ear as he whispered all the things he was going to do to her that night.

‘What did you think had happened to her? Who am I gonna tell, huh?'

‘She's pregnant.' The words came from her like they'd been pulled on strings.

Luke blinked, breaking the spell. ‘Well, that's great.'

‘No, not great. It's her fourth pregnancy in a year. She can't carry past nine weeks. And this is nine weeks.'

‘Oh shit.'

‘Yes, exactly.'

‘But she's OK?'

‘For now.' She took another sip of her coffee, looking away and making a mental note to avoid further eye contact.

‘No wonder Brett was freaking.'

She looked back at him again. ‘No, he doesn't know. I'm the only one. She's not telling him till she gets the all-clear at twelve weeks. She says it isn't fair to make him go through it all again.'

‘But it's OK for her to go through it?' Luke asked, incredulously.

‘I know! That's just what I said!' Cassie exclaimed, feeling vindicated. ‘Her view is, there's no choice for her, but there is for Brett. She thinks she's being kind. Crazy, right?'

‘Totally,' Luke agreed, his eyes holding hers again and spinning them both back to another time, another place.

‘Well, that really does explain why you were so demented to get hold of her,' he said finally, looking away first.

‘I wasn't
demented
,' she retorted with mock indignation. ‘I was a concerned friend.'

His eyes glittered with amusement. ‘Demented.'

‘Concerned.'

‘Demented.'

An exasperated smile tugged free from her and she joshed him in the ribs with her elbow, making him laugh. ‘Concerned.'

‘And how, pray tell, are you paying for this?' Suzy asked, rooted to the spot in the entrance to the yurt, Cassie and Amber clustered by her shoulders as Gem walked around the ‘living space' – a hexagonal area with a kilim rug and wood-burning stove – her arms outstretched and face turned to the sky. The four futon beds were arranged in a fan-shape around the edges of the rug, coloured Moroccan pendants with tea lights inside hanging down low from the ceiling trusses.

‘I've put it on my credit card,' Gem shrugged lightly. ‘No biggie.'

‘Hang on. You told me you put your flights back from Oz on your cards too. And the cost of your homecoming party. How much credit do you have, exactly? And more to the point, how are you going to pay it back?' Suzy asked bossily, finally walking into the room and throwing her rucksack down on the middle left bed. ‘You do understand about interest rates, don't you?'

Gem laughed. ‘Suze, you're such a riot!'