Summer at Tiffany's (50 page)

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 ...
'
C
assie 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.

A rush of emotions clouded Henry's fine-boned features – shock, disbelief, confusion, humiliation, anger . . . ‘Because it's in your diary!' he stormed, desperately willing her to remember, to know what he was talking about, as though it was something she could possibly have forgotten! ‘It was in red pen. “Nine weeks.” “Twelve weeks.” “Baby due.”' He counted the entries off on his fingers.

Cassie retched. No.

‘Why would you put that in your diary if it wasn't true?' he demanded.

She looked at Kelly in panic. Her friend was bone-white and holding on to the worktop for support. She looked as ill as Cassie felt.

‘W-what were you even doing with my diary?' Cassie countered, trying to buy time, to think faster.

‘I packed it in error – what do you think?! It wasn't like I had a burning desire to know your business commitments for September!'

She hid her face in her hands, wanting to hide. How had this all gone so wrong? What could she say? What possible excuse could she have for writing that a baby was due, in her own diary?

‘It's mine.' Kelly's voice was thin, as hollowed out as a piccolo as she put a voice to her secret and sent it out into the world, like a message in a bottle. ‘The due date is mine.'

Cassie stared at the table miserably, her heart breaking as she waited for Kelly to explain, to tell them all about the terrible brutality she had been subjected to by her own body over the past year. How she was carrying the burden alone, protecting the man she loved from needless suffering . . . Cassie had failed her. All she'd had to do was buy lemons, call, keep quiet.

Wait . . . Cassie's head whipped up.
Is
mine?

Kelly's eyes were already upon her, as though waiting for the realization to dawn. ‘I'm ten, nearly eleven weeks now.'

‘You mean . . .' Cassie whispered.

Kelly nodded. ‘It didn't happen. Hasn't happened
yet
, anyway. I'm still, you know . . . waiting . . .' Her voice split as Cassie pushed back her chair, throwing her arms around her. ‘Even as I got on the plane I thought . . . I was so convinced, you know? Any minute now I kept saying to myself, even as the seatbelt sign went on . . .'

‘I can't believe it,' she squealed.

‘Me neither,' Kelly half laughed, half cried into her hair.

It was only a split second later before Suzy and Anouk double-wrapped them, eight arms overlapping and intertwined like a wisteria tree, holding each other up; one particularly firm hand found Cassie's arm and squeezed it hard – maybe so hard it would bruise, but when she met Suzy's eye, it was forgiveness that she saw.

‘Look,' Kelly said, almost shyly, pulling a black-and-white scan photo from the inside pocket of her bag. ‘I know there's not much to see yet. I mean, it's more like a coffee bean than a baby, but—'

‘Oh, Kell, she's got your nose!' Suzy cooed.

‘It hasn't got a nose,' Anouk frowned, peering closer. ‘And who said it's a girl, anyway? Do you know that? Do you know that for certain?'

‘I can't believe it. I was so sure that because you were here it meant the worst had happened. I couldn't understand how you were able to act so normal! I'm so happy,' Cassie laughed as she saw Archie toss Velvet into the air, Hattie and Edie forehead to forehead, their eyes closed. But she fell still as her gaze came back to Henry. He was the only one in the room without a smile on his face, the only one in the room with desolation in his eyes.

It was the screwdriver on her pillow that was the final nail in the coffin for the prodigal homecoming. It only took Henry a moment to make the connection between Luke closing the bedroom door and Cassie desperately unscrewing the expensive-looking bangle as though it was burning her.

‘Henry, nothing happened, I swear. One kiss—'

‘You
kissed
him?'

‘It was a moment of madness,' she cried, watching as he almost bounced off the walls, red-cheeked and looking for a pillow to punch. ‘I was angry with you for pushing me. You kept on pushing when all I wanted was to hold on to what we've got now—'