Summer at Tiffany's (23 page)

‘How long has this house been in the family, did you say?' Cassie asked.

Suzy dropped the cool bags in the doorway and inhaled deeply, a smile on her face and her hands on her hips as she took in the familiar scene. ‘Nana and Grumpy retired here in the 1960s. Me and Henry were baptized in the local church and spent every summer down here.' She closed her eyes for a moment, the tension in her shoulders slackening momentarily. ‘Damn, it's good to be back. I always forget just how much I love it here until I step back in again and then – wham! Never want to leave.'

‘Well, you have to. I need you in London. It wouldn't be the same without you,' Cassie said firmly, worried that her best friend might be getting ideas.

‘Or we could all move down here together,' Suzy said, scooping up the bags again and walking through to the kitchen. Velvet was eating a spider web – hopefully minus the spider – as Arch went around opening all the doors and windows.

‘Oh yes, I can just see it. You'd have me and Henry in Snapdragons as your gatekeepers while you and Arch played lord and lady of the manor.'

‘Well, I just figured you'd have had enough of playing the chatelaine for one lifetime,' Suzy winked, hoisting the bags of Ocado groceries, which she'd had delivered at home an hour before they left, onto the worktop.

‘That's true,' Cassie agreed, walking over to the glazed back doors and stepping out onto the terrace. She could almost taste the salt in the air; a herd of black-and-white cows munched at the grass not fifty feet away. ‘So how far is it to the beach from here?' she called back into the house.

Suzy looked up from stocking the fridge. ‘If you're running – which we always were, when we were little – six minutes. As a grown-up with all the bags, more like ten. That's Daymer Bay you can see from here.'

‘Oh, I've heard of that,' Cassie murmured, stretching lightly and turning back to the room. It was low-ceilinged but with enormous square footage, though it clearly hadn't been touched in thirty years. Old 1980s pine cabinets had been fitted against three of the walls in a U-shape, and a small island unit with cream melamine-topped work surfaces stood in the middle. A wipe-clean lino floor – good for sweeping up sand, no doubt – covered what presumably were the lovely boards she'd seen in the hall, and the fridge was white, unbelievably without an ice dispenser. How old school! What next? Cassie wondered – a TV that still stood on the floor? ‘Suze, I just love it here.'

Suzy flashed her a beaming grin. ‘Yeah? Me too. I know it needs loads doing. It's basically an interior designer's wet dream, but I don't need it to be spangly and perfect. Not like Kelly and Nooks would – can you just imagine?' she asked, one eyebrow arched and shaking her head. ‘It's all about that, for me,' she said, pointing to the view.

‘Agreed.'

‘Come on, I'll show you the bedrooms.' Suzy, abandoning the vegetables, scooped Velvet into her arms and they sauntered up the long and winding staircase, Suzy pointing out the numerous bedrooms – all of them chintzy, with swags at the windows, sofas at the end of the beds and kidney-shaped dressing tables.

The place was so enormous there was no chance of Velvet ever having been able to disturb Gem and Laird, but the damage was done now, and she supposed they probably preferred having their own private space. She didn't imagine Gem was ever going to make a fortune from yoga, and Laird looked like he'd grown up in a coconut shy – or at least would have wanted to – so maybe even the little house was exciting to them.

Cassie's room was one of the best, situated at the back beside the master suite, with a long balcony that faced west. It was easier up here to see down to the beach and she stood for a long time looking out to the water, her mind constantly drifting back to her fiancé, who was, at this very minute, drifting too.

The tide was out and she could make out the dots of people still enjoying the last of the afternoon. A field on the far side had been given over to parking – the windscreens glistening in the sun – and several families were playing a game of rounders.

She helped Suzy draw a bath for Velvet in a bathroom so huge the bath sat in the middle of the room with at least seven feet of space around it on all sides, and Suzy didn't seem to care whether or not the geranium-pink deep-pile carpet got wet.

Archie called up that he was going to bike over to the store in the nearest village, Trebetherick, to buy some chicken and milk – which Suzy had deliberately left off her shopping list in case of traffic and high temperatures – scooting out before Suzy could remind him (as if he needed it) not to move up past third gear or come out of the saddle. ‘Gentle exercise, the doctor said, Arch!' Suzy barked after him as he shot down the drive like he'd been catapulted.

The girls sat on the terrace, sneakily drinking a glass of rosé before he came back. Suzy was adamant that they should all abstain from drinking in front of him when he wasn't allowed alcohol, but that wasn't the same thing as abstaining entirely and Cassie wouldn't have been remotely surprised if Suzy had drawn up a list of things for Archie to do every evening at seven o'clock.

‘I'd have thought Germ would have raced up the drive to see us the second she heard the car,' Suzy sniffed, slightly put out.

‘She's probably at the beach, isn't she?'

‘I suppose. Saying goodbye to the sun by plaiting her arms and legs.'

Cassie chuckled. ‘You're just jealous because you have all the suppleness of that telegraph pole.'

‘If only it was the girth,' Suzy smiled, patting her gently padded hips, which still carried traces of Velvet's baby weight.

‘There's nothing wrong with your girth.'

‘Oh no? Listen, if I went and stood next to that cow over there, you can bet your bottom dollar it would suddenly feel like it was having a thin day and want to put on its skinniest jeans.'

Cassie laughed, stretching out on the white plastic sunlounger and determinedly ignoring the slightly musty smell coming from the green striped cushions.

‘So . . .'

Cassie looked over to find Suzy watching her closely. ‘So, what?'

‘You seem brighter today.'

‘I feel great. Who wouldn't?' Cassie asked rhetorically, motioning to the setting and deliberately avoiding the subject.

‘Have you heard from him yet?'

Cassie shook her head as she felt the pressure rush to her head again. It was the ‘yet' that upset her, as though there was anything optional about it. He was out of contact, almost as uncontactable as if he were on the moon, or in Ikea. ‘I told you, he's got no mobile coverage.' Her index finger tapped the lounger arm metronomically. ‘All the radar equipment on the boat creates too much electromagnetic interference. If he even wants to listen to his iPod, he's got to wrap tin foil round the headphones. This is it now till he gets back, or at least till they get to San Francisco, anyway.'

‘Huh. I thought there was that telecommunications company keeping us in contact with them.'

‘There is, in terms of informing us of their geographical positioning and any SOS messages, but they're hardly there to pass love letters between us.' Cassie knew she sounded defensive.

‘Oh bummer.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Well, I still can't believe he went without saying goodbye. I mean, a text wouldn't have killed him.'

Cassie bit her lip and looked away, focusing on a particularly contented cow, its tail sluicing at flies as it grazed. She didn't reply, mainly because she couldn't believe it either.

‘Having said that, I guess you can't blame him for being hacked off that you're suddenly having second thoughts about things,' Suzy carried on. ‘You did pull the rug out from under him.'

Cassie shot her a look, wondering whose side Suzy was supposedly on. ‘Excuse me! It's because of
you
that this has happened at all. If you hadn't got me entangled in your half-arsed schemes with your bloody cousin, everything would be fine.'

‘Ha! Fat lot of good it did me. You've messed things up for you and Henry,
and
I've still got to single-handedly sabotage the wedding.' She frowned. ‘And anyway, how exactly would it be fine? Henry asked you to marry him and you said yes. You've been engaged for the past year and a half. How can you come out now saying you don't believe in marriage? At some point, you were going to have to fess up.'

‘I love him and want to be with him, and when he asked, I thought . . . I just assumed we could take our time with it all. I didn't count on there being so much pressure to
get on with it
. It's the institution I have a problem with, not him. I don't know why that's so hard to understand.'

Suzy sighed. ‘Look, I get why you don't want to rush into marriage again, I do. But you have to bear in mind that he's never been married. He waited for you all that time, and what's seemingly dead for you is still alive with possibility for him. Are you really going to ask him to give up on his ideals because yours failed?'

‘I'm not asking him to give up on anything. I want him. I want us to have a family. Plenty of people are happily unmarried.'

‘You mean like Hugh Grant in
Four Weddings
?' Suzy asked.

‘Exactly. Or Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell – they're happily unmarried.'

‘Madonna and her backing dancers,' Suzy suggested.

Cassie laughed. ‘Richard Curtis and Emma Freud.'

‘Kermit and Miss Piggy.'

Cassie laughed even harder. ‘See? Lots of people have Happy Ever Afters without the ring.'

‘Ha! As if you're going to give up that ring. Tiffany's finest! Poor Henry practically mortgaged Mum to buy it.'

‘OK, not without the ring. Her fingers automatically reached for it; it had become something of a soother for her and she would often fiddle with it when she was nervous or upset. ‘But without the “I do”.'

‘You need to talk this through with him properly.'

‘Well, he's made that a bit bloody hard now that he's done a disappearing act to the middle of the Pacific Ocean for three months.'

Suzy sighed. ‘I know, but he's never been level-headed where you're concerned. I mean, when you married Gil . . . Most blokes would just go on a massive bender. He went to northern Norway and trained as an Arctic survival instructor! In fact, it's your bloody fault he's an explorer at all. He had a job all lined up in the City, but seemingly trekking the Arctic and biking across Siberia were the only ways for him to try to get over you.'

Cassie didn't say anything.

‘He loves you, but he won't beg, Cass.' Suzy's tone had changed, the joking gone. ‘And it would break my heart to see you two split up over a piece of paper.'

‘We are not going to split up!' Cassie said, aghast. ‘Look, this is all a storm in a teacup. It was bad timing that it came to a head just before he went' – and when she was excluded from the hospital ward, she didn't add – ‘but he'll have forgotten all about it by the time he gets back.'

‘Forgotten he wants to marry you?' Suzy guffawed, her eyebrows almost shooting to the other side of her head, but Cassie just took another sip of her drink and stared determinedly out to sea.

The front door slammed and they both looked back towards the kitchen, smiling as Archie sauntered through a moment later, two brown paper bags scrunched in his hands and an envelope.

‘Bugger, drink up,' Suzy whispered, getting up from her lounger. ‘I'll buy us some time.'

Cassie – who couldn't bolt a drink to save her life – took rapid sips of her wine as Suzy went into the kitchen to check on Archie's colour. There was only one sip left when Archie came out, looking very pleased with himself, a minute later.

‘Ooh, what's that you've got there?' he asked.

‘Huh?' Cassie asked, wide-eyed, as she hurriedly drained it out of sight before he could ask for some. ‘Oh, you mean this? Ribena.'

‘It didn't look like Ribena,' Archie frowned.

‘I prefer it weak.'

‘What's that you've got in your hands?' Suzy asked, quickly following him with a tray of glasses and a jug of sparkling elderflower.

‘It's for Cassie, actually,' he replied, holding out the envelope.

‘For me?' she asked in surprise.

‘Yes,' he shrugged. ‘It turns out they've got Wi-Fi at the cafe at the back of the store—' This time it was Archie's turn to look triumphant as Suzy gasped in horror, her great plan foiled. ‘So I checked emails. Personal ones only,' he added, ever the pacifist. ‘This was waiting for Cass in my inbox, so I printed it out.'

There was only one person who would know to write to her using Archie's email address. Suzy knew it too. ‘Well, what did he do that for? I told him before we left that we wouldn't have reliable internet access down here,' Suzy said huffily.

‘Don't worry. I've replied telling him we're here now. I'm sure the
incessant mailing
will stop.' Archie rolled his eyes as he handed the envelope to Cassie.

She forced herself not to tear it open in a rush, even though the sight of the Inmarsat logo at the top of the email – the expedition's satellite communications supplier and the crew's only point of contact with land except for the coastguard – made the words swim before her eyes. He'd written. Even with ten pairs of eyes seeing this highly personal letter between it leaving him and reaching her, he'd written! She was forgiven . . .

But her mouth dropped open as she began to take in what was written in the email. Not an apology, not a reconciliation . . . ‘Oh!'

‘Oh crap, what? What is it?' Suzy asked, hating being out of the loop even for a moment. ‘What's he gone and done now?'

‘It's a list.'

‘Huh?'

Cassie looked up at her. ‘He's written me a list for down here.'