Summer at Tiffany's (25 page)

Laird smiled, nodding with what seemed to be perfect understanding as Cassie gawped in open-mouthed disbelief. Arch was even more terrified than she was!

Laird looked at Cassie. ‘And how's your heart?'

‘Hers is a little bit dodgy too, at the mo,' Archie said, throwing an arm round her shoulders and giving them a little squeeze.

Cassie smiled. ‘Shit-scared, to be honest.'

Laird laughed. ‘Well, listen, that's totally normal, and actually, we're barely even going to go in the water today.'

‘We're not?' Archie asked with evident relief.

‘Nope. We've got to master the basics on dry land before we get wet. First things first, we need to learn the pop, establish how to paddle and practise the standing position on the board.'

‘The pop,' Archie echoed dubitably.

‘That's the explosive movement when you go from lying down to standing. It's got to be quick and neat. You only get a few seconds at most to plant your feet in exactly the right position. Here, I'll demonstrate.'

He threw his board down on the wet sand and lay on it on his stomach, his arms held out and bent as he pretended to paddle. ‘Now, at the right moment, you've got to plant your hands here, like this, and push – like a mini push-up – as you tuck your legs in tight under your hips and plant your feet wide, front foot facing forward, back foot angled to the side. Like this.'

And in a nanosecond he quite literally popped up from his prone position to a standing one.

‘Well, that looks easy enough,' Archie said, his voice brighter.

‘Really engage your stomach muscles when you're doing it,' Laird said encouragingly, tightening his hand into a fist. ‘It keeps the back tight and allows you to move much more dynamically.'

Archie looked down at his pale, spongy stomach. ‘Dynamically. OK.'

‘And you, Cass. Let's give it a go,' Laird said.

Cassie let her board drop to the sand with a thud and gingerly lowered herself down onto her stomach.

‘OK, so arms out like this,' Laird said, taking her arms at the elbows and pulling them out like wings. ‘And when you're ready, tuck yourself in tight and – pop!'

She gave it a whirl, sucking her tummy in along with her breath and trying to move as dynamically as she could from her favoured sleeping position, but it wasn't so much a popping motion as a flopping one. First she lifted her bottom up before she planted her hands so that she almost went chin first down on the board. Then she lifted her hand too late so that her knee didn't know which way to go round her arm and her feet ended up too far back, which – had she been on the water – would have sent her flying backwards, overboard . . .

Archie didn't fare any better. He had a tendency to use his stomach as a launch pad, rolling on it like a Weeble to get up.

Laird, to his credit, didn't laugh and they tried again. And again.

After half an hour of popping – or rather, flopping – they moved on to paddle technique and balance exercises so that by the end Cassie felt like she'd endured an SAS training drill. There was a knack to it that was as much about belief as strength, and by the time Laird took them into the water – to cool down, rather than surf, Cassie suspected – neither of them was capable of anything more than lying on their boards in the shallows and letting the waves break over them.

‘Well, that looked exhilarating,' Suzy trilled as they dragged themselves back up the beach after an hour and fell, exhausted, onto the towels.

‘Oh, darling, the thrill of the open seas, that horizon, being part of nature . . .' Archie panted as Velvet staggered over and sat on his stomach, prompting him to groan loudly. ‘It's quite something.'

Cassie laughed as she unzipped her wetsuit, rolling it down to her waist and exposing her bikini top. ‘We're alive, at least. And look – I didn't even get my hair wet. Bonus.'

‘Well, yes. Surfing on sand has that advantage,' Suzy quipped as she handed round bottles of cold water.

‘I reckon tomorrow we'll get onto the water, don't you, Cass?' Arch asked. ‘We were definitely getting the hang of it by the end.'

‘Oh, absolutely,' Cassie agreed, taking a sip of her drink and hugging her knees up as she watched Laird paddling out to deeper water with misleading ease. ‘I thought Gem was going to join us, though.'

‘Oh no, she's terrified of the water. Won't go near it,' Suzy replied.

‘You mean because of you guys scaring her with the seaweed?' Cassie rummaged in her rucksack for her oversized sunglasses. Henry had told her that story the night of the party.

‘Well, she says it's that, just to make light of things, but she nearly drowned when she was little once.'

‘God, no. Really?'

‘Mmm. Caught a current when she was on a lilo in Spain with her parents and couldn't get back. She was lucky someone on a pedalo realized and scooped her up.'

‘The poor thing.'

‘Yeah. She says she hasn't been in the water since. We'd better hope it's not the case that the couple that surfs together stays together.' Suzy frowned, puzzled. ‘Or actually, maybe we should hope that.'

‘Leave them alone,' Archie mumbled, already very nearly asleep.

Suzy cast a sly glance at Cassie and winked.

‘So, where is she now?'

‘She watched you guys here for a bit, but she wanted to pop over to Padstow to get some fish. They want to do us a barbie tonight.'

‘And since when has a barbie ever included
fish
?' Archie asked with a note of panic, suddenly wide awake again. ‘If ever a man is entitled to some burnt meat, that's the time: burgers, snags and ribs. I can see I'd better be in charge of the charring tonight.'

‘You're supposed to be reducing your cholesterol and that means less red meat,
much
less. Besides, I think prawns and mackerel sound very healthy. I'm intrigued to see how they taste barbecued. And Gem was saying bananas are a barbecue revelation.'

‘Bananas?' Archie spluttered, redder in the face than he had been during the entire surf lesson. ‘I'm not having barbecued bananas!'

‘Oh, do shut up, Arch,' Suzy sighed. ‘Have you got any sunscreen on?'

They were all as pink as shrimps by the time they got back to Butterbox. Suzy, Archie and Laird had gone ahead in the car with Velvet to prepare her tea, but Cassie was grateful for some solitude and preferred to take the longer, slower clifftop walk home. Their day together had been quietly eventful, relaxed but full on, as it always is with children: Archie had spent hours building Velvet a speedboat in the sand, which she immediately proceeded to fill with buckets of water, and when he and Suzy had fallen asleep, Cassie had taken her off for a play on the grassy banks just above the rocks where they were sitting, the two of them watching in quiet raptures as the wild golden-haired rabbits nibbled on the clover and sea thrifts. They had had pasties for lunch – another thing they could tick off the list (which was proving to be disarmingly placid so far) – vegetarian for Archie, eating them in the brown paper bags they came in and trying not to get sand in them, and it was only when the incoming tide started nudging the bottom of their multicoloured striped windbreak that they were finally forced to move.

The journey back was uncomplicated and straight out of a Daphne du Maurier novel. As Archie had directed, she had to head up the steep hill and take the right footpath onto the cliffs, following the coast round, past the golden crescent of Daymer Bay until she saw the church whose steeple she had spied from the house. If she headed left there, she could follow the hedge line along the fields and would come to the stile that entered their garden.

It had taken her almost an hour from Polzeath, not because the distance was great but because the beauty of the landscape was so distracting and she had stopped frequently to absorb the shape of a land that felt so remote and foreign from the rest of England that she half expected to find the border had been sundered altogether and this county that felt more like a country was bobbing in the sea beside it.

By the time she threw her leg over the stile, Laird was already firing up the charcoals and Archie was on a desperate hunt for something stronger to drink than Purdey's.

‘Hey!' she called as she strode up the lawn in the denim shorts and pink vest she'd left in. ‘I hope I haven't missed anything?'

‘Not a thing. We've only just finished feeding Velvet,' Laird smiled as he looked up. ‘Suzy's gone up to have her shower.'

‘Oh good,' she smiled back, taking off her sunglasses and peering at the platter of fish that Laird had arranged on crushed ice, with samphire and mussels on the side.

Laird's expression changed. She didn't have time to ask why because suddenly she heard Archie bellow from inside the house, ‘Lairdy, m'lad!', appearing at the doorway a moment later with a bottle of Merlot and a delighted smile. ‘Look what I just f— Oh! Good God!' he exclaimed in astonishment as Cassie sauntered up to him with a tut.

‘I'll take that, thank you,' she said in a sing-song voice. ‘It's more than your life's worth, or mine, to let you have that, as well you know.'

‘But—'

‘No buts, Arch!' she called behind her as she strode through the kitchen and into the hall beyond. ‘We'll keep you alive if it kills us all.'

She skipped into her bedroom with a happy smile, tossing the bottle onto the bed and wandering into her bathroom to get the shower running. Only when she caught sight of herself in the mirror did she realize the real cause for Laird and Archie's reactions: her face was as rosy as an apple, but round her eyes, two giant white moons beamed back at her. Panda eyes writ large.

By the time she emerged downstairs, forty minutes later, she had used half a tube of her Clarins green concealer, which was supposed to minimize redness in complexions and which she sometimes used on her cheeks to offset her tendency to blush. She had left her hair down to act as a curtain and hopefully mitigate the full extent of Suzy's scrutiny.

To no avail.

‘Holy crap!' Suzy burst out laughing as she took one look at her in the kitchen. ‘Did the goblins get you?'

‘Oh, don't!' Cassie wailed, her hands flying to her greentinted face. ‘The green's better than the red.'

‘It really isn't.' Suzy walked over to her bag and pulled out some baby wipes. ‘And as your best friend in the world, I am staging an intervention.'

‘But my eyes! They're bright white.'

‘Yes, and you'll put everyone off their food sitting there like you're radioactive.'

Cassie laughed in spite of herself, obediently wiping her face clean and grimacing at the green wipes as she threw them in the bin.

‘Just keep your sunglasses on,' Suzy instructed her. ‘It's light till nine anyway, and then we'll just blow out the candles and sit in the dark.' She pointed to a chilli-flecked green bean salad on the counter. ‘Carry that out, will you?'

Cassie pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head and followed her out with the dish, setting it on the large oval table. Laird and Archie had done a fine job of finding all the cushion covers for the chairs in the summerhouse and lighting the stash of taper candles that were reserved for power cuts, ingeniously planting them in a terracotta pot full of sand. Cassie counted seven place settings.

‘Shouldn't this be five, Suze?' she asked.

Suzy counted on her fingers. ‘No. Us three, Gem, Laird and the couple who are staying with them.'

‘Oh. I didn't realize that they had guests too.'

‘No, me neither,' she said in a lowered voice and checking Laird wasn't listening. ‘Gem conveniently forgot to mention it. Guess I really am excused now for keeping them in the lodge house, huh?'

Cassie shrugged. ‘What are they like?' She remembered all the trendy types at the Cross Keys and her hands went to her sunglasses, pushing them further up her nose. Great – strangers; these would definitely have to stay on all night now. That or excuse herself from dinner by nine.

‘No idea. Gem's been showing them the sights all afternoon,' Suzy said under her breath. ‘But I reckon it's no bad thing: they can distract her from us and provide some much-needed breathing space between her and me.' She rolled her eyes and leaned in closer. ‘Honestly, while you lot were busy
not
surfing, she was driving me potty. By the time she asked me where she should take them this afternoon, it was all I could do to stop myself from suggesting Carlisle.'

Archie came over, breaking up their secretive conversation and handing Cassie a drink of Purdey's with a disapproving look – although whether that was because she had hijacked his Merlot heist or was wearing sunglasses in the gloaming she couldn't be sure.

‘Thanks, Arch,' she smiled apologetically. ‘Have you started to stiffen up yet?'

‘Who, me?' he asked, stretching his neck. ‘I have a residual fitness level that I just never lose, Cass. I guess it comes from being so sporty in my youth.'

‘Yes, really fit. Hence the near-fatal heart attack,' Suzy scoffed, but softening her scorn by affectionately flicking the tea towel at his retreating bottom.

‘Ugh, I've got to start running more regularly again,' Cassie sighed, rubbing her thighs lightly through the thin cotton of her baby-blue dress. ‘I may need a piggyback up the stairs tonight. I'm not sure I'll be capable of popping even a champagne cork by tomorrow.'

There was the sound of squeaking from the near corner and they all turned as a side gate swung back on its hinges.

‘Hey! Here you all are. What a lovely sight,' Gem cried happily, crossing the lawn. She ambled up to Laird and kissed him lingeringly on the lips. ‘Miss me?'

‘Of course,' Laird grinned. ‘Where've you been? I was expecting you back ages ago.'