Summer at Tiffany's (28 page)

‘I guessed from Gem that Henry is Suzy's brother, yes?'

She nodded.

He inhaled deeply, his ribs opening out like bellows. ‘Well, that certainly explains a few things. You guys go way back. That's how he knew with the list in New York . . .' He was talking more to himself than her, it seemed, his eyes on the horizon ahead. ‘Have you heard from him?'

She looked across at him, puzzled at how he talked about Henry so easily, as though he was a mutual friend of theirs. ‘No, not much,' she mumbled. She knew it would infuriate Henry to know Cassie ever discussed him with her ex. ‘I've had one message, but it's hard obviously, when everything's being filtered through twenty other people first.'

‘Yes, of course. I can see how that could be . . . limiting.'

They paused as they got to the golf course again, both looking left and right to check for incoming balls before crossing the fairway.

‘I guess you're used to him being away for long stretches, though, huh? Beau was saying about all the incredible expeditions he's done. It's such a boon for them to have him on the team.'

She couldn't help looking back at him, searching for sarcasm or scorn, but he met her eyes with a guileless smile. ‘He's very experienced,' she agreed.

‘Beau said he was recently made a professor at the Explorers Club.'

‘A fellow, yes.'

‘That's a big fucking deal. You know that, right?'

‘Of course.'

‘Did you go?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘Did you go to New York for the ceremony?'

‘Yes.' She remembered the ludicrously extravagant Valentino dress, how it had felt walking across the hotel lobby, Henry's hand in hers, the snowy polar bear standing guard above them all as everyone drank and laughed and talked and revelled in her fiancé's daring. She missed him so much suddenly it hurt, and her hand instinctively covered her stomach.

He abruptly stopped walking. ‘So when was that?'

Cassie looked surprised. What did he care? ‘Around Easter, I think. Why?'

He gave a small laugh, jabbing his finger. ‘I
knew
it was you. I saw you getting a cab.' She remembered the taxi sluicing past, his face a pale flash in the window. He looked back at her. ‘You were wearing red, right?'

She nodded, surprised he'd remembered that small detail.

He nodded too. ‘That's always been your colour,' he said after a moment. ‘It would have made a great image. Really . . .' He remembered to walk and she quickly fell in step too. ‘Really striking with all the other colours, you know? That was what caught my eye. I wished I'd been quick enough to take a shot. It was like a Tiffany's ad in motion – yellow cabs, tail lights, the red dress, your bright hair.' He stared at her intently. ‘You were wearing red lipstick too, right?'

‘That's right.' How had he noticed that from a passing cab?

‘You never usually wear lipstick.' He was reading her mind again. ‘Hell of a surprise seeing you like that, though. I wasn't sure if you'd seen me too.' His eyes were intent upon her, scanning her like a laser.

She shook her head. ‘No.'

‘No?'

‘No.' She wasn't quite sure why she'd lied about it. What did it matter one way or the other whether or not she'd seen him?

‘Huh.'

They walked in silence past the hedgerows where the brambles were trying to rule supreme, Luke letting her go first on the narrow path before catching her up as they passed where the cows were grazing, the house just ahead of them now.

‘Well, I'm this way,' he said as they got to the stile, indicating towards the side gate and the garden beyond for Snapdragons. He raked his hand through his hair again as another awkward silence began to stretch like a lazy cat. ‘So I guess I'll see you later, then.'

‘I guess so.'

He gave one of his new, unfamiliar benign smiles and she watched as he walked off without a backwards glance.

She didn't see Suzy standing on the terrace in her dressing gown, her hair blowing about her face and a large mug of tea in her hands. And as Cassie crossed the lawn, perturbed and unsettled, Suzy slipped back into the house, as silent as a shadow.

They made an unlikely four – Cassie, Suzy, Gem and Amber – all in Suzy's car as she hooned around the tiny wet lanes the next afternoon, with the recklessness that only ever comes from the suicidal or the local. Suzy considered herself the latter, nipping down farmers' tracks and green lanes in her Volvo estate as Amber tried not to whimper – the boot had already flown open once – and Gem laughed her head off. With the rain having set in for the day, they were on their way to a bridal boutique in Wadebridge, or as Suzy had said under her breath with a mutinous look in her eye, ‘Phase One'.

The town was large and sprawling, with supermarkets and ring roads and plenty of buses. They had passed several large bridal boutiques – Gem jabbing the windowpanes with her finger and pointing them out to her cousin – but Suzy kept repeating she'd found something ‘more bijou' and navigated her way away from the centre, towards a residential pocket at the back, where old stone terraced houses replaced the shops and the streets were narrow with free parking.

‘Here we are,' Suzy said, pulling on the handbrake so hard it squeaked. Archie, Laird and Luke were in charge of Velvet this afternoon, a motley crew of men who looked utterly flummoxed by the proposition of entertaining the toddler for the afternoon, and the last she'd heard, they'd been doing a toss-up between bowling and crazy golf.

They filed out of the car, Amber standing in the middle of the road and looking at the boutique's window display with ill-concealed horror.

‘Are you sure this is right?' she asked. Kelly – in reply to some scurrilous overnight texts from Suzy – had told them that Amber had walked for Miuccia Prada, Karl Lagerfeld and Christopher Bailey, so Cassie reasoned she had probably never seen polyester lace before.

But if Amber was dubious, Gem was oblivious.

‘Oh. My. God,' Gem said dramatically, pausing at the door. ‘This is, like, a seminal moment in every girl's life, isn't it?'

‘What? Coming to Wadebridge? You need to get out more, Gem,' Suzy joked.

‘I mean trying on a wedding dress for the first time!' Gem laughed, with an emotional tremble in her voice. ‘I'm warning you now I might cry. In fact, I probably will.'

Amber – seemingly forgetting her horror at the dresses and getting into the bridesmaid-slash-cheerleader spirit – gave an excited squeal, clapping her hands together and skipping lightly on the spot as a minicab hooted for her to move out of the road.

‘Fine. I consider myself warned,' Suzy said with a tight smile, leaning heavily on the door and falling in. They all filed in after her, silence falling on them like the stiffened veils that had been thrown like poachers' nets on the mannequins.

Suzy caught Cassie's eye as their small group congregated in the middle of the room – she, at least, was clearly very pleased with what she saw. The small boutique – merely the width of one of the neighbouring terrace's sitting rooms but extending right the way back to where the kitchen would ordinarily be found – was the pokiest, most budget-looking salon she had been able to find on her frantic Google searches and she was confident Gem wouldn't be getting her much-hoped-for Cinderella moment in here.

A black nylon carpet flecked with silver bristled beneath their feet, the pale lilac walls adorned with crystal-studded tiaras hanging from plastic hooks.

A woman with a perm – ‘A perm!' Suzy mouthed in delight – jumped up from a silver rococo desk in the far corner, where she'd been reading
Hello!
magazine. She smiled at the disparate band of women, trying to ascertain which one of them was the bride.

‘Welcome,' the woman smiled.

‘Hi,' Suzy said, grabbing Gem by the shoulders and positioning her in front of their group. ‘My cousin Gem, here – she's getting married.'

‘Oh! Many, many congratulations!' the woman cried, as though the revelation was a completely unexpected surprise to her, her enthusiasm managing to override even Gem's.

‘Ah, thanks so much. That's really nice of you,' Gem said, shaking her hand enthusiastically.

The woman looked up at Gem from under her lashes. ‘Might I possibly ask to see the ring?'

Cassie knew this wasn't so much a bonding exercise as a chance to get proof there was actually a wedding in the offing. Suzy had told her lots of boutiques used it to stop hordes of girls just coming in and trying on the dresses. No ring? Not getting in.

‘You might,' Gem laughed, proffering her hand and showing off a ring with a brightly striated caramel stone.

‘What is
that
?' Suzy asked, peering at it with an incredulous look.

‘Tiger's eye. It represents the grounding energy of the earth – that's Laird – and the elevating energy of the sun – that's me,' Gem said, her eyes fixed dreamily on the stone.

Cassie felt bad that she and Suzy hadn't asked to see her ring till now – to have done so could have been misinterpreted as approval or encouragement, but still, standing here in a bridal boutique about to try on dresses, it felt a little mean.

Suzy tutted sympathetically. ‘He spent a month's salary on that, did he? Hmm, well, I suppose surfing's never going to bring in a reliable income.'

Gem appeared not to hear her. ‘It's what it represents that I love, you know?' she said to the woman.

‘Which is why you can't go wrong with diamonds,' Suzy said firmly. ‘They're popular for a reason. They represent eternity and you'll have them forever. They're indestructible. Not like these . . . fashion stones,' Suzy frowned. ‘Still, maybe he can upgrade in a few years, when he's had more of a chance to establish his career.'

Suzy cast Cassie a wink as she turned away.

‘I think it's dead original,' the woman said, nodding as though the ring had unlocked the secret of Gem's soul, her eyes running up and down Gem's tiny but perfect figure in her cobalt-blue harem pants, aqua vest and flip-flops. ‘And I'm guessing you'll want something equally unique for your dress too.'

‘Of
course
,' Gem grinned with wide eyes.

‘Well, before we go any further, let me just start by telling you that
I
am Paula.' The woman raised a hand to her heart, lest anyone should be in any doubt as to whom she was referring. ‘And this afternoon I want you to think of me as your fairy godmother. Your wish is my command.'

Gem clapped her hands together excitedly and Amber trotted her feet on the spot again like a frisky filly. Cassie looked from one to the other, wondering if it was some sort of synchronized routine they'd devised, like footballers celebrating a goal.

Paula raised a finger in the air. ‘And I have a feeling your first wish is for some champagne. Am I right?'

‘Oh my God, yes!' Amber cried, drilling her heels as fast into the floor as a woodpecker's beak into a tree. ‘We had Purdey's last night. I am
desperate
for some Krug.'

Paula looked at her quizzically for a moment and Cassie could see her trying to place Amber's face – there was no doubt this tall, willowy creature with smoky eyes and tight knees inhabited another world – but in the next instant Paula had tossed her head and the query out of her mind and disappeared to a back room, returning moments later with a bottle of Tesco's prosecco and five glasses.

Cassie looked around the room anxiously, feeling increasingly claustrophobic and wishing she'd been more forceful with Suzy as she'd cajoled her into coming along and ‘helping' her with Gem. For one thing, she had brought down a book from London that she had had lying on her bedside table for months – Henry hadn't once given her a moment to get to it – and she wouldn't have minded a few hours just to herself. For another, it was hardly tactful of Suzy to make her spend an afternoon here, given that the thorny issue of marriage was the source of all her woes.

Her eyes flitted lightly, warily, over the gazar ruffles and plissé silk details that edged out of the racks, and she stopped as she caught sight of a sleeve threaded with seed pearls. She walked over and brushed it through her fingers, remembering the excitement she'd felt trying on her wedding dress for the first time – it had been in the Harrods bridal suite, her mother sitting opposite on a huge silk chaise and waiting for the moment she stepped out of the vast changing room, looking like a princess in ivory duchesse satin with a smooth bodice and globe pearls sewn along the scooped neckline and bracelet sleeves. Her mother had cried as the salesgirl had carefully draped the veil over her face, placing a bouquet of silk roses in her hands for effect – Cassie had too.

But they'd also both cried as she rang her mother from a hotel room at Heathrow, ten years later, to tell her that the marriage was over – and why.

She thought of Wiz, no doubt patronizing the smartest boutique in Edinburgh, her dress bespoke and triumphal, more suited to a coronation than a wedding. It was happening this Saturday – eleven o'clock in the chapel on the estate. Cassie still hadn't talked to Suzy about it, and she had made Kelly promise not to tell Suzy she knew: as far as Suzy was aware, Cassie had no idea Gil was getting remarried. Cassie wasn't sure why she didn't want her to know she knew – possibly because she'd make her talk about it, dragging up the past again when all she wanted was to let the earth beneath her feet settle, and to let new shoots grow. And what really was there to say? Their love had died a long time ago now and she had moved on with Henry, she really had. Gil's upcoming wedding was just the turning of the lock on that door to her old life; that was all. Her hand dropped down and she moved away from the racks towards the centre of the room again, where Paula was handing out the drinks.