Summer at Tiffany's (6 page)

‘If you can just carry on holding the fort till Mum gets here? She's already on the way. She was in Scotland doing some, I dunno, herbaceous borders convention or something, but she should be here mid-morning. She might take Velvet back home to West Meadows with her for a bit. Or not. It depends on how long the docs think Arch will be in for.' Her lower lip trembled. ‘It was so horrible in there last night.'

‘I bet it was.' Cassie rubbed her hand soothingly.

‘Did you know I've never spent a night apart from Velvet before?'

‘I didn't,' Cassie smiled. ‘But you both got through it. And she looks OK, doesn't she?'

‘Actually, it's depressing how unbothered she appears to be,' Suzy replied with a sniff, a glimmer of her old fire flickering in her voice. ‘I think you could just take over from me and she wouldn't much notice.'

‘That's not true. I can only buy her love and attention with food.'

The doors opened and they watched as a few nurses walked in – either on their coffee break or at the end of a shift. Suzy stiffened as though their watch may be over but hers wasn't. ‘We should get back.'

Cassie glanced at the untouched food on the tray. ‘Sure.'

They took the stairs. ‘The lifts take too long,' Suzy said, as she walked straight past them, carrying Velvet in her arms, her body vibrating to the same nervous energy as Henry's. Cassie hurried to keep up, already dreading the smothering synthetic quiet that was contained by the CCU's locked glass doors.

The same nurse who'd buzzed them in earlier came to the door again and Cassie knew from her surprised look at the fact that Cassie had actually come back that she wasn't going to be setting a foot over the threshold this time.

‘I'd better, uh, leave you here,' Cassie said quietly, not wanting to alert Suzy to her ‘persona non grata' status; the poor woman had bigger things to worry about. ‘It's probably better not to take Velvet in there. All the machines bleeping, you know . . .'

‘Oh yes. Good thinking.' Suzy squeezed her daughter tightly to her, sniffing her hair and savouring the feel of her skin against her own. ‘If I can't get out—'

‘I can be here anytime you need. Just say the word. We can be here in fifteen minutes.'

‘You're an angel.'

‘No. Just your friend.' Cassie smiled, wishing she could see Henry, but she knew he wouldn't want to be called away without good reason.

She watched as Suzy walked back into the unit and the nurse closed the glass door on her with a resolute click. Cassie waited for a few minutes, wondering if Henry might come out to see her when Suzy reappeared, but not a single curtain flickered and eventually – Velvet growing restless in her arms – she had to turn and walk away.

‘Come on. Pick up. Pick up,' Cassie murmured to herself, chewing on her thumbnail as she paced Suzy's narrow dog-leg hallway, one ear still straining for the diminishing chunters behind the nursery door. The lights on the baby monitor in the kitchen were a soothing green now, at least, indicating sleep wasn't far away.

‘'Allo? Cass?' Anouk's refined Parisian accent was so delicate, yet husky, it almost came with its own scent – a blend of amber, jasmine and musk. ‘How are you?'

‘Nook—'

‘What has happened?' Anouk asked, quick as a flash. With old friends, one syllable was enough.

‘It's Arch,' Cassie said, one hand clutching at her throat, as though she was trying to squeeze the words out – or keep them in. ‘He had a heart attack yesterday.'

There was a shocked pause.

‘But he is OK, yes?'

‘He seems to be stable, at the moment.'

There was another long, stunned silence. And then: ‘Yesterday, you say?'

Cassie picked up on the rebuke immediately. ‘I'm sorry. There was so much going on it was impossible to call. Suzy was in pieces and I had to look after Velvet. Henry only came back last night to sleep, and he's still with Suzy at the hospital now.' She swallowed, the words almost a slur as a silent tear slid down her cheek.

‘What can I do? I can be there in a few hours.'

‘No, no. I honestly don't think there's anything you can do over here. Not yet, anyway. Hattie's due any minute to take Velvet, and until Arch is discharged . . . they're only letting family stay.'

She was still smarting from the bitter blow that engagement to the patient's wife's brother wasn't a strong enough bond to admit her to the CCU's inner sanctum. Hospitals didn't care about bonds that were thicker than blood, friendships that had spanned their lifetimes; fact was fact and she wasn't family. Not yet.

‘I just wanted you to know, that's all.'

‘Have you told Kelly?'

‘Not yet. I'll wait till it's a decent hour over there.'

‘She would want to be woken for this, Cass.'

‘I know, but what would it achieve? It's not like she can do anything from there.'

‘No.'

Neither of them said anything for a few beats. They didn't need to.

‘How is Henry?'

‘Not great.'

‘No. I bet . . .'

There was another pause.

‘Guillaume?'

They were the same words but it was a different question. Guillaume wasn't tied in to this tragedy like Henry. He wasn't struggling to keep it together. The words, framed around him, amounted to a nicety, an automatic social more that meant nothing in the circumstances. Anouk, as though recognizing this, paused before replying and Cassie could just picture her friend dragging slowly on her cigarette. ‘Fine.' Anouk's voice had that bored insouciance only Frenchwomen could pull off when talking about their lovers. ‘He is in Cap Ferrat. Back next week. You are sure I should not come over?'

‘At the moment, no, but I'll let you know if his condition changes.'

‘OK. Well, you give that man a kiss from me.'

‘That might give him another heart attack, Nooks.'

They disconnected just as the sound of keys scratched in the lock. Cassie turned. Through the frosted glass she could make out the hatted, billowing silhouette of Henry and Suzy's mother, and a moment later the door opened, Hattie's tall, wiry frame filling the doorway. She was wearing her usual uniform of black Nicole Farhi apron dress, draped taupe openwork cardigan and plimsolls, and her frizzy ash-blonde hair was contained by a bashed straw hat that was fraying in so many places it looked like it had been nibbled by a donkey. Battered holdalls dangled from each brown hand, but at the sight of Cassie – pale-faced, moon-eyed – staring back at her, she dropped both bags on the spot and wrapped her arms around her, rocking her gently from side to side.

For a split moment Cassie felt herself go limp – a ‘grownup' had arrived: she didn't have to pretend to be brave now – but as they stood there, swaying slightly in the open hallway, she realized it wasn't Hattie who was comforting her: stoic, no-nonsense Harriet Sallyford, the renowned garden designer and four-times gold-medal-winner at Chelsea, the woman who'd shown Suzy exactly how strong and imposing a woman could be . . . Her.
She
was the one trembling, holding on too tight as she tried not to cry, as broken down by the rest of them at the flattened sight of her happy-go-lucky son-in-law, who still looked at her daughter, every day, like she was a dream come true.

‘He's going to be fine, Hats. You know Arch,' Cassie said weakly.

Hattie pulled away, drying her damp eyes with a quick one-two motion of her hands, before clapping them together loudly. ‘Of course he is. You're quite right. He wouldn't dare leave my two girls. It's not his time. It simply isn't.' She inhaled sharply, pulling herself together. ‘Tea?'

Cassie watched as Hattie swept into the kitchen behind, busily choosing two mugs and sniffing the milk. Cassie picked up the abandoned bags from the doorway and closed the door softly, so as not to waken Velvet. ‘You've come from the hospital, I take it?' she asked, stepping into the kitchen.

‘Yes.'

‘Any change?'

‘Not this morning apparently, although since
I
saw him last – what, two, three weeks ago . . . ?' Her blue eyes flicked up to Cassie's. ‘He looks like he's been steamrollered. I mean, his skin is
actually
grey. Roger and Emma had arrived only minutes before me and they looked like they needed oxygen themselves, poor things. No parent should ever have to see their child like that.' She paused, a look of genuine puzzlement crossing her features as she was drawn back into the tragedy again. ‘I just don't understand it, Cassie. He's such a young man, so vigorous—'

‘He'd been under a lot of stress, apparently, at work.'

Hattie gave a sceptical frown.

‘I know – he hid it from everyone. No one knew. Suzy barely realized the severity of it herself.'

‘But . . . there must have been warning signs, surely? Men of thirty-three don't drop down half dead after a quick run just because they've got a lot on at work. Surely he must have been looking unwell or complaining of aches or pains beforehand. I mean, we all know how
stricken
Archie is by the man-flu every winter.'

Cassie shrugged. ‘He really did look totally normal. I saw him and his colour was as good as ever, and he was leading the other runners in a round of songs just before the race.'

‘Well, that does sound like him. Let me guess: “Sweet Chariot”?'

Cassie smiled. Arch had played prop for Harlequins's youth team and had been gunning for a place in the senior squad after university, when an ill-advised tackle in the bar broke his collarbone so badly he not only had to wave goodbye to his ambition of going pro, but any contact sport at all. Touch rugby in Battersea Park was as good as it got for him now, although Suzy – who had met him six months after the injury – had consoled him, saying he couldn't afford cauliflower ears anyway, ‘not with his nose'.

They sipped their tea quietly for a while, Cassie leaning lightly against one of the Heals bar stools and warming her hands, which were unaccountably cold, Hattie distractedly dead-heading a begonia that still had the red reduced label on the pot and clearly hadn't been watered since it had been bought. For a mother and daughter who were so alike in every other way, it was a source of constant despair for Hattie that the one thing her daughter hadn't inherited from her had been her green fingers.

‘Listen, if you'd prefer to get back to the hospital, I'm more than happy looking after Velvet,' Cassie said.

‘I know you are. You're such a natural. I can't wait till you and Henry crack on and have some of your own. Then I really will be spoilt rotten.'

Cassie gave an abashed laugh. Having children was on the ‘One Day' shelf, along with a few other things that she preferred not to dwell on. Like setting a date.

‘It's just that it can feel more difficult to be stuck back here, rather than at the hospital. At least there you feel like you're doing something.'

‘Oh, there's nothing any of us can do for that poor boy right now,' Hattie sighed. ‘I'm as much use being a good grandmother as anything right now. What about you, though? You've been stuck here a day and a half baby-sitting? You must be desperate to go in and see darling Arch. Henry said you haven't been in yet.'

Cassie looked away. ‘Well, if Roger and Emma are there . . . it may be a little crowded,' she murmured, not wanting to elucidate on her ‘outcast' status. It felt humiliating and belittling somehow, to have been left stranded behind glass doors as one of the most beloved people in her life fought to save his own life – all because the lack of a ring and a piece of paper kept her at one remove too far.

She suddenly remembered her car, her shiny, malingering car, which had been repaired again – for the time being – and was waiting for her at the garage. She had been on her way to pick it up when Archie had collapsed. ‘Actually, though, there is something I need to do. If you're sure you're happy to man the fort here . . . ?'

‘Absolutely. You go on and do what needs to be done. I thought I'd take Velvet down to the flower stalls at the farmers' market after her sleep. They should have some marvellous agapanthus now and it's about time I started introducing her to the Alliaceae family. You can never start them too young, you know.'

Cassie drained her tea and set down the cup with a smile. ‘I've got my mobile with me. You will ring if anything changes?'

‘Of course. Now go, go.'

‘See you later, then.' Cassie grabbed her cardigan from the stair banister and closed the front door quietly, glad to be out of the stifling quiet and suspended atmosphere of the house, glad to be doing something other than waiting. It wasn't until she was on the train to Putney Bridge that she remembered something else that had been forgotten in yesterday's events.

She struck gold at the Travellers Club in London's Pall Mall – the heart of Clubland – a white wedding cake of a building, winking opulent and gilded interiors through its street-facing windows. Unlike the colonial style of the Explorers Club in New York, this club boasted the kind of grandeur that was standard for hosting royalty, aristocracy and eminent diplomats and luminaries, with silk walls and marble floors and shimmering chandeliers that would bring down the roof of an average London terrace house.

Not that Cassie got to see much of it. The lobby was as far as she was permitted, and to save both herself and the concierge the embarrassment of staring at each other politely, she was busily occupying herself by reading the club housekeeping notices on the walls while Bob Kentucky and Derek Mitzenhof, the president and chair of the Flag Expedition Grant Board, were called from their rooms.

She had been lucky to have made it this far (although she was going to pay through the nose for it when her mobile bill came in – half-hour calls to New York didn't come cheap), but there had been no other way to get the names and London addresses of the men Henry had been en route to meeting yesterday. The Explorers Club had been reluctant to impart their details, even after she had lengthily explained her relationship to Henry and yesterday's disaster; they had much preferred the option of getting the board to contact Cassie, but she had stood firm, for once. This had to be sorted today. She had called them, standing outside Jimmy's garage in Putney as he hunted for her car keys, and it had taken her another hour to get back into town and find a parking space.