‘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.
‘Miss Fraser?’ Cassie turned to find a tall, white-haired man with a lean face and neat moustache standing before her. ‘Bob Kentucky.’ He held out his hand. He was wearing a dark grey suit and a tie that she recognized as being Explorers Club – Henry had been given the same one when he was made a fellow back in March – and she wished she was wearing something smarter than her blue-and-white-striped sundress, Converses and navy moth-nibbled cashmere cardigan.
She saw Bob Kentucky wish it too and he discreetly looked over at the doorman, who, after a moment, gave a nod as subtle as the Mona Lisa’s smile.
‘We’ll take coffee in the reading room,’ Kentucky said – whether to Cassie or the doorman, she wasn’t sure – holding one arm out in an open hook and inviting her to step into the gilded sanctuary.
It was immediately apparent the walls must be as deep as Afghan caves, as the rush of London traffic speeding along to St James in one direction and Admiralty Arch and Trafalgar Square in the other was instantly muted when the inner door closed behind them.
‘I’m afraid Derek can’t join us,’ Bob said with an apologetic smile. ‘He’s engaged in a fight-to-the-death rackets game with an old acquaintance.’
‘Oh, no, of course. I’m just so grateful you could see me at such short notice. I’m really sorry for turning up unannounced like this,’ she said, as they climbed the elegant winding staircase, which was set at such a gentle pitch it seemed almost embarrassed to turn.
Kentucky smiled. ‘On the contrary – I was delighted when the club rang to tell me you were on your way. We were so baffled by Henry’s no-show yesterday.’
‘I’m also sorry for looking so scruffy. I hadn’t planned on coming here when I left the house today.’ She tried rolling the cuff of her cardigan to hide the fact it had a thumb-sized hole through it.
‘Well, I admit jeans would have been harder to get around, but I think Mr Stanley at the door was also of the opinion that with a face as pretty as yours, nobody’s going to be looking at your feet.’
‘Oh . . . Thank you.’ Cassie blushed. ‘You’re very kind.’
‘We can talk in here,’ he said, stopping outside the door to a large and sunny room. Inside, groups of leather chairs were arranged at intervals beneath the solemn and lavishly gilded portraits of illustrious former members. It took her straight back to her days in Scotland, living in one of the country’s great houses. This was another level again, but she didn’t feel out of her depth here. This was a world she knew and understood.
They settled themselves in a pair of wine velvet wing chairs by the window – she could see the buses sitting in traffic outside – as Kentucky ordered some coffees.
He sat back in the chair, fingers interlaced, an interested smile on his face as he waited.
‘Um, so I don’t know how much they told you on the phone . . .’ she began.
He shrugged. ‘Not much, but once they said you were Henry’s fiancée, I knew you’d be coming with an explanation of sorts.’
‘Well, yes, exactly. Because, you see, none of it was Henry’s fault yesterday. He was en route to see you and everything was tickety-boo.’
He chuckled at her choice of words and she grinned back nervously.
She started again. ‘There’s this annual event, you see, that Henry organizes. It’s called the Annual Tube Dash, or Beat the Train, as the runners call it.’
‘Runners?’ Kentucky sounded as amused as he was intrigued.
‘Yes. It commemorates the anniversary of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile’ – Kentucky’s smile turned into a low, rumbling laugh as he began to get the gist – ‘At least it’s supposed to; we’re a bit late with it this year. Anyway, all the runners have to jump off the same carriage of the train at South Kensington and run a set route through the streets, getting back on the exact same train and carriage at Fulham Broadway.’
‘How wonderful!’
‘Yes, well . . . Henry’s unbeaten at it.’ Cassie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s pretty gruelling. Basically a nine-and-a-halfminute sprint in the middle of rush hour. You can imagine all the people they’ve got to dodge, the cars and bikes crossing the roads . . . Only about ten per cent actually finish it.’
‘And Henry was doing this on the way to our meeting?’ he laughed.
‘I know, it’s mad, isn’t it?’ She shook her head. ‘I kept telling him it was crazy, but well, I think he feels honour-bound, as the organizer, to do it himself. And truthfully, he’s so fit he could run it and you’d never know five minutes later, whereas I bet all the others have to take the rest of the day off.’
Kentucky smiled, sitting further back in the chair as their coffees, in porcelain cups, were set down on the table between them.
‘Anyway, yesterday . . .’ She took a deep breath, willing her voice not to break. ‘Yesterday the worst thing happened. Everything was fine to begin with – Henry had finished the race and was back on the train. We were pulling out of the station when Archie, his brother-in-law, who was doing the race too, had a heart attack on the platform.’
Kentucky’s bemused expression changed to one of immediate horror. ‘Dear God!’
‘I know. It was terrible,’ she said, her voice cracking slightly as she remembered it all too clearly, yet again. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get over the sight of Archie’s face in the split second before he fell. ‘We couldn’t stop the train, because then we’d have been stuck in the tunnel and unable to get off, so we had to go all the way to the next station, knowing what was happening behind us, that he had only strangers looking after him.’ She bit her lip and reached for her coffee, needing a break from the words and images, but it was still too hot to drink and she had to replace it, untouched, on the table. She noticed her hand had begun to shake.
‘What happened?’ Kentucky asked gently.
‘Well, Suzy, Archie’s wife, who is Henry’s sister and my best friend’ – her eyes flickered up to him, as she worried she was bombarding him with too much information – ‘she was there with their little girl; she’s only two.’ She sighed. ‘So you can probably imagine the state everyone was in.’
Kentucky murmured his agreement.
‘When we got to the next station, Henry jumped off and ran back to Fulham while Suzy and I got a cab. She couldn’t run carrying Velvet too,’ Cassie mumbled. ‘Anyway, the ambulance had arrived by then, so Suzy went to hospital with the paramedics and Henry caught a cab after them and basically stayed there all night. He’s still there now.’
‘What a truly terrible story. Is Henry’s brother OK now?’
‘Well, he’s hanging on,’ she said after a moment. ‘He’s still in the Cardiac Care Unit. He had another heart attack soon after getting to the hospital, apparently.’
‘I’m truly sorry to hear that. What a dreadful thing.’ He shook his head as he picked up his coffee, cradling the saucer in his palm, and stared out of the window for several long moments. ‘Well, that certainly accounts for things. We knew something drastic must have happened for Henry not to have shown, or even sent word. We just couldn’t understand it, sitting there as the minutes ticked past and no word.’
‘No, I’m sure. It was just so crazy, you see – everyone panicking and screaming, Henry running all over London, CPR . . . And he’s not allowed to have his phone on in the hospital, obviously.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ Kentucky agreed, taking another sip of his coffee. He sighed heavily. ‘I just wish we had known this yesterday morning.’
Cassie swallowed. ‘It’s not too late, though, is it? It was only yesterday, and in the circumstances—’ She was stopped by his sympathetic smile.
‘My dear, I wish it were that straightforward, I honestly do. But you see, the nature of our profession means we’re rarely all in one country – much less one room – at the same time. A decision had to be made there and then.’ He gave another sigh. ‘It’s all the more frustrating because, in truth, the flag was his. Henry’s a great ambassador for the exploring community and we’re very proud to have him as one of our fellows. This expedition he’s pitching appeals to us on many different levels, and the meeting yesterday, really, was just a formality. But when he didn’t show and there was no explanation . . . Well, I’m sure you can appreciate we can’t afford to lay ourselves open to claims of favouritism or, worse, nepotism. It would have seemed, at the very least, curious, if not downright suspicious to the others if we had tried to accommodate the proposal outside of the formal process.’
‘So then the grant’s been awarded to . . . someone else?’
‘I’m afraid so. We really had no other choice.’ He sipped from his coffee again before returning it to the table and looking back at her with a kind smile. ‘But it’s by no means the end of the road for Henry’s quest. We’re desperately disappointed not to have the club’s name and flag associated with the trip, of course, but with a reputation like his, he should have no problem securing the rest of the funds.’
‘Well, it’s more of a timing issue than anything,’ she said quietly, bitterly wishing Henry hadn’t been all but promised the grant in New York: it had meant he’d stopped looking for the funding elsewhere and had focused on nailing the itinerary and booking the rest of the crew instead. How was she going to tell him it was over? How would he tell all of them? There was no way that they could raise that kind of money in the time they had left. They were leveraged to the hilt . . . She thought suddenly of the divorce settlement sitting untouched in her bank account but dismissed the idea as quickly as it had come. Besides, Henry would never want to use Gil’s money to bankroll his work, she was sure of it. She sighed. ‘This was pushing it as it was,’ she said quietly, the flat tone of defeat hammering down her words. They had fallen into every cliché – put their eggs in one basket, counted their chickens before they’d hatched, run before they could walk – and with less than a fortnight until departure, it had come back to bite them. ‘Obviously he can only travel there during the summer months. Once the sea freezes . . .’ It was professional humiliation, the entire thing a shambles . . .
‘Ah yes, yes, of course. I hadn’t thought of the small matter of being iced in.’ He tutted pensively, one finger tapping his lips. ‘Hmm.’
Cassie took heart from the gesture. Was there still a chink of hope after all? ‘This was simply the final round of funding needed to make it happen, you see – obviously if he’d had any inkling things would fall through with you, he’d have lobbied elsewhere, but as you said, it was pretty much just a formality. Everything else is in place,’ she said, a pleading note sounding in her voice. ‘UNEP, the UN Conference on Climate Change – it’s taken months to get them all on board and signed up, and the National Geographic Channel was really interested in running it as a series afterwards . . .’ She looked at him hopefully.
He looked back at her through focused eyes, as though reading her mind. ‘Well, you know . . .’ he said, stretching out the words thoughtfully, ‘maybe this thing isn’t dead in the water yet.’
She sat straighter, feeling like her heart was doing shuttle runs in her chest.
‘There’s always next year’s grant, and I have no doubt that everything I’ve just said about Henry will still apply – possibly even more so – twelve months from now.’
No. Cassie visibly deflated, giving a polite but weak smile in return as he beckoned the waiter over for more coffees. He didn’t get it. Assurances about next year were no good to her when she and Henry were already worrying about next month’s rent. They’d been planning their finances around this expedition since the spring; they’d been banking on it setting them up to Christmas and a bit beyond. Now what were they supposed to do? The salary she drew at Eat ’n’ Mess was barely enough to cover their food and the repair bills for the car; and C et C, the restaurant in Paris where she retained a minority stake, may have a four-month-long waiting list for a table, but with significant start-up costs still to cover, the company wasn’t issuing any dividends yet. The divorce settlement flashed like a red light in the back of her mind again.
‘A top-up?’ He held up the coffee pot.
She gave an abject shake of her head, feeling suddenly uncomfortable to be sitting in this grand salon in her market clothes like a modern-day Pygmalion. She watched as the other members shook out their papers, brows furrowed as they studied the business and sports pages. If the grant was completely out of the picture, surely there must be a few high-net-worth individuals in the club – in this room, even – who could be persuaded to part with the outstanding sum? Exploring was and always would be the pursuit of rich men’s whims, and $120,000 was mere pennies to the billionaires who played these adventurous games.
The question was, how to find them without having to beg?
The light was fading by the time she got home, pulling into Denbigh Place with a weary sigh. After leaving Bob Kentucky, she had driven over to Zara’s flat in Stockwell to apologize and give her the lowdown on Archie – her poor business partner had had to go it alone at Ascot today, sans eclairs – and they had gone through the menus and shopping lists for their next job, an all-day affair at the Gold Cup polo at Cowdray Park this weekend.
She rested her head against the steering wheel for a moment, worn out and wondering how she was going to break the bad news to Henry. She could see the light on in their little flat and wished she could teleport herself into his arms up there, on the top floor; she loved their little flat but sometimes wished it wasn’t nestled in the grey-tiled eaves of the roof. The building itself was a junior version of the grand club she had left only hours before – cream Regency with porticoed windows, four floors and an elaborate balcony that wrapped round all the French doors on the first floor; but whereas the club was palatial inside, the flats within this building – which themselves sold for millions – were furnished in a stealth-wealth style, with antique wooden floors, Moroccan Beni Ourain rugs, oversized linen sofas and crushed-velvet bedspreads.
Their flat was the shabbiest, as behoved the attic rooms really, but even at that the rent was exorbitant and more than they could afford; Henry had suggested numerous times that they buy somewhere together instead – ‘Rent money is dead money,’ he was fond of saying – but they could never afford to buy somewhere like this, and Cassie so loved the central location and quiet street and, of course, the ancient and bowed crab apple by the rear window.
She saw the back of Henry’s head first as she let herself in. The rugby was on the telly, and he was sitting with one foot on the coffee table, his other leg bent with one arm lolling on his knee, a beer in his hand, his head resting against the sofa cushions.
‘Hey,’ she said softly, kissing his hair before she walked round the sofa, ready to snuggle into his lap. A bath and a glass of wine and they could—
‘Where have you been?’
The ice that veined his words brought her up short, stopping her feet and her heart simultaneously.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
She blinked in astonishment, unable to process the hostility she saw in his eyes. ‘I . . . I was at Zara’s. We had to go over the last bits for the job this weekend.’
‘All day?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘So where were you, then?’
‘Henry, what is this?’ she asked in bafflement, dropping her bag to the floor and sinking onto the edge of the sofa beside him.
‘What is this?’ he repeated with incredulity. ‘Mum’s down, Archie’s half dead, and you’re nowhere to be found and you ask me, “What is this?” Christ, I can’t believe you. You had every opportunity to be there. I needed you there. Suzy needed you.’
This was because she hadn’t been to the hospital? ‘Henry, look, just calm down. I can explain.’ She took a breath. ‘I wanted to be there, more than anything, but . . .’ She didn’t want to say it. It was like letting the genie out of the bottle.
‘But what?’ he prompted impatiently. Had he slept at all today? He looked rough and worn out.
‘They wouldn’t let me in, OK?’ she said. ‘They said only family could go in. I explained to the nurse that I was your fiancée, but she said it didn’t count.’
He blinked at her, sliding his lower jaw to the side and nodding in silence as he processed the words, his anger filling the room like smoke in a jar.
He didn’t reply immediately, instead taking a deep swig from the beer bottle, draining it, and she wondered how many others he’d had. ‘Well, she’s absolutely right, of course. It doesn’t. Engagement isn’t anything. It’s just a nice idea, a promise you can make with your fingers crossed behind your back. It’s only one level up from a suggestion of something you might possibly choose to do someday. Or maybe not.’
‘Henry, stop.’ She could feel it beginning again.
‘Why? It’s true, isn’t it? A year and a half ago I gave you a ring and you said, “Yes,” but that doesn’t actually commit us to anything. It certainly doesn’t make us family. It certainly doesn’t mean that you can be there at the moments that count! Either one of us could change our mind at any given point and the whole arrangement would just come down as easily as a house of cards. Poof! Gone.’ He clicked his fingers hard, the gesture making her jump.
She blinked at him, feeling the first smarting of tears behind her eyes. There they were – back to their age-old argument, their only one. ‘This isn’t about us.’
‘Of course it’s about us!’ he scoffed. ‘It’s about you refusing to commit to anything beyond the next meal. We can’t buy a flat together because that would mean using your divorce settlement, and that’s your fallback, right? I mean, God knows after you caught Gil in the act, I might turn out to be just as big a bastard as him, and then where will you be?’
‘Henr—’ It wasn’t like that, and he knew it. How many times had she tried to explain that the divorce money felt tainted to her? How could she get across her fear to him that using the money would feel, somehow, like she was letting Gil back into their lives? But he wasn’t listening.
‘You won’t let us buy a flat, talk about having kids, set a date – all the great unmentionables that must never be brought up, the fucking elephants that fill this flat more than any of our junk.’
‘Just stop it!’ she cried, standing up. ‘You have no right to throw these things back at me like they’re not important!’
‘Of course they’re important! But you won’t ever discuss them. I’m the only one in this relationship who seems to have any kind of hope that there’s a certain future in it.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘No? Where do you see us living five years from now?’
She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. ‘Well, how would I know?’
‘How about ten? What are we going to be doing?’
‘I don’t know!’ she cried, bringing her hands down into fists and stamping her foot on the floor. ‘That’s not how I think anymore. I like just—’
‘Living in the moment. I know! My God, do I know!’ Henry rolled his eyes, on his feet now. ‘The thing is, Cass, that doesn’t work for me – not now. If what’s happened to Arch proves anything, it’s that we don’t have a bloody clue what’s round the corner, and I don’t want to live with vague promises. I want you to be my wife, not my fiancée, not my girlfriend – my wife. I want us to belong to each other in every way possible. I don’t want there to be grey areas when it comes to us. I want to know you’re mine in good and bad, sickness and health. You may have been married for ten years, but I wasn’t and I’m not going into it expecting it to fail. I fully believe I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you. There isn’t a doubt in my mind.’
He stopped – so suddenly that she double-blinked as she realized he was waiting for her to respond. This was her cue to chime in that there were no doubts in her mind either.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. His surety was a luxury she just couldn’t afford. If they could just have a little more time without adding extra pressures on themselves, without needing contracts or titles . . .
He looked away, a mirthless laugh on his lips. ‘And there we have it. That old chestnut – once bitten, twice shy. I guess it’s a cliché for a reason, right?’
‘Henry—’
‘Forget it. I’m staying at Suze’s tonight with Mum.’
‘Henry, this is ridiculous!’ she said, turning to watch as he crossed the room in two strides and picked up a small khaki duffel bag, already packed, from the foot of the sofa. ‘You can’t just run out like this! We have to talk. Look, you’re stressed about Arch. I get it—’
‘Oh, do you? Well, that’s good to hear. Nice to know you’re so in tune with how I feel.’ She flinched at the scorn in his words. ‘Tell you what I don’t understand, though – if you didn’t want to marry me, why did you say, “Yes”?’
Words fled her yet again – her silence damning her – and Henry inhaled sharply, his hands on his hips as he stared up at the ceiling. Cassie reached for his arm, but he brushed past her, his head dropped low, and a moment later she heard the front door click shut, separating them like a sea.