Relative Love (43 page)

Stephen made a face, wondering if she remembered he wasn’t good with heights. ‘I hate this flat, especially in this heat.’

‘It is
baking
, isn’t it?’ Cassie agreed, relaxing a little. ‘I always want to moan and then I think this might be our only glimpse of summer so I should be grateful.’

‘I thought this might cool us down. It’s been in the fridge.’ Stephen seized the champagne, hoping she’d noticed the label and thinking how much better it would have looked in an ice bucket, with a starched napkin draped over the edge. The bottle, moist with condensation, slipped in his hands. ‘There’s some food too – smoked salmon. I hope that’s okay?’

‘Oh, yes. Lovely.’ Pained by the sight of him struggling with the cork, aware that he was trying, with every sinew, to impress her, Cassie turned her attention to the desk. ‘Is this it?’ She tapped the manuscript.

His face lit up. ‘That’s it. Finished this morning. All ready to go. Due for publication in March. Have a look, if you like. Your uncle is the third chapter —’ Stephen broke off, his face contorted with the effort of twisting at the cork, which popped free a moment later, with sudden and squeaky violence, splashing his T-shirt and the carpet with liberal quantities of champagne. He swore silently, shaking the drips off his hands, then filled the two glasses carefully, not wanting to lose another drop. ‘There we are.’ He handed her the fullest and stood, grinning and very close, to watch her sip it.

‘Hmm … super,’ Cassie murmured, responding to the pressure of his hopeful gaze. ‘Only eight months or so to go, then. How exciting.’ She set down her glass and began to thumb through the loose pages, trying to look casual, but anxious to see that he had kept his word, that her mother’s secret was safe.

‘Take it to the sofa. Make yourself comfortable,’ Stephen urged, drinking his own glass in one go, thrilled at the sight of her, in his sitting room, sipping her drink, reading his words. ‘I’ll just fetch the food. There’s lemon as well, but I wasn’t sure if you’d want some so I’ve just cut it up.’

‘Whatever,’ Cassie muttered, beginning to skim-read the chapter on Eric. A few moments later Stephen sat down next to her with the plate of bread and smoked salmon and lemon wedges on his lap. While she read he watched, taking in the details of her appearance, loving everything, from the creases of concentration in her forehead to the faint freckles on her arms and the smooth curve of her calf muscles. He had never seen so much of her bare skin before and it made his head quite fuzzy with excitement.

‘I didn’t mention the … you know, your mother’s letter and so on.’

‘Thank you.’ Cassie put the manuscript down and smiled at him properly for the first time. ‘It would cause so much pain. Unnecessary pain, not just to my mother but the whole family.’

‘And I’d hate that,’ he blurted. ‘I love your family. I never had anything like that, you see. I never got on with my parents. I couldn’t wait to leave home. My father was a bully.’

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry.’ He had turned to face her and was resting one arm along the back of the sofa. His brown eyes were fixed upon her face, burning with the trust of one believing himself to be in the company of a soul-mate.

‘Untidiness, clumsiness, bad homework, not-so-bad homework – just my existence was enough to provoke him into a rage. He hit me with his belt usually. It had a metal buckle that hurt like hell.’

‘But surely your mother …’

‘Took my part? And get hit herself?’ Stephen laughed. ‘It was better when my elder sister was around – he never laid a finger on her. When she left home things got really bad. I took off soon afterwards.’

‘How utterly terrible.’

‘It’s all right. I mean, I’m all right. I just wanted to tell you. I hope you don’t mind?’

Cassie shook her head, unsure whether she minded or not. Such unhappy revelations were on one level deeply – inevitably – engaging. And yet there was an inherent intimacy in them too, of which she remained wary. He held out the plate and she took one of the laden pieces of bread, to be kind, and because it occurred to her that when the plate was empty it would be all right to go. He was sitting so close that she could smell the muskiness of his skin and see her own reflection in his pupils, which were black-brown and huge.

‘I’ve not told many people about all that.’

‘Haven’t you?’ Cassie turned her attention to her food, chewing vigorously, hoping that if she ignored the tension – thickening like the afternoon heat between them – it might somehow dissolve.

In contrast, Stephen was floating on the euphoria of confession, dazzled by the conviction that what he had dreamed of for so many months was all coming true. She was here. She was close. She was his.

‘Maybe you should have told a few more people,’ Cassie ventured. ‘Talking is good …’

‘Oh, yes, I know that. You taught me that. I can’t tell you how much it meant when I came round that time and you poured your heart out …’ She began to protest, but he wasn’t listening now.
‘Cassie, I’m sorry if this shocks you but I have to say that ever since I first saw you, that evening at your parents’ house, it’s been like – like I had been waiting my whole life to meet you. I wanted to show you that letter your mother wrote, not just because of your uncle but because … because of how I feel about you.
Every moment of every minute of every hour I think of you
. I think it is one of the most beautiful letters I’ve ever read … the sentiments it expresses – the
love
, so real, so raw.’

The words, rehearsed so many times, had come out all mangled, but with Cassie looking dumbstruck rather than appalled, Stephen could no longer contain the urge to touch her. While he talked he had been watching her neck, wondering what it would be like to slide his tongue into the tiny hollow at her throat and along the ridges of her collar-bone. He imagined her tipping her head back, her lips parting to release a little sigh of pleasure. He would cup the crown of her head in the palm of his hand, hold her steady for their first kiss – the gentlest of kisses, so she wouldn’t take fright, wouldn’t realise that his passion was volcanic and terrifying even to him, who had lived with it now, smouldering and frustrated, for months and months.

Cassie started to say something about the letter, about love, but Stephen was concentrating on moving his hand, the one draped carelessly over the back of the sofa, towards the rippling curtain of hair concealing the nape of her neck. The moment he touched her her entire body stiffened, as if she had been stabbed or electrocuted or seen some nightmare vision in his buffalo picture above the gas fire. The next moment she was on her feet, clasping her empty glass. ‘I’m sorry, Stephen, I just can’t —’

‘Of course, you’re not ready yet – after that bastard. I understand, I can wait. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have rushed you.’

‘No, you
don’t
understand.’ Peter had said keep the man sweet, but Peter had no idea what he was asking of her. She couldn’t do it any more, she simply couldn’t. ‘I’m sorry you … have feelings for me.’ She glanced from his stricken face to the manuscript and back again, taking heart at the wad of completed pages. It was written now, after all, without one damaging word.

‘And I think you are a good – a truly
excellent
writer … but,’ she continued, more firmly, reaching for her handbag and gripping it under both arms, ‘I’m afraid I just can’t have you saying Dan’s a bastard because – because the fact is I still love him. And I always will.’ To have stated the central truth of her life – even to the hapless Stephen Smith – felt so wonderful, so liberating, that she repeated it: ‘I always will.’

‘Just friends, then,’ he said hoarsely, not moving.

‘Just friends,’ Cassie echoed, working her way round the furniture towards the door.

Stephen remained on the sofa until the clack of her heels had died away down the stairs. Then he stood up, seized his overcrowded vase of wonky carnations and hurled it with all his might at the closed door. Water, red petals and shards of glass exploded up the wall and across the carpet. Stephen watched motionless, not even blinking, seeing only the scattered fragments of his dreams.

‘I think rowing is boring and stupid,’ declared Chloë, yanking on Toffee’s lead to see if the dog could be persuaded to do something more entertaining than sit panting on the grass. Being in charge of the animal for a week hadn’t been half as great as she had expected. Toffee wasn’t nearly as much fun without Kay, not chasing anything – not even his tail, which Kay could make him do for hours.

‘That seems to be your opinion of most things at the moment, young lady,’ replied Peter, exchanging a look with Helen, then returning his gaze to the river where four boats, each containing four boys, were bobbing around waiting for the signal to start.

‘But Toffee agrees with me. Look at him. He’s so bored he’s
dying
.’

‘He’s not bored,’ Helen corrected her, ‘he’s hot, like all of us. And this is the first team your brother has ever been in and I think you should stop complaining and be proud instead.’

‘You and Daddy didn’t come to my rounders match.’

‘No, we didn’t,’ conceded Helen, marvelling at her daughter’s unnerving ability to strike at the heart of any matter on which she herself felt vulnerable. ‘Unfortunately we both had to work that day, but it’s your sports day soon and we’re coming to that.’

‘I’m only in one smelly race.’

‘Nonetheless we shall be there and cheer you all the way to the finishing line, just as we’re cheering Theo. And, anyway, I thought Miss Harris said you would be in three races —’

‘No, I am NOT,’ Chloë shouted. ‘And I don’t CARE anyway, I don’t CARE.’

‘Stop it, Chloë, this minute, or I’ll go and tell Granny right now not to buy you that ice-cream.’

‘I don’t want ice-cream,’ sobbed her daughter. ‘There’s only vanilla and I wanted strawberry and —’

‘I want never gets,’ retorted Helen, using a phrase she had hated as a child, and gazing over the heads of the other onlookers for any sign of her parents, who had disappeared many minutes before on a mission to locate both lavatories and the ice-cream van they had passed while trying to find somewhere to park. Clearly uncomfortable in the heat, her father, purple-faced under an ancient floppy cricket hat, and her mother, sheltering beneath a moth-eaten straw boater, had leapt at the chance of tottering off in the direction of shade. Helen had invited them at the last minute, inspired to do so by Pamela and John announcing that they couldn’t come after all because of the unfolding crisis concerning Elizabeth. Colin, it transpired, had been having an affair with his fellow deputy head. Instead of sorting it out, Elizabeth had bolted back to Ashley House with Roland and a suitcase of clothes. At least, that was how Peter had relayed the news to her, coming off the phone to his parents midweek, his eyes rolling with despair at this new turn in the hopelessly shambolic life of his sister. Of course it was dreadful of Colin – despicable, in fact – but any other woman (and this was a view clearly shared by Peter’s parents) would surely have stuck around a bit longer to try to sort something out. Mistakes were made in marriages, Peter had thundered, but they didn’t necessarily have to be fatal. When Helen phoned Pamela the next day, she had gathered that they were being as supportive as they could of Elizabeth, but remained concerned that the situation should not be allowed to spiral beyond retrievability, and that Roland had been plucked out of school mid-term without any understanding of what was going on.

‘Poor Elizabeth,’ Helen had ventured.

‘Yes, indeed,’ her mother-in-law countered, ‘poor indeed – and we all feel for her – but nothing has ever been solved in this life by running away, has it? And poor Roland doesn’t know if it’s Christmas or Easter. Luckily, little Jessica is coming to stay with Sid this weekend, so at least he’ll have someone to play with. But the fact remains that sooner or later Elizabeth has got to return to Guildford to face the music. Colin has phoned many times but she won’t even speak to him.’

Remembering the conversation now, Helen felt a fresh stab of sympathy for her hapless sister-in-law. She had never warmed to Colin and had noticed how Elizabeth flapped around him during their visits to Ashley House, perpetually anxious about his mental well-being, clearly believing it
to be a matter for which she should take full responsibility. The effect of having her anxious attentions rewarded by betrayal was something Helen could hardly bring herself to contemplate. Yet there was also something of the victim in Elizabeth, lumbering and fretting through life, which qualified any sympathy one might feel for her. Almost as if she brought things upon herself, as if she
expected
things to go wrong and thereby, subtly, connived in her own misfortune.

The race still wasn’t under way and the sun was growing more ferocious by the minute. Helen could feel it searing into her neck and shoulders, soldering her sleeveless shirt to her bare skin. She wasn’t good in heat. No matter how much sun-protection she used or extra fluid she drank, it made her listless and cross. It didn’t help that she had been fighting a bad headache all week, one that had proved impervious to analgesics and to the wonderful stock of homeopathic alternatives Kay had given her. Kay herself was on a week’s holiday in France, and Helen missed her. Chloë, meanwhile, with a child’s razor sense of the vulnerable, had chosen the last few days to be even more difficult than usual, in spite of the treat of having Toffee lodging on the kitchen floor.

‘A bit more of this, I think, Chloë. Look, I’m having some too.’ She squeezed a generous blob of suncream on to her fingertips and massaged it into her arms and face. ‘Your turn now.’

‘No.’

‘Chloë, don’t be silly. You’ll get burnt and sore.’ Helen checked quickly that nothing was happening on the river and approached her daughter with the tube. ‘Just a little, on the back of your neck and legs.’

‘No,’ Chloë shrieked, hitting out with her arms. Helen struggled with her, smearing cream on bits of leg, but misdirecting most of it on to her daughter’s clothes and Toffee, who was springing round them, barking to join in the new game. They were saved by the arrival of grandparents and ice-cream, which in spite of being half melted and vanilla-flavoured brought both co-operation and peace. It was only as Helen was rubbing the last of the sunblock into Chloë’s nose that a roar of applause from the riverbank alerted her to the fact that she had missed the race. Theo’s boat had won. She stood up just in time to see Peter charging along the towpath to congratulate him, sunglasses bouncing on his nose.