Through the steady fall of rain she watches as her husband sits back on the sofa. He slouches back as the sofa gently folds around him, crossing his right leg over his left and ruffling his hair. He raises a bottle of beer to his lips, his mouth curling around the rim, smiling at someone sitting next to him who Cassie can’t see. He hasn’t looked so relaxed in months.
He can’t be that ill if he’s having a beer, Cassie thinks primly. She’s close to the window now. She pulls her hood down off her head and feels the rain wet her crown like a baptism. She’s about to lift her fist to knock against the window, but she pauses because the person sitting next to Jack is stroking her husband’s leg with beautiful long white fingers. Jack looks down at his leg and interlaces his fingers with the woman’s. She pulls him towards her and he gives in easily. Cassie watches, paralysed, as they come together in a way that looks inevitable, the pressure too great to not put their lips together, for his hands not to hold her face as he kisses it, her red hair cascading between his fingers like lava. He’s kissed Cassie like that so many times. She touches her face, almost expecting to feel his hands there, where they should be, holding her face, not holding Nicky’s. Cassie can’t move. It’s as though her mind has been cleaved clean away from her body. She watches them push and pull against each other, watches as her friend smiles behind her kissing mouth and her fingers fall to Jack’s fly, like they’ve been there before.
Cassie’s heart dilates and contracts painfully, like the organ itself has been thumped hard. The force shoves her backwards, and she grips the window frame to stop herself falling.
The movement catches Nicky’s eye. Her head raises, away from Cassie’s husband, and her hand whips away from his fly. Her red hair flows down her back as she sees Cassie, and she says one, short word before Jack turns.
His face is blanched, already pale, eyes made round, cartoonish with shock. He leaps up as though the sofa is suddenly burning him and comes close towards the window. He’s shaking his head and he keeps saying her name over and over again, a cloud of evaporation frills around his palm as he places it against the cold glass.
But Cassie isn’t looking at him. Through the rain-streaked window she’s staring at her best friend who is now standing perfectly still in the middle of the sitting room, and Cassie can’t stop staring at her because Nicky’s body must be possessed by someone, something else. This can’t be the same person who slept in the same bed as Cassie for a month after April died, because her mouth, which used to call Cassie her sister, was just kissing her husband.
Cassie watches as Nicky’s lips make the shape of Cassie’s name again and then she turns away from the window and she runs as fast as she can back into the weeping day.
16
Alice
I’m running, my feet rhythmic and steady on the tarmac. My body feels taut, energetic, as if I could run for ever. The lane narrows and becomes foggy and I see a figure in front of me, another runner, just a few yards ahead. I can’t see her face; it’s a woman with a bouncy, blonde pony tail. The small, wiry-haired dog – the same one in her Facebook photos – trips around her feet, and then I know who it is.
‘Cassie!’ I call out.
She stops in the middle of the lane, slowly turning around, which is when I see that her face is all wrong. Her features are frozen like a death mask, her mouth twisted in a noiseless scream, her skin a flawless grey. Her eyes are only half open, red veins like weird lace lattice the whites of her eyes; I can’t see the iris.
Our room is pitch black, the bed sheets clammy with my sweat. I turn on my bedside light and David stirs but doesn’t wake.
Jesus.
5.40 a.m. I try closing my eyes. They burn with exhaustion and my body aches for more sleep, but it’s no use. My mind is cracking like a whip, so I grab my dressing gown and pad downstairs.
I’ve always loved the peace of early morning, the privacy of being the only one awake. As if the dial has been turned down on the world, the early morning feels like a suspended space, a pause, a chance to catch up with myself.
Without turning on any lights, I stare out of the kitchen window. The morning sky is still a deep indigo. It’s freezing outside, the lawn covered in petrified, icy blades of grass. Something – a rabbit, perhaps – has left a sweet little trail of paw prints heading into the leylandii bush; Bob will enjoy trying to flush it out later.
I know some nurses struggle not to bring work home with them, but it’s never been an issue for me. As soon as I step out of my uniform, I strip my day, and other people’s pain, off with it. I never thought it was unusual; most people live in at least two worlds. But it’s different now, with Cassie. I want to stay close to her, like the survival of her baby is a good omen, as if some of her magic, just a tiny bit, might rub off on me. I pour myself a glass of water and go back upstairs to the study; I turn the computer on, the light from the screen stark, cold in the dark room.
I open Facebook and search through Cassie’s friends. There’s no Jonathan Parker or Jonny Parker; either he’s not on Facebook or he’s deleted his account. All of Cassie’s photos have been posted by other people, mainly Jack in the last two years and, before then, by someone called Nicky Breton.
I look at the older ones, the ones posted by Nicky. This is the Cassie I don’t know so well. Her face is fuller, more girlish in the photos, her skin’s even, taut with youth, and her hair is buttery and long, falling either side of her face. Her clothes are different in the older photos; they’re colourful, made from natural fabrics, tie-dye and floaty, the kind of clothes people buy at festivals.
One of the photos of Cassie and April is a close-up of their faces. They’re both staring at the camera like they’ve been told to be serious, but they look too giggly, like trying to be serious makes them laugh. They have the same eyes, blue with nuggets of hazel. April is wearing a bright-blue headscarf – maybe she’d just started chemo – and strands of Cassie’s hair dance like sprites around her face. In the background there are slick rocks, jagged as incisors, a foam of white water around them. The two of them look like they belong there, by the sea.