If You Knew Her Read online

  They both knew it would break Charlotte’s heart if she wasn’t there to see Jack, her only child, marry. So they agreed to a small ceremony and a drinks-only reception in the beautiful old barn conversion behind The Hare, Buscombe village’s best – and only – pub. Which was why Cassie was now being passed from guest to guest like a fragile present, for careful cheek kisses, powdery as moth’s wings. All their guests tell her she looks beautiful, even the ones she’s never met before.

  ‘You look absolutely radiant,’ they say. ‘Jack’s a lucky man.’

  Cassie smooths the tight, ivory, lace dress – which Charlotte insisted she tried on – over her hips and feels an increasingly familiar bubble swell inside her as she replies, ‘Not as lucky as me!’ And she means it; she is lucky. Bloody lucky.

  Her eyes skittle around the black-beamed barn, decorated by Charlotte with cheery red-berried holly wreaths, two Christmas trees and hundreds of candles, before they lock on, magnetised to the back of Jack’s dark head. He’s always the tallest person in a room, floating above the canopy of heads as though he’s got more life in him than everyone else. The sight of him – his sure, solid features, his easy smile, the dimple on his left cheek – calms and excites Cassie simultaneously. He bends down to kiss an elderly woman Cassie thinks is his Aunt Torie. She’s clutching on to his hand like a child with a balloon she can’t believe she’s won; she’s left a haze of pink lipstick on his cheek. Aunt Torie looks up at Jack, smiling and coquettish as if she’s back in her own romance from decades ago, but Jack’s not looking at Aunt Torie any more; he’s looking at her, his new wife. She starts moving towards him, and they open their arms to each other, as natural as breath, and Jack kisses her full on the mouth. A camera snaps.

  ‘Wifey,’ he whispers in a jokey Scottish accent, and she smiles up at him, in rapture that this is who she is now.

  ‘Husband,’ she says back to him with a little bow of her head.

  At home in the Brixton flat where Cassie grew up and where Jack and Cassie have lived together for the last six months, they’ve been calling each other husband and wife for weeks already, trying their new titles on for size. They fit perfectly. He kisses her again before someone ting-tings a spoon against a champagne glass and a hush like a wave washes over the wedding guests as they form a neat semi-circle around Charlotte. Jack and Cassie, holding hands, are gently nudged forward to the front.

  Charlotte strokes the side of her blonde bob with her left hand, and her own wedding ring glows like an ember. Cassie has never seen her take it off, even though Mike died over twenty years ago. Theirs was the kind of relationship Cassie’s mum, April, gently told Cassie was make-believe, improbable, a sugary fairy tale for people with sweet heads and hearts. But Charlotte’s ring – its position on her left hand – is proof. April hadn’t been right about everything.

  Some guests are still quietly chatting so Charlotte clears her throat to quieten them. Gentle crow’s feet like speech marks punctuate her blue eyes as she smiles at the wedding guests who stand before her, like exotic birds in their best outfits. Jack puts his arm around Cassie. She feels his muscles tense, nervous for his mum. Cassie strokes the back of his hand to calm him.

  Charlotte thanks everyone who helped with the wedding, the cousins for the Christmas tree, the local family friends for the wedding cake. The guests keep their eyes fixed on Charlotte, moving only to take blind, occasional sips of champagne. Charlotte pauses for a breath. Cassie stops stroking Jack, her hand clammy suddenly, as Charlotte starts talking again:

  ‘Finally, I just want to say what a rare union we have witnessed today. The coming together of two exceptional individuals who share an exceptional love. The first time I met my wonderful daughter-in-law’ – a couple of ‘whoops’ from the younger guests – ‘I knew she was special. With the beautiful Cassie by his side, Jack is the happiest he’s ever been. He came to me just a few weeks into their relationship and said, “Things make sense now, Mum. Everything just makes sense”, and I knew my boy had found the love of his life.’

  Jack squeezes Cassie’s waist before releasing her so he can clap. Cassie’s holding a champagne glass. It’s in the way and she tries to clap but her hands are clumsy around the glass.

  ‘Of course,’ Charlotte says, ‘we all know there are two very special people who can’t be with us today.’

  The air in the room becomes dense. Cassie feels a familiar lump harden in her throat, too large to swallow. Charlotte looks directly at Cassie, her eyes kind as always, and the lump softens.

  ‘I know I speak for us all when I say how dearly we would have loved April, Cassie’s remarkable mum, to be here with us. I’m saddened Jack and I never met April. I’ve heard stories of a woman who loved colour, late-night dancing, a woman who laughed easily and loved heartily. Although we can never fill the void in Cassie’s life, I’m certain April would have been pleased that Cassie will forever be part of a family who will love and cherish her. After all, what more could a parent ask than for the happiness of their child?’ Charlotte’s voice wavers a little. ‘Welcome to our family, Cassie. We love you dearly.’

  Jack’s arm snakes around Cassie’s waist again.

  ‘We’re also missing Mike,’ Charlotte continues, ‘Jack’s dad, today more than ever. Many of you knew Mike, so you’ll know how strongly he believed in marriage, and I know he would hope, as I do, that you are as happy as we were.’ Charlotte’s eyes fill as she looks at her son for a moment before she clears her throat and says, ‘Now, all that remains is for me to ask you all to raise your glasses to the bride and groom! To Cassie and Jack.’

  All eyes in the room spin towards them, and, like a shoal of colourful fish, moved by some unknowable, compelling force, their guests form a circle around them and their voices echo Charlotte. ‘Cassie and Jack.’

  Jack bends Cassie over his arm as he kisses her to more whoops and clapping, before they both turn to Charlotte who, speech over, is wiping her eyes.

  ‘Thank god for waterproof mascara,’ she says, and Cassie holds onto Jack’s hand as she hugs Charlotte.

  ‘I meant it, Cas,’ Charlotte whispers in Cassie’s ear, ‘every word.’

  Cassie wants to tell her again how grateful she is but she can’t because Charlotte’s turning towards Jack for a hug and there’s a hand on Cassie’s forearm gently begging attention, so Cassie turns away from Charlotte, letting go of Jack, expecting one of Jack’s friends or his uncle perhaps, but the hand on her arm, Cassie realises with a sudden drop in her stomach, belongs to Marcus.

  His smile stops at his mouth. Cassie can’t see any real joy in his face even today, his dark eyes a vacuum. As far as Cassie knows they’ve been empty ever since April died.

  ‘Got a hug for your old man?’ His attempt at an old joke rests like stale air between them. After April and Marcus married, just six months before April died, Cassie used to tease Marcus, calling him ‘Daddy’ in public to embarrass him and to make April laugh.

  Cassie’s arms feel weary as she obligingly hugs her stepdad. He’s smaller than she remembers, and his body feels weak and skittish beneath the fibres of his dusty suit. She keeps herself tense, as though if she were to relax, some of his grief might seep into her. Like rich chocolate cake, Cassie finds she can only manage a little bit of Marcus at a time. Cassie gently pulls away from him, and he keeps hold of her arm with one hand; he knows she wants to float away.

  ‘That was a lovely speech, wasn’t it?’ His eyebrows bounce as he talks.

  ‘Marcus, you know, we decided not to have too many speeches, it was our …’

  A small sac of skin pendulum swings beneath Marcus’s chin as he shakes his head, trying not to care that Cassie walked herself down the aisle, that he doesn’t have a spray of flowers in his jacket pocket, that there was no stepfather-of-the-bride speech.

  ‘No, no, Cas, I wasn’t implying that. I thought – what’s her name … Charlotte? – did a good job. Your mum would’ve loved it.’

  Even a year an
d a half on, there still seems to be no Marcus without April. Cassie feels her dress tighten around her lungs; they feel leaden. Marcus’s hand on her arm starts to burn and she feels like she’s back in the hospice room, staring down at her mum’s empty body, Marcus opposite. Marcus makes her feel stuck, as though she should never step away from April’s deathbed.

  ‘I haven’t said hello yet, Marcus!’

  Cassie turns with gratitude towards the familiar voice, and her lungs instantly loosen. Nicky, her oldest friend, must have seen her with Marcus and known she needs rescuing.

  Nicky’s long, red hair is plaited and coiled like a rope over her shoulder; little wisps hover round her head like gas. Nicky has never liked dressing up. Her older sister told her when she was a teenager that she was too big for pretty things and the comment stuck to her like a burr. Today she’s wearing a dark-green silk dress to her knee; it flatters her lightly freckled skin.

  ‘How are you, Marcus?’ Nicky asks, giving him one of her firm kisses on the cheek.

  Cassie keeps her eyes fixed on Nicky, but she feels Marcus’s eyes flicker to her face before going back to Nicky, as though he needs reminding who Nicky is, even though he’s met her many times.

  It was Nicky who used to listen to Cassie moan about how weird Marcus was, how it was even weirder that he was her mum’s boyfriend. They got together five years before April died. Cassie could never say it to anyone, not even Jack or Nicky, but she used to think April only married Marcus because she was dying; she knew it would make him happy.

  He was a retired civil servant from the Isle of Wight who never married before April, and never had kids of his own. He was not the bon vivant she imagined for her mum; he was too beige to ever be a hero, but he made her mum happy and that made Cassie happy. So she’d decided Marcus was a good man.

  There’s a pause. Marcus looks stricken for a moment before he says to Nicky, ‘Long time no see.’ He squeezes Cassie’s arm before he lets go. ‘How’ve you been?’

  ‘Oh, I’m good, good, thanks. Just getting over another knee operation, but apart from that I’m fine. Wasn’t it a lovely ceremony?’

  Marcus ignores her question and instead asks, ‘Did I hear you got a new job?’

  Cassie looks away, over her friend’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, no, that wasn’t me, Marcus. I’m still temping.’ Nicky tilts her champagne flute as an adolescent waiter, face swarming with pimples, refills it for her. ‘Which is, you know, fine … fine for now.’

  ‘Nicky works at the same place I used to work, remember, Marcus?’ Cassie says, still not looking at her stepdad.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ says Nicky, nodding at Marcus. ‘I’m still on the waiting list for my Jack-in-shining-armour to appear, unchain me from my desk and whisk me off to the countryside.’

  Marcus laughs at Nicky; like he doesn’t know what else to do. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Cassie wonders if she can just walk away, or if that would be unfair on Nicky.

  Nicky perseveres with Marcus. ‘How’s life on the Isle of Wight?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, just the same; quiet, especially at this time of year.’

  The conversation limps on. Cassie’s grateful when Charlotte catches her eye and waves Cassie over to meet an old family friend, a round jolly man whose lips feel like squashed berries as he presses them to Cassie’s cheek.

  She watches over his shoulder as an old school friend, Beth, interrupts Nicky and Marcus. Beth and Nicky hug, and Marcus, as though suddenly tossed overboard, steps away from them, hobbling slightly; his hip gets worse in the winter. He moves like a lost tourist through the party, vulnerable and hesitant in this new land that is populated by much happier people than he’s used to. He pretends to admire the Christmas tree, then finds a waiter to top up his smeary glass. An old twist of guilt ripples through Cassie: Marcus getting old on his own. She thinks about going to say goodbye properly, promising him she’ll visit soon, suggesting that maybe they could go for a sea walk along the cliffs and have a pub lunch like they used to when April was alive? But suddenly Jack takes her hand.

  ‘Ready, wife?’

  Charlotte takes her other arm, and it’s all over so quickly, and, before she knows it, they’re outside with the few remaining guests, and Marcus has disappeared into the night already. Probably for the best.

  Nicky raises her hand, palm up to the sky and says, ‘It’s raining.’

  Charlotte opens an umbrella, holds it over Cassie. ‘It rained cats and dogs on mine and Mike’s wedding day, it’s good luck.’

  As Cassie kisses Nicky and Charlotte goodbye before getting in the car to the airport hotel with Jack by her side, she feels the hair on her bare arms rise and she doesn’t know if it’s the rain or something else that’s making her feel so cold.

  4

  Alice

  I don’t have long with her. Cassie Jensen still smells fresh, like an aura of the outside surrounds her. The hypothermia has turned her lips and eyelids an unnatural ice blue, like bad make-up, but her cheeks still have the slight plumpness of recent health, helping her look more alive than dead, but only just. They’ll lose their bounce in a few days. The surgery team has removed any jewellery she was wearing.

  I stroke her left arm, the one that’s not pinned by the surgeon like a voodoo doll; it’s ribboned with thin red lines, lacerations from the accident. I hold her right hand for a moment; it’s warm but there’s no ripple of response beneath Cassie’s eyelids. A tube runs from the back of her blonde head where the neurosurgeon drilled into her skull to insert a temporary probe in the cavity to monitor the inter-cranial pressure and swelling around her brain. It looks like they’ve done a good job; the horror of the tube as it plunges into Cassie’s head is discreetly covered with a small bandage and they’ve only shaved a small bit of her hair. She’s patched with a couple of deep bruises on her neck and chest and there’s a nasty cut on her lip. Like tiny, blazing galaxies, the bruises colour her otherwise fair skin. I wonder as I always do with new patients who she is, what her laugh sounds like, what she had planned to do today. Maybe she should have been meeting a friend for coffee right now. Even with the bruises, the cuts and her broken fingers, she doesn’t look like she belongs here. She looks like she’s pretending.

  I pick up her folder from the little table by her bed. It says her dog was spooked by New Year fireworks and disappeared in the early hours of New Year’s morning. Cassie went out in the dark to look for her. It was noted there was a puddle close to where she would have fallen, which could have caused her to trip. The form is marked that it was either an accident or a hit and run, so the police will be calling.

  ‘Nurse Marlowe?’ It’s Lizzie, speaking from behind the curtain, probably unsure whether she’s allowed in or not.

  ‘You can come in, Lizzie.’

  She pulls back the curtain just enough to move her head around. She looks quickly at Cassie before turning to me. ‘The family are here.’

  ‘Her husband?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, and I think maybe her mum?’

  ‘OK, so there’s only two relatives?’

  ‘Yup. Yes, I mean.’

  ‘OK, show them in, please. Oh, and Lizzie.’ Her face reappears from behind the curtain. ‘Call me Alice.’ She nods and we smile at each other before she leaves.

  I stroke Cassie’s shoulder-length blonde hair back to try and conceal the bandage on her head as much as possible, a feeble attempt to minimise the shock for her family. Other senior nurses delegate the family liaison duties as much as they can, but I like to do the initial meet if I’m on duty. What a patient’s family is like has a huge impact on the ward. It’s often a fine-balancing act: empathy tempered with realism.

  I hear footsteps coming towards us and Lizzie says in an appropriately subdued voice, ‘Here she is’, before drawing the curtain back. Lizzie closes the curtain again behind a woman, who’s probably in her sixties, and an athletic-looking man with dark hair – Cassie’s husband – who looks just a fe
w years younger than me, in his mid-thirties. I stand back. They don’t notice me. It’s as if they’re magnetised towards Cassie.

  ‘Cas, oh Cassie,’ says the husband, clasping and kissing the hand I just held. The woman stands just behind him; she places one tidy hand on his lower back. ‘Oh god,’ exclaims the husband, and starts sobbing. The woman makes small circles with her hand on his lower back and makes ‘shhh’-ing noises. The woman is wearing jeans and an old, lumpy cricket jumper – the sort of clothes thrown on in an emergency. The husband is in jeans and a crumpled blue T-shirt.

  The woman raises her silvery head, as if suddenly aware of where she is. She looks around the curtained area and sees me for the first time. She looks as if she’s searching for something but I raise a hand and say as gently as I can, ‘Please, take your time.’ I don’t think the husband heard me. I don’t want them to feel glared at, so I step to the other side of the curtain. The husband is still sobbing.

  ‘Jack, remember,’ the woman says, ‘the surgeon said this would be a shock … that this is the worst we’re going to see her.’ Her voice starts out clear but crackles at the end of the sentence.

  I wait a few minutes while she mumbles some more soft words, and then I step forward, the rattle of the curtain makes them raise their heads. The woman has her arms around him in a small two-person huddle over Cassie. They look at me, surprised, as if they forgot they were on a hospital ward. The woman breaks away from Jack and comes towards me, her palm outstretched.

  I take her hand. ‘I’m Alice Marlowe, the ward nurse. My team and I will be looking after Cassie while she is with us.’

  ‘Hello, Nurse. I’m Charlotte, Charlotte Jensen, Cassie’s mother-in-law.’ She smiles, a quick reflexive flicker. She smells subtlty of perfume, warm, as if she’s been wearing the same scent for so many years, it’s become part of her. I’ll bet all her clothes carry the same smell.