Summer at Tiffany's by Karen Swan Page A

the race.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Listen, if you’d prefer to get back to the hospital, I’m more than happy looking after Velvet,’ Cassie said.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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 . . . ?’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜Of course. Now go, go.’
    â€˜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