The Book of Us

Martha Martinez was not a woman people often said no to. She was capable of muffling their excuses with love, until they couldn’t find a single reason to disappoint the lovely woman with the constant frown lines on her forehead.

It was the reason she’d so often escaped to her grandmother as a teenager. Her abuela’s home was warm, she was greeted with a bear hug and no one ever looked at her like she was a disappointment. Although maybe if her abuela was still around to see what a mess she’d made of her marriage, she’d feel differently. But at least she would have had back-up against her mum. No one else stood up to Martha.

Lauren often felt like her mother took up all the air in the room, and then siphoned it off to whoever she felt was deserving enough. Her brother usually won that one. Just one of the reasons she’d feigned sickness on Christmas Day. Hearing about her brother’s impressive cases (he was a real lawyer, according to her parents) as a barrister, which news site had featured him, who he had helped. Then, dealing with her perfect sister-in-law, bouncing their gorgeous dark-haired son on her knee, feeling the velvet of his baby cheeks as he gripped her finger … it would have killed her.

‘I can’t, Mum, I’ve got plans tonight.’

Her mother was rarely silent. It sat heavily between them, like a bowling ball, trundling down a lane towards its target. Lauren counted backwards from ten and waited for the impact.

‘Please don’t tell me you’re going to beg him to come back to you. The idiot wants to go, let him go. It’s embarrassing enough to be left, darling. Don’t let him make you pathetic.’

That your entry speech for Mother of the Year Awards, Ma? Lauren said nothing, and wondered if one day she’d bite her tongue so hard her mouth would fill with blood.

‘I don’t want him back, Mum.’ She was surprised to find she was telling the truth.

‘Well, good,’ Martha seemed marginally appeased. ‘Don’t you forget what he did to you. You called me drunk out of your mind at three in the morning on Boxing Day, howling about how you drove him away because you wanted a baby. I don’t want to see you that broken again.’

Lauren twitched her mouth to release the tension and pretended to be fine. ‘I remember. I don’t want him. In fact, I wish him a lifetime of happiness with the teenager he’s in love with. She can deal with washing his pants and making his dinner and listening to him whine about not getting promoted. See how long the magic lasts then.’

Martha laughed, and Lauren relaxed. Her mother always liked when she was sassy. She preferred her when she acted more like a conqueror, less like a victim. More like Cass.

‘So where are you going? Taking yourself for a spa break? A good idea to get away and get refreshed. Though maybe you want to start thinking about money if you’ll be getting divorced soon …’

Lauren winced at the d-word, a sharp little pain in her chest. She wanted to blame it on the coffee that morning, but she couldn’t. Divorced before thirty. Excellent. What a waste of an expensive party.

‘Actually, I’m going to see Cassidy.’

Martha’s gasp was a little dramatic for Lauren’s taste. Her mother had loved Cass. She was always going on about how beautiful she was, how elegant and stylish and bold. Cass wouldn’t have dreamed of being a human rights lawyer and ended up being a conveyancing solicitor. Cass wouldn’t have been left for someone younger and more beautiful. And if someone had been stupid enough to leave Cass, she wouldn’t have stayed in her house, screaming like a banshee, asking what she’d done to deserve it. She would have gone out and found someone new, evening out the playing field. Only fair.

Cass was big on fairness – crimes had to be paid, sins atoned for. Actions balanced the scale. Their friendship was a timeline peppered with Cass’s offerings of apology, from a can of Diet Coke on the side in the morning to a box of doughnuts decorated with pink nipples (she’d borrowed, and lost, Lauren’s best bra). Some were more labour intensive, like the hand-drawn cartoon of their friendship, from meeting in the nightclub all the way through to graduation.

Lauren’s favourite apology remained the beautiful copy of Alice in Wonderland, a hardback with gold leaf edges on the pages. That one was because Lauren had an anxiety attack in her first law exam and Cass had said she was overreacting. She’d expected the quiet, comforting voice Cass always offered, the thumb in the middle of her palm. The soothing words that told her it would all be fine, that she could do anything. Instead, she was told to stop worrying, like it was something she could control. The same words everyone else had always used. The book had been placed outside her room, wrapped in a purple ribbon. On the inside cover was an inscription, the closest thing to a written apology. Down the rabbit hole, we’ll go together, it read, in Cass’s wayward scrawl.

They were always impressive, these tokens, dependable and preferable to the empty words and awkward silences. The insistence that everything was okay when it wasn’t. They had found their balance. Cass would mess up, and then she would make it right. That was the way it always been.

Except for that last apology. There had only been words, and words weren’t enough. Nothing would have been enough to undo that mistake. Except, Lauren hoped, maybe time.

Her mother’s squawking brought her back to the present. ‘Oh my goodness, all this time, and now Cassidy is back again? How is she?’ Martha’s excitement was untempered, and Lauren couldn’t bear to burst her bubble.

‘She’s … she’s reaching out. And I thought it was time.’

‘Yes, whatever it was you girls fell out about, it probably all seems very silly now, doesn’t it?’

It most certainly did not. But it seemed less important. In the scheme of things.

‘You never did say what happened between the two of you …’

‘And if I’ve held out this long, why break a habit?’ Lauren clenched the steering wheel.

‘Do you remember that time she told me off because I said you’d put on weight? She stood up and said, “Mrs Martinez, I know I’m a guest in your home, but your daughter is the most wonderful person I know, and she doesn’t need to be criticised like that.” Do you remember?’ Martha laughed. Okay, so maybe one other person besides her grandmother stood up to Martha.

I remember you scowling and coming into my room later that evening to say how embarrassed you were and that I needed to exercise more so I didn’t put you in that situation again. Lauren held her tongue, as always.

‘She was a good friend. She always stuck up for me,’ Lauren said dully.

‘Well you always needed someone like Cassidy, didn’t you? I’m so glad you found her at university or you would have stayed in your room and done nothing!’

‘I might have got a first instead of a 2:1.’

‘Yes, you would have spent three years with your head buried in books, crying because you had no friends. You don’t always make it easy, you know, being so quiet. You don’t let people get to know you. You’re lucky Cassidy put in the time.’

It was a talent her mother had, managing to pinpoint her fears so terrifically, amplifying them until they were obvious. As if Lauren hadn’t spent all these years hating herself for how grateful she’d been, for how much she’d depended on her one friend. How angry she was that one person in the world had seen her properly, without criticism, and then she was gone and Lauren had no one else. It was hardly what she wanted to be thinking about right now.

‘Well, I’ve got to go, Mum. I’ll give you a call when I’m home. Say happy New Year to Dad for me, okay? I love you.’

‘You too, darling. Give my love to Cassidy, tell her I’ve missed her.’

Lauren rolled her eyes. ‘I will.’

‘And Lauren? Tell her you’ve missed her too.’ Martha laughed and hung up, and Lauren couldn’t help but snort at her mother. She would not tell her she’d missed her. Even if it was true.

Blackpool. Bloody Blackpool. They’d gone to university in Hertfordshire. Cass had grown up in North London. So how the hell had she ended up in Blackpool? Lauren conjured visions of Cass standing in the cold, shepherding kids on and off dodgems or a tired carousel. Would that be her life now? When she left all those years ago, Lauren had imagined her on a beach in Greece, dressed in jewels and designer swimsuits, endlessly adored by rich muscled men. Not in a grey, rainy town by the sea, lit up with tacky lights and strewn with L-plates and feather boas.

The Big Book sat on the passenger seat next to her, infinitely worn, with its thumbed pages and fraying black leather cover. It was a book of un-lived dreams, and she pushed it under her coat when she caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye. Who would want to do that to themselves, look back at all the things they failed to achieve? A lot of it had been travel, she remembered that much. They had been obsessed with all the places the world could offer.

She had been on holidays with Darren. But they tended to be four-star hotels at all-inclusive resorts, where you never saw the people who lived there, never had anything but buffets and booze and commenting on the scenery. They went to wonderful countries and stripped away the culture until there was just a pool and a sunset. It always made her feel a little uncomfortable, but Darren had a thing for luxury. ‘They’ve made it the best of both worlds,’ he’d say, ‘why wouldn’t you want that?’ Why would she want to backpack across India and sleep in hostels when she could be here, in Mauritius, sipping Mai Tais? Why cycle through Vietnam when she could be on a beach in Mexico? Somewhere down the line, she had stopped craving adventure, focusing instead on home and family, preparing for the next part of their journey together.

If she’d known how it would all end, maybe she would have gone backpacking. Although the idea of being brave enough to do that without Cass was laughable. Her, by herself, out in the world? Impossible.

Lauren turned down a few streets, trundling along at a slower pace than she needed to. Under a grey sky, with winds rattling canopies and rain spitting on the floor, Blackpool looked post-apocalyptic. Lauren counted five people, sitting grumpily in a café, nursing cups of tea and shivering. Everything looked so incredibly normal.

She wondered what Cass’s home would be like. It was easier than imagining her response when she opened the door. Her house would likely be a hippie den with oversized cushions and bright fabrics, the way her room had looked at uni. Cass was always getting into feng shui, or crystals, something pretty with a side of spiritual, before dropping it again. Her mum had been the same.

Barbara ‘Babs’ Jones had been an actress, model, backing singer, air hostess, aromatherapist, agony aunt and reiki healer. And those were the ones she’d stuck at for more than six months. In between those, Lauren was sure she remembered Cass talking about the failed doggy spa, selling health shakes and writing a couple of Mills and Boon-esque stories for magazines. Cass’s mum had been fascinating, so different to her own straightforward mother. Barbara always looked effortless, it was something in the chin. It said ‘no offence, but I don’t care what you think of me’. An inherent confidence lived in the Jones women’s bones, made plain by hand movements and head tilts. Lauren had craved it so badly when she first met Cass that once she recognised it as a series of traits, she spent hours in the mirror trying to figure out the reasoning behind the magic. But, alas, it wasn’t for the likes of her. It was just who they were, as natural as breathing.

Barbara loved an audience, she was always ready to hand you a glass of wine and tell you a hilarious story about a time she was in Bombay on a movie set, or Nicaragua, volunteering. She had fit a lot of life into her life. She’d died young, too. And still, not as young as Cass would be. God, that was a horrible thought. Lauren physically shook it away as she gripped the steering wheel.

There it was. She pulled the car over and just looked. The street was leafy and pleasant, the little Victorian terrace was grey, with white window frames and a tiny paved entrance. There was nothing about it that told her Cass might live there, except the little evil eye that hung in the top corner of the doorframe. They’d got them in Turkey that first summer together, solid blue glass with a white eye painted on top. She touched it as she approached the door, fingertips chilled by the glass.

Lauren was quite sure she was going to vomit. The only way to put it off was to repeat, ‘It’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal,’ over and over, until the words ceased to make sense. The rhythm was comforting, and she echoed it as she knocked on the door. Five seconds passed, and then five more. She knocked again, tapping her foot as she counted another five seconds. Okay, well … she wasn’t in. The relief of an anticlimax dripped from her fingertips. She would get back in her car, and go home. Maybe spend a night in a hotel by the service station. Surely those wouldn’t be booked up on New Year’s Eve? Enjoy some tiny room-service bottles and rubbish TV. She could even retrieve the Big Book from her car, leave it on Cass’s doorstep as a gift. A sign that she came, that she tried—

‘Well, well … look what the cat dragged in.’ Cass’s voice was arch. It sounded mocking until Lauren turned around and saw her smile. It was … shy. Grateful. Very unlike Cassidy Jones.

‘Hi,’ Lauren said.

‘Hiya, babe,’ Cass laughed, shaking her head, ‘long time no see.’

She was the same, but different. Age, and life, but more than that, a slight greyness that hovered round the edges. Her thinness was no longer a sign of her diet of coffee and plain toast; it was now evidence of her sickness. She wore grey yoga pants and a jumper that hung from her. The blonde hair that had once flowed wildly down her back was cut into a tousled bob. She could have been anyone. Except for the way she leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed, grinning.

‘So a girl’s gotta be dying to get your attention, huh?’

‘Something like that.’ Lauren twisted her ringless fingers, focusing on Cass’s chin rather than her eyes. She was going to be cold, cool, sophisticated. She was the injured party here. Cass should be playing the role of the apologetic friend, eager to make amends. Somehow death had evened the scale, which didn’t seem fair at all.

‘Well, don’t stand out here like a nutter, it’s cold,’ Cass turned and beckoned her in, watching to make sure she followed, ‘still take two sugars in your coffee?’

Lauren trailed behind her, closing the door and taking in everything as she walked down the neat grey hallway. She followed Cass into the kitchen, where she was busying herself with the kettle. The kitchen was small and clean, with bright blue tiles and a spotless white floor. A plain wooden table with four chairs sat by the back door, looking out onto a frosty back garden with a sweet rainbow-striped birdhouse sat in the tree. The first sign of Cass. An abundance of colour that shouted amongst the neutrals.

Lauren sat down at the table, waiting for Cass to say something. But she didn’t, she just let the kettle steam away, pottering with mugs and spoons and instant coffee.

‘No sugar,’ Lauren said suddenly, even though it was a lie.

‘Okay,’ Cass replied, not looking up, ‘Geronimo.’

‘What?’

Cass pointed to the black cat curling itself around Lauren’s feet. ‘Geronimo.’

‘Why?’

Cass shrugged, ‘I didn’t name him.’

How did you even start to talk to someone who had once been a part of you? How did you ask, ‘So how have the last six years been?’ without dredging up everything that went before? How did you stop being angry at someone simply because they were dying? There wasn’t a switch she could flip, and yet, she drank the sight of Cass in because it was strange and wonderful. Like looking at one of those wacky mirrors at the circus. A reflection, but not a true one. Time was invisible until too much of it passed.

‘Look,’ Lauren stood up, talking to Cass’s back, ‘before all of this starts, I just … I don’t want to talk about the past, okay? Let’s leave all that shit behind, I don’t want to go over it all again. Let’s just talk about the present and the future . .’

Cass made a noise as she leaned over the sink, and Lauren couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or a sob.

‘So you don’t want an apology? I’ve only been practising for six years. I finally got it perfect.’

Lauren clenched her teeth, trying to find the words, ‘Cass—’

Just like that, the bristles were out. Cass straightened her back and placed the two mugs of coffee on the table, her pale hands with the flaked ruby nail varnish shaking slightly.

‘Hey, babe, whatever you want. You’re here. That has to be enough, I guess.’

‘So it’s my fault now?’

Cass blinked at her in shock, ‘How could it be your fault, Loll? You came, after all these years. I’m grateful. Wish it hadn’t taken me dying to get your attention. But hey, we take what we can get, right?’

She shrugged, picking up the cat and cradling him to her chest, tickling beneath his chin. He relaxed for a moment, then started to wriggle, demanding his freedom. Geronimo leapt from Cass’s arms and escaped upstairs, leaving her hands with nothing to do but grasp her coffee cup.

‘I don’t know what I’m meant to say.’ Lauren stared at Cass’s bare feet.

‘Well, I’m meant to say I’m sorry, and you’re meant to say I know, and then we’re meant to ponder silently for a moment before one of us makes a joke about something.’ Cass looked at her hopefully, ‘Know any good jokes?’

‘Why are you acting like none of this matters?’ Lauren asked.

‘God, you really don’t know me at all anymore, do you?’ Cass put down her coffee cup and held out her hands to show her – they were visibly trembling. She quickly crossed her arms, trapping her hands in her armpits. ‘It matters, Loll, it matters more than you know. I’m just trying to keep my shit together. You remember that much about me, at least?’

Lauren nodded. She did know. Something spiteful in her had needed proof. Some signal that she wasn’t the only one struggling. She sipped her coffee, looking at the table, the scratch marks and sticky patches. Did Cass live here with a boyfriend, a partner? A husband? It was almost impossible to imagine, but so was this woman in front of her.

‘How’s Darren?’ Cass sat down carefully, as Lauren’s head whipped up. ‘Might as well get the hard questions out of the way first.’

Loll snorted, nodding, ‘Left me. Just before Christmas.’

‘This Christmas?’

‘Yup,’ Lauren sipped, pretending it didn’t hurt. ‘Man, good coffee.’

‘It’s got caramel or something in it,’ she said, and for a moment, it was so incredibly normal that Lauren felt her chest hurt.

‘Guess you bet on the wrong horse there, babe.’ Not quite an I-told-you-so, but just as sharp. Lauren couldn’t feel too angry, she supposed. Cass was right, after all.

‘Guess I did.’

‘Are you terribly heartbroken?’ Things were always like that in her world, Lauren remembered. They were always terribly or awfully … as if she turned into Audrey Hepburn the minute she was trying to show empathy.

‘No more than expected. What about you?’

‘I’m not heartbroken at all,’ Cass trilled, raising her cup. It was a poor impersonation of herself.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know what you meant, Loll,’ she twisted her cup around on the table, pushing the handle. ‘I’m alone. There’ve been a few guys along the way. No one who stuck. When I knew I was sick again, well, it didn’t seem fair. I felt like I was tricking them into a sad little life.’

She’d never heard Cass be selfless before. She had only wanted to be adored, to be seen. Now, she seemed to curl in on herself, her sleeves pulled down to her fingertips.

‘How long do you have?’

Cass let out that half-laugh again, ‘You know, that’s all anyone wants to know. What does the crystal ball say, what’s the deadline? It’s like when old ladies ask how far along you are when you’re pregnant. But in reverse, I guess.’

Lauren said nothing, and Cass sighed. ‘I’m just … can we finish our coffee first?’

‘Whatever you want, Cass.’ Lauren watched as the pale impersonation of Cassidy Jones put on that voice, the one that pretended to be brave.

‘Best thing about dying – it’s always whatever I want. Should have started dying years ago, everyone’s been so awfully accommodating.’ She gave a little smile and looked up, as if checking to see if Lauren still knew her, still knew how she spoke and what she really meant. Whatever she was searching for in Lauren’s eyes, she seemed to find it.

‘Do you want to go for a walk?’

*

The Blackpool Illuminations on New Year’s Eve were a weird mix of drizzly grey skies, crashing waves, and the party spirit of young people pre-drinking in the afternoon. Loud youths walked back from the shops with six packs of beer, and bottles of wine under their arms. There was a sense of time passing, and simultaneously freezing. Nothing seemed to move or change, just the cold sea air pushing them back as they trudged.

‘So, what do you do?’ Cass asked. ‘Are you a big-shot lawyer now?’

‘I’m a solicitor, yeah.’ Lauren pressed her lips together, holding back any further explanation. ‘And you? Did you become a physio in the end or stay at the make-up counter?’ Did you stick with one thing, finally?

‘Nah,’ Cass shook her head, ‘didn’t seem worth it after Mum. On to new things. I still do a pretty decent smoky eye, though. And I help a couple of the local oldies out with their exercises.’

Her thick mustard scarf was wrapped twice around her, and the colour clashed horribly, bringing out a yellow tone in her skin that spoke of illness.

‘So what do you do?’ It could have been any of a hundred things Cass had tried and quit. Nurse, model, waitress, dog walker.

‘I work in an office. I’m an administrator for a homeless charity.’ She shrugged, sneaking a peak at Lauren. ‘Unexpected?’

‘The word administrator and I in the same sentence from you? Sure.’ Lauren smiled, ‘How long have you done that?’

‘About four and a half years.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know,’ Cass shook her head. ‘Some things change.’

‘Do you love it?’

Cass twitched her nose, shrugged one shoulder. ‘It’s fine. It’s flexible. I like feeling like I’m doing something good. The money is enough and the people I work with are interesting.’

She raised a hand at an old couple walking on the other side of the street. They waved back, before returning to the task at hand – concentrating on staying upright. They gripped each other tightly, blue veins protruding from their clasped hands.

‘I always wonder when I see old people if they’re holding hands because they want to or they need to,’ Lauren said suddenly, looking as the woman smiled at her husband with a kind of light in her eyes.

‘Is there a difference?’ Cass replied, checking her phone as it buzzed. ‘All right if we take a detour?’

Lauren looked at her. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Sure, just got to pop round the corner.’ She stopped suddenly, brushing her hair back from her face in frustration. She seemed to tremble again as she spoke. ‘Look, you’re here and everything, so I assume you’re okay with meeting her? I know it won’t be easy, but …’

Cass’s body was taut, her toe tapping as she watched Lauren. She crossed her arms, hip jutted in a way that was painfully familiar. Ready for a fight.

‘Meeting who?’

Cass looked at her, confusion in the crease of her brow and her pursed lips. ‘My daughter, obviously.’

Chapter 3

Lauren felt her stomach shift and clench. ‘You have a daughter?’

‘Yes.’ Cass frowned in confusion.

‘No, I’m sorry, that wasn’t right. You have a daughter? You?’

They were walking briskly, Lauren marching ahead even as Cass struggled after her, her cheeks reddening with the cold air.