James stood up. ‘Evening. You’re both looking lovely.’ Which was absolutely true.
Dina had on a very Dina-like dress. Black again, straight, knee length, tight and low cut. She was wearing it with bright-red high heels and lipstick to match.
And Cassie. She was wearing a very different kind of dress. Brighter, and kind of softer. It was emerald green, also low cut, but in a less revealing way, with a wide skirt and a big gold belt. Her shoes were softer than Dina’s too. Gold to match her belt, and he was pretty sure that heels like that were called wedges. And her lipstick was orangey. Not so glamorous, but extremely attractive and very Cassie. She looked beautiful.
Dina walked over to him with her arms held out. No choice but to give her a hug and say a lot of effusive hellos.
‘And I don’t need to introduce you, of course,’ she said, inviting Cassie over with a big smile and nod of her head. It felt odd, because, of the two of them, while Dina was the one James had spent more actual, physical time with, Cassie was the one he felt like he knew better. Which was ridiculous. He didn’t. He’d partied with Dina, played cards with her, drunk tea with her, chatted to her. He’d had a fair few conversations with Cassie and had lived in her house, but was that enough to get to know someone?
‘Yes.’ Cassie sounded unusually clipped and her smile seemed strained. Not that he was an expert on what her smile normally looked like. ‘Hi, James.’
‘Evening.’ For whatever reason, this did not feel like an easy situation. He pulled his shirt cuff back and checked his watch. ‘I should go and get Laura. I’ll see you both soon, when I have the birthday girl safely here.’
Cassie seemed to relax slightly. ‘I can’t wait to see her.’
‘Ask her to tell you about when I went round earlier in the week,’ James said. ‘She was a good ten or twelve feet up a tree holding onto the trunk with one hand, trying to prune some branches with the other.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ Cassie said. ‘Incorrigible. So dangerous. You have to admire her, though.’
‘You do.’ James nodded. ‘I think we all need to aspire to being like her when we’re eighty. Right. I’m going. I’ll see you later.’
He hadn’t bargained for how long it would take Laura to find her shoes, put them on (shoe horn required; but where was the shoe horn?), change her shoes (shoe horn required again; at least they didn’t have to look for it this time), change her shoes back, decide on which coat she needed even though it was a very balmy evening, and finally consent to getting into the car.
She’d wanted to walk and had been remarkably stubborn all week in the face of much pressure, including Dina telling her, with all her usual subtlety, that they didn’t need her to fracture a hip on the way. Eventually, Dina had called in the big guns, Cassie, and she’d managed to persuade Laura over the phone. Neither Laura nor Cassie had divulged what Cassie had said but James had been pretty sure it had been the same kind of seductive Glaswegian-accented, simultaneously sarcastic but soft-voiced persuasion that had had him visiting neighbours, hosting parties, agreeing that of course he didn’t really want to buy her land from her and so on.
Pretty much everyone else seemed already to have arrived by the time he and Laura made it into the marquee. James immediately cast his eye around the place to look for Cassie. For Laura’s sake, obviously. Not on his own account.
Maybe a little on his own account. He really wanted to talk to her some more and he really wanted to know why her smile had seemed so strained earlier. He was pretty sure she was normally upbeat and it didn’t really seem right for her to be miserable.
She was in the middle of a big group of islanders, laughing, her face alight. Okay. She clearly wasn’t miserable. He must have imagined it. And there’d be no reason for the two of them to talk this evening, because she’d be wanting to catch up with all her friends.
‘Hey, I brought you another beer. Thought you could do with one. Your hand’s been empty for a while.’ Dina’s voice had gone full-on sultry.
‘That’s really kind, but I’m good, thanks.’ James gave her his best non-committal smile. ‘I’m going to drive Laura home later. And someone needs to look out for all the rest of you because I’m getting the sense that not everyone’s on the wagon tonight.’
‘Boring.’ Dina pouted.
Not boring. Wise. When alcoholism was probably in your genes, you’d be stupid not to be careful around drink.
She put both the glasses she’d been holding down on the nearest table and took his hands. ‘Let’s dance.’
James did not need a misunderstanding, especially in a small community like this, where he was going to be living for another two months, and where he suspected he might like to return for holidays. Dina was showing all the signs of a woman who’d happily end the evening doing something very intimate with him. And since he thought of her as a friend now and she’d mentioned a few times recently that she was keen to settle down, and there was no way he was settling down, he was absolutely not going there.
The same two-man band that had been playing at Amy’s party had just struck up a slow dance. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘We should get everyone onto the dance floor.’ He took Dina’s hand and boogied across the tent with her, side by side, in a – frankly somewhat peculiar, but satisfyingly un-intimate – manoeuvre, inviting every single person he saw to join them as he went.
It was a remarkably successful move. By the time they’d done a circuit of the marquee, he had at least half the guests who were under eighty dancing, and apparently inspired by the dancing, the band had switched to a much more up-tempo song.
Clapping his hands energetically above his head with everyone else, anything to escape any one-on-one Dina-sultriness, James wondered where Cassie was. He’d thought they’d scooped her up into their dancing group but now he couldn’t see her anywhere.
Finally he saw her, over in the corner by the bar, drinking by herself. She looked strained again. He wasn’t close enough to see her face, but her shoulders were both a little stooped and a little rigid. Not a comfortable look.
He clapped himself all the way round the edge of the group until he got to Cassie.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes, thank you, fine.’ She tipped her head back and emptied her glass. White wine. ‘Totally fine.’ She leaned over the bar and said, ‘Todd, could I get another of these?’
‘Sure.’ Todd got a clean glass out for her. ‘Give me a minute. Gonna have to open a new bottle for you.’
