‘Do I really need to explain?’ I said, feeling like screaming myself. ‘It’s not that I want Charlie, far from it, you’re welcome to him, Cass. What’s hurt me more than you can ever know is that you would go behind my back and do this to me. You knew how upset I was about the break-up.’
‘I didn’t! You didn’t seem like you were even that bothered, even Mum said so.’
‘Because I didn’t want you both to worry!’ I shouted. ‘Because I think about you in almost everything I do. Do you know, I even felt bad that I’d broken up with Charlie because I knew how much you’d enjoyed having him around recently, even if you hadn’t really hit it off at the start, and I felt as though I’d taken that away from you. Little did I know that this was how it would turn out!’
For one brief moment, seeing Cassie’s big, fearful eyes so full of tears and yes, at least some remorse, I almost backed down. My sisterly instincts hadn’t gone completely – and I didn’t trust Charlie to look after her.
‘Please don’t hate me,’ she said in a tiny voice.
Hate. I remembered using that word in jest to describe what I had once thought about Marcus, but I didn’t think I’d ever truly hated anyone for real, not even wild-eyed, pathetic Charlie. God, it had been Cassie in those photos on Instagram then, cavorting in the Cotswolds around the same time I flew to Monte Carlo, mere weeks after our break-up.
I turned and walked away, feeling a tug of guilt despite myself. When I glanced over my shoulder, Cassie was crying in Charlie’s arms. Maybe it was time that I let other people look after her. It didn’t always have to be me, and it wasn’t always my job, especially not now.
‘Ava!’
For some reason, Marcus was still here, standing by his car, looking concerned. He half ran towards me.
‘What’s happened?’
I kept talking to a minimum because I couldn’t trust myself not to start sobbing, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be about him or Cassie or Charlie or all of the above.
‘Can you please drop me home?’ I said simply.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It felt very much likeGroundhog Daywhen the doorbell rang. I was experiencing a lot of the same sensations I’d felt when Charlie had left: grief, disbelief, anger, although the anger this time was even more potent than it had been then. Because people broke up all the time and it hurt and it felt unfair at first, but this – this was different. People didn’t generally get it on with their sister’s ex-boyfriend. People’s ex-boyfriends didn’t generally shag their ex’s little sister mere weeks after they’d broken up. I still couldn’t get my head around it all. If you’d asked me about their relationship when Charlie and I had been together, I’d have said it was a brotherly/sisterly one – he teased her, she looked up to him. I’d never seen one iota of sexual chemistry, but perhaps it had been simmering away the whole time, right under my nose.
In the hallway I could see Cassie’s silhouette through the glass panel of the door, and I hesitated for a few beats before opening it. I was torn between not wanting to see her and wanting answers. Wanting the whole story, the whole sordid truth. I hadn’t been able to talk to anybody about it, not even Zoe, not even Marcus, not really. He’d dropped me home, shocked when I’d told him briefly what had happened; he’d sent me messages to check on me and he’d asked me to come to his second-round match, which was this afternoon. I still wasn’t sure whether to go, or how I felt about himafter his apology. In the space of a couple of days, it felt as though every single person I thought I could rely on had let me down.
Cassie was standing there looking withdrawn and tearful like I’d seen her many times before, but never because of something she’d done to hurt me. I wondered how badly this had affected her – whether, if I was a kind person, I should forgive her on the spot, tell her it didn’t matter, that I was glad she was happy, and that now I’d had time to think it through, I wasn’t bothered about her being with Charlie. That she could have him and that I’d learn to be fine with it. I’d come to the conclusion that he’d probably chosen Cassie because she was clearly besotted by him and would do anything for him, just like his mother, which I had seeminglynotdone just by being me and having a modicum of career success that had sent him reeling into a spiral of self-doubt about his own life choices. Since Cassie had a job she hated, no social network and still lived with her parents, there was no need for him to feel inadequate next to her – he could be the powerful, successful one in their relationship, which I suspected was what he’d craved all along.
‘Hi,’ said Cassie weakly. ‘Can I come in?’
I stood aside to let her through the door. Her arm brushed mine as she walked past, kicked off her shoes and went into my lounge. I was surprised she’d made the effort to come all this way – then again, she’d clearly been spending more time in London than I’d thought, since I doubted she and Charlie had been meeting up in Reading.
‘Tea?’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘No thanks.’
I sighed, and sat on the armchair, putting as much distance between us as you could in one small, rather poky living room.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ said Cassie.
I stayed silent. There was no way I was going to do the hard work for her by leading the conversation. She’d come to see me. She was here to explain it all tome.
‘I’d always liked him,’ said Cassie. ‘I was always a bit jealous, if you must know. He was so in love with you. Nobody had ever looked at me the way I saw him looking at you.’
‘Right,’ I said, struggling to think back to those early days.
‘When you broke up, it wasn’t like I suddenly thought:now’s my chance.I just couldn’t bear the thought of not speaking to him ever again. You might have wanted him out of your life, but I didn’t want him out of mine.’
‘But I hadn’t wanted him out of my life, Cassie,’ I said. ‘Heended it withme, remember?’
‘I know. I think I sort of glossed over that bit. And I decided it wouldn’t hurt to have him as a friend, that either I wouldn’t tell you, or you’d understand eventually,’ said Cassie.
Of course that was what she’d decided – Cassie did what Cassie wanted. And until now, I did what Cassie wanted too.
‘So what, you called him? Arranged to meet? When?’
