The cassandra complex, p.20
The Cassandra Complex, page 20
I turn to ‘Diana’, or whatever the hell she’s calling herself these days.
A high-pitched-kettle scream fills my head.
‘Cassandra.’ She glances at Will, then back at me, looking very nearly as disoriented as I feel. ‘I didn’t realise that you and …’ She hesitates. ‘We actually know each other already. From a long time ago.’
‘No way!’ Will laughs and eats another quiche. ‘Small world! How?’
She looks at me. ‘We lived together, didn’t we, Cass.’
Her cheeks are pink and she’s cautious and fine-boned, but her grey eyes are bright like twenty-pence coins and she looks very bloody pleased with herself for having finally hunted me down.
‘Flatmates?’ Will continues to chew, apparently oblivious to the prickly red rash spreading up my neck and across my chest. ‘In Walthamstow? That was your last flat before your current one, wasn’t it, Cassie?’
I open my mouth and promptly shut it again.
‘No, that definitely wasn’t me. I’m not a Londoner.’ She laughs. ‘I was her first ever flat-share, as it happens.’ She is watching my face carefully, poised slightly on the balls of her ballet-pumped feet. ‘It’s really good to finally see you again, Cass. How are you?’
I’m about to say roughly the same as I was when I saw you a few days ago, you total psycho, and then suddenly remember that she didn’t see me, because I never went home. For me, it’s been three days: for her, it’s still been years.
Will’s watching my face, so I carefully unstick my tongue.
‘Fine,’ I reply curtly. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, you know.’ She grins. ‘Same old. Still making a mess. Still chaos incarnate. Although we both seem to be all over the place, because your address seems to be constantly shifting too. I guess neither of us are exactly easy to live with. Where is it you’re based now?’
The absolute audacity of this woman.
‘You know exactly where I live,’ I huff. She has successfully goaded me into non-scripted speech. ‘And I am very easy to live with, thank you. Most people barely even notice I’m there at all.’
Her nostrils flare. That is not what I bloody meant.
‘There was a little bit of drama last time we saw each other,’ she tells Will faux confidentially. ‘It was definitely my fault, but Cass is proving extraordinarily difficult to apologise to. I’ve tried, like – what?’ She glances at me. ‘Fifteen times, now? She’s having none of it. Let’s just say we don’t have very well matched cohabitation styles. I’m somewhat on the careless side, while Cassandra tends to like things neater and more organised than my personal preferences.’
‘Somewhat on the careless side is like saying Alpha Centuri is a bit of a pain to get to.’ I scratch at my arm with my fingernails; my leg is bouncing again. ‘You never once cleaned up after yourself. Not once. Literally. Not a single time.’
‘We had cleaners,’ she shrugs with laughing eyes.
‘They weren’t cleaners,’ I snap, then consciously lower my voice (‘Cassandra has a problem with volume control’). ‘I once found seven empty cans of beans, stored under your bed. By what logic? You’d have to literally eat out of a can with a fork and then get down on the floor and place it there intentionally, seven times.’
‘Not so.’ She shakes her head. ‘Sometimes you put it on the floor so it doesn’t get on the bedding and eventually it just kind of rolls there and they collect.’
I make an exasperated mewl. ‘There was a cigarette butt in one of them.’
‘There was not.’
‘There was! I saw it!’
She grins. ‘They weren’t cigarettes, Sandy-pants.’
I glare at her and her eyes sparkle at me and Will clears his throat next to us; we both look at him with a faint air of surprise, having forgotten he’s there. He’s watching me a lot more closely. Now the quiches are gone, he’s paying a bit more attention to his date.
‘So …’ He lifts his eyebrows. ‘A bit of a falling-out, I’m guessing?’
‘You could say that,’ I confirm sharply. ‘Yes.’
‘I wish,’ she says, grimacing and running a hand through her short brown fringe. ‘For a falling-out there needs to be a fight, an argument, some kind of reckoning, and there wasn’t one. Cass just legged it. Moved out the same day. The same hour. I’ve been trying to have it out with her ever since and she won’t let me.’
‘Because I made it very clear I never want to see you again,’ I agree at the top of my voice, violence in my fingertips. ‘Yet here you are.’
She visibly flinches, the exhibition goes quiet, and Will looks at me with that horrified Lamia expression again: the one I tried so hard to make go away. And I want to stop myself, I do. I just don’t know how to. I’m like a train hurtling off the right track into a wall while everyone inside jumps out of the window.
Will frowns. ‘Cassie, why don’t we—’
‘Did you follow me?’ I ignore the surprised tangerine colour coming out of him and whip towards her again. ‘Is that what happened? I want the truth. Did you hunt me down and stalk me all the way here?’
When, though? Was she on the train behind me? In a different carriage? I was waiting outside for quite a while, but I did have my head buried in my phone. Maybe she somehow slipped in just ahead while I was googling Interesting and Relevant Things to Say at a Photography Exhibition.
‘Yes,’ she admits reluctantly. ‘But before you get too mad—’
‘Way too late for mad,’ I hiss. ‘Mad was three minutes ago. I’m moving rapidly through extremely irate and approaching incandescent.’
She smiles, then tries to bite the smile with her teeth.
‘Shit.’ An apologetic yet simultaneously flirty expression is aimed at Will. ‘This is so rude of us, fighting like this in front of you.’
‘We’re not fighting,’ I clarify heatedly. ‘You don’t get to fight with me.’
‘Yes, I’ve gathered that.’ She sighs and returns to Will. ‘I’m so sorry … What’s your name, anyway? Who exactly are you?’
Will blinks. ‘Oh. I’m Will. I’m Cassie’s …’
He never finishes the sentence, but I think his silence might be the loudest thing any of us has said so far.
I feel something inside me crumple into a sad, tired ball.
‘Well.’ She glances at me with massive eyes. Why are her eyes that big? Nobody needs eyes that big. We’re not owls. ‘Then I’m sure you know this already, Will, but Cass can be a little … black and white. It’s just the way she is. Right or wrong, good or bad. Love or hate. She has this remarkable ability to classify and separate the world and everything and everyone in it. She’s the Queen of Compartmentalisation. Everything in tidy little Tupperware boxes, lined up straight, filed perfectly away in her brain with little laminated labels. That includes people.’
I open my mouth to debate this, then shut it again.
Of course I compartmentalise. Of course I file memories and people and emotions away as neatly as possible. Emotions are confusing, people even more so, and I remember everything that has ever happened to me, in elaborate detail. If I didn’t have an effective storage system, I’d go completely mad.
I also cannot believe she’s using Will as a shield to have this conversation with me, just because I wouldn’t have it with her by post.
‘And if you screw up,’ she continues, her cheeks getting even rosier, ‘just once – just a single time – you’re dead to her. It’s over. For ever. There is no room for basic human error in the world of Cassandra Penelope Dankworth.’
Why can’t you just be normal.
My stomach hurts. It’s one thing to follow me to a photography exhibition, and quite another to make wildly negative accusations about my character to the one man on earth who might be about to fall in love with me.
Even if they’re one hundred per cent accurate.
‘Pomegranates,’ I say suddenly, finally making the connection of why she’s picked that specific scent. ‘Fruit of the dead. Hilarious.’
‘What can I say?’ She grins. ‘I’m a creature of nuance and subtlety.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Am.’
‘Subtle like a spear through the face.’
‘If it’s sharp enough, I reckon you could barely see it from a distance.’ She laughs. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Will. You seem lovely. Handsome, but not too handsome. Just the right amount of handsome. Enough to be secure but not enough to be a prick. And you’re nice and relaxed, too, which is good to see. I’m very glad that Cass has found someone who can balance her out.’
She holds her hand out to Will; he takes it, and I stare at their hands.
Something bright pink flickers.
‘Hi, Diana,’ he says, looking like he wishes he was in another room, in another building, on another planet. ‘In Cassie’s defence, that doesn’t seem a fair character analysis. I’m not sure when you last saw her, but she’s been really cool and laid-back in the short time I’ve known her.’
‘Really?’ She looks at me. ‘I guess time really does change everything.’
That does it. Ugliness flares out of me with a whoosh.
‘Her name isn’t even Diana,’ I spit, losing all control now. ‘She’s a liar.’
I rotate back to her, lines of pure, hissing rage shooting out of my head like Medusa’s snakes. If I wanted Will to know that I try to control every single inch of my life and everything and everyone in it, I probably wouldn’t have spent quite so much effort and literal time ensuring he didn’t.
‘And I might live in black and white,’ I say in a choked voice, ‘but you live in the grey area. No right, no wrong. No fact, no fiction. No good, no bad. No lies, no truth, no consequences. It’s all just one big blurry mess to you, isn’t it, where nothing means anything and you can do and say whatever you want, regardless of what it does to the people around you.’
‘Hey, I was just winding you up,’ she says in a small voice, reaching a hand out towards mine. ‘I’m really sorry. Old habit.’
‘Don’t touch me,’ I say, whipping away.
‘And I’m not lying,’ she objects desperately. ‘I could have been called Diana, couldn’t I? It’s not that different. It would have taken just the tiniest tweak. Just a nudge, somewhere in the past, and boom: a different story. So I’m not a liar. Sometimes I just enjoy living in all the narratives that never got a chance to happen.’
‘That’s the definition of pathological lying,’ I hiss.
‘Oh.’ She frowns, thinks about it. ‘Then, yeah. I might have a problem.’
We stare at each other, breathing hard.
‘Sam!’ Will’s cry of relief is so tangible it turns the air green. ‘Buddy! There you are! Where the hell have you been?’
With a quick, dutiful kiss on my cheek he shoots away from us like a paintball and everything inside me abruptly hurts. She’s done it again. She’s ruined everything. This is exactly why I tried so hard to keep her away from me: I do not like who I become around her.
No, that’s a lie.
I don’t like being reminded of who I really am.
‘Just stop,’ I say as my eyes fill. ‘Please.’
I’m going to have to undo all of this, aren’t I. Erase it from existence. I’m not sure when you’re allowed to start shouting and swearing at a strange woman in the middle of an art exhibition, but I’m going to assume it’s somewhere after date four; probably never.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says in a tiny voice. ‘This has all gone wrong, Cassandra. I just wanted to run into you here, like it was a big old accident, catch you off guard, and then I got all preoccupied with showing off, trying to be funny, and I’ve gone ahead and screwed it all up again. Please can we just start again? I am so, so sorry. Truly. For literally everything.’
Her grey eyes are so earnest and I can feel myself soften, begin to relent, and then – with a crack – one of my Tupperware boxes starts to leak again and I hear it as if it’s still happening.
You’re a monster you’re a monster you’re a monster you’re a—
Something slams shut inside me.
Not because I don’t believe that she’s sorry – there have been enough letters over the years to understand that she is – but because, much like a curse from the gods, turning people into frogs and beetles and flowers and trees and then immediately regretting it, it doesn’t really matter.
At some point, what is done cannot be undone.
But I know one thing that can.
‘Sounds lovely,’ Sophie beams. ‘You can tell me all about it tomorrow!’
‘Sure,’ I say distractedly, typing:
So sorry, can’t make it – stuck at the office.
I press SEND, but all I’m thinking about is Greek Penelope.
Just like my other mythological namesake, it’s starting to feel like every day I weave a complex tapestry and every night – terrified of the consequences, of what will happen when I’m done – I simply unpick it again.
And nothing gets made at all.
26
This time, I go straight home.
I return to the safety of my bedroom and throw myself into a loop of my own making: read a book I’ve already read, watch a TV show I’ve seen dozens of times, wear my Wednesday pyjamas and eat my Wednesday dinner. I listen to a favourite song on repeat, dozens of times; bury myself in familiarity like a small, hurt animal in its den, turning in tiny circles until it can comfortably settle. I make the same small sounds to myself, over and over again. I curl up in a ball on my bed, rocking gently, losing myself in the comfort of a pattern.
I soothe myself with repetition until I feel calm.
Until I can finally fall asleep.
A bright blue light flash; a fraction later, the knock on the door like the thunder after the lightning.
‘Mnnnnuh?’ Disoriented, I sit up. ‘Will?’
Where am I this time? There’s another knock, louder this time. Panicking, I try to process my environment: window outline, position of the door, the smell of my duvet, shape of my shelves. Relief settles gently like my old floating duvet: I’m at home.
A third knock outside my bedroom, and I now suspect it’s not Will after all. Having woken up a little more, it seems unlikely that he left the exhibition and crossed London just to break into my house. Groggy and still confused, I turn the lamp on, grab my yellow dressing gown and unlock the door.
‘Hey.’ Derek leans against the frame. ‘Were you asleep?’
Blinking, I glance at my wrist before realising I took my watch off and put it on my bedside table as I do every night.
‘What time is it?’ I manage.
‘Dunno. Midnight? Just after? The pub’s kicked us out. Sal decided to go on with her mates, but I didn’t feel up to it. Can I come in?’
Before I can say absolutely not, Derek slides past me.
Trying desperately to wake up properly now, I pull my dressing gown tight and warily watch my flatmate walk slowly around my bedroom like he’s Dorothy in bloody Oz. He scans all my colour-arranged clothes, walks over to my shelf and studies it, picks up my little gold peacock, turns it over and puts it back in totally the wrong place. What the hell is happening? I’m scanning my memories for this scene the first time round, but it isn’t there. Although I worked so late in the original timeline, maybe I just slept through his incessant knocking.
Derek picks up my little silver deer figurine and hiccups and oh my God, I’ve just realised: is he drunk?
‘Can you stop touching my stuff, please,’ I say sharply.
He puts the deer back in the wrong place and I wait until he’s moved away before scurrying forwards and pointedly moving it back again. I’m going to have to wash it with soap: it’s got grubby, inebriated-Derek fingerprints all over it now.
‘You’ve really made this space your own,’ he says, continuing to perambulate with a now noticeable wobble. ‘I’ve not been in here since you moved in. Which was … how long ago now? Five weeks?’
‘Nine weeks,’ I say guardedly. ‘And two days.’
‘And two days.’ He flicks me a strange look and grins, then goes back to perusing my belongings as if this is a small station shop and he’s got time before he catches his train. ‘It feels like you’ve only just moved in, Cassandra Wankworth.’
My eyes widen. ‘Dankworth.’
‘That’s what I meant. How are you finding it here?’
‘Fine.’
I feel invaded. Sullied. Like I need a six-hour hot shower and a power hose for my bedroom. There’s something icky and khaki coming out of him in short, slimy waves: a really ugly colour, but I have no idea what it means. I just know I want it out of my bedroom right now before it coats everything.
‘Cool.’ Derek goes to my bookcase and begins scanning the contents with his fingers before pulling out a particularly brilliant story about Pandora. ‘Can I borrow this?’
‘No. What are you doing in here, Derek?’
‘Oh.’ He puts the book back in the wrong place and perches on the end of my bed; I have to stifle a roar. My bedding will need to be thrown out, possibly burned. ‘Sal is a bit worried about you. We don’t really know much about you yet, you really keep yourself to yourself, so she asked me to check on you. See if you were OK.’
I relax slightly. ‘She did? Really? That’s so nice.’
‘Yeah. You’re somewhat of an enigma, Cassandra.’ He looks around my room again. Burps. Teeth gritted, I immediately cross the room and open the window. ‘You’re a bit of a mystery. It’s hard to know what you’re thinking. Your face never really moves, does it? And your voice is kind of flat. Like a robot. Hey.’ He picks up the paint chart next to my bed. ‘You can’t paint in here. Sal’s dad won’t let us redecorate.’
‘I’m not painting,’ I say tightly.
‘You’re not painting?’ Derek stares at it. ‘So … you’ve just got it here as, like, bedtime reading? Is that why there’s one next to the bath, too?’ He peers at me for a few seconds, then laughs. ‘You’re a strange duck, Dankworth, that’s for sure. Like, are you stunted in some way? Is something in here missing?’ He taps his head. ‘Not being rude, but this doesn’t look like the room of an adult woman.’
