Hawthorn Part 2
Episode 14 | Still There
Content Warning: This episode contains depictions of domestic violence, including physical assault, emotional abuse, injury, and controlling behaviour.
Acutely conscious of time, Cassandra strapped on her helmet and headed for home at breakneck pace. Alex would be asleep by now, she assumed, but just as the thought crossed her mind, Clio piped up. ‘ProtonSpeak voice message from Alex. Play it?’ Rushing to meet Verity, Cassandra had forgotten to toggle off notifications from the app.
‘I’m not asleep yet,’ he said. ‘Call me after your coffee if you want to play Q&A.’
She could count what she knew about the particulars of his life on two hands, but nor did he know the details of hers. As though by mutual agreement, they never delved into their specific circumstances, never asked about any other people in their respective lives. Alex was the introducer of questions, questions that she would sometimes mirror back to him, sometimes not. Cassandra relished being the object of his intense curiosity. He always sounded as though he would be fascinated with her answer no matter what she said, as though he couldn’t wait for her responses.
Paul asked her what she was doing, why she was doing it, when he could expect her home, what was for dinner. Paul asked her what she could possibly have been thinking, whether she really thought there was any point to her resuming painting. Alex asked her questions that no one had ever asked her. Not even Andrew, in the first flush of their dramatic whirl-wind romance, had wanted to know everything about her inner life, her desires, her fantasies.
She had fifteen minutes yet before reaching home. It was Monday, the most common day for companies to drag their employees into the physical office, and on the opposite side of the road to Cassandra the cycle superhighway and RT lane bordering it were full of commuters. Perhaps Paul was amongst them; she hoped so. Alone in her lane, she had no reason not to call Alex back.
He sounded fully awake at first, but shortly after she marvelled at how late it was for him, his voice became heavy. Hearing his drowsiness, she pictured the shape of his body under the covers, imagined a naked arm thrown over his head, imagined its shape and definition. She flashed back to her art history professor’s biceps, the day he’d made her and Olivia giggle by directing the laser pointer at the dead centre of Georgia O’Keeffe’s lily.
‘What have you dreamed of doing your whole life?’ Alex asked. ‘Your whole life. Something that you haven’t done yet.’
Cassandra felt incongruous talking to him like this, mismatched with him, and wished that she too were prone in a dark room for this conversation. But she answered him anyway. She replied that she wanted to do art that was taken seriously, that meant something. Something had happened after her big exhibit, she wasn't sure what, just some crisis of confidence.
She wanted to tell him the fuller truth, but that would mean telling him about Paul.
She wasn’t ready for that.
‘Do you want to be famous?’ he asked, his voice mischievous, teasing.
‘If fantasising about people saying, “Did you see the Cassandra Parsons exhibit, how amazing!” constitutes fame, then maybe I want to be famous, yes.’
‘Of course it constitutes fame, and I can absolutely see that happening. It’s going to happen. All right. What’s your greatest accomplishment, the thing that you’re most proud of in all the world?’
‘The show, of course. Again the show.’
‘Ah, a theme emerges. Okay, get ready. It’s important.’ He sounded serious now. ‘If you knew that in one year you would die, suddenly — like Olivia died — what would you change?’
Cassandra hesitated, surprised. Her breath grew shorter, as though she were suffocating under the weight of so many answers she could not give.
‘Take more risks, I suppose,’ she said vaguely.
She tried to focus more fully on the road ahead. It was dangerous, talking to Alex like this, when she was on her bike. She turned off onto a quiet road.
‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘You should take more risks.’
There were a few beats of silence on the line, Cassandra trying to shake off the picture that had sprung into her head: Olivia floating on petal-strewn, reedy water before sinking to her death in the muck beneath.
‘I think you mean risks with you,’ she said, finally, forcing a laugh.
‘Maybe I do.’ Matching her tone, he laughed as well. ‘But wait. I’m being serious. It’s the last one. Are you ready?’
‘I don’t know! Alex, I’m riding.’
‘Do you have a secret hunch about how you’ll die?’
‘Alex…’ Cassandra protested, discomfited. ‘That’s morbid.’
She was in Wynstead now, off the superhighway, in quieter, leafy streets.
‘It’s not morbid,’ he said. ‘It’s telling. It’s interesting. It says something about you, this stuff. Tell me.’
Perhaps this was like therapy. For every provocation a reason, from every challenge some potentially useful piece of wisdom. Eleanor’s prods often bore unexpected fruit, after all.
'I don’t know. But I have a secret hunch that I will die without having done anything important,' she said. 'And that scares me.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if dying without doing everything you’ve dreamed of scares you, then don’t let it happen, Cassandra.’
She had almost stopped wondering what he looked like, the mystery of his appearance less relevant the more time she spent in the presence of his voice. When she'd first seen Andrew, the look in his otherworldly green eyes had pulled her in. In that first moment, when he was being an enraged and petulant child flinging his script into the pool at Hackney House, those eyes had compelled her to ignore his temper and his drama, to go after him with her telephone number scrawled on the page of script.
Weren't eyes the windows to the soul, after all, isn't that what everyone said?
But Andrew's eyes had been a less effective predictor of relationship success than she'd hoped. The comparison was hardly relevant— that wasn’t what this was, the nature of the relationship with Andrew wasn’t like whatever this was with Alex.
But sometimes, when she dreamed about Alex, his voice clear but his features fuzzy, it was.
‘I’m going to have to go soon,’ she said.
‘Nice morning for a coffee,’ Alex said. ‘You see, Oracle now tells me what the weather is like in London, not just in Chicago. Clearly, it’s under the impression that I care. Go figure.’
‘So what’s the weather like in London, then?’ Cassandra said, her eyes flicking around her surroundings as she neared Abbeygate Lane. If Paul hadn’t yet gone to work, he might be taking the dog for a walk in the park.
‘It’s something else,’ Alex replied. ‘Beautiful. Where’s all that famous rain? I can imagine you, you know, riding your bike.’
Cassandra blushed. ‘You can imagine me?’
‘I can,’ he said. ‘I figured out part of the route you took today. I’m looking at it, on EarthView. So much green. I like that you take me with you. Will you always take me with you?’
Cassandra, her heart pounding, couldn’t summon any words.
‘I’ve got your attention,’ Alex said, his voice still too seductive for early morning, for outside, for her sweaty biking kit. Again she pictured him in his bed, perhaps with the lights of Chicago shining outside his window, an ocean and more away. ‘Listen, you’re my captive audience,’ he continued. ‘So you need to listen to me. Are you paying attention?’
He often spoke like this, told her what to do, but she liked it, liked his way of bossing her around. Sometimes he used words not unlike Paul’s, but their meaning and impact were transformed through their tone, their shaping by this other man’s lips. She was starting to believe in herself. It was working. She wouldn’t tell Alex to stop bossing her, not even in jest. He might misunderstand her, might apologise, might stop being that way. She didn’t want that.
‘I’m always happy to be your captive audience,’ she said, slowing her speed and pedalling backwards as she approached the turning into her road. She planted her feet either side of the bicycle and shifted off the seat uncomfortably. Maybe she should get a new saddle, designed for women. Verity was always going on about how the world of machines was designed for men, had recommended yet another book. Cassandra’s pubic bone felt hot and sore.
‘You said the other day that you weren’t sure if you should apply for a residency at all,’ Alex said. ‘Don’t be crazy, Cassandra. You have nothing to lose.’
Counterarguments leapt readily to her mind. But based on what? But what will I say that I want to do?
He anticipated her, mind-reading her as effortlessly as he always seemed to do.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘Your “based on what, little old me” routine. Shut that voice up. Think about what you’re doing now. What about the memento mori? Or start from Room of One’s Own. Picture it: a new generation of painting from British artist Cassandra Parsons. A Room of One’s Own, part two. Imagine.’
She dismounted and stood by the bike.
‘A Room of One's Own' for a new era. For pandemics and lockdowns. For constricted and contested spaces. Portraits of women who were struggling more than ever just to have space and freedom to work.
Verity would be one hundred percent behind her. Liv would have been, too.
‘Apply to somewhere in America, he said. ‘Come to America.’
Butterflies danced along the low blooming shrubs by the road. Her stomach fluttered too.
‘I wish I could,’ she said.
‘Americans love British people,’ he murmured, on the cusp of falling asleep. ‘You’d be lapped up over here.’
‘Say that again,’ she said, as though she hadn’t heard.
The blood-red haws of the hawthorn tree, otherwise known as the May tree. Photo by Anna Zhynhel on Unsplash
Flush met her at the back door. Paul wasn’t in the kitchen, wasn’t in bed. He must have gone to work.
Cassandra lingered in the warmth of the big walk-in shower next to their bedroom, examining with pleasure the changes wrought in her body over weeks of ever-longer cycle rides: the greater tone in her muscles, the definition in her calves, the flattening of her belly. Running her hand down her stomach, she lightly touched those areas that were sore from the saddle of the bike, rinsing them gently with her index and middle fingers.
Twisting the tap to the off position and turning to reach for a towel, she inhaled sharply as she nearly collided with Paul. In the misty bathroom, her head as full of images as her ears had been full of the noise from the rainfall shower, she hadn’t detected his approach. Now, he was blocking her exit, staring at her and unbuttoning his shirt. Where had he sprung from? Had he been sitting quietly in his office?
Had he been out in her studio, investigating her computer?
‘You startled me,’ she half-laughed, extending an arm past him to grasp the bath towel. But Paul grabbed her wrist before she could reach it, bent her arm at the elbow and pushed her palm back onto her own breast, as though he were manipulating a jointed doll. He finished undoing his buttons.
‘Startled you?’ he said. ‘I do live here. Who else would it be?’
‘I didn’t know you were home.’
Cassandra removed her hand from where Paul had placed it and crossed her arms awkwardly over her belly, not knowing where to look. Still blocking her way, he leaned in to restart the shower, shaking his trousers off his legs and kicking them behind him.
‘Are you taking a shower, then?’ Cassandra asked, attempting to sidestep the flow of water.
Paul, naked now, put his hands on both her hips and backed her into the corner of the shower room as he entered.
‘You looked like you were enjoying yours,’ he said. ‘Jesus fuck, Cassie, you’re looking a bit amazing.’
‘Don’t you have to work? Aren’t you working?’ she said.
Putting his fingertips lightly underneath her chin, he pushed her face up towards him and scanned her face searchingly.
‘I don’t have anywhere to be just now,’ he said. ‘And I know you don’t have anywhere to be.’
‘I was just about to go to the st...’
‘The studio, the studio, the fucking studio,’ Paul snarled, the switch so fast it dizzied her. ‘Seriously, Cassie? The studio is more important? The studio’s more compelling to you right now? You need to go paint?’
His fingers shifted, clenched either side of her face, compressed it until her lips were like a child’s drawing of a fish’s mouth.
‘Be honest, Cassie,’ Paul continued. ‘Who is all this for?’
She wriggled, clasping at his wrist with both her hands, trying to free herself. ‘You’re hurting me,’ she mumbled, the words almost intelligible.
‘Who’s it for?’ he asked again, his fingernails almost cutting into her cheeks.
‘The…painting?’ Cassandra choked, water running into her mouth.
‘The painting, the studio, the rides, the body. Look at you. Don’t give me this I’m turning 40 I have to get healthy. I see you, Cassie. No, wait. I never see you. You’re always out there or out there.’
Paul’s free hand jabbed eastwards, westwards, towards the studio, the park, and then swirled upwards towards the imagined cloud, the ether.
‘All over the bloody Internet. All full of yourself like anybody fucking cares about your little pet project. What’s this really about? Go on, tell the truth.’
He released her with a shove, the back of her head almost knocking against the hard tile. For a moment, she could only hear the heaviness of their breathing and the splatter of thousands of droplets striking the granite floor. She would never understand where the boldness came from, how it surfaced so quickly. Suddenly, she was gripped by a fury like she’d never known. Whistling up through her throat it came, a voice like a banshee’s, taking them both unawares.
‘You can’t bully me out of having my own fucking life!’ she screamed at him, pushing him away with both hands. The sound scarcely had a chance to die away before Paul punched her across the face.
She felt a wetness that was not water, an unexpected softness and absence at the tip of her probing tongue. She heard a ringing in her left ear, and unexpectedly, something else too: Clio’s voice, issuing from her phone that lay by the sink.
‘I have detected sounds consistent with domestic violence,’ she said. ‘Should I contact emergency services?’
He was reaching for her, his outstretched hand stopping short of her body.
‘Cassie,’ he whispered, urgently. ‘Cassie, come here.’
She looked down at the tendrils of red circling the drain and disappearing with the water. She spit something hard out of her mouth, and the red appeared on the floor again. She looked at her husband, at his strange, unreadable expression.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Send the police.’
Clio’s response was nearly instantaneous, so much more efficient than it used to be. ‘The police will be at 17 Abbeygate Lane in approximately five minutes,’ she said.
‘Cassandra?’ another voice said, and for a moment her and Paul’s eyes met, sharing their confusion, nonverbally consulting with one another, as if they were once again on the same side. ‘This is Iris speaking,’ the voice continued. ‘I’m a 999 emergency dispatcher. Can you hear me?’
Paul was mouthing something at her. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. He touched her trembling upper arm, and she flinched away.
‘I can hear you,’ she shouted, over the still-running shower.
‘I’ll be staying on the line and listening until police arrive,’ Iris said. ‘Is anyone else there? Are you currently in danger?’
’She’s not in danger,’ Paul said. ‘But she needs an ambulance.’
Her husband plucked something from the floor of the shower. Standing again, he drew close without touching her, reached past her to shut off the water. Slowly, he handed his bleeding wife a snow-white towel that would never look so pristine again.
‘Cassie,’ he whispered, his features in turmoil. ‘What have you done?’
In the next episode, Cassandra grapples with the aftermath of Paul’s assault, and realises she can no longer keep the true nature of their relationship secret from those closest to her.
Don’t miss out! Click the button to subscribe, restack this post, and/or tell a fiction-loving friend about Still There. The more the merrier as the story unfolds.
About the Author
Known for her nonfiction work such as All the Ghosts in the Machine and Reset, Elaine Kasket is now exploring the boundaries between memory, technology, and human connection through fiction with Still There. This serialised novel is being released exclusively on Substack, with new instalments dropping every Tuesday and Friday. Join the journey from the beginning and subscribe to make sure you don't miss a single episode.
