She wasn’t in the mood to see Verity anymore. Back in the house after their encounter in the studio, she could hear Paul was in high spirits — as she rang Verity to cancel, he was whistling in the bedroom as he unpacked his suitcase and changed to go into the office. Before he left, he kissed her deeply for a long moment and squeezed one of her buttocks, the sore place from where it had rubbed on the worktop. Then he was gone.
Cassandra clicked her tongue to Flush, who followed her out to the garden. Secure in the knowledge of Paul’s absence, she flung the door of her studio wide, rearranged the throw over the damp patch of wine, and curled up in the corner of the sofa. Flush leapt up and sniffed at the soaked area a moment before settling down in a dryer spot. Cassandra took a breath.
'Clio, play last message,’ she said.
‘Would you like the last message from Protonspeak or from WhatsApp?’ Clio asked.
‘Protonspeak.’
Alex's voice was as she remembered, as she had dreamt, warm with a slight rasp. She presumed he had a good microphone, for with her eyes shut, no hum or hiss destroyed the illusion — no machines or cables or recording devices seemed to separate them.
'Hey there. Cassandra,’ Alex said. ‘I can't tell you how good it was to hear from you, but I'll try. I was excited to get your message.'
In his mouth it didn’t sound like how most Americans pronounced it, speaking the A's through their noses. His vowels were rich and round, the way she knew, the way she liked. She felt a fluttering, flattering sensation, the slight jolt of a brand-new person saying your first name.
After Jack's eulogy to Olivia, she had searched out the rest of the Mary Oliver poem he'd quoted. Of all its lines, one had stuck with her most, the one that came back to her now.
And each name a comfortable music in the mouth.
'I felt the same,' said Alex. 'Not that you said it like this exactly, but something about you got to me. But I was way ahead of you. I saw your painting, and then I saw your website and I was amazed. I’m happy you did it. If I’ve got something to do with that, that blows my mind. I’m honoured. So, if nothing else, I want us to keep talking. I'm always trying to understand my own creative process, and I want to understand yours. So let’s share that.'
She remained utterly still, yet Flush seemed to sense some reaction in her, lifting her snout and looking at Cassandra quizzically.
'Clio, pause,' she said.
She missed the company of fellow artists, the community. Her mother was merely interested and generically supportive. Verity thought she should get on with it already. Olivia, who did understand her passions and shared them, was dead. Jack was a verbal artist, not a visual one. Compared to what her erstwhile colleagues in art school were doing now, her career seemed so far behind theirs that she felt too much shame to reconnect with them. She was afraid she’d let Naomi down, almost embarrassed to carry on the new conversation with her old mentor, given how little of her early promise she had fulfilled.
Alex had said it himself, the last time they'd spoken. Existential guilt.
Perhaps the universe was giving her a message, in the form of a creative kindred spirit, this bolt from the blue. The synchronicities, the coincidences, they had to mean something. Perhaps it was all destiny. Her mind lunged at the idea of its all making sense.
The clock struck noon, and she was not just hungry, but ravenous.
'Clio, keep playing the message,’ she said.
'But if I'm honest - you were honest with me - I was afraid that you were freaked out,’ Alex continued. ‘I understand. It was weird, the Cassandra Parsons Project thing, the coincidence with what your dad called you. I was freaked out too, believe me. It was like a message from the universe. That makes me sound new age, which I'm not,' he said, and he laughed. 'But you have to admit, that’s weird. I'm not superstitious. But I still think you could be one of those people in life that you’re lucky to meet. Or at least a partner in crime. What sort of crime, I'm not sure yet.'
She was aware of her blood, pulsing hot and fast through a vessel in her neck. She hugged her knees tighter to her chest.
'So, Cassandra...' he said.
What does it mean, she wondered, when someone uses your name like that? Like that. Sometimes they just want to sell you something. And sometimes it’s something else.
'Please do come back to me whenever you like,’ he said. ‘Share what you're doing. I hope that I'm not coming off like a creep, but that photo of you, from your exhibition…and you look the same now. You must get a lot of assholes hitting on you online...’
Cassandra squeaked.
'...but that's not what this is,' Alex continued. 'Remember, we had something special before we knew what each other looked like. So this isn't that. Hope to speak to you soon. Go paint.'
The clock reasserted its usual dominance in the soundscape of the room. Tick, tick, tick.
Go paint. Affectionate, familiar, ordering her about, like he’d dropped into the studio to chat, the last thing he thought to mention before stepping off the threshold, He could still be on the garden path, going out the back gate. He took on more form in her mind when she imagined him from the back, heading away from her, when she did not have to be specific about the features of his face.
The memory of his voice still in her ears, she stayed curled up like a woodlouse, like in PE at school, when she’d roll up into a ball alongside her classmates on the floor of the gym. Their sports teacher, all big arms and tight T-shirt, hoisted the children up under their arms, tried to shake them loose, undo them. Let's see if we can break some eggs! he’d roared.
Once she'd asked Verity if she recalled this game, and she had shrieked with glee. AbsoLUTEly! I think it was one of my first sexual experiences. Mr Braithwaite, phwoar.
'Clio, please play the last 10 seconds again,’ she said.
Before we knew what each other looked like.
If this comment meant what she suspected about Alex’s appearance, this was either good news or bad, depending on one's perspective. Olivia had mouthed something else at her, all those years ago, right before Cassandra ran after Andrew. She had written her phone number on his cast-off page of script, and the rest was history.
Wouldn't kick him out of bed, Olivia had said. And she'd winked.
She should resist the urge to reply now, as strong as it was. She should clear her head, hydrate. She filled a tall glass with water and wandered out underneath the hawthorn tree.
At primary school her teacher had allocated them pen pals in the United States, a place of sunshine and white teeth and nice suburbs that she’d explored through television and movies and in dreams. Their correspondents had been doled out at random, except that girls had been assigned girls, and boys had been given boys. She was old enough to have decent handwriting and to string coherent sentences together, old enough to be disappointed that she wouldn’t be receiving any letters from an American boy. Even so, whenever an envelope with a foreign stamp dropped through the door at Orchard Cottage, she’d replied as swiftly as possible, hoping to shorten the time until the next one arrived.
Alex was like that, but better. A childhood wish fulfilled, trading messages with the American boy. Her 11-year-old self would have been green with envy. But she would wait.
She should wait.
When Verity rang her later in the afternoon to grouse about the missed brunch and procrastinate about an article she was meant to submit soon, Cassandra's hangover had faded just enough to be able to listen to her complaints.
'The problem is, I’m bored,' Verity yawned. 'I never get any good assignments anymore, not anything I can get my teeth into. What's up, buttercup? Tell me something more entertaining than what I'm doing right now.'
Oh, not much. Everything's fine. Never anything much to report. They were her usual answers, the ones that sprang to mind. Other days, they were accurate, not just socially conventional. She debated over whether she should trot one of them out now or tell the actual truth.
'Wee-elll...’ she said.
'What's up?' said Verity, instantly alert. ‘Babes?’
‘Bear with me. Don’t freak out. I've met someone...'
'You've MET someone?!' Verity's eyes popped.
‘Gosh, Verity, hold on, not like that,’ she said. ‘Wait. Yes, I ran into someone, if I can describe it like that, in that ‘Us’ page on Olivia's Memor.I.Am.'
'Holy shit, that room?’ Verity was astonished. 'The altar where the worshippers gather?’
'Verity, they aren’t worshippers. People miss her, and they loved her,’ Cassandra said. ‘We miss her and love her. You always act so callous. Why are you annoyed that people like talking about her? A lot of people are grieving. Why not do it together, if that’s what people want? Some people. And wait a second, you were the one that told me I had to go on it.’
‘Oh, you know how I deal with things. I do miss her, of course. But I came, I saw, I wrote my paragraph, I left. Why linger? That ‘Us’ tab is just odd. What is up with the navigation on that site?’
‘Yeah, I didn’t mean to end up in there either,’ Cassandra said. 'But listen. This is why I’m telling you about it. Based on those two conversations with this guy, on the strength of some stranger cheerleading me and being impressed with my work, I've gotten massively unstuck. Isn’t that weird?’
Verity paused a few beats.
'Let me get this straight. You were hit on at a funeral. And you liked it.'
‘You’re not getting it straight! You're horrible. Will you listen?'
'I'm listening. Are you listening to yourself? You were hit on and you liked it.'
'I am not going to talk to you about this anymore unless you listen to me properly,' Cassandra said sternly. 'Nobody hit on anyone. This is great. This is about...accountability. A sounding board. He’s creative, he’s encouraging, he’s appreciative, but he’s outside of everything. I think it's good he's a new person. He doesn’t compare me to my former self, like those people from uni who never stopped doing stuff. Or Naomi, who I'm pretty sure is judging me, as nice as she's being.'
‘Naomi was a good mentor, and she's always been your champion, babes. She helped get you the Tate...'
'And oh, how I rewarded her faith in me,’ Cassandra said.
'Shut up,’ Verity said, flapping a dismissive hand at the screen. 'She's not judging you; no one is judging you and if they are, they're the arseholes. Don't get me started on this again, and frankly, I should be offended that I'm not getting any credit here. Am I dreaming that conversation that you had with me the other day when you were agitating about the supposed gaps in your CV?'
'That was helpful,' said Cassandra, ashamed. ‘You were helpful. I cannot thank you enough. I wasn't trying to say that he has been the only thing mobilising me, getting me unstuck. I'm saying that he's one of the things. And one of the weirder things. But all sorts of things have happened, I guess. Olivia dying. And after Olivia, didn't you think about what you wanted to change, or all the things you want to do before you die?'
Verity shrugged. "Nah. No change in status. I was pushing and pitching for better assignments before, and I’m still grafting now, hanging on. But you're right, it is one of the weirder things, and I'm grateful to you for enlivening my morning like this. You must keep me posted. Coffee soon?’
Perhaps she had given Alex too much credit, as Verity had said. So she worked, just worked. Day by day, hour by hour, she felt the urges to contact him surface and recede like waves. Instead of messaging him, she focused on the smell of the paint, the sensation of her brush on the canvas, the gloriousness of the May tree when she sat under it at mid-morning to drink more coffee. She heard the tree too, a hive of fertility buzzing with hundreds of bees and dozens of birds, watched half a dozen species of butterfly flutter around its flowers. Cricket season had begun, and at weekends Paul donned his whites and went to the green to play. Cassandra was much alone.
The hawthorn three, which typically blossoms in May in southeast England.
One morning the hawthorn's beauty was so intense that she went to the shed and pulled a long-handled lopper from the stack of garden implements, which were in varying states of rust and disrepair. Climbing onto a stepladder, she craned her neck and squinted through the froth of petals, making sure she would fell no birds' nests when she made her cuts. Jumping down, she bundled the cut branches into her arms and cried out.
The thorns pierced her arms in many places, spotting her white cotton smock with blood. By the time she'd found a packet of plasters in a drawer in the studio, damp red blooms were spreading on her sleeves alongside smears of dried paint. She had grown up with hawthorn trees and their thorns had stabbed her bare feet too many times to count when she was little and running in the garden, but today she’d forgotten that the clusters of soft white blossom concealed danger.
'I am so bloody stupid,' Cassandra said, to no one. 'The clue’s in the name.'
She had sacrificed too much to not make the most of the branches now, so once she had applied her plasters, she pincered each branch between thumb and forefinger and lowered them into a large vase. They were highly scented and so fresh and gorgeous that despite her wounds, the blood turning brown and stiffening on her shirt, her heart sang. She mixed her paints, achieving the colours she needed, the yellow green for the hearts of the flower, the darker colour of the pollen, the slight pink blush at the petals' tips.
Her hands were full. 'Clio,’ she said. ‘Please compose voicemail message to AJ.'
'AJ is not an exact match for any of your contacts,’ Clio said. ‘Do you mean AlexJamesLeicaBoss@protonmail.com, signature Alex?'
'Yes, please, Clio, I mean Alex. Could you match up the records - AJ and Alex are the same,’ she said.
She did not compose the message all at once, but instead spoke throughout the day, little bursts of what was on her mind, a smattering of thoughts.
‘I just skewered myself on a hawthorn tree. Do they have hawthorn in America? Gorgeous but deadly.’
‘I had a pen pal in America when I was young. This is like that. A-synchronous. It was all, This is what life is like where I am, what is life like where you are? You know.’
‘People are approaching me about commissions, wanting me to do portraits. But I'm wondering what more I could do.’
‘It’s strange not knowing what you look like.’
'Clio, no,’ she said. ‘Delete that last bit. Don’t say that. Just say...it’s strange.’
'Okay, ‘not knowing what you look like’ has been deleted,’ Clio said.
Towards the end of the day, just as she was instructing Clio to send the aggregated message, a strange, sickly-sweet smell crept into her consciousness. Was something dead rotting under the floorboards? The mouse that had tried to nibble through the box with Olivia's portrait? But as she walked around the studio, trying to nose out the source, she realised. It was coming fro m the hawthorn.
Her mother laughed at her. ‘Bringing cut hawthorn into the house? You didn’t!’ she said. ‘It’s a bad omen. I definitely told you this once, when Dad was trimming our trees.’
'A bad omen according to whom?' Cassandra asked.
'Oh, the Celts, I think,' said her mother, airily. 'Look it up. Apparently, hawthorn gives off the same chemicals as decaying flesh when you cut into them. Hence its sinister reputation. Not nice. You've done it now, sweetheart.'
'Oh, no! Well, I didn't bring them into the house, I brought them into the studio,' Cassandra laughed. 'So, Paul's safe, but I'm doomed!'
'Let's assume you're not doomed. Tell me. How's everything going?' her mother asked.
'Everything's fine,' Cassandra said, shrugging. 'Not much to report.'
Before the hawthorn blooms dulled, before their petals rained down over the garden, the rhythms of her dialogue with Alex were established. Perhaps he recorded his messages as she did hers, bit by bit throughout his own day, but she asked him to send them to her all in one go, during her night-time. He had never asked why.
After Paul’s visit to the studio, she had worked out how to toggle the notifications on her phone and computer on and off, so that ProtonSpeak notifications wouldn’t appear. On the phone she rendered the app unlockable only through facial recognition, buried it deep in a folder full of store apps and shopping loyalty cards.
The sun rose early now, emerging to the backdrop of the dawn chorus well before Paul was stirring, and nearly every day Cassandra mounted her bicycle with the first rays of light. A few hundred metres from the house she paused in the street to unlock the app, its ear icon’s sound waves pulsating with as-yet-unheard material. She expected his messages now, but she never got used to them. Their novelty remained unchanged, their power to delight her undiminished.
For weeks on end the weather was glorious, like a benediction from the universe, the sun rising every morning on another blue sky. Every day, the messages were longer. Sometimes they carried Cassandra nearly to the ring road marking London's outer border, leaving her wondering if she had the stamina to make it home again. But if his voice was in her ears, her energy was boundless.
‘What's this bicycle mania all about?' Verity croaked, pulling her coat closer around her and exhaling vapour from her e-cigarette. Cassandra had circuited via her friend’s neighbourhood on her way home. Seven thirty was always early for Verity but late for Cassandra these days, who preferred to reach home, shower, and get out into the studio before Paul was fully awake. They were at the coffee shop on the ground floor of Verity’s tower block, sitting outside so that Verity could vape and some of the perspiration could evaporate from Cassandra’s clothing.
‘I need to start taking more exercise than just a stroll,' Cassandra argued. 'Eleanor’s encouraged it. I'll be 40 in July, remember. We will be 40 in July. How's your exercise regime going?'
‘Never mind that,’ Verity said. ‘I’m not cut out for it. But it’s not like you, either. Is this really to do with Eleanor? Anything to do with…you know. What did you call it? Your accountability partner? Mr sexy online coach person?’
‘Oh yes, obviously,’ Cassandra replied, hoping the sarcasm would hold. That morning, though, she was tempted to tell Verity everything.
Before she’d dipped back down into the city to meet her friend, she’d chosen a semi-rural route, skirting the edge of an ancient river. Beneath her helmet, her bone conduction headphones pressed against the skin in front of either ear, letting her hear the vehicles around her, the slight whining of RTs and other electric vehicles, so easy to miss if you weren't alert.
As was her ritual, she’d turned onto the dirt path that led away from the cars and people. She’d checked her watch — it was early enough, only 11:30 pm in Chicago, to have the live conversation she and Alex had planned.
‘Hello, you,’ he’d said, his honeyed voice commingling with the buzzing and tweeting and chirping around her, as though he might be on a bicycle just behind her, just out of view. She’d put her foot on the pedal and pushed off along the path, talking with him while flying past the slow-flowing little river, cast-off petals from the hawthorn and other blossoming trees floating on its surface, like the offerings in some ceremony.
‘You need to be careful, babes,’ someone said, and Cassandra realised she’d lost track of where she was. Verity was watching her, the smoke from her e-cigarette drifting out of her nostrils. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
‘Not really.’
‘If Paul were to…’
‘Good lord,’ Cassandra interrupted, gathering up her empty cup and saucer to take in to the barista. ‘Paul and you both. I’ve never heard so much fuss over a little bit of cycling. I’ve just discovered I like to ride, okay?’
‘Mm-hm,’ Verity said.
In the next episode, Verity’s fears might just be realised. Don’t miss out!
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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.
