Passionflower Part 3
Episode 17 | Still There
Content Warning: This installment contains disturbing content related to intimate partner violence that some readers and listeners may find distressing.
‘Who’s she?’ asked Paul, and something tensed in Cassandra despite the mildness of his tone. She didn’t know who Rebecca Harrison was — it could be anyone, perhaps another portrait commission request.
‘I have no idea,’ she replied, and reached for her phone.
‘Just ask,’ Paul said, and her fingers stopped short of the device.
‘Sorry, Clio, who’s the person the email’s from?’
Clio paused for a beat. 'The signature line reads as follows: Rebecca Harrison, Creative Director. Con…’
Her assistant was, Cassandra realised, on the cusp of saying Conti Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sarasota, Florida.
‘Clio, STOP,’ she said.
Paul withdrew his hand from hers and put the empty glasses and pitcher on the tray.
‘I’ll let you get on,’ he said as he stood up.
Cassandra sat frozen in the heat, watching his receding back as he went into the house. The kitchen door closed without slamming, and although the kitchen remained dark, she could see his movement behind the windows.
She picked up her phone, read the email, her heart pounding. Before she followed Paul into the house, she read it again, just to make sure.
He was putting dishes in the dishwasher in the dim light from the window when she entered. Although someone else might never have discerned anything off about the scene, she noticed the peculiar, exaggerated care with which Paul was loading the plates, the smooth control with which he was moving, as though he were a robot on an assembly line. She took a deep breath.
‘Paul. I’ve had an opportunity,’ she said. ‘An opportunity that I think I’m going to take.’
He appeared confused, then astonished. Presently a smile appeared on his face. Whether he had arranged it there or it had appeared organically, she was not sure.
‘Didn’t sound like it was about tutoring,’ he said.
‘I think I’d need to stop the tutoring,’ she said. ‘I’m only doing a little, anyway. This is something…proper. An art thing.’
His smile took on a rictus quality.
‘Well done you,’ he said. ‘An art thing. I had no idea you were, ah, in the running for something. Did it, ah…’
He turned to the dishwasher again, and in stashing the remaining items there his movements were now different, jerky.
‘Did it come to you, or, ah…’
‘I applied,’ she said.
‘Hm.’ His eyebrow raised, and he nodded. ‘Okay. You didn’t mention.’
‘Well, it was while we…you know. It’s recent, a recent development. And it was a long shot. Mentioning such a long shot didn’t seem necessary. Until I heard something.’
‘Your long shot’s paid off, then. So proud of you. Incredibly exciting. Keen to hear more.’
She noticed how the content and the feel of what he was saying did not match with one another. She noticed how reluctant she was to disclose any detail whatsoever. She wondered whether Paul would remember Rebecca’s name, whether he’d committed it to longer-term memory.
‘So…are we talking London?’ he asked.
Her knees were weak. ‘Not London,’ she said.
‘Hm. Ah, UK?’
Cassandra, putting her fingertips to her collarbone, realised that since Paul had come home, since she had accepted him back, she had not once worn the panic pendant that the police had issued her with. She suddenly couldn’t understand the decision, how it made sense, why she would have worn it the entire time her husband was away and then taken it off when he returned.
‘It’s rather farther than that,’ she said, eventually.
‘Golly.’ He clicked the dishwasher shut and leaned back against the countertop, crossing his arms, facing her. ‘Are you telling me we’re moving?’
‘I mean, I haven’t got that far,’ she said. ‘Planning hadn't come into it. Like I said...it was a long shot, I figured they'd have filled the, ah, post until the end of the year. My application was so last minute. So…like I said. I haven’t got that far.’
He looked down, rhythmically kicking his heel against the baseboard under the cupboards.
‘Rather farther,’ he repeated. ‘Do I get to know where? No, wait, it’s okay, never mind. That’s not my question. Are you leaving me, Cassandra?’
Cassandra fixed her eyes on the cracked tile. One day, they would have to fix that tile. He would, or she would, or they would.
‘Have you decided to leave our marriage?’ Paul asked again, his tone ominously level.
‘No,’ Cassandra replied quickly.
‘Hm,’ Paul said. His heel thumped twice more against the baseboard.
Cassandra had left the back door open when she entered. Flush padded in wearily, becoming more alert as she attuned to the atmosphere in the room. Cassandra reached down and scratched her between the ears, reassuring her, making contact.
'And I'm additionally curious,’ Paul continued. ‘Of all the art things that you presumably also applied for - including art things rather nearer, places where you are known and have connections, a network, has anyone else got back to you? You know, in England. Or environs.’
'Not that I've heard,’ she faltered. ‘Nothing definitive. Not yet.'
He tilted his face towards the window, narrowing his eyes.
'I don't believe you,’ he said, an element of singsong creeping into his voice. ‘I don't believe you have looked for anything nearby. Why that is, I’m not sure. Maybe you're too embarrassed. Embarrassed that you haven't done anything all this time, that you haven’t been up to anything at all. Or maybe this is exactly what you want.'
'Paul, I don't...'
'Okay, let's say that I do believe you,’ he said. ‘Let's say you've been knocking yourself out, looking into opportunities for art things all over England.'
Cassandra shifted her weight, taking the tiniest step backwards towards the door. At the back of the garden was the gate onto the path that led onto the street. On one side of the garden was number 15, whom she knew reasonably well, but not well enough for them to have her confidence. Number 19 were relative strangers. Both households could have seen the police cars and the ambulance, back in June, but nothing had ever been mentioned, not even on the group chat for the street. Given the minutiae typically discussed on the chat, the incident was prominent by its absence.
‘All rather convenient, isn't it?’ Paul said. ‘The one place you've heard back from, the one result of all your supposed efforts, is a place that’s rather farther away.’
Her mouth was dry, and it was so hot outside, so unbearable. Why was it still so muggy at such a late hour, when the sun was nearly gone? She followed Paul’s gaze out of the window. A bat swooped low over the little pond at the back of the garden, dragging its tiny tongue across the surface of the water to scoop up some hapless insect or to slake its thirst.
She would need to rescue herself, turn the tide.
‘I feel a bit scared about talking with you about this. I feel scared. Without someone’s help, I mean,’ she said. ‘I know what I said about Eleanor, but I think it’s worth seeing someone. Her, or someone she recommends.’
He’d yet to have his first anger-management appointment, but at her saying scared, something had already altered in Paul, some different self-awareness that produced a change in his physicality. Victim Support had used the word too, on its website and in the pamphlet the policewoman had left on Cassandra’s bedside table at the hospital.
Stalking, harassment and abuse are when someone repeatedly behaves in a way that makes you feel scared, distressed or threatened. These behaviours are against the law.
Paul must have been told the same things. He seemed to loosen, to shrink, his muscles uncoiling and the tension in his jawline slackening. He nodded, chewing his lip.
‘I don’t want you to be scared,’ he said.
His power was diminishing, he was beginning to be mollified, but to fully reach level ground again, she would need to do more.
Fight and flight are the responses to threat that everyone knows, Eleanor had told her. But they’re not the only ones. There’s also freezing. And fawning.
Fawning, Cassandra had replied, slowly.
Fawning, her therapist had repeated. What does that word mean to you?
‘Paul,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to be scared, but I also don’t want you to be. I don’t want you to feel like I’m going to do something without talking, without agreeing. We’ll decide together. I know we’ve got…disconnected. But I’m still here.’
He was looking steadily at the floor, hugging himself with his arms, nodding like a bobblehead and looking as though he were going to cry. ‘Cass,’ he whispered. ‘Do you…um. Would you consider sleeping inside tonight? In our bed. If you feel ready.’
Her throat contracted, but so did something in her heart. She could no longer tell how she felt about him, could not fully untangle love and fear, memory and hope. Irrespective of all this, though, she realised she had reached a place of safety, however tenuous.
‘You don’t think you’ll be too hot?’ she ventured.
Paul opened his arms. ‘I don’t care,’ he said.
She went to him.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I have a surprise for you.’
Brushing her teeth in the en suite, the tile cool against the soles of her feet, she watched her reflection. The toothpaste foamed at the corners of her mouth as she navigated the brush more carefully around her repaired teeth. They were smooth but for a tiny reminder – a residual glob of glue from the splints that had secured them. In the mirror she could see the shower stall where it had happened, could see the doorway to the room where her husband now lay in bed.
Paul’s surprise was that he had managed to procure perhaps the only portable air conditioning unit available for miles, a noisy thing with a fat exhaust hose that he’d fed out the partially open window. The temperature in their room was dropping rapidly.
‘My god,’ Cassandra exclaimed when she re-entered the bedroom. ‘That feels divine.’
Before the assault, she thought, he probably would have replied ‘you’re divine’ with a lascivious tone and added a ‘Jesus fuck.’ But now, he was being careful.
‘C’mere,’ he said quietly, holding out his arm, and she climbed into bed and lay down next to him, her head settling between his neck and shoulder, as they’d always done. She’d expected to remain tense, to feel wary. But whether it was exhaustion, the comfort provided by the air con, or the relief of allowing herself to slip back into normalcy, she fell asleep straightaway.
She thought she was dreaming at first. She had a vision of looking into Alex’s eyes, his clear, strange light-blue eyes. Alex’s hands were on her body, but then something about the scene didn’t match. He was reaching from behind her, cupping her breasts, pressing his pelvis against her backside, so how could she also be looking straight into his eyes?
Gradually she emerged from grogginess, the situation piecing itself together slowly, until all snapped into reality. Cassandra was in her own bed, with her underwear pulled down around her thighs, and Paul was breathing hard on the back of her neck.
‘Cassie,’ he whispered. ‘Cassie, wake up.’
His touch was not aggressive as he caressed her left breast, and for a moment she felt aroused. But then she felt him hard and insistent between her buttocks, felt him reaching down to manoeuvre himself into place. He pushed, pushed harder, made a frustrated noise, spit into his hand and wetted the tip. She realised he was prepared to enter her even though she had not yet reacted, even though he had no idea if she were awake.
‘Paul, no,’ she mumbled, shifting herself away and reaching down to pull her underwear back up. But he put his hand down to stop her.
‘Cassie,’ he whispered, hot in her ear. ‘It’s important. We need this.’
‘Paul,’ she said, louder this time. ‘No. I don’t need this. I don’t want to right now.’
He could not control the situation lying on his side, his left hand free but his right arm trapped beneath her. Despite the stone he’d lost, in size and strength he still had the power to dominate her. Using his body weight to flip her onto her front and prising her legs apart into a V, he made another failed attempt and another tutting frustrated noise.
‘I’m serious, Paul,’ said Cassandra, fully awake now. ‘I really don’t want to. Stop it.’
He pulled her legs to the side and over the edge of the bed, hinging her at the waist. Although the bed was tall, Paul was too, and he shoved a pillow underneath her belly to elevate her hips. Placing one hand firmly on her upper back, he guided himself into her with the other and exhaled with pleasure and satisfaction. It all unfolded so smoothly that someone watching, Cassandra thought, might not even have thought it violent.
‘Please stop,’ she whispered, but maybe this time he didn’t hear her over the noise of the air conditioning. In any case, it was already too late.
Unlike that time in the studio, he did not go fast; there was no bashing or bruising or cursing, no friction burns from rubbing on wooden furniture. The pillow and sheets beneath her body were soft on her skin, and the air was cool around the two of them. He pushed into her slowly and rhythmically, holding her down firmly with both hands on the small of her waist. He knew she wasn’t going anywhere, and so did she. She could feel the pillowcase growing wetter beneath her eyes, her mouth.
‘We’re connecting,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘We’re reconnecting.’
After rearranging the sheets and pillows, kissing her breasts and her mouth, fetching water for her, and telling her that he loved her, he fell deeply asleep. Cassandra saw that it was only just past midnight, and she wondered if he had been awake the whole time, whether he had purposely waited until she had dropped off. Hearing his breathing slow to the rhythms of sleep, she wondered whether she should call the liaison officer attached to the case. If she reported, it could mean another 28 days without him, maybe more. She wouldn’t decide now. She would think about it tomorrow.
When she was sure he was under, she slipped from beneath his arm. The heat and humidity hit her in the hallway outside the bedroom and eased when she slipped out the kitchen door into the garden, carrying what remained of the bottle of Sancerre. Flush watched her go with sleepy eyes but did not react.
Photo of a passionflower by Anya Chernik on Unsplash
Cassandra stood at the mirror in the studio, watching her curls bounce back after she pulled the brush through them. The perspiration on her skin did not look unattractive — just enough to give her a dewy glow. She touched a finger to the skin under her eye, to her cheekbone.
'Clio,’ she said. ‘Can you make the room be like candlelight, please?’
The studio dimmed to golden, and she could no longer see any sign that anything had ever happened to her face. The artificial light guttered like the real thing, like it could be a hundred years ago or more. She took up Olivia’s teardrop pearl necklace from the decoupage glass dish where it lay and fastened the silver clasp about her neck. The pearl was right for candlelight. If she became nervous, she need only touch its smoothness and she would feel Olivia close by, encouraging her forward.
'Clio, can you allow video for ProtonSpeak?’
‘OK, I have now enabled video for ProtonSpeak,’ Clio said. ‘Would you like to make a video call?'
Cassandra didn't answer straight away. She wondered whether Clio knew exactly who she wanted to ring. Unhurried, she drank her wine, paced back and forth across the now-cool poured-concrete surface of the floor, imagined she was floating, skimming it like a ghost.
In the otherwise silent space, the ticking of the clock was invasively loud. She stuck a book under one side of the case, skewing the pendulum so far to the left that the clock stopped.
Through the open window, she heard a cuckoo from the woodland in the park nearby. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard one.
She wheeled the adjustable stool over to her desk, fiddling with its height until she was happy with the frame.
'Clio,’ she said. ‘Call Alex.'
'I don't think I've ever been so happy to see somebody,’ Alex said. ‘Cassandra. I don’t believe it.’
His smile sent fizzing currents through her body, aliveness from her very core to the tips of her fingertips.
'It's me,’ she confirmed. ‘And it's you.'
'It's us,’ he said.
She ducked her chin, blushed. She had not been deceived. He had not misrepresented himself. He was as gorgeous as he'd been in his photograph, his beard a bit shorter, but now the lovely photo was moving, responding. She wanted to reach out and touch his face, but he might see her lean forward, spot the change in angle of her shoulder, know what she was doing.
Alex propped an elbow on his desk and dropped his chin into his hand, his smile crinkling the corners of his eyes as he circled her face with his gaze, mapping her, taking her in. He was in a dark room, windowless, or else night had fallen in Chicago. Or perhaps he was in his studio, against a black backdrop. He shone like a beacon.
'Where are you?' she asked. She’d had no plan, had nothing else available to say.
'I'm at work,’ he said. ‘In the cave that is my office. I'm not senior enough for a view. I was marking my students' final portfolios for the year, but now that you're here with me, I'm done with that for the night.'
'I can't quite believe I'm seeing you,’ she said.
'Like I said...I can’t believe it either. Cassandra, if I ever get to see you in person, I must photograph you. Promise me you’ll sit for me.’
She held a correcting index finger aloft.
'When,’ she said. ‘When you get to see me in person.'
He brought both his palms to his face, popping his eyes comedically wide, and she laughed. So natural, so comfortable.
‘Okay, tell me,' he said. 'Tell me quickly.'
'I'm coming to Florida. We're going to meet.'
''Oh my god,' he said. 'Cassandra!'
He seized either side of his monitor and shook it, going blurry.
'Stop, stop!' she laughed. 'You'll break something! And I can’t see you.'
Alex's face in the frame stilled, and he sat back in his chair, grinning. ‘We should have Champagne. Do you have Champagne? In that little fridge of yours I’m sure you have?’ He winked at her, making her feel strange in her knees.
‘I don’t. But I have this,’ she said, lifting the Sancerre. ‘Let me get a more celebratory glass.’
When she came back with one of her grandmother's crystal flutes, the image of a Champagne glass was superimposed onto Alex's hand, and a cartoon party hat floated atop his head.
'Sorry about the hat,' he said. 'I don't have anything to drink, and I've only got this birthday-themed filter. So, you have to have one for you, and one for me. To you.'
He pincered his fingers and raised the cartoon glass to her.
'To you,' she said. ‘Without you, I wouldn't have done any of this. And now here we are.'
'This is incredible,' said Alex, when she'd sipped.
The birthday-party filter disappeared, and Cassandra was glad, even though the cartoon glass and hat had made him no less handsome. She wanted to stop smiling so much, feared she looked goofy, infatuated. But he hadn't stopped smiling either.
'When?' he said.
‘Soon. Late August. To start putting everything in place. Occupying the space starting in October.’
'Holy shit, this is perfect,’ he said. ‘Summer break, no classes. I’ll come down. It'll be hot. Stupid hot. Are you ready?'
'I assume you're talking about the weather.'
Alex went into peals of laughter.
'Oh Cassandra. I was talking about the weather. Do we have other hot things to discuss?'
'I'm embarrassed now,' said Cassandra, though suddenly she wasn't.
'Don't be embarrassed. Are you kidding me? Don't be embarrassed. Is this a bad moment to ask if you want to stay with me? At the house? I mean, you can stay at the house. If you need. Sorry...that’s a lot. I’m getting ahead of myself.'
'No, no,’ she said. ‘I didn't take it that way. It’s not too much. We're...friends. We're friends, after all.'
'Mmm. Indeed. Does that sound English? "Indeed".'
He rested his chin in his hand again, came closer.
Everything was obvious, aligned, synchronised. This was magic. She might just as well be face to face with him, breathing the same air.
Soon.
'Well, the gallery is giving me a choice,’ she said. ‘They can sort something out for me ahead of time, or they're happy to pay for a hotel for a week or two while I choose something within the budget. Maybe I’d better go for the hotel option. Get the lay of the land, see what happens.'
'Make them give you a good hotel,’ he said. ‘Tell them you want the Westbay!’
‘Bossy,’ she said.
‘Promise me something,’ he said.
'Almost anything,’ she said.
'Give yourself one night to sleep and get over some jet lag, and the next night, wherever you’re staying, meet me on the rooftop bar at the Westbay,’ he said. ‘We'll watch the sun set together. Please.'
She imagined him, in the flesh. She saw him in her mind's eye, smiling across a table at her, a light wind ruffling his brown hair with its flecks of grey. She pictured herself smiling back, youthful and breezy in a halter-necked sundress, her hair down, shoulders browned from her unseasonably hot English July and braced for the more powerful rays of the dog days of a Floridian August.
'I would have said yes even if you hadn't said please,’ she said. ‘But is it dangerous, meeting you in the evening at a hotel bar?'
'Dangerous?' he said, teasingly.
'Alex, we've never talked about this kind of thing,’ she said. ‘But I need to ask now. Are you...with someone?’
As he paused, her heart fluttered and sank. She remembered going down a terrifying water slide as a teenager at a holiday park. The first dip was a precursor of the sickening plunge to come.
'I was married,’ he said. ‘I was married, and I have a kid at college. I've been separated, though, for a long time.'
'Separated for a long time. Why not divorced?' she asked.
Alex sighed, shrugged.
'It's complicated,’ he said, and her heart twisted again. 'But not for the reasons you might think,' he continued, reacting to her face. 'Medical coverage is a major deal over here. If we get a divorce, she loses her medical insurance, which is not good. For various reasons. We're amicable, and I wouldn't want to put her in that position. Believe me, once we can work that out, it’ll be over.’
'I'm sorry,’ she said. ‘That's none of my business.'
'No, it’s okay,’ he said. ‘It is your business. Or it might be. At some point soon.'
They locked onto one another's eyes. She remembered a time when you didn't know where to look online, when eyes didn’t meet, when people pixelated and froze at critical moments in the conversation, leaving you saying oh no, I've lost you, I've lost you, are you still there into silence.
'So, what about you?' Alex said.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, knowing full well what he meant.
'Are you with anyone?' he asked.
Cassandra, glancing down at her hands, saw the white band of skin on her left ring finger. She had removed her wedding ring without thinking, but when? She faintly recalled the sound of metal against glass, her ring dropping into the same decoupage dish from which she'd taken Olivia's pearl-pendant necklace. Without meaning to, she'd exchanged one for the other.
As Alex had done, she sighed and shrugged.
'I was,’ she said. ‘But I'm not anymore.'
In the next episode, Verity and Cassandra hatch a plan. 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.
