Summer at Tiffany's Read Online Free PDF Page B

flew to her mouth. Another one? He had been completely grey by the time Cassie and Suzy had got to him. Henry had run all the way back from Parson’s Green, the next stop, beating the cab the girls had frantically hailed on the street and, no doubt, all the trains too.
    â€˜And how’s Suze?’ Cassie’s big blue eyes were as wide as the sky was dark. She knew that behind her friend’s straight-talking, don’t-mess demeanour was a heart as fragile as a bird’s egg.
    â€˜Being invincible. She’s watching over him like a bodyguard, wanting to know what every tube is for, and she didn’t let go of his hand once the whole time I was there. She bawled out one nurse because she got the date wrong. She said if she wasn’t even sure of the day’s date, how could she trust her on anything more serious?’ He shrugged, rubbing his face in his hands. ‘How’s Velvet?’
    â€˜Oh, she’s fine,’ Cassie nodded. She had been looking after the child from the second Suzy had clambered into the ambulance with Archie. ‘Oblivious, really. The only wobble was when she wanted Suzy at bedtime, but she was fine as soon as she had her bottle. I thought she might want to sleep in here with me, but she went down in her cot, no problem.’
    â€˜Sweet thing,’ Henry murmured, but a fault line ran through his voice, close to cracking it in two. ‘She’s too young to—’
    â€˜Shh, I know,’ Cassie said, scrambling up onto her knees and wrapping her arms around him. She knew what he had been going to say – that Velvet was too young to be without a father, that she’d be too young to remember him if Archie did die.
    â€˜No. All this is my fault,’ Henry said, pulling away from her and, resting his elbow on his knees, pinching the bridge of his nose as agonies ran over his features.
    â€˜Henry, how can you think that? Of course it isn’t!’
    He whipped up his head. ‘Cass, I physically stopped Suzy from keeping the doors open.
I
kept her from getting to him.’
    She remembered how he’d moved Suzy out of the way of the doors to let them close, how, as they’d pulled out of the station, he’d had to stop Suzy from tugging the emergency cord –
his
logic wrestling with
her
instinct, as he’d tried to explain it was, counter-intuitively, quicker for them to get to the next station than stop in a tunnel outside that one, even though her husband was lying on the platform and beginning to die.
    â€˜You did the right thing, at every point,’ Cassie said quietly.
    He shook his head irritably. ‘I set the pace too fast.’
    â€˜No. The train set the pace too fast. You had nine and a half minutes to make it; the train wasn’t waiting for anyone. That’s the whole point.’
    Henry got up and paced across the floor, raking his hands through his hair. ‘I shouldn’t have talked him into it. He didn’t even want to do it.
I
made him do it.’
    Cassie watched him. ‘The only person who makes Arch do anything is Suzy. We all know that.’
    Henry laughed, but it came out like a bark – joyless and hard – and he continued pacing. ‘I shouldn’t have—’
    â€˜Henry, stop this! Archie is unfit and stressed to the eyeballs. Suze told me on the train while you were gone – his job’s on the line. They might lose the house. She’s been worried about him for weeks.’
    Henry stopped moving. ‘What are you talking about? He hasn’t said anything about it to me.’
    â€˜He hasn’t talked about it to anyone.’
    Henry stared back at her, his eyes unseeing upon her face for once as the news sank in, before he collapsed back down onto the bed again, dropping his head into his hands.
    Cassie crawled over to him and began kneading his shoulders. They were practically sewn together by the tension in his body. ‘Listen,