Chapter One
It was Saturday afternoon and one of those enchanting June days when the air was heavy with a languid sense of time standing still.
With what felt like a huge effort, Cassie Henshaw roused herself from the cushioned comfort of her sun lounger and reached for the tumbler at her side. Much as she would have liked it to be a glass of perfectly chilled chardonnay, it was in fact nothing more intoxicating than sparkling water with elderflower-flavoured ice cubes and a slice of lemon. Once again, she was on a mission to cleanse her treacherous body and shed some unwanted pounds. In all likelihood, it was a futile exercise but one she was duty-bound to pursue, as when the summer came to an end, so would her thirties.
Okay, it was really no big deal embarking on a new decade; forty wasn’t exactly the end of the road, was it? No, far from it, it was something to be celebrated. But for some reason there was a teeny part of her that felt cheated, as though while her back had been turned and she wasn’t paying proper attention, time had played a sneaky trick on her, fast-tracking her through to the next stage in her life.
But then that was her all over; she was too prone to be looking the wrong way when something important was happening, and often when it was right under her nose. Second-guessing wassomething else she did a lot and was subsequently too quick to jump to conclusions and miss the blindingly obvious.
It was how she’d lost her precious daughter to Drew-the-Terrible – her ex-husband – and his glossy new wife. She’d simply been looking the wrong way. But sitting up here on this spacious roof terrace, and with nothing but blue sky overhead and far-reaching views beyond the stone parapet, Drew-the-Terrible was the last thing she wanted to think about. Although come to think of it, imagining him toppling over the parapet and falling to his death had a certain appeal to it.
‘A little excessive even by your standards,’ she imagined Ben gently rebuking her with a subtle lifting of his mouth into a smile.
That was one of the many reasons she loved Ben, he could put her straight without ever putting her down. It was a rare talent in her experience. Some of his other talents included always being able to make her laugh when she most needed to. He could also put up with her when she was being less than rational, which recently was fast becoming her default setting.
Which was such a shame as she was so lucky to have Ben in her life. Lucky too to live here at Hope Hall in this charmingly bucolic setting of nearly a hundred acres, some of which had been given over to grazing cattle and sheep. There were idyllic woodland paths to enjoy and last month, wild garlic and swathes of shimmering bluebells had emerged from beneath the soft leafy undergrowth in the woods where rhododendrons and azaleas grew in dazzlingly colourful abundance. The River Cam meandered through part of the estate and in the early weeks of living here, when they’d strolled along it, Ben would talk about taking up paddleboarding, or maybe kayaking. Somehow it never happened, but they regularly played tennis on what had been the original court, now thoroughly revamped.
Cassie often thought that living here was like being on a film set; it sometimes felt too good to be true. Not that she ever voicedthat opinion to Ben; she didn’t want him to think she didn’t love their new home as much as he did. She absolutely did.
It had been his idea to sell their Victorian house and live in these fabulous surroundings. The moment he’d heard that the former stately pile on the outskirts of Farleigh Fen village and just a short distance from the centre of Cambridge was in the process of being converted into luxury apartments, he’d made an appointment for them to view what was then no more than a building site. Based on what they had seen that day and the plans Ben studied at length, and the amendments he wanted made, he made an offer for the largest penthouse apartment, which was spread over two floors, and the deal was done.
The first time she and Ben had brought her parents here to see where they would be living, when it was still very much in the building-site stage, her mother had laughed out loud when the extravagantly turreted building had come into view. ‘You’re going to live in Downton Abbey!’ she’d gasped.
‘It’s not all going to be ours,’ Cassie had said, ‘we’ll have to share it with others.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ her mother had said, sounding disappointed. ‘How many others?’
‘It’s been divided up into twenty apartments,’ Ben had explained, ‘and of various sizes.’ Later, he’d unrolled the plans of the lower and upper floors of the apartment they were buying and had described all his ideas for the internal modifications from what the developer had originally had in mind.
Cassie couldn’t recall ever seeing him as excited as he was at the prospect of them living here. She had been worried how much it would cost, but he had assured her that they could easily afford it. The small biotech company he had started up ten years ago had gone from strength to strength and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t now reap the rewards of his hard work and success. In the early days it had been tough going, he’d taken amassive risk in resigning from the biotech company he already worked for to go his own way and specialise in providing a service for forensic investigations. His background was biology and chemistry and there wasn’t anything he didn’t know about DNA, and she was immensely proud of him. A little in awe, too.
Someone else she was in awe of was Nina Lavelle, who lived in the apartment at the opposite turreted corner of the Hall to Cassie and Ben. She had a roof terrace like they did but one bedroom fewer. She was the sort of woman Cassie could never be. For starters, she was unfailingly rational and wonderfully composed, and to top it all she was just about the most exquisitely beautiful woman Cassie knew. Whereas Cassie dressed to emphasise her curves and wore heels to make up for her lack of height, Nina was as tall and willowy as a model. She was effortlessly eye-catching, but without appearing to realise it.
Ice-cool and with a protective force shield in placewas how Ben described Nina. He didn’t mean it unkindly, he was extremely fond of her, but widowhood, he believed, had caused Nina partially to withdraw.
But then who wouldn’t withdraw when the man they loved had died? Cassie certainly would if she lost Ben.
The three of them had become firm friends the day they’d met as neighbours just over a year ago when, and with their keys in hand which they’d collected from the selling agent as soon as completion had taken place, they’d both been anxiously awaiting the arrival of their removal vans. To their combined relief the two large vehicles had trundled up the long winding driveway at the same time in a slow-moving convoy. Nina’s van had come from the centre of Cambridge and Cassie and Ben’s from Great Shelford.
The first to move in, they’d had the vast, eerily quiet building entirely to themselves and that evening Cassie had invited their new neighbour to join them for a supper of bits and pieceswhich she’d had the foresight to put in a cool box and ensure would be easy to locate. Wine and glasses had been found and introductory stories shared. That was when they learnt that Nina ran a prestigious fine art gallery in Cambridge and that moving to Hope Hall represented a new start for her, following the death of her husband. Apparently, an athletic and fit man in his early forties, he’d been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and in no time he was dead.
In bed that night in their new home, and after hearing Nina’s heartbreaking story, Cassie had held Ben extra tight and told him she loved him. An intuitive man, he hadn’t said anything silly like,‘What’s brought this on?’; he’d known, and had hugged her back and told her how much he loved her and then they’d fallen asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.
She knew she was so very lucky to have Ben as her forever partner, because unlike her ex-husband he was a good and caring man and had the skills to figure out how she ticked. She’d be the first to acknowledge that there were moments when she could resemble a ticking time bomb. Of late, those moments were all Drew-related.
It infuriated her that he had managed to worm his way back into their daughter’s life after years of barely any contact, other than the occasional remembered birthday or last-minute Christmas present. If he were to be believed, he was now a changed man and wanted to be the father to Emily he’d never previously shown the slightest indication of wanting to be.
When Emily, now twenty, informed Cassie that she had been secretly in contact with her father for the last year and was going to drop out of university and go and stay with him in Dubai, where he was now living with his second wife and their young son, it felt like the worst betrayal.
How could her daughter do that, when she knew that Cassie had literally been left holding the baby when Drew had donea vanishing act within two months of Emily’s birth? He wasn’t ready for fatherhood, he’d claimed, he was too young.
‘I’ll tell you who else isn’t ready for this, and that’s me!’ Cassie had shouted at him.
Before all that had happened, when she had first discovered she was pregnant, and knowing that she wanted to keep the baby, she had given up her place at Nottingham University and had gone home to her parents to tell them her news. As shocked and disappointed as they were, they had fully supported her. Just as they had when she and Drew had hastily married in a registry office and found a place of their own, a dismal ground-floor flat in Watford where he had just started working.
It had all been such a mess and yet somehow, at that ridiculously young age Cassie had believed she was doing entirely the right thing. She had fallen for Drew because, being older than her by four years, he had been like some darkly forbidden fruit, full of temptation and an excess of allure. He used to joke that he was John Travolta to her Olivia Newton-John, playing Danny and Sandy inGrease. He even had a cute little dimple in his chin. After he’d left her, she could never watchGreaseagain. She still couldn’t. But maybe that was out of habit now.
Ben Pearson had come into Cassie’s life a few years after she’d moved back to be near her parents in the village of Linton ten miles from Cambridge. Emily was ten at the time and Ben had taken to the role of stepfather brilliantly. Emily had eagerly accepted him as a permanent presence, proudly boasting to her friends that she now had a proper daddy.
