If Ben felt slighted by Emily now apparently switching her allegiance from him to a man who had abandoned her as a baby, he never showed it. Instead, he did his best to convince Cassie that they weren’t losing Emily, that this was simply something the girl had to do, and they had to respect her decision.
He made it sound so easy, but then he hadn’t been the one who’d been hurt all those years ago and carried the pain and resentment ever since. It was a long time to carry a grudge, but she had, and she didn’t care if that made her seem petty.
She didn’t help herself, of course, because while Drew was vying for the role of Husband of the Year and Superdad, Cassie tortured herself by scrolling through his wife’s frequent postings on Instagram and TikTok showing off their perfect life. It had to be fake, no one really lived such a fantasy life, but it was hard to resist the queasy lure of the photos, especially those of Rosalyn herself. Fifteen years younger than Cassie, the girl’s pouting lips were filled, her boobs perkier than nature ever intended them to be, her waist unfeasibly small and her nails and eyelashes absurdly long. Even when Rosalyn posted a photo of herself lounging by a swimming pool along with her son and captioned it with the comment,Here’s me make-up free and looking an absolute mess!she looked anythingbuta mess.
What pained Cassie most was that Emily had been sucked into the vacuous stream of photos and reels, proudly touted by Rosalyn asMy perfect stepdaughter!Or:I’ve never had a sister, now I feel like I do! I’m truly blessed!
Suddenly filled with a fierce blaze of emotions towards her ex-husband, as well as disappointment that Emily could have done something that she had to have known would cut deep with her, Cassie put down her drink, stood up and went over to the stone parapet. Resting her elbows on it, she gazed out at the beautiful view, and reminded herself just how good life was for her and that she shouldn’t let the past and all its resentment tarnish her present or her future.
In the distance, she watched a heron appear from the branches of a towering oak tree as, lazily flapping its wide span of wings, it tracked a path along the river before swooping down low and onto the bank. She waited for it to move, but it stayed very still.
She could do with learning to be more still, Cassie thought, mentally as well as physically. Particularly when it came to Emily. She had to let her daughter make her own decisions and accept the consequences. But she missed Emily so much.
She missed all the silly times they’d shared, like when they watchedMarried at First Sighttogether – the Australian version was their favourite – and played gaslighting bingo, shrieking so loudly at the worst offenders that Ben would poke his head through the doorway and ask them what was going on.
She particularly missed their regular catch-up chats when she still felt she could guide and advise Emily and in return be mocked for being so mortifyingly out of touch.
Cassie would give anything to have that time back with her daughter, because ever since she and Ben had waved Emily off at Heathrow six weeks ago, all she had now was a skimpy ration of texts or FaceTime calls which were abruptly short and told her nothing of any real worth. They served only to leave her going quietly mad as she filled in the blanks and convinced herself that she had lost her daughter forever to Drew.
Chapter Two
Generally, Saturdays were not when Nina’s serious clients came into the gallery, they preferred to visit during the week when it was quiet and they could spend more one-to-one time with Nina and invariably enjoy an exchange of gossip over a glass of champagne.
Today, and amongst the tourists who came in to browse, a Canadian couple had fallen in love with the beautiful Dorothea Sharp painting of a vase of flowers at an open window, which Nina had only recently acquired. She would have liked to have it hanging in the gallery for longer because it gave her so much pleasure every time she looked at it. That was the trouble with some paintings: she made an emotional connection to them, and it was a wrench to let them go.
Soon after the transaction had been completed and all the shipping details filled out, another couple came in. They were from Boston and on a tour around the UK, as so many were who came to Cambridge. Their taste ran more to pastoral landscapes of the nineteenth century and when they spotted the Henry Hillingford Parker haymaking scene, they were delighted as they already had a painting by the artist back at home. ‘It was meant to be,’ the woman had said happily while her husband handed over his American Express card to Nina.
Once all the paperwork was in order and the couple had gone, Nina decided to close. It was almost four o’clock and she feltshe had a good day’s work behind her. Activating the complex security system, she locked up and set off for her car, a short walk away in a private car park.
The Lavelle Fine Art Gallery in St Anne’s Court had been a family-run business since the 1950s, when it was established by Nina’s grandfather, Jerome Lavelle. It then passed down to her father, David Lavelle, in the late 1970s and it was now Nina’s responsibility to carry the torch. Her brother had made it clear that art wasn’t his field of expertise, despite having grown up surrounded by it, and he’d hightailed it off to the States to work in the tech industry. He now lived in San Francisco and was married with two young children, which was why Mum and Dad had decided to retire early and divide their time between Cambridge and the US – they wanted to see their grandchildren growing up and help as much as they could.
Nina had always believed it was her destiny to run the gallery. She’d been obsessed with her parents’ world since she was a small child, marvelling at the beauty and variety of paintings on the gallery walls and the fascinating people who came and went. As soon as she was old enough, she was allowed to help in the gallery, especially when her parents held an exhibition. Inevitably she went on to study fine art and did several internships at Christie’s in London before returning home to Cambridge to work alongside her parents. Her brother liked to tease her that she was the anointed one, their parents’ protégée, and he was their shamefully philistine son who didn’t appreciate the first thing about fine art.
‘But you’re the special one they want to go and live near,’ she’d countered, knowing full well that Guy didn’t have a jealous bone in his body and that he was far from the philistine he made himself out to be.
‘There’s no one I’d sooner see taking on the mantle than you,’ Dad had said to Nina when the i’s and t’s were legally dotted and crossed, and she was officially the new owner of the business.They’d organised a party in the gallery for all their loyal clients and friends to mark the occasion of their retirement and to celebrate the continuation of the family business, declaring it to be in safe hands for the next generation.
That had been four years ago when Hugh was very much alive, and he and Nina had believed they had a lifetime of happiness to look forward to. A future that had included children. Hugh had been so eager to be a father. When their friends and his cousins to whom he was very close had started producing offspring, he had confessed to feeling broody himself.
‘I know that’s the prerogative of a woman, but I can’t help it,’ he’d said. ‘I want a child. I think we’d make great parents.’
Nina hadn’t been quite ready to take that step, wanting first to establish herself fully in the gallery, but she had relented when her mother had reminded her that the clock was ticking, and that it was a well-known fact that it became increasingly more difficult to conceive the older a woman was. She was thirty-seven at that point and so she agreed to dispense with using any contraception, but on the understanding that they would have help at home when the time came so Nina could juggle the gallery with being a mother.
Hugh had had no problem with this, and joked that they should get to work straight away on filling the house with as many children as possible.
‘Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s see how we manage with the one small baby,’ Nina had said, ever the voice of restraint and in marked contrast to Hugh who could never do anything by halves; he was a great believer in all or nothing.
But creating that one small baby proved harder than they’d anticipated, and they soon accepted that they needed to seek professional help. The problem proved to be a shared one in as much as Hugh had a low sperm count and her eggs were failing to mature properly.
Hugh was devastated. It pained her to see him so upset and she knew then that she had to do everything in her power to create a child with him. So together they began an expensive course of fertility treatment. Which from the very first visit to the clinic opened Nina’s eyes to how big the fertility industry was. She was shocked at what she discovered once the process was underway and was met with nigh on incredulity from the doctor that she hadn’t already put away a stash of healthy eggs for safekeeping. Apparently young women in their twenties were being encouraged to store their eggs well in advance of wanting to be pregnant, or even having a partner. It was an insurance policy; an expensive one at that.
Hugh decided to let his parents know what they were doing, as his mother had started dropping clanging hints that it was surely time they provided her with a grandchild. Nina confided in her parents and brother, but it wasn’t something she wanted to keep bringing up in conversation, and they had the good sense to realise that.
As time went on, Hugh’s mother, who couldn’t accept for one minute her only son could in any way be at fault, preferred to believe that the fault lay entirely at Nina’s door.
‘It’s because you’re too thin,’ Hilary once said. ‘If you’d eat more, you’d be pregnant in a flash.’
On one occasion she had almost inferred that Nina must in some way not be conducting herself in a proper manner in bed with Hugh, that she had to be holding back. When Nina had told Hugh this, he had laughed out loud, but then it had sunk in what his mother had really been saying and he’d been furious and threatened to give his mother an explicit rundown on their sex life, he’d spare her nothing! Thankfully he didn’t, and they were all spared that embarrassment.
