‘I’m still not leaving you. Unless … unless it’s too awkward for you with me being here.’
‘It’s not awkward, I’m very grateful to you.’
He frowned. ‘I know now is not the time to discuss it, but I just want you to know that if I’ve ruined everything, I will understand if you feel it would be better if I no longer worked in the gallery for you anymore.’
‘You’re right,’ she said wearily, exhaustion suddenly catching up with her, ‘now is not the time.’
Chapter Twenty
Monday morning and minutes after Ben had left for work, Cassie was at her desk and updating a website for one of her long-term clients. Andrea J. Matthews was an author of half a dozen self-help books and, in Cassie’s humble opinion, a specialist in waffly wellness BS. Her new bookMindfulness Meditation for the Nonbelieverappeared to be just another take on what most of the author’s previous books had been about. But fair play to Andrea J. Matthews, her books sold and according to the latest batch of testimonials Cassie had just uploaded, she had helped thousands of people over the years, if not hundreds of thousands if the claims were to be believed. Cassie had no idea if the testimonials were genuine, but that wasn’t her concern.
Just as it wasn’t her business to pester Nina about the wedding on Saturday, so Ben had said while they’d been having breakfast.
‘I take exception to the word “pester”,’ Cassie had responded, ‘I just want to know that Nina’s okay, it’s very unlike her not to reply to a message.’
‘If Nina had anything she wanted to share, she would have done so by now,’ Ben had said in that annoyingly reasonable voice of his, while continuing to read the news headlines on his iPad.
‘That is such a typical male thing to say!’ Cassie had retorted.
‘And that, right back atcha,’ he’d said with a smile, ‘is such a typically female thing to say!’
‘Don’t be so smug.’
‘But you have to admit, I do it with such aplomb.’
Why were men so incurious about certain things, Cassie thought now while she uploaded the last batch of testimonials to Andrea J. Matthews’s website. Wasn’t it the most normal thing in the world to want to know how Nina’s day had gone when she had been so anxious about attending the wedding with Jakob? Wasn’t it also perfectly normal to want to know all the details, such as how did the ghastly mother-in-law react to Nina having a plus-one at her side?
The last of the testimonials now uploaded, Cassie moved on to the quote the client wanted added to the welcome page of the website:
You no longer have yesterday, and nor do you have tomorrow. You only have today, so let me teach you how to make it not just a good day, but an exceptional day.
It might not have been wholly original, but it was a sentiment Cassie could get behind. She spent far too much time worrying about what had gone on in her life previously and if there was an easy way to stop herself from doing it, she would. No doubt Andrea J. Matthews, and countless others, would say it was a straightforward choice – you either let go of the hurt or hung on tight to it.
Venetia had said something similar when Cassie had asked her about her time here at Hope Hall when it was a children’s home, something about never allowing the past to become a weapon to use against others, or yourself. The woman genuinely didn’t seem to have a negative bone in her body and yet for someone who had been abandoned as a baby it would be understandable if she harboured any number of grudges. Did that kind of resilience and acceptance come with age, orwere some people born with an innate ability to accept the hand they’d been dealt?
What intrigued Cassie most was that Venetia had never tried to discover who her mother was, or her father come to that. With all the resources available on the internet these days, surely it would be possible. And what about the children with whom Venetia had grown up, in particular her friend, Lucien, why hadn’t she wanted to find out where they all were now?
Or was Cassie merely letting her own curiosity get the better of her, as well as projecting her obsession with not letting go of the past?
The question brought her back to Nina and the wedding on Saturday. Had going with Jakob given Nina a taste of what her life could be like in the future, released from the past and her dead husband and his family? Frankly, the mother-in-law sounded a total control freak and a prime example of someone who was determined not to move on and, while she was about it, chain everyone down with her.
The pot calling the kettle black, Cassie thought with a shake of her head. How easy it was for her to see the mistakes others made but do nothing about her own. Which wasn’t quite true because she knew the mistakes she made, she just didn’t know how to stop herself from repeating them.
The jingling ringtone of a FaceTime call jolted her out of her thoughts and seeing that it was Emily, she took a moment to prepare herself before speaking to her daughter. She needed to ensure that she sounded positive and sincerely reassuring for Emily. It should come naturally to her, of course it should, but because Drew would be part of the conversation it simply wasn’t that easy.
She clicked on Accept and straightaway the bleakness of Emily’s face staring back at her told Cassie that she was going to need to dig deep if she was going to say the right thing.
‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I … I thought you ought to know, Dad died last night. I know you won’t exactly be heartbroken at the news, but—’ Her voice cracked and she pressed a fist to her mouth.
‘Oh darling, I’m so very sorry.’
‘Are you? Are you really?’
Recoiling at the sharpness of the accusation, Cassie said, ‘I’m sorry foryou, Ems, that you’re going through this.’
‘If you hadn’t hated him so much, I would have been able to know him better and for longer, but you denied me that!’
Her instinct was to launch herself into fighting back, to dismiss what was being thrown at her, but Cassie knew that right now her daughter needed someone to blame for the unfairness of losing her father when she’d only just started getting to know him. ‘Ems,’ she said gently, ‘tell me what happened.’
