‘I know you do.’
She gave him a playful nudge. ‘Oh, Mr So-Sure-Of-Himself knows it, does he?’
‘Yeah, that’s why you agreed to marry me. Because youlurveme so much.’
Smiling, she said, ‘I still can’t believe you did that, got down on one knee.’
‘Hey, I can’t believe it either.’
‘I’ll never forget that night, or our time away. It was magical. It’s just such a shame what we came home to. I’m sorry that you’re caught up in it all when it’s not even your problem.’
‘It’s not really yours either, but that’s how partnerships work, we shoulder the problems together. Your trouble is that you expect to solve everything yourself, because you had to when Drew left you, but you’re not on your own. You have me.’
Her heart quickened at the loving sincerity in his voice. ‘I wish I’d met you before Drew ever came onto my radar.’
‘But then you wouldn’t have Emily, and you wouldn’t be without her for anything, would you? She’s been your world since the day she was born.’
Which was so very true and was the reason her daughter’s apparent defection to Drew had been so painful to Cassie. What was worse, his death had effectively now turned Drew into a martyr in Emily’s eyes.
Okay, that was an exaggeration but there was a degree of truth to it, because Emily wanted to believe in the myth that Drew would have been a perfect father if only he had been given the chance to be in her life. If only he hadn’t been so cruelly excluded by Nasty Wicked Cassie.
Sensing that Ben had fallen asleep, that his breathing was slower now and his arm lay heavily across her chest, she very carefully, not wanting to disturb him, rolled onto her side, and waited for sleep to come to her.
Inevitably, given the tsunami of disagreeable thoughts threatening to overwhelm her, sleep eluded her, so she thought back to two nights ago when Ben had surprised her with his wonderfully romantic proposal.
She felt for the ring on her finger. She loved the feel of it; it already felt a part of her, as though it had always been there, and always would be. She had so badly wanted to show off the ring to Emily and tell her that she and Ben were finally going to marry. Not so long ago and Emily would have been delighted to hear it, and the two of them would have hugged and squealed and probably danced around the apartment like a couple of hysterical idiots.
But now Cassie didn’t know how Emily would take the news. Would she think it was inappropriate to talk about marriage when Rosalyn was grieving for her dead husband?
‘Read the room, Mum,’she imagined Emily saying in her most censorious voice, ‘do you think that banging on about wedding dresses and wedding venues is in any way suitable right now?’
Not that Cassie planned to bang on about anything that related to her marrying Ben, but what was she supposed to do, put her life on hold until Rosalyn and Finlay had moved out?
Well, she wouldn’t! If Rosalyn felt uncomfortable here, then there was a simple solution: she could find her own place to live.Nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to spoil Cassie’s happiness at marrying Ben.
It was funny that marriage had never really felt like a big deal to either of them before, but now it felt hugely important to Cassie. She wanted the security of it, because with everything else going on, she needed the certainty she believed – and hoped – marriage would bring.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hilary was bored to tears and wishing she was at home. In fact, she wished she was anywhere but here. She’d only agreed to come because she’d been afraid what the group would say about her behind her back if she didn’t join them.
Lunch with ‘the Girls’ – Susanne, Lynne, Julie and Gabriella – was a tradition that had begun over four decades ago. Back then, they’d been young twenty-somethings who’d met at NCT classes when they were all expecting their first baby. After a month of classes, the five of them had broken away from the original group to form their own as an antidote to the fearmongering fostered by their teacher, a middle-aged earth-mother type. Every session she’d instructed them on what they could and couldn’t eat and drink or what they should and shouldn’t do while pregnant, as well as highlighting the myriad dangers of giving birth. The way the woman had gone on, they’d be lucky to survive!
Finding the sessions unhelpful, the five of them had declined to attend any more and instead had met up for lunch to share books and magazines on pregnancy, labour and motherhood, and usually with a glass of wine to go with their meal. It was their only glass of the week, they would claim, but all knowing they were lying. Their get-togethers had been fun, and they’d supported each other every step of the way. When their babies had arrived, they’d continued to meet up, now sharing theiranecdotal horror stories of labour, breastfeeding and lack of sleep. As support networks went, it was the best and had seen them through all the many years and major life events.
But where was that support now when Hilary needed it most? They’d been supportive enough in the early weeks of Hugh’s death, but as time had passed, they’d drawn back from her, seldom asking how she was. Keith had once commented when she’d remarked on their lack of interest and sympathy that perhaps they’d grown tired of hearing the same answer from her. It had been such a cruelly insensitive thing to say, and it should have warned her that there was worse to come from him. Just how callously he would ultimately behave, she would never have imagined.
The Girls had been shocked when she’d shared with them that Keith had left her, but Gabriella had had the temerity to say, and quite offhandedly, that it was common for a marriage to break down following the death of a child, because in some cases it had only been the child keeping them together in the first place. Hilary had been incensed and hadn’t spoken to Gabriella again until she’d apologised, no doubt at the request of the rest of the Girls.
And what a joke that was, she thought, glancing around the table at the lined and wrinkled faces, that they still called themselves girls when they were well into their sixties, two of them nearer seventy than sixty! It was ridiculous. Just as it was ridiculous that she was putting herself through this charade of all-friends-together over lunch at their regular haunt, the Green Man in Grantchester. These women weren’t her friends anymore. If they were, they’d be more understanding. They’d show genuine compassion.
But why would they understand what she was going through when their own lives were so blessedly untouched by the profoundest of loss: the loss of a child? The problems they’dexperienced didn’t come close. Susanne’s son had had a gambling problem for a while and Julie’s daughter had had a drugs problem five years ago, but all was hunky-dory now and Julie and her husband were thrilled that a grandchild – their first – was now on the way. No, none of those trifling little so-called problems came anywhere close to what Hilary had suffered.
The news that Julie was at last going to be a grandmother meant that Hilary was the odd one out, the only one of the group who would never know that pleasure. Whenever they met, photos of cherubically adorable grandchildren were relentlessly shared on their mobiles and ooh-ed and aah-ed over. Although in Hilary’s opinion, Lynne’s granddaughter was never going to win any best-baby prizes; she looked like an angry, piggy-eyed, red-faced troll.
It was now the middle of October and two weeks since Nina had shattered Hilary’s hope of ever being a grandmother. She had watched Nina drive away that evening, somehow still holding on to the faint hope that her daughter-in-law would reverse up the driveway, rush to the front door and say she’d changed her mind, that she would try one more time to have Hugh’s child.
But Nina had gone and after Hilary had closed the front door, she had sunk onto the bottom step of the stairs and wept, her head resting against the wall, her heart breaking for Hugh and all that might have been. For him. And her. She had stayed there until it was dark and then she had gone up the stairs to Hugh’s old bedroom and where she kept all her guilty but very precious secrets. Holding one of them to her chest as a comforter, she had lain on the bed and wept some more until she had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep.
