‘Does Emily know? And Ben?’
‘Yes,’ replied Cassie. There was no point in saying otherwise. ‘Emily refuses to believe it though,’ she added, ‘and hates me for believing that Finlay could have done such a terrible thing, or that her father could punish his son in the way Finlay said. She prefers to believe that I’m making it up and exacting some kind of sick revenge on her father.’
‘Just as I accused you. I’m sorry I said that. And I’m sorrywhat I said about Ben. It was easier to lash out and remain in denial than to accept the truth.’
‘That’s often the way it is,’ Cassie said softly. ‘But something must have changed for you, because you went back to your room and—’
‘And I lost it,’ Rosalyn finished for her. ‘I was packing, and I picked up the photographs which I’d put on the bedside table, and I couldn’t stomach the sight of them. The photos were taken on our honeymoon, and I remember being so blissfully happy, but it wasn’t long before it was harder to reproduce that expression of carefree happiness on my face whenever we posed for a photo of us. Sometimes, if Drew thought I didn’t look happy enough in a photograph with him he would be angry with me. The more I tried to look happy, the worse I looked.’
‘You looked happy enough in your Instagram photos with him,’ Cassie said.
Rosalyn sighed. ‘Instagram isn’t real, you surely know that. None of what I posted was genuinely me. But I did it to please Drew, he liked the idea of our perfect life being out there in the world for people to view and like. He was desperate for approval and admiration. The hours I spent on doing that and all the time I knew it was fake. Nothing about our life was real. You had a lucky escape all those years ago.’
Didn’t I just, thought Cassie.
There was nothing else they could say for at that moment the doorbell rang loudly in short staccato bursts, announcing that Emily and Finlay were back.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Later that evening, after Rosalyn had put Finlay to bed, they gathered around the island unit in the kitchen. With the pendant lights softly glowing above their heads, there was a stage-like atmosphere to the space and Cassie felt as if they were actors in a play and were about to deliver their lines. The cast consisted of the ex-wife, the daughter, the husband-to-be, and the widowed wife. There was a character missing, of course, and that was the dead husband, Drew. He was the reason they were here. Everything always seemed to lead back to him.
In front of them were glasses and a selection of drinks – wine, fizzy water and beer which Ben was offering round. There hadn’t been time to cook supper, but Cassie had set out an assortment of snacks – olives, pistachios, salted almonds, and chilli-flavoured crisps with a soured cream dip.
It was Rosalyn who had wanted to do this. In fact, she’d insisted on it. She’d claimed it would be better to get everything out in the open, and that included telling Emily the truth about her father. Cassie had been one hundred per cent opposed to doing it this way, believing it to be unfair to Emily being put on the spot like this. It was all very well for Rosalyn to say she needed to speak her truth –such an over-used expression!– so she could take the first real honest steps of her new life, but did it have to be at the expense of Emily’s feelings?
‘Wouldn’t it be better for you to talk to Emily on your own?’ Cassie had asked. ‘So you can break things to her gently? Ever since Drew came back into her life, she’s so badly wanted to believe in him.’
‘No,’ Rosalyn had replied with surprising rigidity. ‘I’m tired of being pushed around and told how I should do things. That’s all in the past. From now on, I do things my way.’
It had been a difficult day as it was and not wanting to make the situation any more stressful, Cassie had reluctantly agreed to do as Rosalyn had requested. She couldn’t deny that a small part of her was relieved that Rosalyn hadn’t wanted Cassie to be the one to shatter what remained of Emily’s newfound belief in her father.
Not so long ago, and in the hope that their relationship would have returned to how it used to be, Cassie would have been only too eager for Emily to be disabused of the notion that Drew was a changed man, that he’d never actually been as bad as Cassie had made out. She might even have taken pleasure in doing that. Somehow that didn’t sit comfortably with her now.
But she wouldn’t have gone about it like this, especially as Drew now appeared to have become a far worse man than when he’d abandoned Cassie and Emily. Learning the truth that he’d been abusive and manipulative was going to be painful for Emily. Did she really need to know that? But would it be right to keep her in ignorance of the truth?
Truth had always been so important to Cassie; she had never wanted her relationship with her daughter to be tainted with lies. Which was why it hurt so much that Emily had recently accused her of making things up about Drew.
Ben had agreed with Cassie that it was better to be honest with Emily. ‘It would be treating her like a child if you pretend your discussion with Rosalyn never happened and she later found out about it.’
This conversation with Ben had taken place when he’d been driving home. Not wanting to be overheard, Cassie had gone for a walk in the chilly darkness to call him and to tell him all that Rosalyn had told her. She’d stayed out there in the cold talking with him until the headlamps of his car appeared on the long driveway. Then going round to the courtyard, she’d watched him park and then hugged him tight when he’d stepped out of the car.
Burying her face into his chest and thinking of Rosalyn’s words earlier –You had a lucky escape all those years ago– she’d said, ‘I’m so very lucky, Rosalyn’s story could have been mine.’
Yet now as they stood together in this oddly stage-managed ensemble, a niggling doubt had wormed its way into Cassie’s mind, and she couldn’t help but feel that something was off. But what exactly? Was it no more than her maternal need to protect her daughter?
Or was it less noble than that? Was it a combination of Cassie’s age-old insecurities and her deeply rooted antipathy towards Rosalyn that was causing her to be irritated by the younger woman’s apparent vehemence to control the narrative?
Because by rights Cassie should feel some kind of sisterhood sympathy for Rosalyn, but she didn’t. So perhaps that was what was giving Cassie a sense that was something was ‘off’. It was shame that she felt. Shame that she didn’t have it in her heart to feel genuinely sorry for Rosalyn. Not that she thought Rosalyn deserved what she’d got from Drew. Absolutely not. No one deserved to be abused under any circumstances.
But what if … niggled the doubt burrowing deeper still into her mind … what if it wasn’t true what Rosalyn had said?
What if being the abused wife was just another persona she had adopted in what now looked like a series of personas? There was no doubt that since her arrival, Rosalyn had displayed a variety of moods and guises.
Firstly, there had been the anguished widow barely surfacing from her bed and then when she had, she’d shuffled around in her dressing gown like an old woman incapable of doing anything.
Next, she had morphed into the attractively made-up young woman cheerfully and purposefully cooking Ben’s favourite meals.
After that had come the screaming banshee shrieking at Emily when Finlay had gone missing. Which may or may not have been understandable.
