Jemma glanced away, trying to banish the images of Josh’s broken body from her mind.
‘You were crying out,’ he added, and let it hang.
She could feel his eyes on her. She didn’t look at him, reaching instead to brush Liam’s peachy cheek with the back of her hand.
‘Good-looking little bugger, isn’t he?’ Ryan commented after a second.
‘He is.’ Jemma smiled, marvelling at how peaceful he seemed, so different to the distressed tiny human being she could never seem to appease.
‘Doesn’t look much like me, does he?’ Ryan said after another heavy pause – and Jemma’s blood froze.
‘He does.’ She laughed nervously. ‘He looks just like you. He has your nose, and I’m sure his eyes are going to be hazel.’
Ryan considered. ‘I doubt it,’ he said after a second. ‘They’re a really intense blue. I’m thinking they’re going to stay that way.’
Jemma felt an icy dagger of foreboding pierce her heart. ‘He still looks like you,’ she offered weakly. ‘He even sleeps like you. Look.’
Ryan was looking. A deep furrow in his brow, he was studying Liam intently. Her mouth dry, nausea churning inside her, Jemma waited. He didn’t speak. The silence above the soft sound of her baby’s breathing was so profound, she was sure she could hear the foundations of her life crumbling.
Ryan eventually moved, bending to tuck Liam’s blanket gently to his chest. And then he turned to look at her, a long, penetrating gaze that chilled her to the bone.
Jemma tried to speak, but she couldn’t get the words past her constricted throat. She reached a hand to his arm, desperately needing reassurance, but Ryan flinched and pulled away. Still he didn’t say anything. Instead, he scanned her face for an agonising second, then turned to walk silently out of the nursery.
Thirty-Five
Cassandra
It had been an innocent gesture. A show of affection. Cassie tried to dismiss what she’d seen in the hall, but the niggling thought that Adam and Kim were colluding against her, the feeling that she was on the outside looking in, just wouldn’t leave her.
She was being paranoid. If she mentioned it, Adam would think she’d gone mad. He’d hugged the girl in a fatherly way, that was all. She tried to reassure herself as she prepared Samuel’s bath. It was the kind of person he was. He’d always been hands-on with Josh, never shying away from physical shows of emotion. She was blowing things out of proportion because of her own insecurities. He could hardly have shoved the girl away when she’d thrown her arms around him. And Kim would hardly have been quite so demonstrative in front of Cassie if she had eyes on her husband, would she?
It was nonsense. Adam was old enough to be her father. But then you often heard of older men sleeping with much younger women. Never the other way around. Her brow furrowed in contemplation as she lifted the bath from the sink to the work surface. She didn’t like the idea of the mixer tap anywhere near that darling little baby when she bathed him.
Her eyes flicked to the clock as she dried her hands and went to gather Samuel from his pram. What was keeping them? she wondered. Kim had arrived unannounced, telling them she thought the fuse box had blown and that she could smell burning, and Adam had dutifully gone to the cottage to investigate. Cassie wasn’t sure why Kim had had to go with him.
Honestly, what was the matter with her? She would be certifiable at this rate. Despairing of herself, she went over to the pram. She was glad Kim had gone, to be honest. It would give her and Samuel a chance to share some time together. She’d barely seen him lately. ‘Come on, little man,’ she said softly, stroking his cheek and lifting him carefully from the pram. Samuel whimpered. From the smell wafting from his nappy, she guessed he needed changing. She didn’t want Kim coming back and thinking she’d left him like that.
‘Cleanliness is next to godliness, hey, my little angel?’ she whispered, cuddling him close – and then stopping dead as she realised she was actually quoting her mother. Closing her eyes, she breathed through the panic. She wasn’t anything like her. A cold shudder ran through her as she recalled the night of her father’s adultery.
Her parents’ bedroom door had been open. Cassie had soon realised that the young woman in the bed wasn’t her mother. Shivering on the landing, she had glanced from the naked girl to where her mother was vigorously vacuuming. There were several long strands of blonde hair lying on the carpet, the kitchen shears abandoned there too. The rest of the girl’s hair had been sucked up the vacuum, Cassie had guessed.
Unsure what to do, sorry for the girl but also scared, she’d hesitated, and then moved towards her. There were fat tears falling down the girl’s face, snot running from her nose. With her shorn hair, she didn’t look very attractive at all.
Now Cassie’s hand went to her own hair. How unattractive must she look in Adam’s eyes compared to a girl half her age, with pretty, delicate features and a lustrous mane of flame-red hair?
Shaking herself, she drew in a breath. She was wrong. Allowing her past to colour her thinking. Adam would never do something like that to her. But she’d never dreamed her father would do something like that either.
‘Please make her let me go,’ she heard the girl say over and over, fear in her voice. She remembered her young body, pale and naked and shaking. Recalled wondering where her clothes were. ‘Please,’ the girl had begged, her eyes wild as her gaze shot past Cassie.
To her mother, Cassie realised. Her heart flipping over, she’d watched in awe as her mother loomed over the girl, her face contorted with rage.
‘Don’t,’ the girl sobbed, drawing her knees up, trying to make herself invisible.
Her mother stood tall. ‘Dirty littleslut,’ she’d seethed, lifting the vacuum bag aloft, pausing for a second as if revelling in her victory, and then emptying the contents over her.
The rotating blue lights on the bedroom wall had told Cassie the police had arrived, her dad coming in close behind one of the uniformed officers. He was deathly white. Cassie guessed that he’d waited for the police before venturing back into the house. He’d been right to. Her mother didn’t go quietly, screaming obscenities at him.
Cassie had soon discovered where the girl’s clothes were. Poking around in the embers of the fire in the garden the next day, she’d found a strip of melted neon legging and one scorched pointy stiletto. Her father’s clothes had largely fuelled the bonfire, she’d realised, which had been a big one. ‘It’s the children I feel sorry for,’ she’d heard one of the neighbours whisper when she’d finally dared leave the house.
