‘Yes, why not? Just a quick one, thanks.’
Aware of him watching her carefully as she filled the kettle, Kim felt a bit flustered. She needed to change the subject. He’d been asking one or two pointed questions, wearing that same quizzical expression he’d had when he’d asked her about her trip to Boots on the day of Cassie’s shoplifting spree.
‘Ooh, I’ve just thought.’ Flicking the kettle on, she went to grab her phone from the work surface. ‘We should have a photo.’ Scrolling to her camera, she threw her arm around his shoulders, taking a couple of quick shots at arm’s length before he had a chance to object.
Heading back to the kettle, she beamed him another smile over her shoulder. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It’s just that after seeing your albums, I thought I should start one of my own. You know, as a keepsake for Samuel,’ she gabbled on while she made the coffee. ‘I’d much rather have pics of his new family than my dysfunctional one.’
‘Er, no. I don’t mind,’ Adam said, sounding unsure.
Kim realised she’d dropped a bit of a clanger with his own family looking pretty dysfunctional at the moment. ‘Black, no sugar.’ She twirled around and offered him a mug. ‘I put some cold water in it so you wouldn’t burn yourself.’
‘Cheers.’ Adam smiled, but his eyes were still curious. ‘So, this friend who looks after Samuel…’ He went straight back to the child-minding subject. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch her name.’
‘Freya,’ Kim said, turning away to retrieve some clothes from the washing machine. ‘She’s an old school friend.’
‘You’ve known her a while then?’ Adam asked as she headed to the conservatory to hang the washing on the clothes rack she’d put in there. He was grilling her again. Kim didn’t like it.
‘Since we were eleven,’ she shouted back. ‘She’s as mad as a hatter, but we’d trust each other with our lives. Like I say, she has a little boy of her own, so I know Samuel’s in safe hands.’
Coming back into the kitchen, she stopped in her tracks.
‘It’s a decent photo,’ Adam said, his eyes flicking from her to the phone he’d picked up from the work surface.
Shit.Kim cursed silently. She hoped he hadn’t bloody well checked her texts.
Forty-Five
Cassandra
Realising she couldn’t hide away in Herefordshire forever, a place full of happy memories that only exacerbated her loneliness, Cassie had decided it was time to come home, to be honest with Adam. What she would say to him, how she would begin to explain, she didn’t know, but she had to try. First, though, she knew she had to confront the woman whose threatening texts had added to the weight of the problems that were crushing her marriage, crushing her and Adam both.
She glanced at her dashboard clock and then looked back to the pub doors, wondering whether to go in, where she might be able to follow the woman to the toilets. She had to find a way to talk to her alone. Reaching for the door handle, she stopped, relief flooding through her, as the man the woman had gone in with emerged without her.
She decided to give it a little longer before going inside. Even if she managed to get her on her own at a table, she would much rather have this conversation in private. Her patience was rewarded when, ten minutes later, the woman also came out, pulling her cigarettes from her pocket, lighting one up and blowing smoke agitatedly into the air.
Cassie had been in the wrong, she was well aware of that. She’d hated what she’d done, though she couldn’t possibly have foreseen the tabloid she’d had articles lined up for folding. If the guilt she lived with had been her punishment, she’d paid for it ten times over, a thousand times since Josh’s death. Now, though, mixed in with the guilt and the grief was an anger so potent she could taste it.
She watched as the woman answered a call on her mobile. Pressing it to her ear, she took another draw on her cigarette and then growled, ‘Tell him he’s old enough to get his own bleeding dinner. I’m his mother, not his fucking servant.’
Cassie felt bile rise in her throat. She hadn’t been wrong. By whatever means she’d done what she’d done, she’d been right.Seeing a scene play out in her mind’s eye, she clenched the steering wheel until the whites of her knuckles showed. Seconds was all it would take. Every sinew in her body tense, she willed herself not to release the handbrake, press her foot down hard on the accelerator and rid herself of the problem, the woman’s family oftheirproblem.
Breathing in deeply, she closed her eyes, seeing him, as she always did, her boy. Hearing it as she did in her dreams, the sickening impact. Felt it as if the pain were her own, her son’s bones splintered by unforgiving steel against steel. She could see his face, such a perfect face, so innocent as a child. He wanted to know why. She could see the question in his eyes when he knew it was inevitable he was going to die. His warm blood speckling her own face, she would wake screaming.
‘Sue!’ someone yelled from the pub entrance, and Cassie snapped her eyes open, expelling the rage that had consumed her in one harsh breath. ‘You forgot your shopping bag.’
‘Typical. I’d forget me head if it wasn’t screwed on.’ The woman rolled her eyes and about-faced. ‘Thanks, Debs,’ she said, going back to retrieve the bag. Checking the contents, she turned, tossed her cigarette down, grinding it out with her foot, and walked straight into Cassie.
‘Watch where you’re going, darling,’ she grumbled, giving her a cursory glance up and down.
Cassie presumed she wanted her to step aside. She stood her ground, holding the woman’s bloodshot eyes instead. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.
The woman scowled. ‘Yer what?’
‘The texts!’ Cassie bit back the anger rising dangerously inside her.
‘What texts?’ The woman’s scowl deepened. ‘You’re out of your tree, darling,’ she said, looking guardedly at her. ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re on about.’
‘But you contacted me. You…’ Cassie faltered, disorientated, as the woman stepped off the kerb to go around her, the expression on her face a mixture of wariness and pity.
