Horrified, she lowered him carefully back down and, a hand clasped to her mouth, backed stumbling out of the room.
Her breath ragged, she closed the door, placed the flat of her hand against it, then slid slowly to her haunches. She could have hurt him. Dear God, she might have… Burying her face in her hands, mortification settling like ice inside her, she stayed there, crying along with her baby.
Eventually, when Liam’s cries quietened to an exhausted hiccuping whimper, she pulled herself shakily to her feet and pressed her forehead against the door, feeling the solidity of it between them. ‘I’m sorry, baby. So, so sorry,’ she whispered.
She wanted to go back in to him, kiss his Cupid lips and say goodbye to him. She couldn’t allow herself to do that. Couldn’t trust herself to be anywhere near him.
Turning silently to the bathroom, she stepped in and opened the cabinet. They were still there, the antidepressants she’d been prescribed when she’d fallen apart, her emotions spiralling out of control, after losing her darling little Noah.
Fifty
Adam
Staring in disbelief at the letter, Adam felt his gut twist. He closed his eyes, swallowing back the acrid smell of smoke suffused with alcohol that permeated the house; the guilt, which was lodged in his throat like a stone. His fault, all of it. Up until Cassie had mentioned Josh’s allergy, he’d been refusing to acknowledge what his instinct had been telling him. Yet he’d known. Deep down somewhere, he’d known. When he’d learnt that Kim had been in the very same shop Cassie had been accused of shoplifting from, he’d wondered. Every time she’d mentioned the friend they’d never seen, he’d been wary. They’d never seen her because she didn’t fucking well exist. There was no text from Freya. No one called Freya in her contacts.
Even after checking her phone, he’d wondered why he was doing it, skulking around stealing samples to send off to some DNA lab. To prove what? he’d wondered. It seemed impossible that Samuel wasn’t Josh’s son. Cassie had been right: he was the living, breathing image of him. Still he went ahead and did it, if only to confirm his own neurosis. Samples hadn’t been hard to obtain. Kim’s brush in the bathroom had many strands of hair to choose from. He’d even taken a glass she’d drunk from.
He’d thought that obtaining a sample from Josh would be problematic. Not so. He’d felt his heart crack wide open when he’d taken the lock of hair Cassie had kept in one of the family albums.
So here they were, the results. Scarcely able to comprehend it, he read the letter again.There is no genetic link to Kimberley Summers, the report clearly stated.Kimberley Summers is therefore excluded as the biological mother.How had this happened? How had he let it? Why in God’s name hadn’t he mentioned his concerns to Cassie? She’d also sensed something wasn’t right. That had been abundantly clear when she’d had what he’d feared was some kind of mental breakdown that day in the garden. His sympathies had been with Kim, whom he’d thoughthad been attacked, and who seemed to be under attack all over again. He’d refused to listen to his own wife, insinuated she was paranoid when in fact she was half out of her mind with grief and suspicion. And now… He had to find her. Reach her before she… Christ, what would she do?
Pressing his phone hard to his ear, he willed the taxi firm he was calling to pick up, cursing when it didn’t. Wiping his hand over his face, he googled another, all the while scanning every conceivable place for Cassie’s car keys. They were nowhere to be seen. What thehellshould he do? She would be almost there by now. Panic climbing inside him, he contemplated ringing Kim. He would have to say there was an emergency, ask her to come over here, rather than alert her to the fact that they were aware of what she’d done… to what end? Whywould she have feigned a pregnancy, claimed another child as her own? To get to them, obviously. She done that masterfully. Butwhy? She’d said she’d loved Josh. They’d believed her. She knew things about him she couldn’t possibly know unless she’d been close to him. But was it possible she’d hated him for some reason? Fallen out with him? That she’d been trying to exact revenge for some kind of wrong she imagined he had done her?
He sucked in a breath, the same impotent anger crashing through him that always did when he tried to work out who would have wanted to harm Josh. He couldn’t make himself believe he’d been so drunk he’d fallen onto the tracks and just lain there. It didn’t make sense. Josh had drunk in his youth, as most kids did, but never to excess. He could have knocked himself unconscious – Adam had held onto that. Prayed that Josh had been out of it in those last seconds of his life. He couldn’t bear to imagine what would have been going through his mind if he hadn’t been.
Bile rose in his throat as he recalled what the officer had said about possible suicide. He couldn’t make himself believe that either, that Josh had been so depressed he was contemplating ending his own life. He’d tried to move on, to forget, but he simply couldn’t. The inescapable fact was that what was left of Josh’s wallet had still been in his bloodied pocket. His broken phone by the side of the tracks. If someone had attacked him, then robbery hadn’t been the motive. So failing a random attack by some kind of psychopath, it had to have been someone who knew him. Someone who’d wanted to hurt him.
Kim, who had to be insane to have coldly done what she’d done? But she was petite. Would she have had the strength to push a grown man who didn’t want to be pushed onto the tracks, to be pulverised by the approaching train? He pressed his fingers hard to his temples, then breathed a sigh of relief when the next taxi firm picked up.
While he waited for the cab, he bolted up the stairs to check the bedroom for the keys. It was carnage up there. He understood now why Cassie had done what she’d done – Kim had been playing him, playing them both; why hadn’t he been able to see that? – but the fact that she had obviously mistrusted him shook him to the core.
Halfway down the stairs, his gaze shot to the front door as the bell rang. He stopped, his body tensing, then hurtled down the rest of the stairs and swung it open.
‘Hi. Is Cassandra home?’ the young man on the doorstep asked. ‘I need to speak to her.’
‘No, she’s not,’ Adam said shortly. ‘Can I help?’
‘Not sure.’ The guy looked him over warily. ‘Ryan,’ he took a breath and introduced himself, ‘Josh’s mate from school. I was hoping Cassandra might know where Jemma is. She’s not at home and I can’t get hold of her.’
‘Why would she?’ Only half listening, Adam glanced past him to his car. He was about to ask him for a lift when he realised he recognised him. ‘I saw you at the funeral, didn’t I?’ he asked. ‘With your wife.’
‘We were there.’ Ryan smiled uncomfortably. ‘We’re actually not together any more.’
‘Oh?’ Adam felt a ripple of apprehension run through him and wasn’t sure why. ‘That’s a shame. I thought you were…’
‘Expecting a baby? We were. That is…’ Ryan trailed off with an awkward shrug.
Shit.This wasn’t the time or the place, but… ‘Is there a problem?’ Adam couldn’t help feeling for the man.
‘You might say that.’ Massaging his forehead, Ryan glanced down and back. ‘Look, there’s no easy way to tell you this… It’s Josh’s. Liam, Jemma’s baby, Josh was the father.’
Adam stared at him, astounded, for a second. Then,Samuel, he thought, his heart almost stopping.
‘He had an affair with my wife,’ Ryan went on, as Adam’s mind raced. ‘We were going through some stuff at the time. The details don’t really matter. The thing is, I think Cassandra knew about it. I’m not proud of it, but I checked Jemma’s texts.’
Adam shook his head, his bewildered thoughts reeling back to the last conversation he’d had with Josh. Was this what he’d wanted to talk to him about? Why he’d been on a deserted station platform late at night having been drinking?And Cassandraknew?
‘There’s something else.’ Ryan hesitated. ‘There was a sum of money deposited in Jemma’s account. It allowed us to buy our house. We could never have afforded it without it.’
