Chapter One #2
Before all that had happened, when she had first discovered she was pregnant, and knowing that she wanted to keep the baby, she had given up her place at Nottingham University and had gone home to her parents to tell them her news.
As shocked and disappointed as they were, they had fully supported her.
Just as they had when she and Drew had hastily married in a registry office and found a place of their own, a dismal ground-floor flat in Watford where he had just started working.
It had all been such a mess and yet somehow, at that ridiculously young age Cassie had believed she was doing entirely the right thing.
She had fallen for Drew because, being older than her by four years, he had been like some darkly forbidden fruit, full of temptation and an excess of allure.
He used to joke that he was John Travolta to her Olivia Newton-John, playing Danny and Sandy in Grease.
He even had a cute little dimple in his chin.
After he’d left her, she could never watch Grease again.
She still couldn’t. But maybe that was out of habit now.
Ben Pearson had come into Cassie’s life a few years after she’d moved back to be near her parents in the village of Linton ten miles from Cambridge.
Emily was ten at the time and Ben had taken to the role of stepfather brilliantly.
Emily had eagerly accepted him as a permanent presence, proudly boasting to her friends that she now had a proper daddy.
If Ben felt slighted by Emily now apparently switching her allegiance from him to a man who had abandoned her as a baby, he never showed it.
Instead, he did his best to convince Cassie that they weren’t losing Emily, that this was simply something the girl had to do, and they had to respect her decision.
He made it sound so easy, but then he hadn’t been the one who’d been hurt all those years ago and carried the pain and resentment ever since. It was a long time to carry a grudge, but she had, and she didn’t care if that made her seem petty.
She didn’t help herself, of course, because while Drew was vying for the role of Husband of the Year and Superdad, Cassie tortured herself by scrolling through his wife’s frequent postings on Instagram and TikTok showing off their perfect life.
It had to be fake, no one really lived such a fantasy life, but it was hard to resist the queasy lure of the photos, especially those of Rosalyn herself.
Fifteen years younger than Cassie, the girl’s pouting lips were filled, her boobs perkier than nature ever intended them to be, her waist unfeasibly small and her nails and eyelashes absurdly long.
Even when Rosalyn posted a photo of herself lounging by a swimming pool along with her son and captioned it with the comment, Here’s me make-up free and looking an absolute mess! she looked anything but a mess.
What pained Cassie most was that Emily had been sucked into the vacuous stream of photos and reels, proudly touted by Rosalyn as My perfect stepdaughter! Or: I’ve never had a sister, now I feel like I do! I’m truly blessed!
Suddenly filled with a fierce blaze of emotions towards her ex-husband, as well as disappointment that Emily could have done something that she had to have known would cut deep with her, Cassie put down her drink, stood up and went over to the stone parapet.
Resting her elbows on it, she gazed out at the beautiful view, and reminded herself just how good life was for her and that she shouldn’t let the past and all its resentment tarnish her present or her future.
In the distance, she watched a heron appear from the branches of a towering oak tree as, lazily flapping its wide span of wings, it tracked a path along the river before swooping down low and onto the bank. She waited for it to move, but it stayed very still.
She could do with learning to be more still, Cassie thought, mentally as well as physically. Particularly when it came to Emily. She had to let her daughter make her own decisions and accept the consequences. But she missed Emily so much.
She missed all the silly times they’d shared, like when they watched Married at First Sight together – the Australian version was their favourite – and played gaslighting bingo, shrieking so loudly at the worst offenders that Ben would poke his head through the doorway and ask them what was going on.
She particularly missed their regular catch-up chats when she still felt she could guide and advise Emily and in return be mocked for being so mortifyingly out of touch.
Cassie would give anything to have that time back with her daughter, because ever since she and Ben had waved Emily off at Heathrow six weeks ago, all she had now was a skimpy ration of texts or FaceTime calls which were abruptly short and told her nothing of any real worth.
They served only to leave her going quietly mad as she filled in the blanks and convinced herself that she had lost her daughter forever to Drew.