The Cinderella Moment

‘You said that your husband is no longer living here with you and your son?’

‘No, what I said was that he had left me for the girl who did our cleaning. And no, I haven’t got any plans to set up a secret seaside love nest, if that’s what you are implying. I just wanted to take a break, think things through – the last few months have been tough.’

The policewoman stared blankly at her. Cass wondered if she was protesting too much, an emotion only equalled by her growing sense of frustration and fury. She made an effort to smile. ‘I don’t really see how this is relevant, but, OK, yes, I am moving to Bright –’

‘To meet Mr Devlin?’ the WPC asked quickly, as if Cass might not notice that she had slipped the question in.

‘No, not to meet Mr Bloody Devlin. I’ve been offered a summer job there,’ snapped Cass.

The policewoman nodded and scribbled something in her notebook. For all Cass knew, it might have been a note to pick up a frozen pizza on the way home. Whatever it was, she had had enough.

‘What sort of job?’ the WPC pressed.

Cass was already halfway across the sitting room, guiding the two of them towards the door. ‘In a gallery,’ she said briskly as she opened the front door.

The policewoman’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes,’ she said gleefully. ‘You’re an artist, aren’t you?’ She managed to make it sound like it was a career choice that was up there somewhere between mass murder and self-employed puppy-strangling.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Cass grimly.

‘Um, well, we’ll be in touch,’ said the policewoman. ‘And if you remember anything else in the meantime, or Mr Devlin makes contact, please don’t hesitate to ring.’ She handed Cass a card. Cass slipped it into her pocket; there was really no point in protesting.

Margaret Devlin had the most terrible hangover when she got up, although it could easily have been down to mixing gin with the sleeping pills that the doctor had given her. She hadn’t had that much. Gordie had had quite a lot, although the private detective, Mr Marshall, had had only one – a very small one at that, which probably said it all – explaining that he was driving and wanted to take notes during their little chat. Margaret narrowed her eyes, trying to reconstruct their conversation from the fragments she could remember.

It appeared that James had been involved with Gordie in some sort of business investments and Gordie wasn’t convinced that the police were working as diligently as they might to track James down. And over another G & T, Gordie explained that he had other ways and means at his disposal – things and methods not always available to the law, more direct methods. And then Mr Marshall explained that he was working for Gordie – but Margaret couldn’t remember the exact details now.

She had told them everything she thought might help. Mr Marshall had written down the phone numbers and name of the woman who had rung and left a message for James.

‘And you think that your husband and this Mrs Hammond were having an affair?’

‘Well, she said she had picked up the phone on the train. I mean, what sort of story is that?’

Mr Marshall didn’t say a word. Margaret sniffed; she could tell he didn’t believe her. And then they had all traipsed up to James’s office. At the door, Gordie and Mr Marshall pulled on surgical gloves, then searched the place from floor to ceiling and photocopied James’s diary and address books.

‘You can take them if it will help,’ she had suggested.

Gordie smiled and patted her hand. ‘Thank you, Margaret.’ And then he looked at his companion. Mr Marshall tapped the side of his nose and very carefully slid the books into a plastic carrier.

Now, stone-cold sober, sitting in her bedroom, Margaret cursed her naivety. She ought to have gone through the diaries and the address books and seen for herself if Cass Hammond’s name was in there. Men weren’t any good at that kind of thing. Margaret had a nose for codes and little hints and subtle marks in the margin. She had always caught James out before; she knew the signs. Bastard.

She dropped two soluble aspirin into a glass. The plink, plink fizz made her wince, and she wished for the hundredth time that she’d saved the woman’s answer machine message – all that bloody giggling and flirting. If they’d heard that, the police and Mr Marshall would have understood why she was so sure and so bloody angry.

Cass closed the front door behind the policewoman, laid her forehead against the wood, and closed her eyes. So far it wasn’t proving the easiest of weeks.

The only good thing was that the madwoman hadn’t rung her again, although Cass wasn’t convinced she’d heard the last from the hysterical, dog-loving, Mrs James Devlin.

By contrast, David had been bleakly sane when he showed up, a couple of hours or so after she arrived home from meeting Barney, which was quite a feat for someone red-faced, sweaty, with wet hair slicked slyly over his bald patch, wearing a bright turquoise tracksuit and carrying a squash racquet in a fluorescent green-and-yellow case. Seeing him made her heart lurch miserably.

‘The thing is, Cass, I need a little time and space to think about the future – our future,’ David said, sitting on the sofa, wringing his hands. ‘Well, all right, my future.’

‘Really,’ Cass said flatly. When they had been together she had never realised just how self-centred and conniving he sounded. Pain and the sense of loss made her see him so differently. Was it clearer and truer, or was it that betrayal coloured her vision?

‘There’s no need to be so negative, Cass. You see,’ he said, seizing on the word like a terrier grabbing a trouser leg, ‘to be perfectly honest with you, I think that’s the problem really, isn’t it?’

‘Sorry? I’m not with you,’ said Cass in surprise.

‘Well, you’re always so negative about everything, and so petty. For example, I’ve been here, what? Nearly ten minutes?’ He pulled back the sleeve of his tracksuit and peered at his watch to emphasise the point. ‘And you know that I’ve just walked up here from the sports centre, but you didn’t ask me to sit down and you haven’t offered me so much as a glass of water, let alone a cup of tea. It’s all a bit petty and vindictive, isn’t it?’

Cass stared at him; he was incredible. ‘David, the last time we spoke, you said my relentless optimism was the real problem, that my being so cheerful was driving you mad. Always looking on the bright side, no sense of reality, never taking things seriously – that’s what you said.’

‘I’ve had time to reconsider, since the…get some sense of perspective.’ He glanced round the room. ‘I’m parched. Harry Fellowes and I had a really cracking game. He sends his regards, by the way. Now, about that cup of tea –’

Cass looked at David as if seeing him for the first time; he really was a piece of work. How was it she had never noticed that before?

‘I thought as you said you didn’t want to see Danny, you weren’t staying for long,’ Cass snapped.

What on earth had she ever seen in him? And why, if he was so bloody horrible, did it still hurt so much? Cass watched him as he tried hard to hold his pot belly in, and sighed. Being a woman could be such a pain in the arse at times.

He was still talking. ‘I thought that you’d understand. It seems obvious to me – we really have to look at it from Danny’s point of view, Cass. I think that it’s better if he doesn’t know I’m here. I really don’t want to upset him.’

Cass nearly choked. ‘Upset him? For Christ’s sake, David, you’ve already upset him. You walked out and left us, remember? There isn’t a day goes by when he doesn’t ask where you are, or when you’re coming home. He misses you like crazy. He wants to see you. I’m running out of excuses as to why you don’t want to see him. He adores you, David. You’re his daddy –’

‘You see, there you go again – everything a huge drama. You’re so demanding and difficult, there’s never any room for manoeuvre with you, is there, Cass? You always see the worst in people,’ David growled.

This was not the way Cass saw herself at all. She struggled to keep the sound of tears and hurt and anger out of her voice. ‘Why can’t you come round and see Danny? Tuck him in and read him a story, take him out for the day. You could go to the zoo or the beach – or just take the dog for a walk.’

David avoided meeting her eye. ‘Cass, you have to understand that things are a little difficult for me at the moment.’

Oh, Cass understood, all right. Having a six-year-old around calling you Daddy probably didn’t go hand in glove with David’s new teenage sexgod ethos.

‘I am very concerned about the way you’ve interpreted things, the way you look at life,’ David continued.

‘You don’t think,’ said Cass conversationally, ‘while we’re on the subject of personality traits, that the main problem here is not my doom-laden, overly pessimistic nature, but the fact that you ran off with Abby, by any chance, do you?’

David looked shocked, or at least made a good fist of trying to look shocked, and then shook his head. ‘Is that what you’ve told Danny?’

‘No, of course that’s not what I’ve told Danny. I told him that Mummy and Daddy loved him very much, but that we couldn’t live with each other any more because Daddy had got a new friend.’

‘Oh, Cass, there you go again – you have to be in the right, don’t you? You have to be the good one. And you always jump to the wrong conclusion.’ He managed to make it sound like the summing up in the case for the defence, not to mention everything being entirely her fault. ‘Let’s face it, Cass, this thing with Abby – surely you have to understand it’s a symptom of the problem between us, not the cause?’

‘And what do you think the cause is?’ she prompted.

David looked almost apologetic. ‘Well, we’ve already talked about your attitude –’

Cass felt his words stoking up the murderous rage that had been growing in her belly for the last fifteen minutes. ‘Have we? And what do you think about my attitude?’

‘Well, it’s hard to know where to begin, really. I’m very conscious of not wanting to hurt you – but, let’s face it, you’ve always had a very naïve take on life. I suppose it’s all your creative brainpower –’ He laughed in an unpleasantly patronising way. Thinking about it now, he sounded a lot like the policewoman.

‘Unworldly.’ His expression suggested he was being generous in his description. ‘You know, sometimes I felt that being with you was too big a responsibility, Cass.’