trees at the back to make sure her view of the countryside wouldn’t be obscured. That had been thoughtful. He’d always been that.
Turning her face to the sun, she smiled sadly, and then went back to her digging. She didn’t rejoice too much in her freedom. She didn’t really have any. She didn’t crave it. She was in prison in a way, she supposed, a self-imposed prison. She preferred it that way. Enjoyed the solitude.
She glanced up at the fragrant pale yellow roses climbing the trellis. She’d done a good job, even if she did say so herself, creating the pretty roses-around-the-door garden she’d had planned.
Adam had admired it. He came every weekend without fail, bringing her anything she might need from the shops, though Cassie did most of her shopping online. He would fill her in about Samuel, who was growing into a sturdy little toddler, living happily with Ryan and Jemma. She’d done something right at least, Cassie consoled herself. She missed seeing Samuel, almost as much as she missed Josh, but that was her pain to bear for the hurt that she’d caused. Adam showed her photographs when he came, looking at her occasionally with quiet sorrow in his eyes. Cassie hated that she’d put that there.
He’d wondered again where Kim was when she’d mentioned her, speculating as to whether she’d ever been pregnant. Cassie thought not. The woman had so badly wanted her deluded fantasy, it had become her reality. She truly had thought that Josh and she were destined to be together, that he belonged to her.
She’d last been seen boarding a train heading for Wales, according to a witness who’d come forward. They police had been slightly baffled when they’d found out she didn’t have a sister living there. They’d registered her as a missing person. She never had been traced. Her disgusting father eloquently telling them that it was likely she’d ‘pissed off with some bloke’ had led to them scaling the search down.
Utilising the anger that still simmered inside her whenever she thought about Kimberley Summers and the darkness she’d brought into her son’s life, Cassie attempted to dig a deep-rooted dandelion root from the ground.
Leaning back on her haunches, her eyes grew wide as she plucked up a shoot that she realised wouldn’t easily be extracted. She glanced quickly over her shoulder, and then looked back at it. They would probably never find Kim. Sighing sadly, she went back to her labours, tucking the tendril of red hair back under the soil and compacting the earth neatly around it.
It was cosier here in her little garden, at least, than it was in the dank, forbidding woods.
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Books by Sheryl Browne
The Babysitter
The Affair
The Second Wife
The Marriage Trap
The Perfect Sister
The New Girlfriend
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
The Babysitter (Available in the UK and the US)
The Affair (Available in the UK and the US)
The Second Wife (Available in the UK and the US)
The Marriage Trap (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from Sheryl
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The story looks at loss and regret, touching on emotional issues caused perhaps by the depressive phase of bereavement, which might not always be obvious because the sufferer might be too embarrassed to admit to what they see as a personal failure, the inability to cope even with everyday simple tasks. Sometimes all we need to do is reach out to realise there is a hand to hold, someone there to support us. That, I think, has never been more obvious than in the challenging times we are living through just now. There are so many people offering help, sympathy and support to those who need it, both within our communities and through social media, and it’s a lovely reminder of the kinder side of humanity.
The New Girlfriend also looks at the power of love, which can inspire us to great things but which