Once the appointment was cancelled, she used the time she had left before the interview to scroll to the groups she regularly checked on Facebook. She was familiar with them all. She’d joined some of them as part of her research for an article on drug-dependent parents and the effect on their children. The broadsheet she’d been writing the article for had paid well, promising a future regular spot, otherwise she might have turned it down. As it was, it had been useful research, should she ever need it. Her heart had stopped beating when she’d discovered a video posted on one of the sites by the woman she’d kept tabs on for years.
Bracing herself, she flicked to the woman’s profile page, as she regularly did. She was clean now. Cassie had been surprised when she’d learnt that. She’d been so dependent when she knew her, she hadn’t been capable of caring for anyone – not herself, not her children. Cassie’s heart had broken for them, for the innocence that had been stolen living with a mother whose drug addiction would have dictated her every mood. She’d obviously turned her life around.
Realising the time, she exited the site and was about to climb out of the car when she received a text. Pausing, she checked it. The message was short. Blood-freezing. I know all about you, it read.
Eleven
Cassandra
‘I think I have everything I need.’ Cassie smiled at the grieving mother she’d come to talk to, while praying that she really had got everything. She’d run through the interview with her mind frantically racing, wondering who the text was from. It had been sent anonymously, the caller ID blocked, making it more ominous. The message had been a warning, quite obviously, but what did it mean? For it to be the woman whose profile she’d been studying at that moment, someone she’d hoped never to encounter again, would be incredible. Cassie could only think it was her, though, hinting that she intended to go to the papers. In which case, everything she’d worked so hard to keep hidden would come out.
A chill ran through her as she imagined Adam’s reaction. Her marriage, the foundations of which she feared were already shaking, would crumble. Her career would be over. She would lose everything. She would lose Samuel before she had even got to know him. All this despite the fact that her intention, though also self-serving, had been to keep safe someone who was so very vulnerable.
What if it wasn’t her? Her heart banging against her chest, Cassie scrambled to think who else it could be. What if the threat was nothing to do with her distant past, but what was happening in her life now?
Swallowing back icy fear, she switched off her voice recorder, picked up her phone and notepad and got to her feet. Already standing, the woman smiled tremulously, but her face was etched with grief. Her eyes wore the same haunted look Cassie caught whenever she glanced into a mirror. She was still plagued by what Josh had gone through, her mind relentlessly conjuring up images of her son’s last moments. Adam would hold her when she woke sobbing, try to reassure her. This grieving mother had no one. A single mother, her only son had struggled with his mental health and committed suicide after being discharged by the psychiatric treatment team. He’d attempted to take his own life twice before, yet had been abandoned. His mother blamed herself, inevitably. Cassie’s heart bled for her.
Overwhelmed suddenly by images of Josh growing up, smiling, laughing, crying, she caught a breath in her throat and moved towards the lounge door before the walls rushed in and suffocated her.
Following her to the front door, the woman extended her hand. ‘People need to know,’ she said, as Cassie took it. ‘Callum was vulnerable and scared,’ she went on, a flash of determination in her eyes. ‘He was in need of help and the people who should have offered that help let him down.’
This was this woman’s reason for continuing to live when her life must seem empty and pointless. She needed to stay strong to get justice. Her focus was on highlighting the flaws in the system and trying to prevent the tragic death of another vulnerable young person.
Cassie wished her well, hoping that her article – which she had to get right, no matter what was going on in her own life – might help. ‘We’ll