the fields that backed onto the house, pre-milking; neighbours shouting hello to each other as they went through the morning ritual, climbing into cars and slamming doors; the letter box flapping, a dull thud as the newspapers landed on the hall floor bringing news she was no longer interested in. As a reporter, she always used to scan them. Now they piled up, unread.
She could hear Adam downstairs, making tea she couldn’t bring herself to drink. He was trying so hard to be there for her; to reach out and comfort her. Her heart constricted as she recalled how he’d tried to embrace her once the police had left after delivering the news she’d begged them not to tell her. She’d pulled away from him. His arms around her, his palpable grief would have made it real. She didn’t want it to be real. Couldn’t bear it, had to contain it, the silent scream rising inside her, the terror.
She’d gone upstairs, something driving her, some desperate hope that she would find her son there, lying on his bed, his stuff strewn all over the place, a bemused smile on his face as he wondered what all the fuss was about. He wasn’t there. Cassie had whimpered like a wounded animal. She’d heard the sound escaping her mouth as she’d wrapped her arms around herself. She hadn’t realised at first that it had come from her.
She’d sensed Adam standing hesitantly behind her as she’d gazed at the newly decorated walls in Josh’s room. She couldn’t smell him, she’d realised, above the paint fumes. And she’d needed to. Oh God, how she’d needed to. ‘It feels as if we painted him out of our lives the day we did this,’ she’d whispered.
She’d heard Adam suck in a sharp breath. She hadn’t meant to say it. She’d wished dearly she could take it back. She hadn’t been thinking of Adam. Of the fact that he’d redecorated the room. She’d just wanted Josh safe back home. She would have given anything, everything – a limb, an eye – for her son to walk through the door. She would have traded her soul to the devil to undo the argument they’d had before he left. To see him smile, listen to his tiresome jokes, pick up his discarded clothes. But he wasn’t going to come home. He would never come home again, and all she had left was the guilt and the pain and a room full of nothing. Memories glossed over. His life obliterated.
‘He was my son too, Cassie,’ Adam had said quietly, after a second. He’d sounded hollow, heartbroken. Still he’d been there for her, catching her as she’d finally crumpled.
Now she turned her face to the pillow, her heart bruising as she felt his crushing hurt all over again. He’d been the best father a man could be, sharing his passions and his hobbies as their boy had grown. He’d been just Josh’s age, twenty-four, when he’d come into her life. Josh had immediately taken to him. They never had managed to have a child together. After an awful late miscarriage, quietly grieving the loss of their baby, they’d finally realised her body simply couldn’t live up to their dreams. Adam had reassured her it didn’t matter, that he was happy as long as they had each other. Had he been? He’d nursed her through surgery after her cancer scare; had always been there. Quietly, though, she’d dreaded that one day he might regret not having a child of his own. And now with Josh gone… He was a handsome man, his dark, rugged looks enhanced rather than marred by the passing of time. Why would he stay with her when he could be with a younger woman, someone who could still help him achieve his dream?
Hearing the bedroom door open behind her, she closed her eyes and pressed the extra pillow closer to her midriff. Adam would want her to get up, try to function, but she couldn’t. Not today. She didn’t have the energy. She just wanted to lie here reliving each painful memory as every one of Josh’s birthdays played through her mind like a slideshow, the reel slowing, melting and snapping as she arrived at the day of his death.
She sensed him come around the bed, place the tea he’d made on the bedside table. Her eyes fluttered open as she felt him sit on the edge of the bed. She watched him run his hands over his