She wasn’t. A phone call confirmed she was off sick, so Cassie drove to her house, from which the woman emerged around lunchtime with some man. She followed them to a city pub, where they went inside for a liquid lunch, and to satisfy a more urgent hunger. Cassie watched from her seat in a discreet corner of the lounge. She was no expert, but she recognised a deal going down, the small wraps of drugs changing hands. It was as she’d feared: the woman was using, a functioning addict but an addict nevertheless. And she would need money to fuel her addiction, more than she could earn as a caregiver, more than Cassie could earn even back at work full-time.
Leaving the pub, Cassie went back to her car and texted her. I need to know how much. I need to put an end to this.
I haven’t put a price on it yet, the reply came back, leaving her in no doubt that whatever she paid, she would probably only be buying time. The woman would come back for more. Cassie needed to circumvent it, to tell her secret first. She needed to tell Adam.
But how? He would never understand what she’d done, how she’d handled it since. How could he? She didn’t understand it herself. She’d found herself on a one-way road, no way to turn back. If only she could stop her telling.
Back home, the taste of fear thick in her throat, Cassie wondered what drugs the woman was taking as she busied herself cleaning the paintwork in the hall. How reliable her drug dealer was, what the heroin that she was ingesting or injecting into her veins might be mixed with. She knew from her research that to increase its street value, heroin was cut with all sorts of things: talcum powder and quinine, even laxative powder. Often, to produce a similar high, stimulants such as amphetamines, strychnine or caffeine would be added. Sometimes synthetic opioids were used; fentanyl, she recalled, had caused so many overdose-related fatalities the police had taken the unusual step of issuing a warning to users. Such drugs were easily available, she also recalled, if one knew where to look.
Feeling sick to her soul as she realised where her mind was taking her, that she was capable of even imagining such a dreadful thing, Cassie channelled her emotions into her cleaning. She didn’t hear the front door open, didn’t realise Adam had come home until he spoke.
‘What in God’s name are you doing, Cassie?’ he asked, his tone a mixture of shock and exasperation.
Dipping her cloth into the bowl of water perched on the stairs, Cassie squeezed it out. ‘Just cleaning,’ she said lightly. Did he realise how exasperated she was with herself? How frightened? How much she was hurting as they grew further apart when she so needed him, when he so obviously needed the comfort of a loving embrace. Though not hers. She swallowed back a sharp pain as the thought popped into her head.
‘Cassie…’ Adam walked towards the stairs. ‘The walls don’t need cleaning.’
‘They do. There are dirty marks above the handrail.’ Cassie concentrated hard on those rather than look at him, see the familiar disillusioned expression.
She’d chosen the colour, ivory with a hint of pink. It was too light. Adam had said it was. It would show all the marks from sleeves rubbed against it, he’d warned, especially with Josh’s mates charging up and down.
Her breath catching, Cassie paused. There would be no more dirty sleeves rubbing these walls. There was no one here any more. Just her and Adam, rattling around in a house that was too big for two. She swallowed hard and redoubled her efforts to remove a stubborn mark. It was one Josh had made when he’d been fetching his stuff before leaving. His arms had been full of clothes, his rugby bag slung over his shoulder.
Oh God, how she wished she could turn back time. Have her son back. She should have gone after him, made more effort. How she ached to go after him now, be wherever he was.
‘Cassie, just stop, will you?’ Adam asked, now sounding cautious.
She brushed a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand, and scrubbed harder.
‘You don’t need to do this,’ Adam said more forcefully.
She glanced at him. He was clearly also working to control his emotions. She wasn’t being fair on him. It wasn’t his fault that Kim hadn’t been in contact. None of what