her to where Cassie was hurrying anxiously towards them. ‘I’ll call you and let you know how things go.’
Thirty-Seven
Cassandra
Straightening up from where she was kneeling digging in the garden, Cassie wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and gazed towards the patio, where Samuel gurgled happily on his play mat. She was so relieved that Kim had accepted her apology, which she had been more than willing to offer to ensure future contact with Samuel. They’d been right, of course. She shouldn’t have left him, not even for a second. She wasn’t sure what she’d been thinking.
Adam had been less forgiving, insisting she should talk to someone, for the sake of her relationship with Kim if nothing else. Cassie couldn’t help but wonder whether it was his relationship with Kim he was concerned about. Still, she’d bitten her tongue, agreed to make an appointment and apologised to him too.
‘Thanks,’ he’d said, relief flooding his face. ‘For agreeing to make the appointment, not the apology. I don’t need that, Cas. I just need you to be well.’
Hearing another gurgle from Samuel that was almost a chuckle, she smiled sadly. She didn’t think counselling would help. She’d done what she’d had to do to buy her some time with her grandson.
And she had clearly won Kim’s trust. She’d had Samuel here three times over the last two weeks. The first time for just an hour, while Kim went to a dental appointment. Cassie had suspected it had been concocted by Kim and Adam, a trial of sorts to assess whether she was well enough to look after him. She had smiled quietly at the obviousness of it. She might be neurotic and obsessive at times, but she wasn’t blind. She hadn’t missed Kim smiling girlishly at Adam when he’d offered her a lift to her cardio dance class on his way into work.
She hadn’t missed what she was wearing either: white leggings and a white sports top with flesh-revealing mesh panels that showed off her slim figure. She was lucky not to have carried much weight while she’d been pregnant, Cassie mused. She herself had piled on the pounds.
Despite her fears that Kim’s workout might not be the sort that generally took place in a gym, Cassie was happy to let her go, leaving her to tend the garden and look after little Samuel. In allowing her access to him, Kim knew where her interests lay. She always had, Cassie was in no doubt of that. She’d come to them distraught, with Josh’s baby. A vulnerable young thing, guilty of nothing but falling in love with a man and being too poor to bring up his child on her own when tragedy struck. Cassie wasn’t as gullible as she appeared, however. She was very aware that Kim wasn’t the picture of innocence she pretended to be. It had taken a certain amount of guile to approach them in the first place. She’d had an agenda. She’d needed money up front to secure her house. She’d wanted furnishings, financial support for the foreseeable future. Cassie had been fine with that. Everything was a means to an end, after all, and the girl had been owed that much in her mind, if not more. She’d brought Samuel into her life, and Cassie would be eternally grateful for that. Now, though, it was apparent she wanted more. The question was: was Adam obliging? Cassie hadn’t seen much affection in his eyes for her lately. Concern, yes. His affection for Kim, though, that was obvious. All that whispering and touchy-feely body language between them… He couldn’t keep his hands off her. Had he had sex with her yet?
Her heart lurched as she imagined him sharing that kind of intimacy with the mother of her son’s child. A woman who was not much more than a child herself – ripe forbidden fruit, all the better for being so.
She turned her face skywards. The late-autumn sun was warm, the smell of freshly mown grass piquant on the air. The last cut of the year? she wondered. Seasons changed, plants withered and died, giving way to vibrant new buds; such was the cycle of life. Josh had gone. Ashes to ashes. She stopped breathing, her trowel grating against the grit and dirt as she jabbed it into the freshly dug earth. His child lived. Cassie would do whatever she had to to make sure he stayed in her life. She would keep quiet for the moment, but