higher and, almost blinded by the tears cascading down her face, picked her way carefully downstairs.
She was passing the open lounge door when she saw them. The photograph albums, stacked on the coffee table. Images of their life together, a happy life, she’d once thought, her life with her son. Why would he have fetched them from the loft now? He would hardly have been going through them, his heart breaking, when he didn’t give a damn about his marriage, about her. He clearly didn’t care about Josh either, if he was sleeping with the mother of his child. Drinking wine with her. Cassie’s blood turned to icicles in her veins as she noticed the two washed wine glasses on the plate rack in the kitchen. She went to the fridge and found an open bottle of white wine. Adam didn’t drink white wine. Kim did.
Stultified, she carried on to the utility room. Placing the bedding on the floor, opening the washing machine door, she wondered what temperature to choose. Forty degrees? Or thirty, bearing in mind the environment? Or sixty, considering how soiled they would be?
Sixty, she decided, reaching for the washing capsules.
A ragged sob rose inside her. She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t. She pressed a hand to her mouth, sinking to her knees on top of the Egyptian bed linen. Kim was stealing her husband, her life and her memories. Cassie tried to stop the choking sobs, but still they kept coming, racking her body. Sobs for her stolen babies, who’d never breathed independently of her; for her beautiful son, all grown, yet still such a child; for her husband. She cried until she thought her heart must surely break.
Her grandson… they would steal him from her too.
No. She would not let that happen. She would not allow Adam and the whore who’d slept with her son and her husband to do this to her.
Grasping the washing machine door, and then the work surface, Cassie pulled herself up, straightened her shoulders and tried to stand tall. She would do their dirty washing. In public. She would stop them.
It would scorch the lawn, she realised, heaving the bed linen outside. Her pretty garden, which she tended so meticulously, would be scarred. But she didn’t care. Her mother had been right: this was a far more satisfying way of cleaning up the dirt and mess her husband had created. Her anger growing steadily, she went back to the kitchen and found the matches she kept in a drawer to light the candles at Christmas. They wouldn’t use them again now. There would be no more family Christmases. No more family.
Plucking the matches out, she banged the drawer shut and headed to the lounge, fuelled with purpose. She scanned the drinks cupboard and then grabbed the cognac – Courvoisier, Adam’s tipple of choice when he was celebrating or stressed. He would certainly be stressed when he realised that though it was he who had destroyed their marriage, she was the one who was lighting the funeral pyre.
Forty-Seven
Cassandra
Flames dancing in her eyes, Cassie watched the bed linen burn, waited to feel the thrill of satisfaction. There was nothing. Nothing but a hard rock in her chest. She watched a while longer, her arms wrapped tightly about herself, the warm glow of the fire scorching her cheeks but doing little to force the chill from her bones, and then went back to the kitchen for the bleach.
Hurt and anger burning inside her as surely as the fire outside, she went back upstairs into the bedroom and stood over the bed. It was a good bed, comfortable. It contoured their bodies perfectly, Adam had once said. Had she lain in his embrace? Had he pulled her close to his midriff, her body fitting perfectly with his?
Swallowing hard, Cassie held the bottle of bleach high, hesitated for a heartbeat, and then upended it. She couldn’t wash away the sins of her husband, but the mattress would be germ-free at least. She swiped at a tear from her cheek and turned to the wardrobe, where Adam’s shirts hung. Resisting the urge to press her face to them, breathe in the scent of crisp clean cotton suffused with his citrusy aftershave, she tugged them from the hangers. The majority of them had been selected by her, ironed by her.
His suits too? she wondered. Yes, she decided, piling as many as she could over her arms and making her way downstairs. If he was leaving, he could go