Cassie had read and reread her semi-literate messages and wondered. And she’d stared at the profile image and held it next to the old photo over and over again. Was it the same person? Could this woman be her mother? Or was it someone just cruelly messing with her? But if so, why? And how had they got their hands on the photo?
Erin was, of course, completely wigged out by it all. She was absolutely against Cassie going to Oldham, seeing all sorts of dangers in meeting up with a complete stranger whose motives were unclear, and who was being very cagey about who she was and what she knew. And course Erin was right, but that wasn’t going to stop Cassie. She had to give it a try. This woman knew things. Cassie had to meet her at least and find out what. And she was taking precautions. They’d agreed to meet in a public place, Ryan was driving her there and she would have her phone with her all the time. Add to that the fact that her defences were well and truly up. What could go wrong? She’d be fine. Or at least she hoped she would. But Erin wasn’t in any mood to be placated. Much to Cassie’s shock, and surprise, her reticent, nervy little sister had played her blackmail hand coolly and without blinking. She threatened to tell Tom and Grace about everything, unless Cassie let her go with her. Cassie had been secretly impressed.
Now, as they bombed across the M62, Cassie was reassured to have Erin’s slight but determined presence in the back of the car. If Ryan was pissed off, having been demoted to chauffeur, that was his problem.
‘How much longer?’ she asked.
Ryan stared out through the windscreen, scanning the roadside for a junction number. ‘Dunno. Half an hour?’ He sped up.
Cassie sighed and sat back in her seat. Another hour and she’d get to find out if she was being played or not.
Once on the high street in Oldham, they headed into Subway, as agreed. Cassie was reassured by the familiar sounds and smells. ‘You go grab a table and I’ll get us a drink,’ she commanded Erin. ‘I’ll message you when we’re through.’ This to Ryan, who scowled and stumped off.
From her position at the back of the queue, Cassie watched Erin walk self-consciously across to the furthest unoccupied table and slide into a seat. Cassie felt a rush of affection and gratitude for her little sister. She was bricking it, but trying very hard to cover that up. They exchanged a look that said: Okay, that’s stage one completed without any major disasters. Cassie eventually got served by a woman who looked too old to still be working, but who called her ‘duck’ and smiled as she passed over her change. Armed with two boiling hot cardboard cups of coffee and two six-inch subs – which she knew they wouldn’t eat – she went and sat next to Erin. It was a good vantage point. She could see the door; in fact she could see through the whole wall of glass that fronted the cafe, out onto the street beyond. Now all they had to do was wait.
Their coffee was too hot to drink. The heat radiated through the ridged cardboard of the cup into Cassie’s fingers. Erin peeled the lid off her drink and blew on it, like their mum used to do with their hot chocolate when they were little. The girls took it in turns stroking their phone screens back to life, checking the time and looking out for any messages. There were none. Time slowed to a dribble of unfeasibly long minutes.
The counter was busy, a steady stream of people arriving, then departing clutching their bandaged rolls of greasy comfort-food. The queue built and shrank, then grew again, but never disappeared entirely. Cassie felt a mixture of panic and dislocation. She wasn’t stupid. She knew it wasn’t going to be some happy-clappy reunion like on the TV. She was ninety-nine per cent certain this woman wasn’t going to turn out be her real mum. And even if she was, that she wasn’t going to walk in, open her arms and beg forgiveness. And what if she did? What difference would it make? She hadn’t been forced into giving up her baby by society; she’d been declared unfit. But – and the ‘but’ was important – that couldn’t be the whole truth, could it? Because if her birth mum had been a terrible mother, why did Cassie remember being cared for? Where had her memories of love and affection come from? Her mum and dad were still adamant that it was her foster mum, but they were wrong. Cassie could only vaguely remember being with Jane; all she could conjure up was a fug of food smells and furniture polish. The snatches that had been flooding back in the past few weeks were different, very different. The smells, the images, the feelings, the texture of those memories seemed to be from another place altogether. Knowing that she might, in the next few minutes, either meet her mother or at least find something out about her – or be left sitting there like some pathetic loser – was making her heart race.
People wandered past outside, going about their everyday lives. Cassie watched them, looking out for potentials. On a midweek morning there were plenty of candidates, though very few that she wanted to stop, turn into the cafe and walk towards her. She wondered, when LW finally did arrive, if she would come over to the table first; surely she wouldn’t go and join the queue? That’d be awkward. Cassie started stressing about whether she should offer to buy her a drink, but that wouldn’t work, because it would leave her having to talk to Erin. And Erin wouldn’t cope with that.
Cassie decided that the best thing would be to send Erin up to fetch her a drink. Yeah, that would be a better plan. All of which fussing would be irrelevant, if she didn’t show up. But she wasn’t that late. Cassie wasn’t even certain that she’d recognise her when she did, not from the tiny thumbnail picture. And besides, that picture could be – probably was – a fake. It could all be fake. This could be just some cruel hoax. Cassie turned her attention to the people inside the cafe again. Any one of them could be the person playing her, laughing at her for sitting there like a gullible idiot. The corkscrew of her emotions twisted again, replacing hope with anger.
The other girl was a shock.
A nasty one.
It threw Leah off her game.
She’d been building up to this showdown with Cassie for weeks. It had taken huge amounts of time and effort and ingenuity on her part to get this far; time and effort that she couldn’t really afford. The stalking, the scheming, the preparing, the imagining – there was a cost to all that investment and emotion, a cost that would have to be repaid.
This meeting was supposed to be Leah’s first taste of retribution.
But it looked like her moment, alone at last, with Cassidie was going to be denied her – by this girl.
Whoever she was, she was an interfering bitch.
She was like a bad photocopy of Cassidie, paler, less defined, weaker, but oddly like her. She looked too young to be a friend and yet they seemed very close. The bitch-girl was attentive and very anxious, but not for herself, for Cassidie.
The sudden insight into what Leah was looking at struck her hard.
The girl was Cassidie’s sister.
That was the only logical explanation.
A sister was not part of the plan. A sister had no right to be there, sitting fussily alongside Cassidie, whispering in her ear, patting her arm. This was nothing to do with her. Why the fuck had Cassidie brought her along? Safety in numbers, moral support, someone to hold her bag and pass the tissues? Cassidie ought to be ashamed of herself. It was pathetic…and it was disrespectful. This was between her and Cassidie. It had nothing to do with this girl. She wasn’t family.
Leah watched the pair of them and, with each passing minute, grew more and more incensed. The cafe was small enough that she could hear snippets of their conversation – not that Cassidie was saying much; it was the girl who had verbal diarrhoea. And what she kept saying – kept suggesting – with increasing insistence, in her posh, childish, fucking irritating voice, was that Cassidie should leave, that it wasn’t worth it, that she wasn’t worth it.
The snotty, interfering little skank. How dare she?
Leah’s only comfort was that Cassidie seemed to be ignoring her.
She blanked out the girl – she would be dealt with later, when the right opportunity arose – and instead she focused on Cassidie.
; Close up, Cassidie was beautiful. Leah wasn’t the only one to be struck by it. As people queued for their food she saw how they glanced at her, looked away, then looked back again. It was the type of beauty that made Leah want to scream and rip something to shreds. It was so fucking unfair. Waves of resentment, jealousy and anger rippled through her. For a split second she very nearly gave in to the impulse to leap across the cafe and slap Cassidie’s perfect, flawless face. That would get her to wise up.
But of course she didn’t.
Leah knew that getting worked up was not good for clear thinking – that if she let her emotions get the better of her, she would lose more than she might gain. So she focused hard and managed to bring herself down one notch, then another and another. It was a struggle, but she managed it. Shallow, regular, slow breaths; that was what worked whenever she was in pain. And this – seeing Cassidie and finding out that there was a bitch-sister in the picture – this was as painful as any kicking she’d ever had. In and out, in and out, through tense lips. They said that she had no self-discipline, but they were wrong. She was stronger than anyone ever gave her credit for. With every minute that passed she felt more stable, more in control.
In contrast, as the time ticked by, Cassidie’s composure crumbled. Leah watched and started to see more than just perfection in her face. Beneath the fake calm, messier emotions were bubbling away: frustration and anger and irritation and, near the end, what looked a lot like disappointment. It was satisfying to watch.
The knowledge that she could have put Cassidie out of her misery easily enough made the experience even sweeter. It felt good to sit and observe and know that she was the cause of all that agitation.
The reappearance of the scrawny boyfriend put an end to it. Surprisingly, he seemed to have more influence than the sister. There was a short debate about what they were going to do, then they all stood up and started getting ready to leave. And that was when – just because she could, and because it had been a very long time since she’d been the one able to toy with someone else’s feelings – Leah delayed their departure.
She reached into her pocket and pressed the Call button.
There was a tiny delay, then Cassidie’s phone began to ring.
Leah watched her scramble to retrieve her phone, hope blooming on her face. When there was no one there, that hope shrivelled and died.
They left with an awful scraping of chairs and Leah sat alone, content, after all, with the ways things had worked out.
Chapter 23
CASSIE AND Erin got home just after 3 p.m. They both made more noise than was strictly necessary, chucking their shoes into the hall cupboard and opening and closing doors. Cassie couldn’t stand the way Erin kept looking at her. It made her want to slap her.
All the way home Cassie’s phone had burnt in her hand. She felt such a powerful mix of anger, frustration and profound disappointment that she didn’t know what to do with herself. Ryan had dropped them off outside the house, with a look of relief on his face. She’d endured his kiss. Now Erin’s pinched, distressed little face seemed to be tracking her from room to room. She couldn’t bear it. ‘Stop, will ya! I’m fine.’ Erin flinched, and Cassie’s desire to slap her increased. ‘Erin. I mean it, stop trailing around after me like a bloody puppy.’
‘Okay.’ Erin sat down on the couch, but did nothing other than look more upset than she had any right to.
Cassie snapped, ‘I mean it. Just be normal, can’t you?’ Erin nodded, but Cassie drove her message home. ‘Seriously. You have to act normal when Mum and Dad get home. I don’t want them knowing anything about today.’
‘Okay,’ Erin said, but she still looked wobbly.
‘I’m not joking, Erin. If you say a word to anyone about today – anyone – I swear I’ll never speak to you again. Understand?’
‘I said, “Okay”.’
‘Well, that’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yeah, well, good!’ Like little kids all over again. With that agreed, Cassie escaped upstairs to get away from her sister, who she knew would never betray her anyway. In the privacy of her bedroom she sat on her bed, staring at the abandoned call. It had to have been her, so there was a sliver of hope, but Cassie didn’t know what to do with it. Why set up a meeting and not show? Why call and not say anything? What was stopping her? Embarrassment? Shame? Cruelty?
Her room was stuffy. She climbed up on her chair, pushed open one of the skylights and poked her head up through the gap. It was as warm outside as in. Not a breath of wind. The roof tiles creaked in the heat. The view hadn’t changed since the last time she’d sought sanctuary up there. Whichever direction you looked, there were looping skeins of houses, road after road of different-sized boxes, interspersed with swathes of green and bright patches of colour. Cassie wondered, not for the first time, whether she could somehow lever herself up through the window and onto the roof, but even as she grasped the frame and tried to hoist herself up, she knew it was pointless; she was too heavy. She was stuck, with her head poking through the gap. She very nearly didn’t hear her phone ringing. She scrambled clumsily down off the chair to answer it, scraping her arm badly on the window frame in the process. ‘Hello,’ she stammered.
Silence. It had to be her. Then, ‘Sorry.’ A female voice, so quiet that Cassie had to strain to hear her.
‘Why didn’t you come?’ Her arm was stinging, the skin raw around her wrist. More silence.
‘I couldn’t get there.’ It wasn’t much of an apology.
Cassie wanted to hear contrition, guilt, something that indicated a beating heart at least. ‘I sat there for an hour.’ More silence or, more accurately, more muffled background noise. She persisted. ‘I gave up, came back home when it was obvious that you were gonna be a no-show.’
‘Like I said. I’m sorry.’ There was a spark there now, a flash of energy and defiance. She didn’t sound sorry at all. Cassie held her ground, forcing the woman to say the next words. The silence was fraught. Then, ‘Do ya still wanna meet?’
Did she? No. Not if this woman couldn’t be arsed to even apologise properly and explain herself. But of course that wasn’t what Cassie said. What she said was, ‘Yes. I need to talk to you.’
The woman said ‘’Kay.’ Nothing more.
‘When?’
‘Whenever.’ Whoever she was, she was good at pretending to not give a damn.
Cassie ploughed on, feeling like she was begging, and hating it. ‘I might be able to come this weekend, but I’ll need to sort out a lift. Are you going to turn up this time?’
‘Yeah.’ It didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
‘I’ll text you then? If I can come. With a time. On this number?’ Cassie said.
‘’Kay.’ One syllable. That’s all she was prepared to offer.
‘You’ll text back?’
‘Yeah.’
Cassie was just about to end the call when the woman said, quietly, but very clearly, ‘This time – come on your own.’
Chapter 24
GAIL FROM the Adoption Service rang Grace at work. She apologised for the delay in getting back to them. ‘But I’ve finally been able to find out a little bit, with regards to your enquiries. Is now a good time to talk?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Grace said. It wasn’t, but she was hardly going to say that.
‘Well, I’ve had some success with the foster family, in terms of information, rather than direct contact,’ she added hastily. ‘Less so with the birth family.’ Grace waited. ‘Jane Marshall is, I’m afraid, deceased.’ It was such oddly formal phrasing. ‘She died five years ago. Heart problems, I believe. She carried on fostering for quite a number of years after Cassie. She was a stalwart of the service actually.’ Grace heard the click of a keyboard as Gail checked her facts. Some things were obviously saved accurately on their databases. ‘She fostered, let me see, forty-eight children over the years that she worked for us.’
They both honoured this feat with a few secon
ds of silence. In the pause, Grace readily conjured up Jane’s brisk kindness and her tired face.
Gail carried on. ‘When Jane retired, her local office wanted to put on a bit of a do, celebrate her years of service, get in contact with some of the children she’d helped, invite them back to say “hello”. That sort of thing can also act as good publicity. You would, no doubt, have been sent an invitation. But it never happened. Her family – her daughter especially – weren’t keen. She died within nine months of saying “goodbye” to the last young person in her care. Not much of a retirement, sadly. In the circumstances, I’m not sure that approaching the family is such a good idea. I’m sorry. I know you were hoping that a meeting might be possible.’
Grace was shaken by how upset she suddenly felt. Poor Jane, all those years of sticking children back together and handing them on to the next stage of their lives, only to retire and die so quickly. She roused herself. ‘Well, thank you for at least finding that out for us. Are we okay to tell Cassie that she’s passed, if she asks?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Gail said.
‘And have you been able to discover anything about Cassie’s biological mother?’ Grace felt a red flush of anxiety creep up her neck.
‘Well, there, I’m afraid, I’m coming up with a blank. It isn’t being helped by the fact that it was an out-of-area adoption.’
Greater Manchester to Yorkshire – hardly a giant leap. ‘What have you been able to find out?’ Grace asked.
‘The honest answer is nothing concrete, I’m afraid. That doesn’t mean we won’t be able to. I’ve sent emails to all the bodies involved, but as I explained the last time we spoke, it can take a little while for enquiries to get passed to the correct person, in the right department. People move on.’ This sage observation rankled with Grace. They thought that they’d moved on, too. ‘I’m waiting for a couple of people to come back to me. Adult services are very separate from children’s services – different processes and protocols, and suchlike. I will keep trying.’
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