Almost Lost

by Ophelia Night

  The gray-haired woman standing outside did a double take when she saw her.

  She was holding a covered plate, and through the glass lid Cassie could see a home-baked pie.

  “Hello,” she said.

  People were bringing food to comfort the family, and despite her stress, she couldn’t help being touched by the community’s kindness.

  But the woman glared at her.

  “You’re the au pair? What are you doing here? I thought you were in prison.”

  “I—I got bailed out,” Cassie stammered.

  “Really?” The woman stared at her suspiciously.

  Cassie felt her face flush. Under this woman’s condemning gaze, she felt no better than a criminal.

  “Yes. You can call Trish and check if you like, or she’ll be home later this afternoon. Can I take that? Is it for the family?”

  “No.” The gray-haired woman clutched the plate. “I’m not leaving it with you. For all I know, you’ll poison it. I’ll stop by again when Trish is back.”

  Cassie stared at her, appalled that she felt entitled to speak this way to her face.

  “Trish bailed me out,” she tried in a small voice, but the woman was a juggernaut.

  “I can’t believe you were given bail. You should be in jail, where you belong. Rest assured, I’ll be attending the trial. Ryan was part of our community. You had no right to seduce him and then take his life. You little whore. You deserve whatever’s coming to you.”

  Cassie couldn’t take any more of this tirade. From inside her, a tiny voice of courage started to make itself heard.

  She was not going to stand here while this woman abused her for a crime she had been wrongfully accused of.

  She drew herself taller and glared back at the woman.

  “Shut up!” she screamed. “Just shut your mouth. You know nothing about what’s happened. Nothing! And if you did, you wouldn’t be speaking like this. What gives you the right to say those things to another person, another human being, when you don’t even have all the facts? Go away. I don’t have to listen to this and you shouldn’t be saying it.”

  She slammed the door in her face.

  Peeking through the window, she saw the woman stand, indecisive, for a moment, and Cassie thought that she looked ashamed.

  She turned away and walked to the garden gate before heading down the road.

  Even though she’d had her say in return, Cassie felt shattered by the woman’s accusations. Her words had cut deep. This was what everyone in the village thought of her.

  As the woman disappeared from sight, Cassie started weeping with humiliation. This episode had brought her to rock bottom, and she knew there was nowhere lower she could go. Her self-esteem was ruined, she felt mired in confusion and shame. She was a victim—first of Ryan, and now of Trish, and together, the couple had annihilated her own future.

  There was no hope in anything.

  Cassie wanted to lie sprawled on the floor and simply let the hours pass by until the inevitable happened.

  Somehow, she found the strength to get up and totter to the master bedroom.

  There, she checked all the drawers and the filing cabinet. She felt under the mattress and looked under the bed and pounded the pillows.

  She was running out of places to look, and she was starting to realize that of course Trish would not have left the recorder behind. Even if it had been hidden well, she must have guessed that a desperate search would uncover it.

  Faced with the certain prospect of failure, it took all of her will power to hold herself together. She reached deep inside herself and to her surprise, Cassie found a steely core that she’d never known was there.

  Abandoning the search would mean giving up. She wasn’t going to do it. No matter that the horrors she’d been through had left her at her lowest ebb, that she was emotionally shattered and drained of strength and feeling entirely broken.

  She was not going to let Trish win. Even if she didn’t find the recorder perhaps there might be something—anything—that she could use to prove her innocence.

  Drawing a deep breath, Cassie resumed her search. She checked the wardrobes, looking in Trish’s empty suitcases and under her clothes. She went through the coat hangers, checking the pockets of every jacket, because after all, that was where Trish had concealed the recorder in the first place.

  There was nothing to find.

  Cassie opened Ryan’s cupboard and did the same.

  Her search uncovered nothing except a folded note and a business card in the back pocket of a pair of his jeans.

  Curious, Cassie opened the note.

  She recognized the writing.

  “Hello handsome,” the note read. “Thought I’d surprise you by reminding you I’m thinking about you. Give me a call when you find this and let’s meet up. Dinner, drinks, pink hair, pink champagne, and you know what!”

  She guessed the note was Harriet’s. During their affair, the cleaner must have hidden a note for Ryan. Had he found it, read it, and put it back in his pants? Or had he never seen it at all? She didn’t know.

  The business card was the standard card for Maids of Devon, with an office number and an email, but on the back of the card, Harriet had scribbled her cell phone number.

  Cassie looked down at it and her mind started to race.

  She had one friend in this village; one person who understood what she’d been through, and who would most likely believe her innocence.

  How could she use this information?

  Cassie remembered the magician shuffling his cards in the town square, and his expert use of misdirection.

  Dylan’s matter-of-fact acceptance of his mother’s intent to poison his rabbit and the preemptive action he’d taken.

  The angry, aggressive stance of the detective as he’d bemoaned the lack of concrete evidence to convict her.

  The confession she’d made so innocently, shouting out her anger at her betrayal, not knowing that every word would be used against her.

  Cassie felt the threads of a plan start spinning together. It relied on many factors she couldn’t control or predict—first and most importantly, that Harriet would answer her phone and would agree to help.

  It was a long shot, a desperate stab in the dark, but it was all she had, and her only hope of escaping.

  Cassie picked up her cell phone and dialed.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  It was late afternoon when Trish finally returned.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Cassie heard the snick of the door latch, the rattle as it closed.

  She felt sick with nerves. All the decisions she made now, the variables she couldn’t control—they would decide her fate. Her plan was flimsy, born of last-minute desperation. There were a thousand reasons why it might not work.

  Misdirection, she thought. You can do it.

  Once again, she felt that steely resilience inside her, an inner strength she hadn’t thought she possessed, giving her the courage she needed to see this through.

  Trish’s heels clicked along the wooden floor.

  “Hello, kids,” she called.

  Then, with a sharpness in her voice, “Dylan? Madison? Are you here?”

  A moment later, Trish was at the kitchen door.

  She looked as immaculately made up as if she’d stepped out of the house a minute ago. She was dressed to the nines in a tailored black suit and a string of pearls.

  “Where are the children?” she snapped at Cassie. “Did they stay at Nadine’s place? What’s going on? I want them home, and you out of here.”

  She rummaged in her purse for her cell phone.

  “Don’t bother calling Nadine,” Cassie said. “She brought the children back at one.”

  “Where are they then?” Trish glared at her. “Why the hell aren’t they here?”

  “They’re safe,” Cassie said. “But they’re not in this house.”

  Now Trish was looking at her with a shocked expression, as if a worm she’d been abou
t to crush had turned into a spitting cobra.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I thought you and I needed to talk, alone. Would you like to sit down?”

  Cassie gestured to the chair and then tugged her coat closed again. She couldn’t stop her hand from moving toward the inside pocket, before she quickly lowered it.

  Trish was watching her intently.

  “Why do we need to talk?”

  Cassie forced herself to speak as calmly as she could, even though she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking.

  “Trish, I know you murdered Ryan. You put the rat poison in his wine. There’s no doubt about it. But what I want to know is why? It can’t just be because he had an affair with me. You must know what he’s like. So—why?”

  Trish started to laugh. The unpleasant, bell-like sound pealed through the room.

  “Open your coat.”

  Cassie stared at her, her eyes wide, her face stricken.

  “Why must I?” Now her voice shook.

  “Call it a whim. Because I’m not stupid. Huddled in a coat in a warm kitchen? Really? Go on, open it.”

  Cassie’s face crumpled.

  Slowly she opened the coat.

  “I can see it there. Take it out, sweetie. Don’t make me come and do it for you.”

  Cassie’s hands were shaking so badly she could hardly remove the Dictaphone from her inside pocket.

  It wasn’t an expensive model, like Trish’s had been. It was a much cheaper one, which Harriet had picked up on the way to fetch Dylan and Madison, who were now at Harriet’s house.

  Cheap it had been, but Cassie had hoped it would do the job. Now she bit her lip, staring at Trish with silent appeal as she placed the item on the kitchen table.

  “Let’s take a look.” Trish picked it up.

  “Goodness me, it’s recording and all. But not for long.”

  She turned it off.

  “How cute. You were hoping to tape my confession. Well, unfortunately, I’m not playing along. In fact, I think we’ll get rid of this altogether. What a shame you had to waste your money. Not that you’ll have a chance to spend it in jail.”

  She threw the small, silver recorder onto the floor.

  Then she stamped on it. Cassie watched, horrified, as Trish brought her tough, shiny boot down on the recorder over and over.

  “No,” she cried. “Trish, please, no.”

  It didn’t take long for its flimsy shell to splinter. Within a minute, the recorder was lying in fragments on the floor. Cassie stared at it, and then back at Trish, and she knew that her face must be a picture of devastation.

  “No,” she whispered over and over.

  She could only imagine what Trish thought, watching her. How pathetic, how broken she looked after her rookie effort at deception had failed.

  “You needn’t bother to sweep it up before you go,” Trish told her sympathetically. “I’ll do that while I wait for the police to arrive.”

  She laughed again.

  “Would you like some wine?”

  When Cassie shook her head, Trish shrugged.

  “Well, I’m having some.”

  She opened a bottle and poured herself a glass.

  “Cheers,” she said, and the smile she gave Cassie was without any trace of warmth.

  “You’re right. I did kill him,” she said. “I put the poison in his wine. I wasn’t as drunk as I looked. And, trust me, when I heard him yelling at you on the balcony, I sobered up rather fast.”

  “You killed him because he yelled at me?” Cassie asked incredulously.

  Trish sighed.

  “Try and apply some intelligence, will you? No, I killed him because of what he threatened you with. Look, screwing around was not his prerogative. My trips overseas? Trust me, darling, we had an open relationship and I didn’t grudge Ryan his little flings. I didn’t even care that he was a compulsive liar, or that he was bad with money, although it did get tedious having to bail him out every so often.”

  “What was it then?” Cassie asked. Her lips felt numb and she struggled to get the words out; her voice sounded flat, as if she no longer cared what Trish’s motive was.

  “He threatened to call social services. He promised the children would show evidence of abuse. You know something?”

  Trish pulled out the chair opposite Cassie and sat down, leaning across the wooden table in a conspiratorial way.

  “You must have really got to him, because I haven’t ever seen him so angry. Clearly, you pushed all his buttons. But threatening to harm my children is unacceptable. Having social services come round and investigate would be extremely inconvenient, and it would risk damaging my reputation. My career relies on an impeccable record, as my company deals with corporates, celebrities, and politicians at the very highest level.”

  Cassie cleared her throat.

  “You want to say something?” Trish asked. “Please, go ahead. The floor is yours. You could call this our girls’ get-together.”

  Cassie’s voice trembled audibly as she spoke.

  “I think you were worried your children might tell social services about other things. Like threatening to poison Dylan’s rabbit or pull Madison off the stage. That’s abuse, too, I think.”

  Cassie watched Trish’s face twist with anger.

  “Oh, my word, you have been getting friendly. Well, enough of that, I’ll have a word with them later about tale-telling. I’m sick of you, and your pathetic attempts to hide your affair, and your lame efforts to ingratiate yourself with my children. Now, tell me where they are.”

  Cassie stood up and moved round the other side of the table, keeping it between them.

  Every muscle in her body felt tense. Her breath was rapid and shallow and she willed herself to be strong, to keep reaching for that inner steel, because if she buckled now, it would all be over.

  She moved aside a folded dishcloth on the kitchen counter.

  Next to it was her cell phone; it had been in plain sight, but yet camouflaged, because she’d drawn all Trish’s attention to the hidden recorder. She picked it up and held it tight.

  “The Dictaphone was a red herring,” she said to Trish. “This phone has been taping you the whole time. I’m not letting your children come home until the police have listened to it and arrested you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  Trish’s scream of rage filled the room.

  Cassie saw her face darken as she realized she’d been double-crossed.

  “Give me that. Now!” she cried.

  Cassie backed away.

  Adrenaline coursed through her. She hadn’t expected Trish’s anger to be so sudden.

  “No,” she insisted.

  Trish paused, making a final attempt to regain control of the situation.

  “Cassie,” she spat. “The police will never believe you. But let’s talk. We can work together. We never shared who else might have done it. The cleaner would be my guess, and if you and I both say so to the police, there’s a strong likelihood they’ll believe us. Come on.”

  Cassie shook her head.

  Trish laughed, but it was a high, panicky sound. She began babbling out the words.

  “I can see you want more. That’s fine. After what you’ve been through, I’ll be happy to compensate you. Let’s sit down again and discuss it properly.”

  “I’m not discussing anything with you, Trish,” Cassie insisted. “I’ve seen who you are. You deserve what’s coming to you.”

  In the blink of an eye, Trish’s reasonable demeanor evaporated. Her eyes narrowed and her lips curled back.

  “You bitch. If you don’t want to give me that, I’m going to make you.”

  She leaped at Cassie, who jumped away in terror as Trish’s nails raked her face. The tall woman lunged toward her and got hold of her arm.

  “No!” Cassie screamed. She twisted away, trying to dislodge her grip, but Trish was fighting with the strength of desperation. She could hear her breath, harsh in her ear, as her fin
gers clamped around Cassie’s wrist. Inexorably she started prizing the phone out of Cassie’s hand. Cassie was shocked by her wiry power.

  Flailing her free arm behind her in a panic, Cassie caught hold of something and grasped it tight. She recognized the shape of the giant pepper grinder.

  Clumsily, she raised it and brought it down on Trish’s head with all her strength.

  Trish swore violently, staggering back, and even though she didn’t let go, her grip loosened enough for Cassie to twist away.

  Trish made another grab for her and got hold of her jacket, pulling her back so she ricocheted against the table. The wooden table rocked and tilted, and the bottle and glasses smashed on the floor. Glass fragments exploded over the tiles, as wine sluiced across the floor like blood.

  Trish swore again as she slipped on a piece of glass, and that allowed Cassie to break free once again.

  She made a desperate run for it, glass crunching under her trainers, skidding over the wet floor as she headed for the door.

  Behind her, Trish had the strength and speed of total desperation. Cassie heard her footsteps thudding, far too close.

  Then something tore at her jacket, ripping it open, and as she glanced behind her, she screamed.

  Trish had picked up one of the long, lethal kitchen knives and Cassie had come within inches of having it slice through her flesh. The shock gave her an extra burst of speed and she leaped ahead.

  Where to go? She sped down the hallway, riding on the wings of her fear, knowing that Trish was taller and probably faster, and had more to lose.

  She bolted into the master bedroom. Slammed the door. She twisted the key in the lock just as Trish flung her weight against it.

  Gasping for breath, Cassie realized the door had bought her only a moment’s respite. The latch was too flimsy, and at any moment, Trish could break through.

  She ran into the bathroom, closed the door—and realized in horror that there was no key.

  Cassie flung it open again and saw that the bedroom door was starting to splinter.

  She slid the phone under the bed. For now, it would be a safe hiding place. Then she ran to the window and forced it open.