‘We can’t leave the children.’ She began to collect the rest of the plates, but he bent down and caught her hand. It was trembling.
‘Come on,’ he said, taking her other hand and drawing her to her feet. ‘Just along by the lake. We’ll see the children if they come anywhere near the water.’
‘Nick, it’s pouring with rain.’ She sounded almost desperate, he thought.
‘I thought we’d already agreed that a walk along the beach in the rain is the height of romance.’
Romance? ‘There isn’t a beach. At least not much of one.’
‘Imagine it. Here, put my jacket on; it’ll keep you dry.’ He fed her arms into his waxed jacket as if she were a child, zipping it up to the chin, fastening the collar around her face so that little more than her eyes showed.
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll survive.’ He held back the tent flap and then took her arm and tucked it beneath his as he straightened beside her.
‘I’d better just check—’ she began, shying away like a nervous colt. But shrieks of laughter were coming from the other tent and Nick kept her close. ‘Oh, well. They seem happy enough.’
‘They’re fine.’
Neither of them spoke as they walked down to the edge of the lake, but as the waves of rain came in across the water, soaking their hair, running down their faces, Cassie stared across at the island and said, ‘This is madness.
‘Probably,’ Nick agreed. And they both knew they weren’t talking about the weather. Then he turned to her. ‘I’ll wait, Cassie. As long as you like. I want you to be as sure as I am about this. But I want you to know that I’m not going away. Not unless you tell me there can’t ever be any hope. And if you tell me that I shan’t believe you.’
‘You think you’re that irresistible?’ She turned on him with a show of resistance, eyes sparking for the first time in days.
‘No, Cassie. You’ve been resisting me ever since I walked into Beth’s shop and I’m sure you intend to carry on doing just that. But you’re finding it a lot harder than you’d like. And, once or twice, when your guard has slipped, your real feelings have shown through. Do you want to tell me about it?’
‘I’m sure Beth filled you in on all the details.’
‘Beth told me what she thought was the truth. That you were love’s young dream, that it ended in tragedy and your heart was irretrievably broken. I don’t believe that. At least not the bit about love’s young dream.’ She spun round and looked up at him. And he saw fear, real fear in her eyes ‘Can you look me in the eye and tell me that I’m wrong?’
Her mouth opened, then closed and he saw something like a war going on behind her eyes. He wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter. Not to him. Whatever had happened. But until she had faced the past she didn’t have a future. Not a real future. Only a career.
‘Cassie?’ he prompted gently.
‘No. You’re not wrong. I thought it was, but I made a mistake.’
Because he knew it would be easier for her to talk if she didn’t have to look at him, he turned with her and began to walk along the shore. ‘He hit you, didn’t he?’
There was a shocked silence that told him he was right. Then her deep, shuddering breath came to him over the sound of the rain. ‘No, he didn’t hit me, Nick. But he would have done if Dem hadn’t flown at him and clawed his arm. How did you guess?’
‘Your remark about Dem not liking men very much did make me wonder why. And then, when I dumped you rather unceremoniously onto the sofa, he reacted like a little tiger.’ He glanced down at her. Her head was bowed, her hair soaked through.
‘He might just be a bad-tempered cat.’
‘He might. But when the policeman asked you if you wanted someone from the domestic violence unit to visit you you went quite white. I think that’s probably why he was so persistent.’
‘You were supposed to be delivering a message to his partner, not eavesdropping!’
‘I know. I gave myself a good talking-to afterwards.’ He found her hand in the depths of his sleeve and she didn’t reject him when he took it in his own. ‘What went wrong, Cassie?’
‘It was nothing complicated, or intense. No other women. Or men,’ she added, in case he might have some idea that she was to blame. ‘It was all about money.’ He said nothing. ‘Jonathan was a gambler and he married me for my money. By the time he discovered that I didn’t have any that he could use to pay his debts, his ring was on my finger and he was trapped. And very angry.’ She gave a convulsive little shudder and didn’t pull away when he put his arms about her and held her close.
‘I did wonder about the speed of the wedding.’
‘His idea, of course. And I was too much in love to question his reasons.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’ve never told anyone what happened, Nick. Not even my sister.’
He glanced at a fallen log. ‘Shall we sit down?’ She nodded. ‘I won’t tell a soul, Cassie. You can trust me.’
‘Can I?’
He heard the uncertainty in her voice and understood it. One man had let her down badly and he hadn’t exactly proved himself the soul of probity. This wasn’t the moment for an over-the-top ‘with your life’ declaration. ‘I may not be perfect but I don’t gossip. Nothing you tell me will go any further.’ Her eyes still doubted him. ‘I do think you should tell someone.’
She looked around him and then gave the smallest of shrugs. ‘There’s no one else here so I guess you’re it.’
It took her a while to get started, but once she did it all came tumbling out. ‘It was the house he was after. It’s been in the family for generations and when my parents died in a coach crash it came to Lauren and me. Lauren was married by then, Mike was a toddler, Joe was on the way and she wanted a garden. She never did like living in the city. I was still living at home, so I paid her rent for her half and started up my catering business with my share of some compensation money we were awarded from the crash.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose Jonathan must have read about the compensation in the local newspaper and thought I might be easy pickings. Then he discovered I was living in this really big, very valuable house and he decided to stake everything on one throw of the dice. As I said, he was a gambler.’
‘How did he meet you?’
‘At one of the functions I catered. He said he was a blood-stock dealer, dropped names the way a careless cook drops cherries, and he simply oozed charm and excitement. Prince Charming couldn’t have done it better. He was just too good to be true, looking back. No one is that perfect. It had to be an act.’
‘He seems to have taken in everyone. What about his family?’
‘Living abroad. In South Africa. We would visit them on an extended honeymoon when he wasn’t so busy, he said. That at least was true. I had a lovely letter from his mother when he died, thanking me for making his last weeks happy, inviting me to visit.’
‘They didn’t know what he was like?’
‘Maybe they did. Maybe they were like me, just pretending.’ She looked at him, her cheeks wet with rain or tears, her eyelashes clumped together, her hair clinging to her forehead. ‘The first I knew that anything was wrong was when the bank manager phoned me to ask whether I wanted to extend my overdraft facility. Until that point I didn’t know I had an overdraft. But he had cleaned out my account—our account; I had changed it to joint names when we were married. Of course he had a perfectly plausible excuse about covering the cost of the purchase of some horse until the new owner’s cheque cleared. But when I called in at the bank to sort things out I discovered that he’d taken the deeds of the house from the bank’s safe.’
‘But he couldn’t just sell it without you finding out.’
‘He couldn’t sell it at all. But he hadn’t wanted to sell it, just use the deeds to cover some bookmaker’s debt. That’s when the pretence came to an end. I was waiting for him to come home and tax him with it, but he didn’t wait for that. His bookmaker had told him that the deeds wouldn’t do. He wanted his mon
ey.’
‘What was the matter with them?’
‘The house is held in trust for us. It would take all of us—Lauren and me and the trustees—to agree a sale.’
That was when Jonathan had told her the truth. That there was no job, that he gambled and that sometimes he lost. He had told her that he didn’t care about her at all, that their whirlwind romance had been provoked by an urgent need for money. Or, more particularly, for her house, which he was going to use as collateral to cover an embarrassment of debt. If she didn’t persuade her sister and the trustees that the house must be sold, he would go to prison.
‘And you said no?’
Cassie stirred. ‘It was like having a revelation. I saw him for what he was, Nick—a very nasty man inside a beautiful body—and I discovered that love at first sight has an equal and opposite emotion. Saying no was easy.’
He had changed before her eyes from Jekyll to Hyde and would have beaten her but as he’d raised his hand Dem had leapt at him, clawing at him. He’d knocked the cat halfway across the room and then he’d left. Walked out. Two days later the police had called to tell her that he had driven into the bridge superstructure on a motorway somewhere in Yorkshire.
‘Suicide?’
‘I don’t know. The verdict was accidental death, but on the day of his funeral the deeds were dropped through the letter box in a plain brown envelope. I sometimes wonder if perhaps they’d given up on him and used him as an example…’
Nick said something brief and to the point under his breath. ‘No wonder your friends feared for your sanity.’
‘Did they?’
‘Beth said that only your work kept you sane.’
‘Jonathan’s only legacy was a pile of debts, Nick. Gambling debts die with you, but the credit card companies don’t take the same view of things. I didn’t work hard to forget, I worked to keep my head above water.’
‘I can see why you’d find it hard ever to trust anyone again.’
‘Do you really think that’s the problem? Don’t you see, Nick? I thought I was head over heels in love with Jonathan. I married him, for pity’s sake. But if I had really been in love with him I would have stuck by him, done anything to help him. It may not be particularly bright, but it’s what women in love do. But I didn’t want to stick by him. I just wanted him out of my life.’
‘That’s a misplaced sense of guilt.’
‘Maybe it is. I didn’t wish him dead, just gone, but I couldn’t feel sorry…just relieved…’
‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. He didn’t think twice about destroying you and if you let him deprive you of the life you should have he’s still won.’
‘He’s not depriving me of anything.’ And it was true, she suddenly realised. ‘I’ve been blaming him for that all this time, telling myself that I couldn’t ever trust another man, but it’s not true.’ Her hands flew to her cheeks. ‘Oh, God, how could I have been so stupid? The reason I can’t, won’t get involved with anyone is because if I could make such a mistake about him…if I could think I was so in love…’ She turned her face to his, a mute appeal for understanding in her eyes. ‘Don’t you see, Nick? I couldn’t ever trust my judgement again.’
‘You wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time.’
‘Can you be sure? Would you really want to take the risk?’
He reached out and laid his palm against her cheek. ‘I’d take a risk on you right now, Cassie. But I’m not the one who needs convincing.’
‘It’ll never happen.’
‘It will. One day. You’ll know when.’ He stood up and, taking her hand, pulled her up alongside him. ‘Come on. We’d better go and see what the kids are up to.’
‘Cassie?’ She had only been asleep for what seemed like seconds when Cassie heard an insistent little voice in her ear. ‘Cassie?’ It was Bethan, she realised, and she opened one eye. It was, as she had feared, still pitch-dark. ‘Cassie, has Sadie come back yet?’
‘Sadie?’ she repeated groggily. ‘Has she gone to the loo?’ She was getting braver if she’d make the dash across the field in the dark by herself. Awake now, Cassie sat up and groped for her torch. ‘Do you want to go, sweetheart? Just let me find my jacket.’
‘Sadie hasn’t gone to the loo, Cassie. She’s gone somewhere with Mike. I heard them saying…’
At three o’clock in the morning Cassie might not be at her best, but something about the child’s anxious words jolted her awake faster than a cold shower. With Mike!
A quick flash of the torch over the sleeping bags confirmed her worst fears. Sadie was gone and so was her sleeping bag. ‘Stay there, Bethan.’
She pushed open the tent flap. It wasn’t exactly raining, but something wet, a cross between a drizzle and a mist, immediately clung to her face. She pushed her feet into her shoes and, the light from the torch swinging about as she ran, she dashed to the other tent, unzipped the flap and flashed the torch across the sleeping figures. Three of them. No Mike.
‘Nick!’ she whispered urgently.
He threw up an arm to shade his eyes as she shone the torch into his face. ‘What the hell…?’
‘It’s Mike and Sadie. They’re missing.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘BETHAN, darling, try to think,’ Nick said gently, curbing his anxiety as he quizzed the child. ‘What exactly did you hear Mike say?’
‘He said…he said…’ She yawned.
‘She’s asleep on her feet, Nick.’
‘Bethan,’ he said, with a touch more urgency. ‘It’s really important that you tell us what you heard.’
‘I heard Mike,’ the child mumbled, close to tears. ‘He said he was going to run away and live on the island.’ She sniffed.
‘But why?’
‘Because he gave his mummy a headache. And when his mummy had a headache his daddy was unhappy.’
‘I should have known,’ Cassie said, furious with her sister for letting things get to this point. ‘He pretends to be tough but he’s not.’
‘And Sadie?’ Nick demanded. ‘Why did she go?’
‘Sadie said he’d have to take her with him, or she’d tell.’
‘That figures. Little madam.’ Cassie and Nick exchanged a glance. ‘Put her back to bed, Cassie. I’ll check the boat.’
‘But they couldn’t have… It was dark…’
‘If the boat’s there, I’ll come back.’
‘And if it isn’t?’ she whispered as a deep cold feeling of dread settled in the pit of her stomach.
‘I’ll call the police. They can organise a search the minute it gets light.’
‘Nick?’
All her fear was in that one syllable and he held her for just a moment. ‘It’ll be all right, sweetheart. Why don’t you get the kettle going? They’ll be cold…’ He left the sentence unfinished. The temperature had dropped with the rain. They’d be cold. And if he didn’t find them soon they’d stay that way.
Cassie settled Bethan back in her sleeping bag and the little girl was asleep before she’d pulled up the zip. Then she crossed to the cook tent and, fumbling in the darkness, lit the storm lantern and put a kettle on to boil.
Deep down she knew that Nick had only asked her to do it to keep her occupied, but he was right. If he found the children they would be cold.
When he found the children, not if. And he would find them. They couldn’t have sailed out to the island in the dark. They wouldn’t be so naughty. If anything had happened to them…
She turned as she heard Nick behind her. ‘They’ve taken the boat.’
‘No-o-o-o…’ The word was a long and desperate need for it not to be so. ‘They’ll be so frightened,’ she muttered into his chest as he held her close for a moment.
‘I’ll call the police now.’ He held her at arm’s length so that he could look at her. ‘They’ll be all right, Cassie. I promise you they’ll be all right.’
And while he held her she believed him. But the moment he left her to use his m
obile phone all her doubts came flooding back. Her poor sister. Helen. The children. How would they cope? How would she be able to live with herself?
‘Stop it,’ she said, out loud, then spun around as Nick returned. ‘Are they coming?’
‘They’ll be here at first light.’
‘But that’s not for hours.’
‘It just seems that way, Cassie,’ he said sympathetically. ‘It’s two at the most but they can’t do anything much before then. I thought I’d drive the minibus down to the water’s edge and shine the lights across the lake. We might see something. At least, if they’re frightened, they’ll know we’re doing something.’
‘But we aren’t doing anything! We’re standing here wringing our hands and doing absolutely nothing at all—’
‘I’ll get the minibus.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
They bounced across the field, the headlights illuminating first the grass, then the lake and the patches of drifting mist that clung to the still water.
‘What’s that?’ she said, scrambling out of the van, her feet thudding hollowly against the wooden jetty as she raced along it, certain that she had seen something in the headlights.
‘It’s just the mist, Cassie,’ Nick said, coming up behind her.
‘No. I’m sure I saw a sail.’
‘They won’t get far with a sail; the wind’s dropped right away. I’m afraid if they’re heading for the island they’ll have to row.’ He took a step nearer the edge of the jetty, then turned back abruptly. ‘Have you still got the night binoculars in your tent?’
‘I think so. Why? What have you seen?’
‘Nothing, probably. But I’d like a better look.’
She didn’t stop to debate it, but Emily woke and had to be comforted, then the binoculars were not in her bag where she’d left them when they’d been watching a badger up in the woods. After wasting valuable time hunting for them, it occurred to her that Sadie might have taken them with her. And she wondered what else they’d taken.
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