15

‘What do you think Cass is short for?’ Jen said casually to Neil, at work the next day. She was foolishly hoping he wouldn’t quiz her on why she was asking. Just shootin’ the breeze, wondering idly about the derivation of certain names, no reason.

‘Cassie? Or Cassandra, probably. Or Casper, if it’s a bloke.’

‘Cassandra. That would be good. It’s unusual.’

‘Who are we talking about?’

‘No one.’

‘Oh, right. How about Cassiopeia? Cassidy?’

‘Mmm, maybe.’

‘Cassius? Caspian?’

‘It doesn’t matter, really.’

It was strange with Neil, he could sit there in silence all day but, once you gave him a topic, set him off on a path, it was sometimes hard to get him to stop. She couldn’t really tell him it was only the girls’ names she was interested in, because then he would ask her why. She would have to suffer him burbling on for a while. Now he seemed to be googling the answer. She inhaled deeply.

‘Cascada? Cascata? Cassia? Cassta? God, there’s all sorts on here.’

Jen couldn’t think how to get him on to another track.

‘What’s your wife’s name, Neil?’ she said, in a fit of inspiration. ‘In all these years, I don’t think you’ve ever told me.’

‘I must have.’

‘No. Pretty sure you haven’t.’

‘Well, that’s –’ he said, and then mercifully the phone rang. Neil sprang into professional mode. ‘Hello. Reception. How can I help you, Mrs Richardson?’

Jen busied herself double-checking that the rooms that had been vacated that morning were clean and ready for reoccupation. She was desperate to be alone to think.

‘I’ve agreed a late checkout for Mrs Richardson tomorrow. One o’clock,’ Neil said, when he eventually got off the phone.

This was another habit of Neil’s. He would invariably spell out all the details of any interaction he had with the guests – regardless of whether you were standing right there, listening to every word of his conversation, or not. For him this passed as repartee. Jen had clearly heard him say, ‘So, just to confirm, you’re fine to stay in the room till one tomorrow, Mrs Richardson,’ about ten seconds before.

‘Fine.’

‘Because we have a couple checking into a standard double who aren’t going to get here till the evening. I double-checked.’

Jen knew this too. She had heard him tell Mrs Richardson the exact same thing, after he had gone through the future bookings on the computer.

‘Right,’ she said, and tried to look as if she was absorbed in what she was doing.

It was either famine or feast with Neil.

‘What were we talking about?’ he asked.

Jen acted like she didn’t remember. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Nothing important. I’m just going over the housekeeping report, actually.’

She tried googling both Cass and Cassandra – the most likely of all the names Neil had offered up in her opinion – Richards while she was at work, when Neil was on his break, but people kept coming over and it was a strict rule at the hotel that no personal business be conducted on the computers at reception. When one of the new junior staff she was meant to be training looked over her shoulder and asked her what she was doing, she knew she had to give it up.

‘I’m just checking no one’s been using the computer for anything other than hotel business,’ she said, somewhat unconvincingly, exiting the page as quickly as she could. ‘I like to go through the history every once in a while, just to be sure.’

The junior looked taken aback. ‘That sounds a bit draconian.’

‘Hotel policy. I don’t make the rules.’

Truthfully, Jen had no idea what she was intending to do once – if – she tracked Cass Richards down. She just wanted to do something, anything, because she felt so powerless. It was out of the question that she was going to ignore what she had seen and let Charles destroy the family – she knew that much. She thought, maybe, if she could find out a bit about Cass, then that might help her decide on her next move. Maybe she could get in touch with her, and tell her Charles had a loving wife and adoring family that he was risking by being with her. Maybe, even though she was having an affair with a married man, she would have some sense of decency under there somewhere and do the right thing. She knew that wouldn’t solve the bigger problem of Charles, of whether this was who he really was – a man who cheated on his oblivious loved ones – but it would at least remove the immediate threat. That was what Jen was telling herself, anyway.

There was no harm in finding out who Cass was. It would satisfy her curiosity to a certain extent. And then she could decide what to do with that information, if anything, later on.

She didn’t want to use the computer at home, because it felt both wrong and foolish to leave something on the history that her unsuspecting husband might stumble across one day – like those people who secretly get off on eating a whole packet of Jaffa Cakes in one sitting, but then hate themselves for it, so they leave the wrapping right there on top of all the rubbish in the bin, subconsciously hoping their partner will find it. So, at lunchtime, she took herself off to an internet cafe on Charing Cross Road, bought a coffee and a sandwich, paid for forty-five minutes’ access, and settled down.

The cafe had the air of a sixth form common room. Handwritten notices adorned every spare inch of the walls, advertising rooms to let or help with computer skills. There was a distinct aroma of unwashed clothes in the place. The funk of forty thousand rucksacks. Her coffee tasted of dishwasher soap.

There were various people called Cass or Cassandra Richards on Facebook and Twitter but they were too old, too young or on the wrong side of the world. There were several who had no details, not even a photograph on show. There were a couple of others whose pictures may have been Cass when she was younger, but it was almost impossible to tell. Jen kept going. There were Cassandra Richardses working in Woking and Hull, but one gave horse-riding lessons and the other worked in the refuse department of the local council, and neither of those seemed right. Although what she had to base that feeling on, she didn’t know. There was one who lived in Coventry. Jen racked her brain. Had there been any clues when they’d met?

She couldn’t remember Cass having had a Midlands accent, but she had barely said a whole sentence and, even if she didn’t, that didn’t mean anything. You could be brought up in London and then move to Coventry. You could go off and become an officer in the refuse department at Hull City Council, for that matter.

She had already used up twenty-eight of her forty-five minutes. She needed a strategy. Concentric circles, she decided. She would start by checking out all the Cassandra Richardses in London and then, if none of them came through, widen out the search from there. One-sixth of the country’s population lived in the capital. Good odds.

She rushed through the list, discarding as many as she could on the grounds of age, nationality, anything. She was left with three that seemed to merit further investigation. She pored over any details she could find about the first – listed as a systems analyst in Barking. She wrote down the number of her office. She would decide what to do with it later. The second had a Facebook page that Jen was denied access to. She was a member of a sailing club in Westminster, and had taken part in their annual race. On their website there was a picture of her with a trophy. A smiling, pretty, athletic-looking black woman who had come in second place. Jen scored her name off the list.

The third seemed to be very gregarious. She had a Facebook page, a Twitter account (Jen scrolled back – no mention of meeting up with her lover at his office recently – in fact, most of her tweets were pictures of her two dogs) and a blog where she wrote about baking. On the blog she mentioned her husband and three children. Jen didn’t even want to think about what Cass might be doing to her own family, as well as the Mastersons. She also talked about her weight and her futile attempts to exercise and resist the call of home-made scones. ‘Scales still hitting sixteen stone four!’ Jen read on one recent entry.

Next.

So, after all that, she was left with the systems analyst in Barking and a phone number. It could be her, it was possible. It just hardly felt inspiring, that was all. There were probably countless more Cassandra Richardses she had missed. Or she may have disregarded the right one for the wrong reason. Or Cass might live in Wales or Cornwall. Or she might be called Cassiopeia. Or she might have absolutely no presence on the internet, although Jen wasn’t sure that was possible these days. She started to pack up her things. She would call the Barking number and see what she could find out. After that, who knew? Maybe this was someone’s way of trying to tell her she should leave well alone. Not that Jen believed in that stuff – fate and karma and spirit guides – that was much more Jessie’s arena. At this point, though, she was prepared to accept anything.

There were a couple of minutes left on the clock, but she didn’t have the heart to start a whole new search. She was about to close down the screen when she thought maybe she should hit ‘images’ for the hell of it. She clicked on it and, just like that, there she was. ‘Cassandra Richards’ brought up a picture – several times, actually – dotted among various other Cassandra Richardses, some of whom Jen recognized already from her trawl.

It was her, there was no doubt about it.

Jen clicked on one of the pictures and then gasped as she saw the text beneath it. It was a spread from a regional magazine. One of those pages of photographs from some kind of social gathering, a charity event or the opening of a new bar. Jen had never understood them. Who was looking at them? How crucial was it to anyone to see what the people from their local car dealership wore to a party? Cassandra stood next to a man, both smiling at the camera, glasses of champagne in their hands. ‘Cassandra Richards, Senior Property Agent at Masterson Property in Brighton, and Andrew Burford from the London Head Office’ the caption declared.

The girl who was working behind the counter came over to tell Jen that her time was up.

‘Two more minutes,’ she said, waving the girl away. ‘I’ll pay.’

She tried to take it in. Cass was a senior member of staff at Masterson Property. Charles’s company. Of course, that made sense, in a way. He had to have met her somewhere. But it also made it far more complicated. Even if they ended their relationship, they were still going to see each other. There were no guarantees.

Jen scanned the page again, looking for a date. It was right there in the top left-hand corner: 9 May 2011. More than two years ago. Cass was already working for Charles two years ago.

She was going to be late back to work. She printed off the page, paid for her extra time, and left.

Jen raged the whole afternoon, swinging between anger and confusion about what it all might mean. Had Charles been seeing Cass all that time? Did that mean it was serious? More than just – she used ‘just’ in the loosest possible sense, meaning it only comparatively – a fling. Of course, they might have worked together for years and their relationship had only turned into something else more recently. She hated not knowing.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing, that’s what Charles had turned out to be. A snake in the grass. She often found herself thinking in idioms when she was stressed. Better late than never. He who laughs last laughs longest. It takes two to tango. Her mind would throw one out for every occasion. She usually had the sense to keep them there, to not let them out of her mouth.

She was crashing pots and pans around the kitchen, trying to take her frustration out on the dishwasher, when Jason appeared and unravelled himself from his scarf and jacket. He always arrived home from work a mess after his bike ride, but today, because it was raining, he looked like a rather mangy otter, freshly dragged from the river. Jen tried to ignore the lake that was forming around his feet.

‘What’s up with you?’

She gave him a hug to hopefully demonstrate to him that he wasn’t the cause of her mood, and to give herself a moment to think. Now they were both dripping. She could have gone straight from her kitchen and won a wet T-shirt competition. If what they were judging you on was how wet you could get your T-shirt, and nothing else, that was.

‘David. He’s trying to change all the rotas. He thinks it’s not fair that some of us always get to do the most popular shifts.’

In reality, it was Jen who had the final say on the shifts each receptionist worked. David had never been anything other than sympathetic about the fact that Jen wanted her hours to fit around her family. Even now she had no children at home, he was still happy to let her cherry-pick. She made a mental note to be extra nice to him, to make up for her slander.

‘He’ll never do it. He won’t have the guts.’

‘Well, he’d better not,’ Jen said, getting into her role.

It was frightening how easy she was finding it to lie to Jason. Alarming how readily she could justify to herself that she was doing it for the right reasons. Jason would be devastated if he learned the truth about his father. He idolized him. As did the rest of the family, for that matter. If she had to tell a few white lies to protect them, was that so bad? At least until she found out for certain exactly what it was Charles was guilty of. A petty, impulsive crime of passion or a premeditated, cold-hearted, calculated felony.

‘I’d resign, if he did.’

Jason laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’

Even though Jen was making up her dilemma, she was a little offended at Jason’s response. Implicit in it was the fact that she had settled years ago, that she had no ambition. He was right, of course, but that wasn’t the point. At least, she had always had an ambition, and that had been to create a family. She had always told herself that once Simone and Emily had both left home, she would have time to pursue her passion. If only she had a passion to pursue.

‘I might surprise you one day.’

‘Oh, Dad’s on The One Show tonight, by the way. Feature about national service.’

‘Oh, right,’ Jen said, unsure what else to say.

‘I’ve set it to record, in case we forget.’

‘Great.’

At eight minutes past seven, they were in front of the TV, inevitably. Plates on their laps, glasses of wine on the coffee table in front of them. Jen’s father-in-law ambled through a pre-recorded feature on post-war compulsory military service. Some kind of significant anniversary had apparently occurred earlier in the year – fifty years since it had ended, something like that – and Charles had tracked down (that is to say, the show’s researchers had tracked down) a few old boys who had done their stint in the 1950s.

Short film over and back to the studio where the two presenters tried to feign interest. Charles was sitting on the sofa opposite them. He looked just as he always looked: thick shock of near-white hair combed just so, his slightly too orange tan and his jaunty, brightly coloured shirt that contrasted oh so beautifully with his dark grey suit. The idea of a woman so much younger than him – so much younger than her, in fact – looking at him and thinking ‘phwoar’ was incomprehensible, Jen thought, as she watched. Flattering him by hanging on to his every word and telling him his liver spots made him distinguished and therefore sexy. It didn’t bear thinking about. She shuddered.

‘So,’ the male half of the duo said, ‘what’s your feeling, Charles? Should we bring it back?’

Charles smiled his ‘I’m on TV’ smile. ‘Well, it certainly didn’t do me any harm.’

‘Do you think it made a real difference to society, though?’ the female presenter asked in a bored voice. The regular hosts were both on holiday, and the two stand-ins were struggling to act as though they cared about anything except the fact they were getting prime-time exposure.

‘Oh, definitely. I think we were taught to have proper values. Young lads nowadays have no idea how to hold down a job or keep a family together, because they’ve never experienced real discipline.’

‘He’s a natural, isn’t he?’ Jason said proudly.

‘He certainly is,’ Jen said. ‘You really feel like he means it.’

‘You do.’

Jason thought she was paying his father a compliment. She wasn’t.

They watched the rest of the show in silence. Jen wanted to fill it, but she suddenly didn’t know how. It struck her that their default topic of conversation may have left home with their daughters. She had never realized before how much of their common ground revolved around the girls’ movements. And whatever gossip there was from the rest of the family, of course, but that now felt like a topic she wanted to avoid. Surely they had had more in common than that? Years of a shared – and she had thought happy – life. She felt suddenly light-headed, as if she was standing on the ledge of a tall building. She closed her eyes, breathed in slowly.

She tried to think if anything funny had happened at work, but the only thing that kept coming into her head was an image of Charles and Cass Richards. It clogged up her brain like duckweed, refusing to budge, blocking out all other thoughts. So she stayed silent. She was scared of what might come out if she opened her mouth.