Despite not having to go in to work, and a nightly vodka intake that would shame a Soviet salt miner, Cassie was still waking up at her usual time of 6 a.m. Lying in bed the morning after her encounter with Gerry Hobbs, she turned this way and that, trying to get back to sleep, but her thoughts wouldn’t stop whirring.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that Hobbs had something to hide – something to do with that missing swab. Evidence of sexual contact between Kath Raven and someone other than her husband would have backed up her father’s claim that she was having an affair. And although it would arguably have strengthened his motive for killing his wife, the police should clearly have traced any other contact as a possible suspect.
But there had been no mention of the missing result in the press reports, which suggested that her father’s defence had either failed to notice the omission or to understand its possible significance.
Dragging herself out of bed she found Macavity sitting silently but meaningfully by the fridge. Over the last week he’d gradually got over his epic sulk, and as she squeezed the rest of the pouch of cat food onto a plate, he actually deigned to press his furry body against her bare legs.
‘Hmm. I know cupboard love when I see it.’ She reached down to stroke his silken head, hearing his lawnmower purr. ‘But I’ll take it all the same, you heartbreaker, you.’
Knocking back a couple of Nurofen Max with a mug of water she went into the living room and wrinkled her nose: on the coffee table lay two tinfoil curry boxes, half-empty, two beer bottles, and a half-drunk bottle of vodka.
Gripped by a sudden compulsion, she gathered it all up and took it into the kitchen. Going over to the sink, she unscrewed the cap of the vodka bottle and without giving herself time to reconsider, upended it, pouring the contents straight down the plughole.
Inhaling the last of the delicious vapour as it evaporated she smelled something else. Something she couldn’t place at first.
Watermelon. The perfume her mum had worn. And had once dabbed behind the four-year-old Cassie’s ears.
The scent disappeared within seconds but it left her feeling strangely warmed. It struck her that there was something she hadn’t asked herself. What would Kath think about her daughter digging around in the harrowing events of the past?
Remembering hearing her voice in the mortuary – even if she wasn’t sure what the words had meant – and now catching a whiff of her perfume, Cassie was gripped by a conviction: her mum supported what she was doing.
After putting on the rose-sprigged blouse she threw a scarf and a leather jacket on top and set off for a walk along the canal. The sky bore down, a low grey ceiling, and the bitter cold made her regret not wearing a proper coat. She decided to take the stairs up to the high street, to go buy some gloves. Seeing a sign in the window of the Sports Direct that screamed EXTRA 50% OFF SALE! she remembered they sold ones with touchscreen fingertips.
The next thing Cassie knew she found herself somewhere random on the right-hand side of the store, looking at a display of men’s trainers. She stood there frowning for a moment. It wasn’t like her to be scatty.
Whoosh. The carpet tiles of the floor loomed closer and she had to fling out a hand to grab hold of the display unit. A jolt of static and the row of trainers dissolved from the centre of her visual field, to be replaced by a jumble of bright colours.
Sweets. Red liquorice shoelaces, acid-yellow lemon sherbets, pink foam false teeth, the violent pastels of sherbet flying saucers. A pick ‘n’ mix display counter.
Of course. The Sports Direct had previously been a Woolies, and the spot where she was standing had been her childhood Mecca.
Cassie was back in her four-year-old skin – experiencing again the sensory overload of vivid colours, the warm-sticky smell of chocolate, horrid aniseed, sneeze-inducing sherbet. The impossibility of choice – torn between fizzy cola bottles, or the strawberry skulls, or the love hearts to share with Daddy when he came home—
Where’s Mummy?! A flurry of panic. Scanning the shop.
There’s a man dancing with her. The bag of sweeties she’s collected falls to the floor.
Mummy! Adult Cassie hears herself say the word in a half-croak, half-whisper. Feels the hot wet astringency of tears on her cheeks.
Coming to, Cassie found herself still gripping the display unit, a row of Nike Air Max where the sweet-filled hoppers had stood.
A young black guy nearby sent her a look signalling concern. ‘You OK?’
She nodded, before making her escape.
Once she’d parked herself in a coffee shop with a large espresso to calm herself down, she went over what had just happened. Was it real, the memory? Had her four-year-old self really seen a man ‘dancing’ with her mother? In Woolies?
Then it struck her: through the eyes of a four-year-old, a man holding a woman by the arms, or in his arms, might look like a couple dancing.
Cassie was familiar with the psychological theory that an adult could recover long-forgotten childhood memories – and was well aware that ‘recovered memories’ of childhood trauma could be highly unreliable. The brain craved order and pattern, and where it encountered gaps in the record, it sometimes made stuff up just to fill them in.
But. The visceral memory of something being badly wrong was still with her. OK, she thought, let’s apply some logic here. Her mum wouldn’t ordinarily have let her loose on the pick ‘n’ mix alone – four-year-olds having zero concept of restraint. But this time, she had left Cassie to her own devices and gone off some distance – albeit keeping her child within her line of sight. At some point, Cassie had looked for her mum and seen her in the arms of a strange man.
The interpretation of her memory – if that’s what it was – was blindingly obvious. Katherine had arranged a rendezvous with a man in a harmless-seeming place. But what had happened between them was hazy. Was he trying to kiss her? Pleading with her to leave Callum? Was she saying no?
If the strange man wasn’t just a phantom of Cassie’s imagination then there was only one interpretation. He had to be Kath’s secret lover – the man Callum claimed his wife had been seeing. The man he believed was responsible for her murder.