The Cinderella Moment

Barney took a moment or two to regain his composure and then said, ‘Another half hour.’

Daisy’s bottom lip jutted out grumpily. ‘Oh, go on. It’s been really quiet today.’

Barney was unmoved. ‘There may be a lastminute rush.’ Daisy was still not impressed, so Barney continued, ‘You see the opening times on the door, on that little sign? Well, when it says on there that we’re open, funnily enough, we’re supposed to be. Bit quirky, I know, but it’s an idea you can get used to over time.’

Daisy sniffed and carried on looking hard done by.

‘If you’ve got Daisy…’ Cass began.

‘Oh, but that’s just it – I haven’t got Daisy,’ Barney said. ‘Not only is she unreliable, but she’s off soon on her travels, on this gap-year thing that everyone does these days – and she is expecting me to help fund it. I told her she would have to work her passage.’

‘And believe me, I am,’ growled the teenager.

Hate had never looked so affectionate.

Barney turned his attention back to Cass. ‘So what do you think of my emporium, then?’

Cass shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to say. It’s amazing.’

‘I knew you’d like it. Wait,’ said Barney, holding a finger to his lips. ‘There’s more.’ Like a mad pied piper he indicated she should follow him upstairs.

‘Daisy, do the lights, will you?’ he said over his shoulder.

The gallery proper was painted white, the uneven walls with their odd-shaped bricks covered in crumbly flat whitewash, which brought out the beauty of the pale sanded wood floors. The ceiling opened up into a pitched roof space set with skylights and tiny twinkling halogen spots. The current exhibition was of abstract seascapes in the most wonderful soft blues, greens and golds. Cass was enchanted. Even more so when she looked at the current catalogue and realised the work was all Barney’s.

She stared at him. ‘For someone so horrible, you paint like an angel.’

He nodded sagely. ‘I know, it’s a complete bastard, isn’t it? I think we would all prefer to believe that talent is visited on the worthy, the humble and the genuinely deserving.’

Cass raised an eyebrow.

‘But you don’t have to worry,’ said Barney. ‘I’m none of those things. Now, how about I show you the studio, and then we can go and have an early supper? I’m starving. There is this wonderful little Italian place down the road. The staff fight all the time and swear at each other – I feel so at home. We’ll take Daisy so’s she doesn’t have to go home to her poor demented mother on an empty stomach. After you…’ He indicated a small door to one side of the gallery, set back in what should have been an outside wall or maybe the wall of the adjoining property. Barney grunted when Cass mentioned it.

‘The arse ache that’s caused me over the years. It’s a flying freehold. To be honest, I’m seriously thinking about renting somewhere else to work. I’ve got a room in my mother’s place, but I can’t work there – she never shuts up,’ he continued as Cass headed up a set of stairs that twisted round so sharply they were almost a spiral, while behind her Barney struggled and swore, puffing and blowing like a train. ‘Nag, nag nag; the woman is a complete menace. I’m sure my father only died to get some bloody peace.’

The room Cass stepped into had to be above someone else’s shop or storeroom. The roof had skylights and, in contrast to Barney’s domestic life, was almost clinically clean and tidy, practically spartan. Painted white, one wall was shelved from floor to ceiling, each shelf neatly stacked with sketchbooks arranged according to the dates running down their spines; albums, magazines and books arranged alphabetically; labelled boxes, jars of brushes, bottles of linseed oil and turps. There was a set of Perspex drawers filled with tubes of paint; neatly stacked tins of charcoal and pastels; a jam jar full of pencils which sat alongside another full of feathers and a third and fourth with brushes and palette knives. One shelf held a row of pebbles that ran unbroken from one end to the other. Against the wall adjoining the shelves, boards stacked in a metal frame, canvas stretched and ready in another. But all these things were so tidily and methodically arranged that the studio felt uncluttered. An easel dominated the centre of the room, the bare floorboards below it covered with a delicate filigree of spilt gold, blue and red paint.

‘Those bloody stairs play havoc with my back,’ grumbled Barney. ‘I keep thinking it would make a decent storeroom, but I’d only fill it up with crap. If you like it, you could use it – if you want to, that is,’ he added grudgingly. ‘There’s a kitchenette thing through there and a toilet.’ He waved towards another door in the far wall and then pulled a cloth off something fixed on a cantilevered arm to the wall opposite the easel. Underneath was a small television monitor, currently switched off.

‘It’s the shop,’ said Barney in answer to Cass’s unspoken question. ‘In theory, you could work up here and mind the fort, although in practice it is a perfect fucking nuisance. You just get into something and you’re interrupted by some bloody moron wanting to know if you sell T-shirts. And if you don’t go down, they get annoyed. Assuming you’re that quick. People are in and out before you can get down the stairs – nicking the stock, stealing money out of the till…Although I suppose the bonus is that at least you’ve got their faces on video for when you take the thieving bastards to court.’ He looked up at her. ‘So, when can you start? You are going to take the job?’

Cass shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ she said, trying hard to sound noncommittal, while knowing that she planned to say yes.

Once they had closed the shop, Barney, Daisy and Cass walked down to the restaurant, Barney and Daisy bickering all the way. Cass smiled to herself. Jake was right: a summer in Brighton was exactly what she needed.

Margaret Devlin looked at the man on the doorstep and said with genuine surprise, ‘Gordie, how are you?’ He was the last person she had expected to see.

He smiled. ‘More to the point, how are you, Margaret?’

Gordie Mann had a bluff rugby player’s face, broad cheekbones, the skin around his eyes cut and shaped by great swathes of scar tissue, and a nose broken and badly set more than once.

‘Bloody awful,’ she said grimly. He towered above her like a badly constructed crane.

‘I would have been round sooner, but I thought what with the law here and everything, you wouldn’t want any more visitors. I’m so very sorry to hear about James.’ He handed her a bunch of flowers.

Margaret Devlin looked coyly up at him. ‘You know that I’m always pleased to see you, Gordie. Why don’t you come in and have a drink.’

He nodded. ‘Don’t mind if I do, Margaret – only I’ve got someone with me.’ Gordie stepped aside to reveal a small, weaselly-looking man with thinning reddish-grey hair, wearing a mack and dark horn-rimmed glasses. ‘This is Mr Marshall,’ he said.

Margaret Devlin peered at him. ‘Mr Marshall?’ she said, both as a muted welcome and a question. She would have much preferred it if Gordie had been on his own. It wouldn’t be the first time that she had cried on his big broad shoulders.

Gordie nodded. ‘He’s working for me. He’s a private detective. We’re looking for James.’

Margaret Devlin stared at him. ‘But why? I’m not with you.’

Gordie smiled and, sliding a bottle of Gordon’s gin out of the pocket of his Crombie, said in an undertone: ‘How about I come inside and explain it to you?’

Margaret blushed and then stood aside to let him pass. Gordie Mann and Margaret Devlin went back a long way.

‘So, Ms…’

‘Mrs.’

The policewoman nodded. ‘Mrs Hammond, you said that you’d never met Mr Devlin before.’

‘No. What I said was that we’d met on the train before.’

‘Several times?’

Cass glanced at the WPC, wondering why the hell she should be feeling guilty, and at the same time annoyed that the policewoman was asking her the same questions over and over again in different ways, quite obviously and very heavyhandedly trying to catch Cass out.

‘Once. I met him once before. He gave me fruit.’

The woman nodded and looked down at her notes. ‘Peaches?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. And are you normally in the habit of taking fruit from strangers, Ms Hammond?’

This was ridiculous. Cass stared at the small, dour policewoman trying very hard not to lose her patience, laugh or swear. ‘Well, it’s not something I do every day, no – but then again, on the whole most strangers don’t offer me fruit.’

The policewoman’s expression tightened. ‘Please, Ms Hammond,’ she said between gritted teeth, ‘this is a very serious matter.’

Cass nodded. ‘I don’t doubt it, but I’ve already told you everything I know. I had met this man once before. The second time we met he told me he was going on an adventure to Rome. He got off at Cambridge, told me he was going to catch the Stansted train, and that was the last I saw of him.’

The woman nodded and then said softly, ‘And the phone?’

Cass sighed. ‘What about the phone?’

‘You were handed it by a woman who –’

‘Who found it under the man’s seat, or on it – I’m not sure now. So, I rang his home number and left him a message to let him know he’d lost it, but that it was safe.’

‘And to arrange to meet him and give it back?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And other than calling his home number, you haven’t done anything else to the phone, subsequently? Edited the phone book or deleted any information regarding incoming or outgoing calls, texts or anything?’

A small sleek silver mobile phone lay on the coffee table between them, all neatly sealed up in an evidence bag. As Cass’s eye moved over it, the policewoman smiled without warmth.

‘No,’ said Cass, wishing the bloody woman would just leave.

‘Mrs Devlin said that your manner on the phone was –’ the WPC read from her notebook – ‘“flirtatious and over familiar”.’

Cass reddened furiously. ‘I’m not sure that’s exactly how I’d put it. OK, he had been very friendly, chatty – very chatty. I didn’t know he was married. I certainly didn’t think I was leaving a message that would be picked up by his wife.’

The policewoman’s expression didn’t change. ‘So, you were attracted to Mr Devlin?’ She didn’t wait for Cass to answer. Instead she added, ‘You know, it wouldn’t be the first time that a woman was taken in by an attractive and plausible man, Ms Hammond.’

Cass stared at her, wondering if the WPC had met David.

The policewoman leaned forward, as if to imply that this was really just a cosy girl-to-girl-chat, and continued in a low conspiratorial voice. ‘And James Devlin is quite a charmer, apparently.’

Cass felt a growing sense of indignation; the insinuation made her skin prickle. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’ she growled.

The woman aped empathy. ‘Oh, come on, Ms Hammond. Meaning that James Devlin has a knack of getting women to do what he wants. He’s got quite a reputation, you know – bit of a ladies’ man, bit of a lad.’

Cass considered the possibility. All that grinning and bumbling boyish enthusiasm for life, she could see how that might work. ‘Uhuh. Your point being…?’

This was obviously not the answer the WPC was expecting. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ she snapped, ‘is that you wouldn’t be the first woman to be taken in by him.’

Cass was fed up of feeling put on, patronised and annoyed. ‘Look, let’s get one thing straight, shall we? I wasn’t taken in by him. He gave me fruit and a mint humbug.’

The policewoman glanced down at her notes. ‘A mint humbug? You didn’t mention –’ she began, the implication being presumably that if Cass had overlooked a boiled sweet, it was quite reasonable to assume that she might have overlooked a secret assignation, an extra-marital affair, or a plan to run away to Rome together.

‘Officer,’ said Cass, as politely as she could manage, which wasn’t very, ‘I think this has gone on quite long enough. I’ve got things to do, I’ve got to collect my son from school. I’ve answered your questions and told you everything I can remember. And I don’t think going over and over and over is going to help.’

The woman nodded and she and the young policeman she had brought with her got to their feet.

‘One more thing,’ the WPC said, while still almost bent double. ‘Your neighbour mentioned the fact that you are thinking about moving to Brighton.’

Trust Jake.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Cass, well aware of how defensive she sounded. ‘Just for the summer.’

The policewoman’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Right. Any particular reason? I mean, why you’re thinking about moving there now?’

‘Why not now?’ said Cass.

‘You said that your husband is no longer living here with you and your son?’

‘No, what I said was that he had left me for the girl who did our cleaning. And no, I haven’t got any plans to set up a secret seaside love nest, if that’s what you are implying. I just wanted to take a break, think things through – the last few months have been tough.’

The policewoman stared blankly at her. Cass wondered if she was protesting too much, an emotion only equalled by her growing sense of frustration and fury. She made an effort to smile. ‘I don’t really see how this is relevant, but, OK, yes, I am moving to Bright –’

‘To meet Mr Devlin?’ the WPC asked quickly, as if Cass might not notice that she had slipped the question in.

‘No, not to meet Mr Bloody Devlin. I’ve been offered a summer job there,’ snapped Cass.

The policewoman nodded and scribbled something in her notebook. For all Cass knew, it might have been a note to pick up a frozen pizza on the way home. Whatever it was, she had had enough.

‘What sort of job?’ the WPC pressed.

Cass was already halfway across the sitting room, guiding the two of them towards the door. ‘In a gallery,’ she said briskly as she opened the front door.

The policewoman’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes,’ she said gleefully. ‘You’re an artist, aren’t you?’ She managed to make it sound like it was a career choice that was up there somewhere between mass murder and self-employed puppy-strangling.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Cass grimly.

‘Um, well, we’ll be in touch,’ said the policewoman. ‘And if you remember anything else in the meantime, or Mr Devlin makes contact, please don’t hesitate to ring.’ She handed Cass a card. Cass slipped it into her pocket; there was really no point in protesting.

Margaret Devlin had the most terrible hangover when she got up, although it could easily have been down to mixing gin with the sleeping pills that the doctor had given her. She hadn’t had that much. Gordie had had quite a lot, although the private detective, Mr Marshall, had had only one – a very small one at that, which probably said it all – explaining that he was driving and wanted to take notes during their little chat. Margaret narrowed her eyes, trying to reconstruct their conversation from the fragments she could remember.

It appeared that James had been involved with Gordie in some sort of business investments and Gordie wasn’t convinced that the police were working as diligently as they might to track James down. And over another G & T, Gordie explained that he had other ways and means at his disposal – things and methods not always available to the law, more direct methods. And then Mr Marshall explained that he was working for Gordie – but Margaret couldn’t remember the exact details now.

She had told them everything she thought might help. Mr Marshall had written down the phone numbers and name of the woman who had rung and left a message for James.

‘And you think that your husband and this Mrs Hammond were having an affair?’

‘Well, she said she had picked up the phone on the train. I mean, what sort of story is that?’

Mr Marshall didn’t say a word. Margaret sniffed; she could tell he didn’t believe her. And then they had all traipsed up to James’s office. At the door, Gordie and Mr Marshall pulled on surgical gloves, then searched the place from floor to ceiling and photocopied James’s diary and address books.

‘You can take them if it will help,’ she had suggested.

Gordie smiled and patted her hand. ‘Thank you, Margaret.’ And then he looked at his companion. Mr Marshall tapped the side of his nose and very carefully slid the books into a plastic carrier.

Now, stone-cold sober, sitting in her bedroom, Margaret cursed her naivety. She ought to have gone through the diaries and the address books and seen for herself if Cass Hammond’s name was in there. Men weren’t any good at that kind of thing. Margaret had a nose for codes and little hints and subtle marks in the margin. She had always caught James out before; she knew the signs. Bastard.

She dropped two soluble aspirin into a glass. The plink, plink fizz made her wince, and she wished for the hundredth time that she’d saved the woman’s answer machine message – all that bloody giggling and flirting. If they’d heard that, the police and Mr Marshall would have understood why she was so sure and so bloody angry.

Cass closed the front door behind the policewoman, laid her forehead against the wood, and closed her eyes. So far it wasn’t proving the easiest of weeks.

The only good thing was that the madwoman hadn’t rung her again, although Cass wasn’t convinced she’d heard the last from the hysterical, dog-loving, Mrs James Devlin.

By contrast, David had been bleakly sane when he showed up, a couple of hours or so after she arrived home from meeting Barney, which was quite a feat for someone red-faced, sweaty, with wet hair slicked slyly over his bald patch, wearing a bright turquoise tracksuit and carrying a squash racquet in a fluorescent green-and-yellow case. Seeing him made her heart lurch miserably.

‘The thing is, Cass, I need a little time and space to think about the future – our future,’ David said, sitting on the sofa, wringing his hands. ‘Well, all right, my future.’

‘Really,’ Cass said flatly. When they had been together she had never realised just how self-centred and conniving he sounded. Pain and the sense of loss made her see him so differently. Was it clearer and truer, or was it that betrayal coloured her vision?

‘There’s no need to be so negative, Cass. You see,’ he said, seizing on the word like a terrier grabbing a trouser leg, ‘to be perfectly honest with you, I think that’s the problem really, isn’t it?’

‘Sorry? I’m not with you,’ said Cass in surprise.

‘Well, you’re always so negative about everything, and so petty. For example, I’ve been here, what? Nearly ten minutes?’ He pulled back the sleeve of his tracksuit and peered at his watch to emphasise the point. ‘And you know that I’ve just walked up here from the sports centre, but you didn’t ask me to sit down and you haven’t offered me so much as a glass of water, let alone a cup of tea. It’s all a bit petty and vindictive, isn’t it?’

Cass stared at him; he was incredible. ‘David, the last time we spoke, you said my relentless optimism was the real problem, that my being so cheerful was driving you mad. Always looking on the bright side, no sense of reality, never taking things seriously – that’s what you said.’

‘I’ve had time to reconsider, since the…get some sense of perspective.’ He glanced round the room. ‘I’m parched. Harry Fellowes and I had a really cracking game. He sends his regards, by the way. Now, about that cup of tea –’

Cass looked at David as if seeing him for the first time; he really was a piece of work. How was it she had never noticed that before?

‘I thought as you said you didn’t want to see Danny, you weren’t staying for long,’ Cass snapped.

What on earth had she ever seen in him? And why, if he was so bloody horrible, did it still hurt so much? Cass watched him as he tried hard to hold his pot belly in, and sighed. Being a woman could be such a pain in the arse at times.

He was still talking. ‘I thought that you’d understand. It seems obvious to me – we really have to look at it from Danny’s point of view, Cass. I think that it’s better if he doesn’t know I’m here. I really don’t want to upset him.’

Cass nearly choked. ‘Upset him? For Christ’s sake, David, you’ve already upset him. You walked out and left us, remember? There isn’t a day goes by when he doesn’t ask where you are, or when you’re coming home. He misses you like crazy. He wants to see you. I’m running out of excuses as to why you don’t want to see him. He adores you, David. You’re his daddy –’

‘You see, there you go again – everything a huge drama. You’re so demanding and difficult, there’s never any room for manoeuvre with you, is there, Cass? You always see the worst in people,’ David growled.

This was not the way Cass saw herself at all. She struggled to keep the sound of tears and hurt and anger out of her voice. ‘Why can’t you come round and see Danny? Tuck him in and read him a story, take him out for the day. You could go to the zoo or the beach – or just take the dog for a walk.’

David avoided meeting her eye. ‘Cass, you have to understand that things are a little difficult for me at the moment.’

Oh, Cass understood, all right. Having a six-year-old around calling you Daddy probably didn’t go hand in glove with David’s new teenage sexgod ethos.

‘I am very concerned about the way you’ve interpreted things, the way you look at life,’ David continued.

‘You don’t think,’ said Cass conversationally, ‘while we’re on the subject of personality traits, that the main problem here is not my doom-laden, overly pessimistic nature, but the fact that you ran off with Abby, by any chance, do you?’

David looked shocked, or at least made a good fist of trying to look shocked, and then shook his head. ‘Is that what you’ve told Danny?’

‘No, of course that’s not what I’ve told Danny. I told him that Mummy and Daddy loved him very much, but that we couldn’t live with each other any more because Daddy had got a new friend.’

‘Oh, Cass, there you go again – you have to be in the right, don’t you? You have to be the good one. And you always jump to the wrong conclusion.’ He managed to make it sound like the summing up in the case for the defence, not to mention everything being entirely her fault. ‘Let’s face it, Cass, this thing with Abby – surely you have to understand it’s a symptom of the problem between us, not the cause?’

‘And what do you think the cause is?’ she prompted.

David looked almost apologetic. ‘Well, we’ve already talked about your attitude –’

Cass felt his words stoking up the murderous rage that had been growing in her belly for the last fifteen minutes. ‘Have we? And what do you think about my attitude?’

‘Well, it’s hard to know where to begin, really. I’m very conscious of not wanting to hurt you – but, let’s face it, you’ve always had a very naïve take on life. I suppose it’s all your creative brainpower –’ He laughed in an unpleasantly patronising way. Thinking about it now, he sounded a lot like the policewoman.

‘Unworldly.’ His expression suggested he was being generous in his description. ‘You know, sometimes I felt that being with you was too big a responsibility, Cass.’

She stared at him, noting the past tense and wondering who the hell he had been living with for the last nine years? ‘And are you saying that Abby isn’t a big responsibility? Please don’t tell me she’s very mature for her age,’ Cass snarled. She saw he was about to speak and held up a hand to silence him. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, David? You’re making this up as you go along. It’s complete and utter rubbish. This is my house. When we first got together you couldn’t get a sofa on tick because your credit rating was so bad. I’ve always paid my way and sometimes yours. Even when Danny was a baby, I worked; I’ve sold stuff, I’ve taught…I don’t know how you dare accuse me of being unworldly. We’ve always got by.’

David nodded and rested his fingertips together as if passing sentence. ‘You see, that’s just it, isn’t it? Scraped through, managed, got by.’ He smiled indulgently, as if these were the worst words in the world. ‘The thing is, Cass, I don’t want to scrape by any more. It’s time to move on, but I don’t want you to feel bitter or unhappy about the past, pet. We’ve had a great time.’