‘So how’s work?’
‘Very good actually,’ said Cassandra. ‘I’ve just taken Jessica West on as a contributing editor, I believe you know her? Used
to go out with Rob Holland. It was quite serious at one point I think.’
‘Yes, I think he liked her,’ said Emma honestly, though it pained her to do so. ‘But I think she was a little too ambitious. I don’t think having stepchildren, playing happy families with Rob’s little girl, figured in her immediate masterplan.’
Cassandra smiled.
‘Yes, she told me that’s why she finished with him. According to her, he was very cut up about it and went running back to his ex – Madeline, isn’t it? Apparently Jessica saw them together in New York at somewhere glamorous like Sant Ambroeus. Sounds like they’re well suited, anyway. For all his rock ’n’ roll credentials, Rob is really just a Connecticut WASP.’
Emma stared down at the ground, dazed. While there was probably no way Cassandra knew about herself and Rob, her words were still designed to wound and they had had the desired effect, stabbing Emma in the heart like barbs. It all made sense. That was why Rob hadn’t phoned after their night in Somerset: he’d got back with Madeline in New York. Her mind whirled, desperate to think of some other explanation.
It couldn’t be true, could it? Rob didn’t love Madeline and she didn’t love him either.
But of course, love didn’t need to come into it. Rob was back with Madeline for the sake of Polly, to be a family because Polly was the most important thing in his life. She felt a tear slip down her cheek. Just one. It was an act of rebellion: telling her that her head and heart were in conflict.
‘Oh dear,’ said Cassandra with a quiet look of triumph. ‘Have I said something I shouldn’t?’
Emma turned swiftly on her cousin.
‘What is wrong with you Cassandra?’ she spat.
Cassandra turned and smiled, pulling her mink coat tighter around her body.
‘Oh dear, what’s rattled your cage? It’s not Rob Holland, is it? He’s slept with half of London, darling, so don’t waste your time.’
‘It’s not Rob, it’s
you.
You spread lies about me around the industry, you throw a party on the same night as the Milford launch, you even got that little creep from Astrid’s wedding to do a hatchet job on me! And now you think you can wind me up with stories about Rob.’
‘I’m only saving you from getting hurt, being foolish enough to fall for some cad like Rob Holland.’
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ replied Emma angrily. ‘You don’t give a hoot about me. It’s all about Milford. It’s all about getting even.’ Emma took a deep breath and tried to compose herself.
‘I never asked for Milford, or even wanted it, but it’s mine now and I want to make it into the best thing I possibly can. Stop blaming me, Cassandra. Stop hating me. Please just leave me alone to get on with it. Take out your frustrations elsewhere.’
Cassandra’s mouth curled viciously. She wasn’t a woman who was accustomed to having people say things to her face. She stared at Emma with a look of disgust.
‘For all that blue-chip education, and those fancy letters at the end of your name, you really don’t know anything, do you,’ she said, her voice a low, cold whisper.
‘I know enough, Cassandra.’
‘Do you?’ she barked a hollow laugh, ‘I really doubt that, Emma.’ She stopped in the street and faced her cousin squarely.
‘But you’re right about one thing. I do blame you. But not for being given the company, although I’m sure you must have manipulated Saul somehow. Emma, I’ve been blaming you since I was thirteen years old.’
Cassandra paused, her breath puffing in white clouds.
‘I’ve blamed you since the day your father destroyed my family.’
Emma actually gasped. She was rooted to the spot and could only stare at the woman, her head in the air, her slim, straight nose held aloft like a bloodhound.
‘I don’t understand you,’ she whispered.
‘It’s very simple,’ said Cassandra, her voice dripping with venom. ‘Your father had an affair with my mother. Did you know that, Emma? Is that one of the things you “know”? My father found out and he left her. He left
us.
Do you know how that feels, Emma? Do you?’
‘Cassandra, please.’
‘Oh yes, you probably think you
know
how it feels, Emma, because your father is dead. But it’s really not the same as someone
leaving
you. Mine didn’t want us any more and you’ll never know how that rejection makes you feel.’
Her cold confession had stunned Emma. She had been completely wrong-footed.
‘I’m sorry your father walked out on you,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady, ‘but it’s not
my
father’s fault. My dad didn’t have an affair with Aunt Julia. She’s my mother’s
sister.’
‘Another one of your certainties? Well, I saw it with my own eyes,’ spat Cassandra. ‘That first summer we went to Provence, the night of the party. Most of the kids were in bed, but I thought I was too old to be tucked up with the children. I walked out deep into the grounds, to that tool shed.’
Cassandra’s voice trailed off, as if it was taking every ounce of will to keep herself under control.
‘I saw my mother in there having sex with your father. Sex I didn’t understand then, but which I recognize now. Wild and hungry sex. Sex that breaks up families because it’s so exciting it’s like a drug which makes everything that’s gone before seem hollow and meaningless.’
‘It was dark, it could have been anyone,’ said Emma, knowing how weak her argument sounded, but still desperate to deny her father’s involvement.
‘It was them,’ said Cassandra. ‘My father left us three months later.
Abandoned
us. Your father broke up our family. I came back from my first term at school and he had gone. I grew up without a father.’
The moonlight was shining a milky light down at them. Behind them the church bells rang out their midnight Christmas peal.
‘So every kick you give me makes you feel a little better? Is that it?’ said Emma softly. ‘Well, it’s not going to bring him back.’
Cassandra turned towards Emma so quickly, she slipped on the icy path.
‘Don’t you dare give me your pseudo-psychoanalysis!’ she hissed. ‘You think your father ruined my whole life because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants? You think I’m some heartbroken little girl who’s using success to make up for Daddy not loving me? You’ve been watching too much Oprah, honey.’
Cassandra held up one hand, her fingers curling into a tight fist. ‘This isn’t about my hurt feelings, Emma. This is about
revenge.
’
Emma’s eyes widened as she saw the fury in Cassandra’s face.
‘And believe me, darling, I’ve barely even begun.’
Cassandra turned and strode on ahead. Emma could do nothing but watch her go.
‘Is it true?’
Emma was standing by her mother’s bedroom door. Virginia had changed into her dressing gown and was turned towards the dressing
table mirror, putting on face cream. In the dim light, her mother’s face was pale, almost ghoulish in the reflection.
‘Is what true, darling?’
Emma came in and sat on the blue and white gingham bedspread.
‘That Dad and Aunt Julia had an affair? Was that why Uncle Desmond left her?’
She watched her mother’s face carefully but she didn’t even flinch, she simply carried on with her task.
‘Who told you this?’ she said finally.
‘Cassandra.’
Virginia turned round to face her daughter.
‘Jonathon will be back in a moment,’ she said, looking over Emma’s shoulder. ‘He’s only gone to get some coffee.’
‘Cassandra said she saw them,’ insisted Emma. ‘She saw them together the summer before Dad died. Uncle Desmond found out and that’s why he left Julia.’
For a moment, Virginia had a faraway look in her eye as if her mind had drifted off somewhere else. Then her face tensed, as if she were about to deny everything, then her cool face saddened with emotion, as an old wound re-opened, raw and bloody.
‘Tell me, Mum,’ said Emma softly.
‘Some of it’s true, some of it isn’t,’ she said, walking over to the bedroom door and closing it. ‘Yes, your father and Julia had sex in Provence. You’re a grown-up, Emma, you know how it can happen. You’re drunk, it’s hot, you’re on holiday and caution flies out of the window on nights like that.’ Her voice had the edge of sarcasm and the hint of regret. It was as if she were reciting lines from an old play she had long ago ceased to enjoy.
‘How did you find out? Who told you? Dad?’
‘Saul,’ said Virginia quietly. ‘I don’t know how he knew. He told me he “suspected”. I suppose in the same way that I suspected. You can just tell you know, sometimes.’
Virginia closed her eyes for a moment, seeing it all as if it was only yesterday. She told Emma about the way her husband Jack and Julia had begun to avoid each other on the holiday; about the way her hand used to spring back from his when he touched her at the breakfast table; about the way two people who try to force themselves to be natural in front of one another, just end up looking even more contrived and unnatural. Emma could see the sparkle of a tear slip down her face; she who was usually so cool and
restrained, usually such a mask of control. Emma wondered if it had always been that way.
‘Julia and Desmond’s marriage was very rocky,’ she continued. ‘It had been since Tom was born when Julia became very depressed. Several weeks after the Provence holiday Desmond left her; Saul suspected that he had found out about Julia and Jack. So Saul called up Jack and asked him to come round to the manor for a conversation, a
man to man
chat.’
A small smile pulled at Virginia’s lips. ‘Saul was like that. He was dreadfully irresponsible in some ways but in other ways he really understood his position as head of the family. Anyway …’ she puffed out her cheeks, ‘… that’s when your father’s crash happened. On the way to see Saul.’ She gave a low, angry laugh. ‘The irony was that Des didn’t leave Julia because of any affair
she
was having. Julia and your father – that was a one-off on holiday. Julia told me that many years later. Des left her because he’d met Helen by then, the South African trollop he eventually went to Durban with. Julia hid it from the kids, she didn’t want them to know that Des was in a serious relationship so soon after he’d left them. She wanted to protect them.’
Tears were now running down Emma’s cheeks.
‘But Cassandra thinks it was all Dad’s fault.’
‘It wasn’t. And I don’t think Saul ever forgave himself for the accident. A fateful intervention,’ she continued with a slow sad smile. ‘Saul used to tell me over and over again that he’d left you without a father.’ She looked at Emma with a more controlled expression as if she was putting her mask back on again.
‘I don’t doubt that’s why he left you the company, Emma. It was his way of trying to make things up to us.’
Emma nodded, taking a tissue from the dressing table and wiping her eyes.
‘Who knows about this?’ she asked.
‘To my knowledge, no one apart from us and Julia.’
‘Cassandra certainly doesn’t.’
Virginia turned to her; the cold eyes were back and the shutters were down.
‘And you must make sure it stays that way.’
‘But she despises me. She’s trying to destroy the company and ruin me because she wants revenge for something she’s got the wrong way around!’ protested Emma.
Virginia grabbed Emma’s hand and squeezed hard.
‘No, Emma. I know Cassandra is hard work sometimes, but she’s suffered enough. Please, for me,’ she said, searching her daughter’s eyes, ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’
In her attic bedroom, a tiny room she had been furious about being allocated, Cassandra was unable to sleep. She sat on the bed, looking over to the small single bed in the corner, where Ruby was fast asleep. She watched the rise and fall of her breath under the duvet and felt a tug of guilt somewhere distant inside her. Did her daughter deserve a father? Cassandra had always rejected marriage in favour of her own career, thinking it would be better that way. That way, you didn’t get hurt. But was she right?
There was a decanter of port on her bedside table and she poured herself a small measure. There was no balcony in the cramped living space in the rafters, but there was a door leading to some narrow steps which led to the ground, a relic from when the chalet had servants living in the attic who needed to come and go without disturbing the family. Cassandra put on her cashmere robe and went out onto the wooden steps. She sank down, and breathed in the ice-cold air. So finally she had told Emma, had told someone. But instead of the sweet relief of sharing a secret she had kept for over twenty years, there was a terrible sense of emptiness – and she had to admit it, embarrassment.
I’m such a bloody cliché,
she thought, her cheeks flaming despite the cold. All that time, without even knowing it, she had used the pain and hurt to drive her onwards, to transform herself into something bigger and better than that bruised 13-year-old who felt so worthless.
If I make myself clever and pretty and successful, then maybe Daddy will come back,
she mocked with an ironic smile. But now it had been vocalized, it didn’t seem like such a potent force. Now it just felt like what it was; pain and envy so fierce it stuck in her throat and made her want to choke. Despite all Cassandra’s bluster and threats, Emma had been right on two counts: every kick she gave her did make Cassandra feel better; she simply wanted Emma to suffer the way she had. But Emma was also spot on when she had said it was futile: Milford was successful. She had achieved nothing.
She looked at the dark jagged edges of the mountains and took a deep lungful of air, trying to let go of all the tension so that she
could finally sleep. She was about to go inside when she heard the low creak of a balcony door opening beneath her and voices.
‘Come in, Rebecca,’ said a man’s voice. ‘It’s bloody freezing.’
Cassandra peeked over the edge, keeping in the shadows. From her lofty position, she could see the whole balcony beneath her. Rebecca and Roger were talking in low mumbled voices. Rebecca was trying to talk in a whisper but her anger made her words clear.