The Cinderella Moment

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.’

‘Pet? A great time?’ she yelled. ‘We’re talking about a marriage here, David, not a day trip to a bloody theme park. Would you like to tell me what you came round for – aside from letting me know that everything is my fault – if you don’t want to see Danny?’

‘There’s no need to talk to me like that.’ David looked hurt. ‘And I’d be grateful if you kept your voice down. We don’t want to wake him up, do we? I’ve been to see my solicitor today.’

Cass’s eyes narrowed; she could sense a trap.

‘The thing is –’ he said quickly, before she could interrupt the flow – ‘I’ve got a lot of responsibilities and outgoings with the new business. I mean, we’re doing well – but…’ David hesitated. ‘It’s not been an easy year for the firm, one way and another, and I was wondering…well, you’ve got this house…’ He looked around thoughtfully, while Cass tried to work out exactly where the conversation was leading.

‘Your point being?’ she said.

‘Well, for one thing, I’ve come to discuss the idea of maintenance for Danny. I was thinking that maybe we could settle with a one-off payment rather than all this monthly malarkey. I was thinking something in the region of…what shall we say?’

Cass waited with bated breath.

‘I mean, presumably you will remarry at some time.’

‘David, you’ve been gone three months.’

‘Exactly. That’s what I’m saying – things move on, times change. How would you feel about, say, five thousand pounds?’ he said cheerily.

Cass stared at him, not quite able to believe what she was hearing. ‘What?’

‘Well, it seems fair. I mean, if we want to go with the letter of the law, legally I’d probably be entitled to half your house if I wanted to push it. But that would be mean, wouldn’t it?’

Mean? Cass didn’t know what to say, or where to begin, or at least she didn’t trust herself to open her mouth. What a complete and utter bastard.

‘So what do you think?’ he pressed.

‘I think that you ought to leave.’

He smiled. ‘So you’ll consider my offer then?’

‘I had Abby’s parents round over the weekend,’ countered Cass, her tone icy cold.

David paled. ‘Ah, right. And how are they?’

‘What do you mean, How are they? How do you think they are, David? They’re looking for someone to blame for why you ran off with their precious little girl.’

Cass paused, waiting for David to suggest that that, too, was her fault, but fortunately he just nodded. ‘You know, it’s sad really. They simply can’t see that the way they’ve treated her is at least half the problem. She is so, so complex – so fragile. It’s not easy. They’re not easy people to get on with, apparently. Abby has been telling me how they –’

‘David,’ Cass snapped, ‘they are perfectly reasonable people who are worried to death about their eighteen-year-old daughter running off with a man old enough to be her father.’

David flinched as if she had punched him. ‘Hardly old enough to be her father, Cass. Come on now, you have to admit that that’s a bit of an exaggeration.’ He ran a hand back over his thinning blond hair – which, it struck Cass, was several shades lighter than when he had left.

‘David. You’re forty-four –’

‘Forty-three, actually.’

‘All right forty-three, but you’ll be forty-four next month and, whichever way you add it up, surely to God you can see that Abby’s parents are worried sick about what’s happened – and they have every reason to be. As far as they were concerned, come October their precious little girl was off to De Monteford to do something meaningful in social sciences, and now here she is shacked up with some ageing Lothario in a love nest above the laundrette.’

David glared at her, his face fire-engine red. ‘You can be so bloody cruel at times.’

‘You mean when I’m not being pessimistic or a terrible burden?’

‘This is no joke, Cass,’ he snapped.

She got to her feet. ‘I wasn’t being funny. I think you should leave now.’

Reluctantly, David got to his feet. ‘So what do you think of my offer?’ he asked again.

‘I took it in the spirit in which it was made, David,’ she said, guiding him towards the front door.

‘Meaning what, exactly?’ he asked.

‘That I think you’re taking the piss. I’m going to see my solicitor and, in the meantime, I am seriously considering accepting a managerial position I’ve just been offered in Brighton.’

David’s jaw dropped. ‘What?’

‘You heard me.’ If she was going to be accused of being a cow, Cass decided, she might as well enjoy a few of the perks. She also didn’t bother pointing out that she was only going for the summer, nor that she would be managing Barney.

It totally wrong-footed David. ‘I hadn’t thought – I’m not sure how I feel about that. I mean, where does that leave us?’

‘Us?’ Cass said incredulously. ‘What the hell do you mean, us?’

‘What about Danny?’ he blustered.

It was all Cass could do not to punch him. ‘Don’t talk to me about Danny. You’re the one who planned your visit so that he was asleep when you got here.’

And then there had been Abby’s parents, who had been another complete nightmare. They couldn’t see beyond the fact that it had been Cass who had offered Abby the job after she had replied to an ad in the corner-shop window. Everything that had happened from then on, it seemed, had been everybody else’s fault except Abby’s.

‘She’s very naïve and young for her age. We thought it would be safe, letting her work here, didn’t we, Moira? We’re very upset about how things have turned out,’ said Abby’s father. It didn’t seem to occur to either of them that Cass might be hurt or upset too, or that their daughter might have had any part in seducing, flirting with, or encouraging David. Oh no, that it seemed was absolutely impossible.

‘We thought of her as our little girl,’ said her mum, tearfully. ‘You know, she hasn’t rung or been round or anything since…well, you know.’ They were talking about Abby in variations of the past tense, as if running off with David was the same as dying.

‘She was just a baby, really,’ agreed her father.

Cass nodded. Their little girl, their baby, who turned up to clean house in a pink lycra crop top with Sex Kitten in silver sequins across the front, no bra, breasts so pert they would have taken an eye out of the unwary, and a denim micro skirt that, combined with the top, was every dirty old lecher’s dream ticket. Abby may well have been young, but Cass had a horrible feeling that she had known exactly what she was doing when she sashayed across the sitting-room floor pushing the Hoover and plumping cushions. Certainly she had been just what David’s mid-life crisis needed.

3 (#ulink_a1c2bada-2e09-58b0-9c8e-263e01f2e8ee)

Cass, holding her breath, standing up on tip-toe and reaching as far as she was able, struggled to tease a big holiday-sized suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe with the very, very tips of her fingers, watched by a wide-eyed and increasingly anxious Danny.

‘Are we going on holiday?’ Danny asked in a nervous little voice.

‘No.’