“Where are they then?” Trish glared at her. “Why the hell aren’t they here?”
“They’re safe,” Cassie said. “But they’re not in this house.”
Now Trish was looking at her with a shocked expression, as if a worm she’d been about to crush had turned into a spitting cobra.
“What’s going on?”
“I thought you and I needed to talk, alone. Would you like to sit down?”
Cassie gestured to the chair and then tugged her coat closed again. She couldn’t stop her hand from moving toward the inside pocket, before she quickly lowered it.
Trish was watching her intently.
“Why do we need to talk?”
Cassie forced herself to speak as calmly as she could, even though she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking.
“Trish, I know you murdered Ryan. You put the rat poison in his wine. There’s no doubt about it. But what I want to know is why? It can’t just be because he had an affair with me. You must know what he’s like. So—why?”
Trish started to laugh. The unpleasant, bell-like sound pealed through the room.
“Open your coat.”
Cassie stared at her, her eyes wide, her face stricken.
“Why must I?” Now her voice shook.
“Call it a whim. Because I’m not stupid. Huddled in a coat in a warm kitchen? Really? Go on, open it.”
Cassie’s face crumpled.
Slowly she opened the coat.
“I can see it there. Take it out, sweetie. Don’t make me come and do it for you.”
Cassie’s hands were shaking so badly she could hardly remove the Dictaphone from her inside pocket.
It wasn’t an expensive model, like Trish’s had been. It was a much cheaper one, which Harriet had picked up on the way to fetch Dylan and Madison, who were now at Harriet’s house.
Cheap it had been, but Cassie had hoped it would do the job. Now she bit her lip, staring at Trish with silent appeal as she placed the item on the kitchen table.
“Let’s take a look.” Trish picked it up.
“Goodness me, it’s recording and all. But not for long.”
She turned it off.
“How cute. You were hoping to tape my confession. Well, unfortunately, I’m not playing along. In fact, I think we’ll get rid of this altogether. What a shame you had to waste your money. Not that you’ll have a chance to spend it in jail.”
She threw the small, silver recorder onto the floor.
Then she stamped on it. Cassie watched, horrified, as Trish brought her tough, shiny boot down on the recorder over and over.
“No,” she cried. “Trish, please, no.”
It didn’t take long for its flimsy shell to splinter. Within a minute, the recorder was lying in fragments on the floor. Cassie stared at it, and then back at Trish, and she knew that her face must be a picture of devastation.
“No,” she whispered over and over.
She could only imagine what Trish thought, watching her. How pathetic, how broken she looked after her rookie effort at deception had failed.
“You needn’t bother to sweep it up before you go,” Trish told her sympathetically. “I’ll do that while I wait for the police to arrive.”
She laughed again.
“Would you like some wine?”
When Cassie shook her head, Trish shrugged.
“Well, I’m having some.”
She opened a bottle and poured herself a glass.
“Cheers,” she said, and the smile she gave Cassie was without any trace of warmth.
“You’re right. I did kill him,” she said. “I put the poison in his wine. I wasn’t as drunk as I looked. And, trust me, when I heard him yelling at you on the balcony, I sobered up rather fast.”
“You killed him because he yelled at me?” Cassie asked incredulously.
Trish sighed.
“Try and apply some intelligence, will you? No, I killed him because of what he threatened you with. Look, screwing around was not his prerogative. My trips overseas? Trust me, darling, we had an open relationship and I didn’t grudge Ryan his little flings. I didn’t even care that he was a compulsive liar, or that he was bad with money, although it did get tedious having to bail him out every so often.”
“What was it then?” Cassie asked. Her lips felt numb and she struggled to get the words out; her voice sounded flat, as if she no longer cared what Trish’s motive was.
“He threatened to call social services. He promised the children would show evidence of abuse. You know something?”
Trish pulled out the chair opposite Cassie and sat down, leaning across the wooden table in a conspiratorial way.
“You must have really got to him, because I haven’t ever seen him so angry. Clearly, you pushed all his buttons. But threatening to harm my children is unacceptable. Having social services come round and investigate would be extremely inconvenient, and it would risk damaging my reputation. My career relies on an impeccable record, as my company deals with corporates, celebrities, and politicians at the very highest level.”
Cassie cleared her throat.
“You want to say something?” Trish asked. “Please, go ahead. The floor is yours. You could call this our girls’ get-together.”
Cassie’s voice trembled audibly as she spoke.
“I think you were worried your children might tell social services about other things. Like threatening to poison Dylan’s rabbit or pull Madison off the stage. That’s abuse, too, I think.”
Cassie watched Trish’s face twist with anger.
“Oh, my word, you have been getting friendly. Well, enough of that, I’ll have a word with them later about tale-telling. I’m sick of you, and your pathetic attempts to hide your affair, and your lame efforts to ingratiate yourself with my children. Now, tell me where they are.”
Cassie stood up and moved round the other side of the table, keeping it between them.
Every muscle in her body felt tense. Her breath was rapid and shallow and she willed herself to be strong, to keep reaching for that inner steel, because if she buckled now, it would all be over.
She moved aside a folded dishcloth on the kitchen counter.
Next to it was her cell phone; it had been in plain sight, but yet camouflaged, because she’d drawn all Trish’s attention to the hidden recorder. She picked it up
