Life Sentence by A.K. Turner

Author:A.K. Turner [Turner, A.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zaffre Publishing

Chapter Twenty-Six

The following day Cassie went to her grandmother’s for Sunday lunch. At first it looked like Weronika had gone along with her request for something light – serving up Polish rolmopsy, salad and miseria, proudly pointing out the substitution of crème fraîche for full-fat sour cream in the latter. But then she went and blew it with dessert.

Cassie had just finished her second slice of home-made kremowka.

‘Another little piece maybe?’ Weronika wheedled. ‘You are looking so thin in the face!’

‘Are you kidding?’ Cassie pushed the plate away. ‘And remind me, when did multiple layers of pastry, buttercream, and real cream, count as “light”?’

‘A little treat is good for the soul.’

Cassie suppressed a smile at this exchange – worn to a soft shine by a thousand repetitions. It was good to see her grandmother apparently fully restored to her old self.

The buzz she’d got last night at the mortuary after hearing – or imagining she’d heard – her mum’s voice had faded, leaving her feeling depressed and deflated.

Not my style. To what? To get gruesomely murdered? Or to have an affair?

It wasn’t much help. She realised what had been lurking half-consciously at the back of her mind during the photographic post-mortem she’d conducted on her mum. The dumbass idea that she would find some big fat clue to clear her dad of the murder.

After lunch, she and her grandmother shared a comfortable silence, listening to the hiss and pop of the gas fire. Cassie was close to dozing off on the sofa when Weronika asked, ‘How are you, tygrysek? I know how hard it must have been for you, learning what happened to your mama.’

Surprised into a candid reply she said, ‘The hardest thing is finding out my father was alive all those years.’ She blinked. ‘Sorry, Babcia—’

Weronika raised a hand. ‘No, it is I who should be making the apology. I have been thinking it over and I realise now what a very wrong thing it was for me to do. I had no right to rob you of the knowledge that you still had a father.’

‘You had good reason after what he did.’ If he did it.

‘No.’ A firm headshake. ‘Whatever kind of man he is, whatever he did, you had the right to know you still had a parent living once you were old enough. What you chose to do with the knowledge should have been up to you.’

That partly assuaged Cassie’s guilt about having seen her father – not that she had asked him to pop up out of nowhere after a twenty-one-year absence.

‘It was probably for the best, given that he showed zero interest in me while he was in prison.’

Her grandmother set her hands on the arms of her chair to lever herself up, before going to retrieve something from the old mahogany bureau where she kept her correspondence. She put a sheaf of envelopes into Cassie’s hands, which were all addressed to Weronika Janek, here at the flat.

‘Go on, take a look.’

Opening one, Cassie found a single sheet of notepaper and written in a looping hand, ‘For Cassandra’.

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