Page 41 of You Can't Hurt Me

“I don’t know, are things ever easy with family?”

“Quite. Thanks for sharing, Anna,” he says and I smile, relieved that I got away relatively lightly. Is it purely coincidence that my professional life has been spent chasing other people’s secrets while I’m always on the run from my own? In the end, you only come back to the beginning.

But no more. It’s time for the real work to begin.

“Quid pro quo,” I fire back. “Your turn now. That’s the deal.”

15

“Don’t worry. Take your time.”

I glance down at his hands interlaced on the table and the slim gold band gleaming on his wedding finger. As I look, he reflexively touches it with his other hand, his fingers sliding it up and down, an imperceptible shift in mood.

“Everything okay?”

He swallows hard, arms crossed tight around his chest. “Sure, I guess, but before we get into all this, I’ve been thinking.”

He hesitates, pausing as a waitress approaches us. We sit in a moment or two of insufferable silence while she removes our unfinished plates, glacially circling our table. As she finally walks away, Nate starts again.

“I can see it’s been a bit of a battle for you, trying to get to the bottom of the story. I know how I can come across. It seems to me we’ve probably got a bit more in common than we thought.”

“I somehow doubt that,” I say, dryly.

“I meant we’re inquisitive but too good, perhaps, at deflecting personal questions. Both of us have different reasons. I have theories about yours—”

“I’ve just told you all there is to say,” I cut through impatiently. “And what’syourreason?”

Silence. He looks unconvinced, but then lets out a longer sigh. “It absolutely can’t go in the book, or anywhere.”

“Of course, I’ve signed the NDA form. Whatever you say is completely confidential.”

“There’s no way you can record any of this. For Eva’s sake. You do understand, don’t you?”

I pick up my recorder sitting between us, slide it across to him. He checks it’s switched off and passes it back toward me.

“No one has to know about whatever you and Eva are hiding, but youneedto tell me what really happened, even if it’s only to know how we’re going to conceal it.” My voice has fallen to a whisper.

He glances down at his hands. “Our marriage was complicated.”

“As most marriages are.”

“Ours more than most, I think.”

I look at him in silence, willing him to say more.

“Eva and I were so different. It was a case of opposites attract, you could say. She was open...to all sorts of things when we first met, sexually, recreationally. Drugs, well, cocaine. I’m not sure exactly how often she took it. It was a social thing, mainly, but it contributed to our growing arguments.”

“You knew about it? At the inquest you denied you knew anything.”

“I needed to protect her. I was her husband. Kath was convinced her sister wasn’t a regular drug user and I wanted to support her. I’d told Eva many times she was mad to take it, that her mom had died of a heart attack in her fifties; there was a history of heart disease in her family. But she told me I was making a fuss. What’s the harm in a line or two, she would say. What could I do?” He shrugs. “But it wasn’t just drug-taking. The fact is...she was seeing someone else.”

I blink, taking this in.You little fool.Of course, it was an affair.

“Nate, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“No? You, the journalist who can read everyone?”

“Well, perhaps not everything. Anyway, you can never really understand any marriage unless you’re inside it and even then... But are you sure?”

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