Page 69 of Cuckoo

I shrugged, though I felt a dull ache in my chest. ‘Yeah, well. I guess I’m just nobody.’

‘You’re not nobody, Claire. Don’t say things like that. What did Noah say?’

‘He told me she’s rotting away in hell and we don’t need her money anyway. That I have him even if I don’t have her, and that I’m his whole world and she didn’t deserve me.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Sukhi said, nodding.

‘And as far as you recall, that was the end of the harassment? After the social media blocking?’ Dodgson asks Noah.

‘No. She got my phone number somehow, kept leaving me weird voicemails, so I switched off the messaging option and left my phone ringing out. I don’t even know how she got my number – it must have been online somewhere for work or something. She even came to my office. I told the receptionist not to let her in again. I gave security photographs of her. I even gave some to Lilah to give to her own office, in case Claire went after her as well.’

‘What do you mean bywent after?’

‘Well, I didn’t know what she wanted– whether she was after money, or if she was unhinged, or what.’

He pulls at his tie, and I wonder if he is about to choke on all his lies.

‘And so she was now blocked from all your social media, banned from your office, and that was the end?’

‘Well, I also got some emails through to my work address, but I don’t know who they were from. The email was anonymous and the address was a mix of random numbers and letters. To be honest, I didn’t even get them for ages– they were going into my spam folder. But then one day I was looking for something and I found them all, hundreds of them. They were short, saying things likeI love you, andSee you at dinner. I was so confused, but I assumed someone just had the wrong email address. Now I am convinced it was her.’

‘Hearsay!’ Grosvenor objects, standing up, but her voice wavers in a way I haven’t heard before. My eyes are closed; I can’t bear to look at anyone in this room.

‘Andthatwas the end of the interactions?’ Dodgson asks, rolling his eyes at Grosvenor in a way that I would find incredibly offensive were I not busy loathing my fiancé for the first time in my life.

‘Yes, for a while. I had begun preparing a log for use in requesting a restraining order by this point, but I hadn’t heard from or seen Claire again, so I figured she got the message and was done with me.’

‘At what point did you begin to feel concern for your safety, enough to keep a log?’

‘When I saw the Photoshopped images of us together online. Lilah convinced me it was too far, that I had to put an end to it. I did it to keep her happy – I didn’t really want the hassle.’ Noah’s voice wavers when he says her name. My knuckles whiten.

‘We even put a deposit down on a guard dog, just to make Lilah feel a little safer.’

Rosie’s Rottweilers was to protect them from me?I want to laugh, but I want to cry even more.

‘You felt you were in enough danger to require a protection dog?’ Dodgson asks.

‘Well, no, I never thought it wasdangerous.But Lilah was just so weirded out about it all and I wanted to do anything I could to make her feel safer in the house, especially as we were trying for a baby. If she was pregnant, I’d have wanted her to have someone at home to protect her while I was at work. The dog seemed like a good choice.’

The blood is bubbling in my veins, hot and molten.

‘And still you chose not to go to the police?’

‘Lilah wanted to,’ Noah admits, running a hand through his hair and looking down. ‘Obviously I regret not doing so now,’ he says, and his voice breaks. He wipes a tear away.

‘Why did you not?’

‘Because I didn’t want my affairs to be discovered. I was worried that if they began to look into this woman and her interactions with me, then more would be uncovered. Relationships that were real affairs, and I didn’t want Lilah to find out,’ he admits, breaking into a sob, one hand covering his face.

‘And the affairs that were raised, Miss Choi’s testimony– do you have anything to say about that?’

‘They happened, and I’m sorry, but they have nothing to do with this trial, or with what happened to Lilah. If I could take back ever speaking to any of those women and get Lilah back, I would.’

My eyes are boring into his,willinghim to look at me, even for just a second. But he doesn’t, and I know why. Because he can’t. My fiancé cannot bear to look me in the eye while he lies, lies, lies through his teeth, to get me locked up. I hold my chin a little higher, as though daring him to glance my way, to unravel, to break and tell the truth to this jury, to thisworldof people who have been fed lies from his entire circle, his entire fucking contacts book.

But, of course, he doesn’t.

Grosvenor calls for a recess, and that’s when I know I’m screwed.

---