Page 3 of I Knew You Were Trouble

‘What Idoknow,’ he continues, ‘is that my sister – her name’s Adriana – recently got engaged to a man she barely knows, a man I’ve never met. So, I looked into him.’

I latch on to the detail with the least power to derail my entire life. ‘You looked into him? You mean, you investigated him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’ I ask, imagining Willem engaging a private investigator, an old-school one with a cluttered office, a sassy receptionist, and nicotine-stained fingers.

‘I’m a cyber security consultant. I have access to information, and I know what I’m looking for – mostly.’ It sounds simple when he puts it like that; though plainly it isn’t.

‘Which is how you found me?’ I ask quietly.

‘Yes.’

I drag my eyes from his tractor-beam gaze, dropping them to the table where someone has roughly carved ‘S + B’ into one of the slats. My mind starts vomiting up vignettes of me and Jon, which appear then vanish in quick succession.

Michelin-star dinners at Le Gavroche… Watching the world’s greats play at Wimbledon… Champagne brunches at Duck & Waffle on a Sunday morning… Wandering through Hyde Park with takeaway coffees, and stopping to pet other people’s dogs…

‘I’m really sorry, Kate,’ says Willem gently. ‘It must be a shock. That’s why I wanted to tell you in person.’

I jostle my head to dislodge the romantic snapshots. Because there are other memories lurking, more sinister ones, and they skulk into view, mocking me.

Jon excusing himself to take a hushed phone call in the other room… Jon suddenly leaving at 11p.m. because the airline needed him to fly to Cairo at late notice… Jon not introducing me to his only family member, an aged mother who’s in a care facility in Harrow, despite me asking numerous times… Jon dismissing my questions about his life before me with, ‘Oh, you don’t want me to bore you with all that.’

Were these instances of Jon’s double life intruding on ours?

Something else occurs to me. Jon rarely wanted to stay in, always insisting that I ‘put on something nice’ and we go out. A sickening feeling washes over me.Is everything I feel for Jon one-sided? Am I simply someone to wear on his arm?

‘Wait,’ I say, my head snapping up, ‘are youpositivethey’re the same person? There must be dozens of Jon Dunns. What proof do you have that my Jon is the same man who’s engaged to your sister?’

These are the desperate questions of a woman who knows better, but grasping at straws is far more palatable than admitting I’ve been deceived, that Jon is cheating on me. It’s also easier than questioning the very nature of our relationship.

Willem presses his lips together, his jaw pulsing, then he reaches into the messenger bag by his side and takes out a document-sized envelope. He sets it on the table between us, his fingertips resting on it lightly. ‘This is a summary of the evidence I’ve collected to date, but I suspect there is more to uncover.’

‘More to…?’ I look at the envelope, my heart pounding and my stomach lurching. I lift my gaze. ‘I think I’m going to need that drink after all.’

* * *

‘Kate, seriously, what the actual eff?’

Margot is sitting cross-legged on the floor of my lounge, surrounded by the evidence Willem gave me at the pub. It’s obvious she’s shocked – and it takes a lot to shock someone like Margot. She’s usually the one doing the shocking.

‘I mean, this…’ she continues, holding up the page she’s been reading. ‘This is irrefutable.’

‘I know,’ I squeak from the sofa where I’m curled up in the corner, legs tucked beneath me.

Her eyes soften, bathing me in her unique brand of love, as dozens of thoughts play behind her intelligent brown eyes.

Margot is my only cousin on my dad’s side. She’s eighteen months older than me and because her mum died suddenly when she was a baby and her dad worked away a lot, picking up odd jobs wherever he could, she mostly lived with me and my parents. Essentially, we grew up as sisters – even though we look nothing alike. She’s petite and wiry with olive skin, a round face, and large brown eyes – almost pixie-esque, especially now that she’s dyed her close-cropped hair bright pink. Then there’s me: tall and willowy with wavy, dark-blonde hair, a pale complexion, green eyes, and attractive but otherwise non-descript features. Total opposites.

Regardless, Margot is my closest friend and fiercest ally. And as soon as I called with my news, she abandoned her Friday-night plans – a feminist poetry reading at a bookshop in Soho – and came straight here.

She picks up another page and continues reading, intermittently murmuring and tutting, her face set in a scowl.

As she reads, I eye the slew of papers littering the rug. Ostensibly, I’ve read every page –twice– but only some of the details have stuck. After a while, the revelations were so extreme, the words began swimming on the page, and an odd sort of numbness came over me.

Regardless, it didn’t take long to get the gist. Jon lied – about pretty much everything – and he’s currently engaged to both me and Adriana de Vries.

Memories of us start popping up again, only now they have the word ‘LIES’ stamped over them in fat red letters.

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