Page 37 of I Would Die for You

Tears immediately spring to my eyes and I grind my teeth together in the hope that it will go some way to stop them from falling.

“It’s that woman on the CCTV, isn’t it? You know who she is.”

His jaw twitches involuntarily and I throw a hand up to my mouth to stop me from calling out. How could he bring me somewhere like this, to tell me something like that? That’s almost as disrespectful as the act itself. How can he have so little regard for the twenty years we’ve spent together as to bring me here to tell me it’s all been a lie?

I can’t look at him, so instead my eyes focus on a woman walking across the bar toward us, with her hair falling around her eyes and an unreadable expression.

I force a tight smile as she gets nearer, sure that I know her from somewhere, though in my heightened state I’m struggling to place her.

“Hello again,” she says, stopping in front of me.

Her eyes lock with mine and I feel like I’ve been electrocuted with a cattle prod. An unfathomable shock runs through me, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. This can’t be happening. Shecan’tbe here.

I look manically from Brad to her, my brain going into free fall as I wait for one of them to determine how this is going to go. But she stands there, on mute, making an already excruciating situation all the more agonizing. But I suppose that’s the idea.

She smirks, as if enjoying my discomfort. “Well, isn’t this a coincidence?”

Isn’t it just?

“I don’t suppose you’ve had second thoughts about what we discussed?”

“Er…” I bluster, feeling my mouth dry up. “I… not really, no…”

Zoe looks to Brad. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says apologetically. “I was just hoping to convince Nicole to help with something.”

“I-I don’t believe we’ve met,” he says, his voice sounding unlike his own.

“I’m Zoe,” she says, reaching across the table with an outstretched hand.

I want to snatch it away, not wanting the man I love to be tainted by my past.

“You’re English?” observes Brad.

Zoe nods. “Just visiting for a week or two.”

The stilted silence that follows begs to be filled, but I don’t trust myself, my brain unable to think fast enough to justify this woman’s presence.

Brad looks to me, the cogs turning as he no doubt attempts to second-guess our relationship. I’m not surprised he’s struggling; I’d not spoken aboutanyonefrom “back home.” Over the years, I’d sporadically thrown in an occasional mention of a Gina or a Caroline, both of whom I knew at school, though not well enough to remember their surnames; but they’d given me a footing in the past, an anchor on which to hang a superficial history that went some way to convince Brad that the woman he’d chosen to spend his life with had had a perfectly normal upbringing in England.

And I suppose I had, up until a point. But then it had all got turned upside down and the “normal” I’d taken for granted was destroyed, so that nothing was ever normal again. The life I’d had “before” was forcibly wiped from my consciousness, with no trace left of the person I’d been and the life I’d led.

Brad had often tried to get me to revisit the trauma that had so suddenly descended upon our unsuspecting family, even though he had no concept of what had really happened and how deeply scarred it had left me. “Perhaps if you went back to England, with me by your side, you could put the bad memories to bed once and for all,” he’d say, believing that it was the death of my sister that was responsible for the cavernous wound that had left me hollow.

“You’ll have your own family with you this time,” he’d said in his efforts to convince me to face my demons. “And nobody can ever take that away.”

I couldn’t help but blanch at the empty promise. The people you love canalwaysbe taken away.

“We could visit your old haunts,” he’d said during his latest attempt. “Give Hannah a sense of your life before us.” He’d looked at me hopefully. “Perhaps we can even show her your sister’s resting place?”

His naivety was dangerous.

“No!” I’d snapped, as the truth sat heavily on my chest. “I’m never going back there.” I’d meant it both literally and metaphorically.

“What are you so afraid of?” he’d said, letting out a heavy sigh of resignation.

This, I answer silently now, as I look at Zoe, unable to believe that everything I’ve spent years running away from is about to catch up with me. Here, in this dirty, windowless bar.

“I’m writing a book,” Zoe goes on, slowly and painfully perforating the life I’ve spent years building. “And I was hoping Nicole might be able to help me with my research.”

---