Page 43 of I Would Die for You

I suck in a breath. “Yes, but thankfully justice prevailed.”

“So, what’s this woman doing here now, then?” he asks, looking more worried than mad. “What does she want?”

“She was after some help with her book—I assume looking to fill in some blanks, but I told her I wasn’t interested in being dragged back to the past.”

“What day was she here?”

Bizarrely, it’s the question I’ve been most frightened of. “Wh-what?” I stutter.

“What day was she here?” he asks again, slowly and deliberately.

“Erm, I-I can’t really remember.”

“Well, was itbeforeHannah went missing, or after?” His patience is wearing thin and I’ve run out of places to hide.

“I think… I think it was the same day…” My vagueness lends itself to someone who genuinely doesn’t know, but it’s etched into my memory, and I’m a fool if I think Brad doesn’t know me well enough to see it.

His nostrils flare. “So, this has something to do with what happened to her.”

“What?No, of course not. Why would you think that?”

He snorts derisively. “Are you honestly telling me it’s pure coincidence? That our daughter going missing has nothing to do with your mucky past being raked up on the very same day?”

“Yes,” I say, sounding far more forthright than I feel. “There would be no reason on earth why what happened twenty-five years ago would result in anything happening to Hannah.”

“You’d better be telling me the truth,” he warns, his features pinched.

20

LONDON, 1986

The last four weeks have been as surreal as they’ve been testing, the juxtaposition of what’s been happening outside the house with the turmoil of watching her mother’s slow deterioration ripping Nicole’s emotions to shreds and scattering them in opposite directions.

How is she supposed to feel? How is she supposed to imagine what next week will bring, if she can’t predict what will happen tomorrow? So much feels up in the air, like she’s living in an unenviable limbo but where there’s only one possible outcome. Is it any wonder, then, that every time she’s with Ben, she’s consumed not only with the guilt of forgoing precious time with her mum, but the constant fear of Cassie finding out that the man staring out at her from her bedroom wall is so much closer than she thinks.

But now that Nicole has temporarily moved back home, she needs space to breathe, and spending time with Ben, writing songs and making music, allows her to do that.

“I didn’t know you were such a prolific songwriter,” she says, struggling to hide her emotions as he plays her a new song in the studio she’s come to feel surprisingly comfortable in. The meaningful words and soulful voice sound as if they belong to one of the Motown artists her mother used to listen to.

“Do you like it?” he asks, looking at her with nervous trepidation. “Honestly?”

“It’s amazing! Have you recorded it?”

He shakes his head. “I’m trying to convince management to release it as our next single, but there’s some… resistance, shall we say?”

“Who from?”

He laughs, but there’s an uneasy edge to it. “The management aren’t sure that it sets the tone of a Secret Oktober record. They think it’s too melancholy and grown-up for our audience. I keep telling them that they’re underestimating the angst of a teenage mind.”

“But that line, ‘Look at those before you, to know who you want to become’ will sing to the hearts of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls all over the country.”

Ben shrugs his shoulders despondently. “But it’s not just management I have to convince. Other band members aren’t exactly ecstatic that I’m writing my own songs either.”

“Why wouldn’t they want that?” asks Nicole, knowing that to date the band’s music had been penned by a hit-factory production team. It had led to the snobby music press labeling their records as just another tune on the conveyor belt of mediocre. “Surely it’s a good thing.”

“There’s a lot of stuff that the public don’t get to see,” he says, his eyes downcast. “And a lot of it would surprise you.”

“Like what?” Nicole can’t help but ask.

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