Page 86 of I Would Die for You

“Why weren’t you honest about who you were when you first came to see me?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I suppose I was scared of how you might react. I didn’t want to dredge up all the bad memories of a time I assumed you’d rather forget.”

I can’t help but be touched by how considerate she is, even though her undeserved empathy feels like shards of glass in my throat whenever I swallow.

I reach across the center console, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “Your father would be proud,” I choke, unnerved by the feeling of her skin against mine.Hisskin against mine.

“When did you know?” she asks in a small voice.

I wipe away the errant tear that I can’t stop from falling onto my cheek. “If I’m honest with myself, I think I probably knew the very first moment I saw you. Something about your eyes, the shape of your jaw, burrowed its way into my subconscious, although I was too scared to give it air to breathe.”

“What are you frightened of?”

I snatch back my trembling hand. If only she knew.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” she says.

I refrain from asking why it seems that trouble has followed me around ever since she arrived.

“So, whatdoyou want?”

There’s a lengthy pause. “Answers, I guess. I want to know what really happened to my father. What happened to you. Why you ran away.”

“Ididn’trun away,” I say, far too sharply.

“It seems like you did, from where I’m sitting.”

Is that honestly what she thinks of me? But then I pull myself upshort. Why would she think any differently? All she’s undoubtedly been told was that I left the very first moment I could, taking my version of events with me. Is it any wonder then that she wants to know more,needsto know more, about the event that has shaped her life and so many others’ since?

“After the trial, I just…” My voice wavers as I remember taking the stand, knowing what I knew and waiting for it to be revealed. “I just needed to get away. I was still getting over what had happened, trying to hide myself away, but the trial meant that my entire world erupted all over again. It was day upon day, week after week, of questioning and speculating, both in court and in the media. They were desperate to tarnish your father’s character, needing to prove that he deserved what happened to him, but I refused to give them what they wanted.” I look to her. “Do you know why?”

She shakes her head.

“Because he wasn’t entirely the man they made him out to be. Your father was a lot of things, but know this: had he lived to see you, to know you, he would have loved you unreservedly. He didn’t deserve to die, and all of us who were there that day were accountable in some way or another. Every one of us played a part in what happened: me, Michael, Ben, my father, my sister… We were all to blame in some way or another, and it haunts me every day to know that it would have taken only one tiny variable to stop it.”

“That’s what I’ve always been told, too,” says Zoe sadly. “That but for a particular sequence of events, none of it would ever have happened…”

I nod regretfully, ruing the sacrifices we’ve all had to make since that day, not least Zoe, who has missed out on so much since being born among the ruins of a shattered dream.

“I’m so very sorry,” I manage. “If I could go back and change it, please know that I’d do so in a heartbeat.”

“Funny—my mother used to say the same…” says Zoe, half smiling at the memory. “She always wished that things had beendifferent. That she could have given me the real family she thought I deserved.”

“So, she was honest from the outset?” I ask.

“As soon as I was old enough,” says Zoe, nodding. “It was little things at first, like your tape in the attic. I don’t think she was expecting me to find it—it was pretty well hidden—so when I started asking questions about it, I think she was taken aback. I was still young, and I don’t think she was ready. But bit by bit, year after year, she opened up a little more, slowly revealing my history and telling me who I really was.”

“She sounds like an incredible woman,” I offer, though I can’t help but admit that it pains me. “And to be so generous as to help you find me…”

“Oh,shedidn’t help me find you,” says Zoe. “Aunt Cassie did.”

46

LONDON, 1986

“Are you looking for Cassie?” asks a voice, as Nicole hurriedly makes her way through the teenage throng that has congregated on the concourse outside the Savoy hotel. Hearing her sister’s name, here, out of context, jolts her like an electric shock.

“Where is she?” demands Nicole, turning toward a girl who looks vaguely familiar–but with her scrambled brain, Nicole can’t even begin to work out where she recognizes her from.

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