Page 27 of I Would Die for You

I lay her down in her bed and tuck the duvet up tight under her chin, as if it will create a shield that nothing, or no one, can infiltrate. “Did she ask any other questions about me and Daddy?”

Hannah shakes her head and I allow myself to believe that this woman isn’t intent on tugging on the thread that will unravel my entire life.

“How come she didn’t bring you back home?” I ask.

A sadness clouds her freckled features. “She said she was going to, but then she went to ask the other lady something…”

“What other lady?”

I wait two beats, suspended between the need to know and the need to let her tell me in her own time. When she turns onto her side and snuggles into Felix, I fear the latter is never going to come.

“Were theretwoladies with you today?” I press.

Hannah closes her eyes as she shrugs her shoulders, too tired to respond.

I stifle a sob as I gently run my fingers through her copper-red hair, remembering Brad’s shock when I gave birth. “Where in god’s name didthatcome from?” he’d laughed.

If he’d thought to look at the regularly discarded boxes of hair dye hidden at the bottom of the garbage can, he’d be in no doubt.

When I think of all the lies I’ve told and the secrets I’ve hidden, I’d be a fool to think I could get away with it forever. If I’m honest with myself, it has always felt like the truth was close on my heels, snapping away like an alligator whose prey is just out of reach. But until now, I’ve always managed to stay one step ahead, distancing myself from the person I was back then, in the hope that it would eventually create a gulf so great that even my darkest memories couldn’t traverse its narrowest point.

But in the dead of night, while Brad and Hannah are sleeping, those flashbacks come thick and fast, blighting the happiness I’ve worked so hard to find, convincing me that the only chance I have of defying the thieves of joy is to tell Brad who I really am. Yet by the first morning light this absurd thought has diminished along with the darkness, the reality of what the truth would do to him—to our marriage, ourlife—too much to bear.

Yet now it feels as if someone is gearing up to tell himtheirversion—and that may well be so much worse than my own.

13

LONDON, 1986

“Don’t move!” yells a voice, shattering the fantasy that Cassie was living out.

Ben’s hand freezes on her leg, the promise of what he was about to do immediately forgotten.

“What the…?” they both say simultaneously, as a barrage of helmeted policemen rush into the hotel room.

“Stay right where you are,” hollers one. “Don’t move a finger.”

Despite the instruction, Cassie finds herself lifting her arms in the air in shocked surrender.

“What have you got on your person?” barks the seemingly impatient leader of the pack, as his hands run roughly over Cassie’s body.

“I-I don’t have anything,” she says, confused by the question and the invasion of her personal space.

“Hey!” Ben shouts. “Lay off her!”

Cassie smiles, not only because she’s touched by his protectiveness, but also because for a split second she imagines that they’reall part of a stripper troupe who are playing a prank on them. She remembers Nicole having a stripogram for her twenty-first birthday last year and Cassie had been as intrigued by his sleazy routine as Nicole had been mortified.

“Well, come on then!” she says now, standing up from the sofa. “If you’re going to arrest me, can we make it quick?”

“What have you taken?” asks the policeman.

“Why, do you want some?” laughs Cassie.

“You’d better shut up,” Ben tells her.

“Cuff ’em,” barks the policeman as his colleagues rush toward the pair of them.

There’s still a part of Cassie that’s waiting for them to start taking their clothes off, but the force with which they snap the handcuffs onto her wrists makes her wonder through the haze of drugs if she’s read this wrong.

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