Page 45 of The Lie
‘Hi,’ he said, making no move to kiss or embrace her.
She stared at him, stepping back so he could enter the house before her, then closing the door. The atmosphere in the sitting room was heavy and still. Finch stood, arms crossed, in front of the empty wood-burner.
Romy frowned. ‘You look awful.’ She did not sit either, and they faced each other across the length of the coffee table in silence.
Suddenly his fierce demeanour crumpled and he covered his face with his hands. ‘Oh, Romy. This is so terrible. I don’t know how to tell you.’
Heart bursting, she crossed her own arms tight across her chest, trying, somehow, to still the cold panic rising through her body.What on earth?
Finch took a loud, rasping breath and began to pace up and down the small space by the stove. Then, as quickly as he’d started, he ground to a halt and faced her again, his look determined now, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘It’s Grace.’
Romy said nothing. Neither did Finch, for what seemed like an eternity.
‘Right … Start from the beginning,’ he said finally, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘I was telling her about you, and she seemed happy for me. Her only worry was that you weren’t divorced from Michael yet, and had gone back to look after him … She thought I might be being a mug.’
‘I’d probably think the same,’ Romy said.
Finch didn’t seem to hear her, just twitched at her reply as if it were a passing fly.
‘But then I told her more about you and mentioned Michael, used his full name.’ He stopped and eyed her, as if this fact held some significance. But Romy didn’t get it.
‘So?’
‘Grace knows Michael, Romy. From when she did work experience with him when she was sixteen …’
Romy froze.Work experience, sixteen. The words were so etched on her brain that Finch did not need to finish his sentence.
‘There’s no easy way to say this …’
She heard his next words as if from another universe and found her legs going from under her as she fell back on the sofa.
Finch’s expression was tortured. She saw him swallow hard. ‘Did you know?’
The letter. Romy blanched.It was Grace who wrote the letter. Multiple thoughts cascaded through her brain – but she was too shocked to make sense of them.
‘Did you, Romy?’ Finch’s question was more strident this time.
‘No,’ she muttered, not looking at him. ‘No, not at the time … and not that it was Grace.’
There was silence and she glanced up to see bewilderment on Finch’s face.
Taking a deep breath, Romy went on, ‘I got an anonymous letter …’
‘A letter? When? What did it say?’
‘Exactly what you’ve just told me.’ Romy held her breath.
She heard Finch gasp. ‘So youdidknow. You were actually told your husband had assaulted a sixteen-year-old child,’ his emphasis on ‘your husband’ cut through her like a knife, ‘but you did nothing about it?’
‘It wasn’t like that. I had no idea who it was from.’ Romy, heart pounding, tried to gather her thoughts. ‘And it only arrived three years ago. WhatcouldI have done when there was no name or contact details? And Michael flatly denied it, of course.’ The words of the letter sprang before her eyes:I just thought you should know who you’re married to. Romy could quote the letter verbatim, but that phrase, in particular, haunted her, pushing through her day-to-day thoughts at random intervals in the following years. It had only begun to fade since she’d moved to Sussex and distanced herself from Michael – since Finch had started to divert her into different waters.
‘Do you still have the letter?’ Finch demanded.
She nodded.
‘Show me, please.’
She got up, shaking, and went to retrieve it, locked in her dressing-table drawer. Now she wished she’d torn it up when she’d had the chance.
