Nick was oddly upbeat when he got home from work. He called out to me as he slammed the door, then
bounded through to the kitchen, where I was stirring a pasta sauce on the hob, a glass of red wine at my
elbow. ‘Something smells good,’ he said, leaning in to give me a kiss, his tongue unexpectedly slipping
into my mouth. I could taste the whisky on his breath.
‘What we having?’ ‘It’s Bolognese,’ I said. I’d squeezed it out from a pouch I’d bought at the deli: since
Christmas, I hadn’t really felt like cooking. It spoke of hearth and home, of family. If I risked roasting a
chicken, I’d inevitably end up salting it with my tears. ‘You seem chipper,’ I said, trying not to sound
judgemental about the fact. ‘The Hutton deal closed today,’ he said. ‘That place is off the scale. It’s not
just the house. Acres of land, workers’ cottages. It should complete next Friday.
Serious pay day.’ He squeezed his body next to me and I dropped the wooden spoon into the pan. ‘I was
thinking, why don’t we fuck all this off and go to Paris for the weekend? Celebrate?’ ‘Nick... It’s
Sophie’s hen night that weekend.’ ‘You invited?’ I took a sip of my wine, feeling myself flush. ‘Not as
such, but I don’t think she’s really thought it all through yet.’
His face crumpled up with sympathy. I suspected he was thinking back fondly to Josh’s three-day
extravaganza in Amsterdam, where he’d been the star guest, but he at least had the good grace to ke ep it
to himself. ‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘Right now, we need to be invincible. That woman’s trying to destroy
our family, and we can’t let her. We need to double down.
Rachel needs to see us as a unit. We’re her stability – she’ll come back to us, I know she will. All this
shit is going to blow over.’
‘But they’re treating us like criminals!’ I said, both exasperated and comforted by his blithe confidence.
‘It’s a bullshit case, and we’re gonna fight it. And then we’re going to destroy that fucking charlatan.
How’d you get on with Deborah?’ I felt my body shrink away from him. I picked up the spoon, running
it through the bubbling sauce. ‘She was as dull as ever,’ I said. ‘But she did admit that Amber’s seen a
lot of those St Johns girls. Called her a “strong character”. And...’ I was hesitant about the next part, but
before I’d eked out any words, Nick was crossing to the fridge, pulling out an open bottle of Sancerre.
‘That means there’ll be others, Lily! All we need is to get some of those families corroborating the
manipulation, and we’re back in business to get her for coercion.’ He let a torrent of wine waterfall into
his glass. ‘I was thinking we should look at getting a private detective onto her, and I’ve definitely
found us the right lawyer. She’s a fucking bulldog by all r eports.’
I was desperately grateful for his energy – for the slipstream it created, swe eping us forward – but I was
barely listening to the plan he was laying out. I k ept thinking about what Deborah had said: she already
knew who you were. Something stopped me confiding what she’d said to my husband, some sixth sense
as to where this was taking us. I picked up my phone, googled Amber’s website, even though the mere
sight of her made me cringe. I held it out to him.
‘You don’t recognize her, do you?’ He batted it away, grimacing. ‘I’ve seen quite enough of that
fucking woman’s ugly mug the last few weeks.’ He pulled a ridiculous ‘listening face’, a parody of hers,
which would have made me giggle in a parallel universe. As it was, I could barely remember the last
time I’d laughed. ‘Not from the website! I mean – you don’t think we knew her, do you?’
I stared at my phone, transfixed by Amber’s photograph. The cobalt-blue eyes, the half-smile that
played across her rosy lips. The barely-there make-up that made her look simultaneously beautiful and
wholesome. That agelessness of hers had always unnerved me, and it did so more than ever now. It
provided cover.
‘I’ve never clapped eyes on her, Lily.’ Nick kissed me again. ‘Just stop thinking about her, okay? Let’s
just try to have a nice evening. I think you need a top up.’ As he reached for the bottle, I k ept staring at
her picture. How could it be that she was familiar and unfamiliar all at once? Was it just my fevered
mind, playing horrible tricks on me?
Or was it something far, far worse?