The Lying Game (12 page)

Zoey slammed her bag on top of the car.
‘None
of this is what I want! But if that woman insists on access to
my
child, she’ll have to come through me first! Courts
move slowly, Richard, you know that, especially when you’re dealing with two separate legal systems in different countries. There are ways to drag this out. Every month I can protect Nell
from this, I intend to. With any luck we can spin it out long enough for her to be able to make her own decisions when the time comes.’

Time.
That’s all she wanted. Time to find a way to prepare Nell for this, if such a thing was even possible. She knew she couldn’t keep it from her for ever, but Nell was
still only fifteen. Zoey wanted to protect her just a little bit longer. Was that really too much to ask?

Her question was answered ten days later when she answered the kitchen door and came face to face with a woman who could only be Nell’s mother.

In sixteen years, Harriet could count on the fingers of one hand the times she and Oliver had fought – really
fought.
When she’d cancelled a skiing holiday
because she refused to leave Florence – newly diagnosed with diabetes – with his parents and he’d castigated her as overprotective. When he’d taken out a new loan for the
business without telling her, using their home as collateral; although by the time she’d found out, he’d already paid it back with interest.

Now it seemed fighting was all they did.

‘You want to
abandon
your own daughter?’ she cried. ‘We know who she is, where she is, and you don’t even want to
see
her?’

‘I’ve always known who and where she is,’ he said shortly. ‘About ten feet along the hall.’

‘Be serious, Oliver.’

He stepped out of the shower and snapped a towel around his waist. ‘I’ve never been more serious.
Florence
is my daughter. How many times do I have to tell you
that?’

‘But she
isn’t!
When are you going to face up to that? You can’t keep burying your head in the sand!’

‘I’m not burying my head in the sand. I’m trying to protect Florence!’

‘And letting her live a lie for the rest of her life is protecting her, is it?’

‘Damn straight!’ he shouted. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Harriet? You started this thing, sending off those bloody toothbrushes to ease your guilty
conscience, and then you contacted the hospital behind my back after I begged you not to. When will you realize this isn’t just about you? It’s about all of us: you, me, Florence, the
boys – and another family who are being put through hell right now because of you! God alone knows how those poor people are feeling! How is this helping anyone?’

‘I was thinking of our daughter,’ she protested tearfully. ‘I had to know she was all right!’

‘Our
daughter is safe at home, here with us, where she’s always been! You weren’t thinking of anyone but yourself!’

‘That’s not true—’

‘Isn’t it? You’ve made a mess of things with Florence, and you thought this would finally get you off the hook. Give you a brand-new dream daughter to get it right with. Well,
I’ve got news for you.
You’re
the one who screwed up your relationship with Florence. It has nothing to do with whether she has our genes or not.’

She reeled. He’d never spoken to her like this,
never.
No matter how bad things had got, even in their worst fights when they’d reduced each other to tears, he’d never
gone for her soft underbelly, her Achilles’ heel. He’d always fought fairly. In their relationship, she was the one who stormed and yelled, and he was the voice of reason, even if that
reason caused him to be furious at times.

She’d thought he would understand, would forgive her, once she’d actually found their birth daughter. He’d want to see Nell – their daughter was called Nell – and
that would make everything she’d done to bring it about all right.

She’d never imagined he’d look at her the way he was looking at her now, as if he didn’t even know her. As if he didn’t
want
to know her.

‘I love Florence. This has nothing to do with how I feel about her,’ she pleaded. ‘I just couldn’t let Nell go, not now, not without—’

‘You keep telling yourself that,’ he said coldly, flinging his towel on the bed. ‘Maybe a part of it’s even true. But ask yourself this, Harriet. If it were Sam or George
or Charlie, would you still feel this way?’

She’d asked herself that same question many times over the past few weeks, and in the dead of night, when she stared up at the ceiling and forced herself to face the truth of who and what
she was, she’d known the answer was no. The ache and sense of loss would still have been there, of course, if it had been Sam or George or Charlie who’d been mixed up. But it
wouldn’t have been coloured by an emotion so shameful she found it hard to admit even to herself. It wouldn’t have been shot through with
relief.

All those times she’d asked herself what was wrong with her because she couldn’t feel the same bond with Florence she felt with her boys. All the times she’d looked at her
daughter and seen the eyes of a stranger looking back. The guilt and the doubt and the self-recrimination – none of it need ever have existed. She and Florence lacked the natural connection
of mother and child because they
weren’t
.

She loved Florence, there was no question of that. She’d step in front of a speeding train to save her. But there was a
reason
they weren’t close. There was a
reason
Florence had always felt like a cuckoo in the nest.

She followed Oliver as he stormed into his dressing room, automatically picking up his wet towel from the bed and putting it neatly in the laundry basket. ‘You’re not being
fair,’ she said, struggling to keep her emotions in check. ‘What was I supposed to do? Don’t you think Florence deserves to know the truth?’

‘Yes, maybe. When she’s older, when she’s more able to deal with it.’ He yanked on a pair of trousers and grimly buckled his belt. ‘We could have prepared her,
found a way to help her through it. We’d have been in control. But thanks to you, it’s out of our hands now. You’ve lit the fucking touchpaper and there’s no going back now.
God alone knows what you’ve brought down on our heads.’

‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ she said eagerly, following him as he stalked back to the bathroom. ‘There’s no reason everything has to change, not really. Once
we’ve all got used to the idea and the dust has settled—’

‘What planet are you living on?’ He turned to her, his expression incredulous. ‘What do you think is going to happen? We’ll swap daughters for a few weeks every now and
then like they’re a couple of exchange students? All go on holiday together like some big happy family? How exactly d’you think this is going to work?’

‘Divorced families manage it,’ she protested. ‘I know this isn’t the same, but if we all work together—’

‘We have no idea how this other family is going to respond. We know nothing about them. How do you know what they’re going to want?’

‘Why can’t you just try to be supportive? Is that too much to ask?’

‘I can’t support you, Harriet! Not on this!’

‘This is because of what I told you about Ben, isn’t it? I’ve said I’m sorry – I don’t know what more I can do. Nothing happened! It was only the blood group
thing that made me ever think it had! Ben’s out of the picture, the DNA test proves that. I’ve never cheated on you, I swear—’

‘This has nothing to do with Ben.’ He leaned on the vanity, his head bowed. ‘Harriet, I love you,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s not going to change. You’re
my wife. Whatever you’ve done, I’m not going anywhere. But I’m struggling very hard to understand how you could have gone behind my back on something this important. Do you think
I’m not hurting over this too? Don’t you think I care about that little girl out there as well? But this isn’t about either of us. It’s about Florence.’

‘I understand that.’

‘Well, you have a strange way of showing it.’

‘But if Nell’s family want to try to work something out? If they feel the same as I do, what then?’

He sighed. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let them make the next move. You’ve got to give this time, Harriet. Stop pushing it. Promise me you’ll leave this
alone for now, until we decide –
together
– what comes next. Please. I need you to promise me that.’

‘I promise,’ she said.

At the time, she meant it.

She stared up at the crumbling Georgian terrace in front of her in dismay. This wasn’t what she’d expected. She and Oliver had a restaurant on Islington’s
Upper Street, neighboured by expensive antique stores and chic clothes shops and stylish French bistros; the homes in the streets nearby cost upward of seven figures and had Audis and BMWs in their
‘Residents Only’ parking bays. When she’d found out Nell lived in Islington, she’d pictured her sifting through rails of designer jeans or laughing with her friends as she
drank cappuccinos at a pavement café. Not . . .
this.

She peered through the grimy window of the shop. ‘Born-Again Vintage’. Dear God. She
was
in the right place.

She glanced down the street. How had her child ended up living in a place like this? Rubbish littered the pavement, spilling out of black plastic bags dumped by the side of the road, and more
than one window in the row of narrow houses in front of her was boarded up. A lurching derelict pushed a supermarket trolley laden with his scavenges along the other side of the street; two
teenagers slouched past her as she lingered, speculatively eyeing her handbag. Quickly, she flicked her diamond engagement ring around so that the stone dug into her palm and was no longer visible.
She stuck out like a sore thumb in her court shoes and expensive grey trouser suit. She should have just worn jeans.

She eyed the shop again. A sign in the window said it was open, but she could see neither customers nor staff. Maybe Nell didn’t actually
live
here, she thought hopefully. Perhaps
this was just the shop address.

She walked to the end of the street and turned right, and then right again, approaching the terraces from the rear. A group of teenagers lounging against a parked car watched her sullenly as she
approached, and she studiously ignored them. For the first time, she wished Oliver were here.

She’d honestly never intended to break her promise to him. She’d been so certain that once Nell’s family had got over the initial shock they’d want to reach out to her
the way she’d reached out to them. She’d created a legal fund to fight for Nell as a precaution, that’s all. She was sure she’d never actually have to use it. Florence was
this woman’s biological child, for heaven’s sake. How could a mother ignore that?

But her lawyer had been very clear. This woman, Zoey Sands, wanted nothing to do with either her or Florence. She’d refused even to consider it. Despite pressure from both Harriet’s
lawyer and the hospital director – who was desperate to avoid any publicity and wanted to make this go away in any way he could – the woman had refused to budge.

Oliver said she had to let it go.
Give it time,
he kept saying.
Let the girls grow up a bit more, keep their childhood innocence as long as they can.
But she’d already
given up fifteen years! How could she bear to miss another day of Nell’s life when she’d missed so much already?

So she’d gone behind Oliver’s back. She’d found Zoey Sands’ address, and she’d told her husband she was going to New York for a few days to celebrate a
friend’s American book launch. Which, in fairness, she had done. And as soon as it was over, she’d got on a plane to London.

She stopped now outside the rear of number 33. Once she met Zoey, woman to woman, mother to mother, she knew they’d work this out. Oliver need never know how it had happened, need never
even know she’d been here.