The Lying Game (24 page)

‘Journalists?’

‘Photographers.’

‘What, like
paparazzi?
Why on earth would they want photos of
me
?’

‘At a wild guess, I’d say it has something to do with you and Nell,’ Mom said grimly. ‘I can’t think of any other reason they’d be here. Go upstairs and get
your father. And try not to wake Gran. This is the last thing she needs.’

Florence found Dad in the shower. By the time he’d grabbed a towel and followed her downstairs, Mom had already flipped open her laptop and was furiously surfing various news sources.
‘I can’t find anything online,’ she said tersely. ‘It’s not in the
Mail
or any of the broadsheets.’

‘What the hell is going on?’ Dad demanded.

‘Someone’s leaked the story about the girls,’ Mom said shortly.

He leaned over her shoulder, dripping water onto the screen. ‘Are you sure?

‘Take a look outside,’ Mom snapped. ‘Why else would we have snappers camped on the doorstep? Someone’s broken the story, and now half of Fleet Street’s chasing
it.’

‘Mrs Lockwood?’ a voice called suddenly, echoing down the hall. ‘Mrs Lockwood, this is Lesley Morgan from the
Daily News.
Can I talk to you a minute?’

Mom stalked towards the front door, Florence close behind her. She could see a pair of heavily made-up eyes peering through the mailbox. ‘What do you want?’ Mom demanded.

‘Please, Mrs Lockwood, if you’d just open the door—’

‘I said
what do you want?’

‘Have you seen our story today, Mrs Lockwood?’

Mom turned to Dad, hovering out of sight in his towel. ‘It’s the
Daily News.
See if you can find it online.’

The woman crammed a folded newspaper through the mailbox. ‘It’s our lead story. Look, Mrs Lockwood, I’m here to help. I’d like to hear your side of things. If you could
just open the door—’

‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Mom snapped, grabbing the paper and turning on her heel.

Florence caught a glimpse of the headline above the fold.
Teen Girls Switched At Birth. Newborn daughters who were accidentally mixed up in a maternity hospital and grew up with wrong
parents have been reunited – with devastating consequences. Florence Lockwood and Nell Sands . . .

Mom tossed the newspaper into the empty fireplace. ‘How did they get hold of this?’ she demanded.

Dad shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know? The hospital, I should think. Someone in the admin office probably leaked it. I’m surprised it’s taken this long to come out, given
the stink you made there.’

‘So this is
my
fault?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘How did they find us?’ Florence asked.

‘The same way I found Zoey and Nell,’ Mom sighed. ‘As soon as you have a name, you just have to look online.’

‘No, I mean, how did they know we were
in London?’

There was a long silence. Mom sank onto the sofa. ‘She’s right,’ she said tiredly ‘How would any of the papers know that? Nell and Zoey would be easy to track down, but
surely the first port of call for anyone looking for us would be Vermont? Even if they knew we were in London, how would they guess where to look? Morgan’s a very common surname – there
must thousands in London. They’d never have found my parents this easily. Someone must’ve tipped them off. Someone we
know.’

Dad raked his hand through his wet hair.
‘Who?
Only our families know we’re here, and none of them know the truth about the girls, because we were waiting for your father to
be well enough before we broke the news. No one else knows.’

‘Zoey does,’ Florence said uncertainly.

They both stared at her.
‘Zoey?’
Dad exclaimed. ‘She’d never talk to the papers! She’s wanted to keep this quiet even more than we have!’

‘Newspapers pay a lot of money for this kind of story,’ Mom said slowly. ‘And Zoey needs a lot of money very much.’

‘Sell out her own
daughter?
Come on, what kind of person d’you think she is?’

‘A desperate one, trying to keep a roof over her head.’

‘She’d never do that,’ Dad repeated. ‘No matter how desperate she was.’

‘Why don’t we call her and ask?’

‘Are you
serious?
You actually think it was her?’

‘So what if it was?’ Florence said unexpectedly. ‘I’d rather she and Nell got the money than anyone else. They’re the ones who need it. They’ll lose their
shop and their apartment otherwise. Like you said, the story was bound to come out sooner or later. At least this way Zoey and Nell get something out of it.’

‘Either way, she’s probably got photographers on her doorstep too,’ Mom added. ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t phoned us already. At the very least we need to talk
to her to discuss how we’re going to handle this.’

‘She won’t be at home,’ Florence said. ‘She told me last week she was going down to Bath for some special antiques market this weekend. I remember because she said she
was getting the early train, and she hates getting up early.’

‘What about Nell?’ Mom asked.

‘She’s spending the weekend at her friend’s house.’

‘In that case, we’d better try Zoey’s mobile,’ Mom said tersely. ‘And before you start, Oliver, even if she wasn’t behind this story, she still needs to know
what’s going on. Florence, you should call Nell and warn her too. Tell her to stay at her friend’s house for the time being, out of sight.’

Dad gripped the damp towel at his waist. ‘You’re overreacting. It’s not the end of the world. We just need to release a statement and move on. It’ll be yesterday’s
fish-and-chip paper by next weekend.’

‘Really?’ Mom snapped. ‘I didn’t realize you were such a PR expert. There’s no such thing as yesterday’s news any more. The Internet has seen to that. This
story will still be out there in the ether when Florence and Nell have teenagers themselves.’

‘Does that really matter?’

‘Yes, it
matters
! Apart from anything else, my father’s in no state to deal with this right now, and nor is Mum, to be honest. And what about the rest of our families,
having to read about this over the breakfast table instead of hearing it from us? You can be sure the American networks will pick this up once they discover the US connection. Florence is going to
have to deal with this all over again when we get back home. Think what that’s going to be like for her.’

‘It’s OK,’ Florence said staunchly. ‘I don’t care. You’re still my mom and dad, and that’s what I’ll tell everyone.’

‘Good girl,’ Dad smiled, giving her a hug.

‘Oh, Oliver. You’re not even dressed,’ Mom said illogically ‘Florence, darling, you don’t understand. I worked in PR for years. I know what the press can be like.
They’ll follow you everywhere, trying to take pictures, talking to your friends . . .’

‘But what if we give them an interview?’ Florence suggested. ‘Me
and
Nell. Let them take all the photos they want. It’ll be over and done with, then.’

Mom hesitated. ‘It would put a stop to this circus, certainly,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘We could do an interview with one of the better papers – the
Mail
or
Express
would be our best bet. The supermarket magazines will pick it up, but they’re not going to chase you down the street. Maybe a slot on one of the daytime shows. If we pull
this all out in the open now, it’ll be chaos for a week or two, but then the story will run out of steam.’

‘So let’s do that, then,’ Florence said.

‘Hang on a minute,’ Dad protested. ‘She’s got no idea what that means. Live television, for God’s sake! She’s only fifteen!’

‘Do you have a better idea?’

‘Yes! We sit this out and wait for them to go away! Call the police if necessary! I could take Florence to visit your aunt in Montreal—’

‘I think we should ask Florence,’ Mom said firmly, turning towards her. ‘What do
you
want to do, darling?’

Florence felt a sudden glow of pleasure. Regardless of the circumstances, it was the first time Mom had treated her like an adult and actually considered her opinion. Maybe things really
had
changed.

She peered through the bamboo blinds at the photographers on the front steps and around the railings. There were at least four or five of them, plus a dozen or so curious bystanders who’d
gathered to see what was going on. It was like that scene in
Notting Hill
when Hugh Grant opened the door to see the world’s paparazzi waiting for Julia Roberts. Well, maybe not
quite that many people, but loads, anyway. It was actually kind of exciting. If she ended up on TV, her friends would be able to see it on YouTube; she’d be almost famous. And all she had to
do was talk about how it felt to be her. How hard could that be?

‘I want to do it,’ she said.

‘In that case, I suppose we’d better see what they’ve got so far,’ Mom sighed. ‘Florence, can you hand me the newspaper?’

Florence picked it up from the empty fireplace, unfolding it as she did so. She stared at the colour photograph beneath the headline, struggling to make sense of what she was seeing. Suddenly,
she felt sick.

‘Dad,’ she said, her whole body trembling as she turned to her father. ‘Dad, why were you kissing Zoey?’

Zoey was on the train down to Bath when she saw the newspaper. Another passenger had left it behind on his seat when he got out at Swindon. He’d been halfway through the
sports section; it was only when she flipped the paper back to the front page that she saw the headline.

And the photograph.

Her first panicked thought was not for Oliver, or Harriet, or even Nell, but for Florence. How could they ever make this up to her, how could they
ever
put it right? She felt physically
sick just thinking about what the child must be feeling. She’d told Florence she could
trust
her. How could she have let her down like this?
How?

She’d lose her for ever now. Even if by some miracle her daughter forgave her, Harriet certainly wouldn’t. She’d never let her anywhere near Florence again.

Oh God. Harriet.
What a terrible thing to do to a woman who, whether she liked her or not, had never been anything but her friend. She’d felt guilty enough when she’d been
having the affair with Patrick, but she’d been so
young
then – she’d had no idea what it was like to be a wife. She hadn’t really stopped to think how it must feel
to be the heartsick woman sitting alone at home, night after night, wondering where her husband was, what he was doing – and with whom. She’d never met Patrick’s wife,
didn’t even know her name. She’d just been a faceless shadow, an
obstacle,
not a real person with feelings; a woman who, after all, had had a prior claim on Patrick. Zoey
filled with hot shame now to think how careless she had been with another woman’s heart, how cavalierly she’d excused everything because of
love.

But what she had done to Harriet was a thousand times worse. Harriet had welcomed her into her home, into her
family.
She’d met her children, sat down and eaten with them, leafed
through family photograph albums filled with Harriet and Oliver, Oliver and the boys, Florence and her parents. She’d known exactly, intimately, what this affair had been jeopardizing.

The train pulled into Bath and she grabbed her old-fashioned Lady Bracknell carpet bag and got out, crossing straight to the platform on the other side. The display board told her there was a
train back to London in thirty-five minutes. She had to go home and face the music. She couldn’t leave Nell to deal with this on her own.

She sank onto a bench and buried her head in her hands. She’d never meant any of this to happen. That night in Maine had been a mistake – a dreadful, unforgiveable, unrepeatable
mistake. She’d struggled through the next two crucifying days only by clinging to the knowledge that there would soon be four thousand miles between her and Oliver. Four thousand precious,
safe, unbreachable miles.

She’d done everything she could to stop the Lockwoods coming to London. It had broken her heart to think of never seeing Florence again, and knowing how keenly the poor child would feel
the rejection had rubbed salt into the wound. But she’d told herself it was for the best. She’d absorbed Nell’s anger, Harriet’s frustration, Florence’s hurt, sticking
resolutely to her guns to protect them all. It had been Oliver who’d talked her round, who’d persuaded her that the only way they could atone for what they’d done was to make
Harriet happy, which meant giving her the big family summer reunion she’d wanted. She
never
should’ve listened to him.

She raised her head and blew her nose loudly on a grubby tissue culled from her coat pocket. No point denying how much she’d wanted to be persuaded. She was just as responsible for this
mess as Oliver. She’d let him talk her into agreeing to the London visit, knowing how dangerous it was, because she’d wanted to see him again more than anything. She hadn’t
expected him to appear out of the crowd at the market with Florence, but the moment he had, her world had exploded from grey into technicolour. Her knickers had practically hummed. She’d seen
the way he’d looked at her, too. As if she were naked. And
she
was the one who’d sent Nell and Florence off together, leaving the two of them alone. She’d let the
afternoon by the canal happen. She’d
wanted
it to happen.

She could tell Harriet it had just been a kiss. One snatched kiss, the heat of the moment, too much wine and sunshine – and maybe Harriet would even believe her. But the damage
hadn’t been caused by the kiss itself. It was the
intimacy
: erotic, undeniable, captured on camera for the entire world to see. How could any wife forgive that?

Somewhere in her bag, her phone rang. She started, tempted for a moment to ignore it, and then realized it might be Nell and frantically groped through cough sweets and sunglasses and spare
umbrellas and folded magazines and charity flyers – she could never say no to those poor people standing on pavements, desperate to get rid of their bundle for the day – until she found
it.