Believing the Lie (67 page)

“I can’t promise—” But he ended the call before she could finish. She said to Lucy, “
The Source
reporter is on his way in. This is out of my hands unless you wish to tell me more, something I can spin to keep him away from you. It’s to do with money, I expect. You’ve agreed to be a surrogate for Alatea, and Alatea is willing to pay you more than just your expenses, isn’t she? That would put you on the wrong side of the law. It explains why you misdirected me yesterday.”

Lucy said with some passion, “Look at me. Look at this job. All I need is time to finish my play, to have it workshopped, to be able to revise it, and I
don’t
have time and I
don’t
have money and the surrogacy agreement between us was going to give me both. So you can make a story out of that if you’d like, but I hardly think it’ll sell any papers. Do you?”

She was, of course, dead right.
Scion of Fairclough Fortune in Illegal Surrogacy Deal
might sell some newspapers, but the story would have legs only if there existed a bouncing baby whose winsome picture could be run along with the tabloid’s disclosure, along with a typical tabloid caption, something like
Purchased Baby Fairclough, Sold by Surrogate Mum for £50,000
. The story of an illegal deal going unfulfilled couldn’t even be sold to
any
tabloid since there would be nothing to prove it save Lucy’s claim, which would be denied by Alatea Fairclough. The story of a deal in which an infant could be produced as proof would be hot and lively, but since there was no baby to speak of, there was also no story.

On the other hand, Deborah now knew why Alatea Fairclough was in a panic about her. The only question was whether Ian Cresswell had discovered this situation in some manner and had threatened Alatea in the one way she could be threatened by him: through money. If Lucy was to be paid for the surrogacy, then the money would have had to come through Ian Cresswell. He had been the man in control of the Fairclough fortune. Unless she had funds of her own, Alatea would have had to strike some kind of deal with Ian.

This of course brought up Nicholas Fairclough’s role in the surrogacy arrangement. He would have had to know and to agree, which meant he would have had to be part of digging up the funds to pay for everything.

She said to Lucy, “What about Nicholas, Alatea’s husband?”

Lucy said, “He only—” but that was as far as she got.

The maddening Zed Benjamin burst into the room. He said to Deborah, “Enough of these Scotland Yard double crosses. We’re doing this together or not at all.”

Lucy cried, “Scotland Yard double crosses? Scotland
Yard
?”

Zed said to her, jerking his thumb at Deborah, “Who the hell d’you think you’ve been talking to here? Lady Godiva?”

ARNSIDE
CUMBRIA

Alatea had managed to send Nicholas off to work. He hadn’t wanted to go and chances were very good, she knew, that he wouldn’t stay there. But the only thing she had to cling to at this point was a semblance of normalcy, and what constituted normal was Nicky heading to Barrow and after that to the pele project.

He’d been unable to sleep again. He was filled with remorse, seeing himself as the person who was bringing Raul Montenegro down upon her.

Nicky knew they’d been lovers, she and Raul. She’d never lied about that. He’d also known she was on the run from Montenegro. In a world in which fixated stalking had become just one more thing a woman had to worry about, Nicky had had no trouble believing that she needed to be protected from this multimillionaire from Mexico City, a powerful man determined to have what she’d promised him, a man in whose home she’d lived for five years.

But Nicky had never known everything about her, about Raul, and about what they’d been to each other. The only one who knew the story from start to finish was Montenegro himself. He’d changed his life to be with her; he’d altered hers to bring her into a world she’d had no chance to make her own before she’d met him. But there had been elements of Raul that he’d never made quite clear to her, just as there had been elements of herself that she’d never made quite clear to him. The result had been a nightmare from which the only chance of awakening was to run.

She was pacing and considering her final options when Lucy Keverne rang. She made her announcement tersely: The woman from the previous day had returned, and she hadn’t come alone. “I had to tell her the truth, Alatea. Or at least a version of it. She left me no choice.”

“What do you mean? What did you tell her?”

“I kept it simple. I told her that you’ve had trouble becoming pregnant. She does think your husband knows, however. I had to make her think that.”

“You didn’t tell her about the money, did you? How much I’m paying…Or the rest…She doesn’t know the rest?”

“She knows about the money. She worked that out easily enough because I’d told her about the egg harvesting yesterday and she knew money was connected to that, so she reckoned there had to be money connected to the surrogacy, and I could hardly deny it.”

“But did you tell her—”

“That’s all she knows. I needed money. End of story.”

“Not about—”

“I didn’t tell her how, if that’s what you’re worried about. She doesn’t know—and no one will
ever
know, I swear it—about faking the pregnancy. That part is yours and mine to hold: the ‘friendship’ between us, the holiday together too close to the due date, the delivery of the baby…She knows nothing of that and I didn’t tell her.”

“But
why
did you—”

“Alatea, she gave me no choice. It was either tell her or face arrest, and that would hardly put me into the position of helping you later, when all this dies down.
If
it dies down…”

“But if she knows and then there’s a baby later on…” Alatea went to the bay window and sat. She was in the yellow drawing room, its cheerful colour doing little to mitigate the dull grey day outside the house.

“There’s more, Alatea,” Lucy said. “I’m afraid there’s more.”

Alatea’s lips felt stiff as she said, “What? What more?”

“She had a reporter with her. The choice she gave me was to talk to him or to have Scotland Yard—”

“Oh my God.” Alatea slumped in the chair, her head lowered, her hand holding her brow.

“But why is Scotland Yard interested in you? And why is
The Source
trying to write about you? I
have
to ask because the one thing you promised—you guaranteed this, Alatea—was that no one could possibly root out the deception. Now between Scotland Yard and a tabloid, we both stand in very good stead to be—”

“It’s not you. It’s not me,” Alatea told her. “It’s Nicky. It’s the fact that his cousin drowned.”

“What cousin? When? What’s this got to do with you?”

“Nothing. It’s got nothing to do with me and nothing to do with Nicky. It’s just what brought Scotland Yard up here in the first place. The journalist was here to do a story on Nicky and the pele project, but that was weeks ago and I don’t know why he’s come again.”

“This is a mess,” Lucy said. “You do know that, don’t you? Look. I do think I’ve managed to keep the reporter from getting a story out of all this. What’s there to report? You and I talking about a surrogacy arrangement? There’s no story in that. But as to the woman…She claimed that she could produce the detective from Scotland Yard with a wave of her hand and he said that she
was
the detective, which she denied. But she wouldn’t say more and by that time things were falling apart and…For the love of God, who
was
this woman, Alatea? What does she want with me? What does she want with you?”

“She’s gathering her information,” Alatea said. “She’s making sure she knows who I am.”

“What do you mean, who you are?”

The instrument of another, she thought, eternally never who I wish to be.

VICTORIA
LONDON

Barbara Havers spent the morning keeping her nose to Isabelle Ardery’s assigned grindstone, which had a great deal to do with meeting a clerk from the CPS on the invigorating subject of comparing all the statements taken from everyone connected to the summer death of a young woman in a north London cemetery. She hated this kind of work, but she did everything save salute when Ardery gave it to her. Better to prove herself in ways beyond her manner of dress, she reckoned, which was today letter perfect, as a matter of fact. She’d
donned her A-line skirt, navy tights, and perfectly polished court shoes—well, there was one little scuff but some spit had taken care of that—and she’d topped this with a new wool sweater that was finely knitted and
not
, mind you, of her usual heavy-gauge fisherman’s variety. Over that she’d shrugged into a subtle plaid jacket and she’d even put on the single piece of jewellery she owned, which was a filigree necklace purchased the previous summer at Accessorize in Oxford Street.

Hadiyyah had heartily approved of her ensemble that very morning, which told Barbara she was developing more skill in the putting-oneself-together-professionally department. She’d come to Barbara’s bungalow as Barbara was indulging in the last bit of her Pop-Tart, and heroically she’d ignored the fag smouldering in the ashtray in favour of complimenting Barbara on her growing talents in fashion.

Barbara noted that Hadiyyah was not wearing her school uniform, and she asked about this. “Holiday today?”

Hadiyyah bounced from foot to foot, hands on the back of one of the two chairs at Barbara’s kitchen table, which was little larger than a chopping board and generally did duty as that as well. The little girl said, “Mummy and I…It’s
special
, Barbara. It’s for Dad and I must take the day off school. Mummy phoned and said I was ill today but it was only the
littlest
lie because of what we have planned. It’s a surprise for Dad.” She hugged herself in glee. “Oh, just wait, wait,
wait
,” she cried.

“Me? Why? Am I part of the surprise?”

“
I
want you to be. So Mummy says you can know but you mustn’t say a word to Dad. D’you promise? See, Mummy says she and Dad had a row—well, adults do row sometimes, don’t they—and she wants to give him a cheer-you-up surprise. So that’s what we’re doing today.”

“Taking him somewhere? Surprising him at work?”

“Oh no. The surprise’ll be when he gets home.”

“Special dinner, I’ll bet.”

“Much,
much
better than that.”

To Barbara’s way of thinking, there wasn’t anything better than
a special dinner, especially if she wasn’t the one who had to cook it. She said, “What, then? Tell me. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

“D’you promise and double promise?” Hadiyyah asked.

“Triple promise if that will do it.”

Hadiyyah’s eyes danced along with her feet. She pushed away from the table and spun so that her hair flew round her shoulders like a cape. She said, “My brother and sister! My brother and sister! Barbara, did you know I have a brother and a sister?”

Barbara felt the smile melt from her face. She forced it back on. “A brother and sister? Really? You have a brother and a sister?”

“I do, I do,” Hadiyyah cried. “See, Dad was married once before and he didn’t like to tell me ’cause I s’pose he thought I was too young. But Mummy told me and she said it’s not such a
bad
thing to be married once before, is it, and I said no, of course it isn’t ’cause lots of kids have parents who aren’t married any longer and I know them from school. So Mummy said well that’s what happened with Dad only his family got so cross with him that they didn’t want him to see his children anymore. And that’s not nice, is it?”

“Well, I suppose not,” Barbara said, but she was developing a very bad feeling about where this was heading and what the possible outcome would be. And how the hell had Angelina Upman tracked these people down? she wondered.

“
So
…” Hadiyyah allowed a dramatic pause.

“Yes?” Barbara prompted.

“So Mummy and I are going to fetch them!” she cried. “Won’t that be a wonderful surprise! I get to meet them, and I’m ever so excited to have a brother and a sister I never knew. And Dad gets to see them next and
he’ll
be ever so excited as well ’cause Mummy says he’s not seen them in years and
she
doesn’t know how old they are, even, except she thinks that one of them is twelve and the other is fourteen. Imagine, Barbara, I got an
older
brother and sister. D’you think they’ll like me? I hope so ’cause I know I’ll like them.”

Barbara’s mouth had gone so dry that she could hardly move her jaw, so tightly were her cheeks adhering to her teeth. She gulped a mouthful of tepid coffee and said, “Well, well, well,” which was just about the only thing she could manage while her brain was racing
with thoughts of the bloody-hell-what-should-I-do variety. Friendship demanded that she warn Azhar of the impending disaster about to befall him: Angelina Upman presenting him with a fait accompli that he would have had neither time nor opportunity to prevent. But did friendship extend that far? she asked herself. And if she told him, what would he do and what effect would whatever he did have on Hadiyyah, who was, as far as Barbara could see, the most important person involved?

Ultimately, Barbara had done nothing because she couldn’t come up with a plan that didn’t culminate in utter havoc being wrought upon too many lives. Talking to Angelina felt like a betrayal of Azhar. Talking to Azhar felt like a betrayal of Angelina. It seemed the better course to stay out of it altogether and let nature—or whatever it was—take its course. She’d have to be there to sweep up the pieces but perhaps there would be no pieces to sweep up. Hadiyyah, after all, deserved to know her brother and sister. Perhaps everything would come out of the wash of affairs smelling sweet as roses in June. Perhaps.

Thus Barbara had taken herself to work as usual. She’d made certain Superintendent Ardery got the complete eyeful of her day’s ensemble, although she’d presented herself to Dorothea Harriman for a thumbs-up first. Harriman had been copious in her praise—“Detective Sergeant Havers, your hair…your makeup…stunning…” —although when she’d gone on to talk about a new mineral-based foundation that Barbara
had
to try and did the detective sergeant want to pop out at lunchtime and see if they could find it locally, Barbara drew the line. She’d said thanks, made her bow to Superintendent Ardery, who’d handed her the demands from the CPS while she spoke to someone on the phone about, “What sort of cock-up is this, anyway? Are you people ever on top of things over there?” which Barbara assumed had to do with SO7 and matters pertaining to forensics. She herself got down to work with the CPS clerk and it was some time later when she was finally able to resume the work she’d been doing for Lynley.