The Lying Game (28 page)

‘I see you read the
Daily News.’

‘Once it becomes known that we are suing for custody of
both
girls, the phone will be ringing off the hook with researchers for
Jeremy Kyle
,’ Hatfield shot back.
‘You must realize the level of media interest in this case will be intense. Your children will be subject to public scrutiny, and your lives will be picked over until you have no secrets
left. The world will know what you eat for breakfast, your brand of toothpaste, the date of your last menstrual period. You will have no privacy, and, frankly, no right to expect it.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ she said coolly.

‘I hope so.’ He tossed the folder aside and leaned forward, skewering her with that sharp blue gaze. ‘I hope you have no skeletons in your cupboard, Mrs Lockwood, since our
only hope of winning custody of your biological daughter is to go after Zoey Sands for what is still quaintly called “moral turpitude” in legal circles. Our case would be significantly
undermined if you are seen to be anything but whiter than white.’

‘I’m not claiming to be a saint,’ she snapped. ‘But Zoey Sands had an affair with a married man and then gave birth to his baby. She slept with my husband while she was a
guest in
my home.
Who knows how many men have passed through her bedroom in the interim. I can’t allow Nell to spend a minute longer than necessary in that woman’s
house.’

‘She’ll fight you, of course.’

‘And I’m paying you to beat her.’

The lawyer nodded, relaxing back in his chair. ‘I hate to ask the obvious, Mrs Lockwood, but have you considered what Nell wants?’

For the first time, she hesitated. Of course Nell would want to stay with Zoey But how could she trust the woman to look after her daughter properly now? Yes, she was angry with Zoey; she wanted
to hurt her as much as she’d been hurt herself. But more than anything, she wanted to protect Nell from ever being let down by Zoey again.

‘I’m her mother,’ she said tightly. ‘I have to do what’s best for her, even if she doesn’t see it that way now.’

‘By exposing her to the jackals of the Fourth Estate?’

‘Since when were you paid to pass judgement?’

Hatfield shrugged. ‘I don’t give a damn about the rights and wrongs of the case, Mrs Lockwood. You pay me to enter the ring, I’ll fight till I’m red in tooth and claw. I
just want you to know exactly what that is going to entail. As I said, I don’t like wasting my time.’

‘I want my daughters,’ Harriet said.
‘Both
of them.’

‘Please don’t do this,’ Nell begged as soon as Harriet answered the front door a couple of days later.

She stepped aside, beckoning the girl in. ‘Go through to the kitchen. My mother’s taken the boys out; we won’t be disturbed.’

‘You can’t mean it,’ Nell cried as soon as the door shut behind her. ‘I know what Mum did was total crap, and I don’t blame you for being mad at her, but you
don’t want to do this. I
know
you don’t.’

Harriet ignored her outburst, leading the way into the kitchen and pulling out a stool. ‘Sit down, Nell.’

The girl folded her arms, stubbornly remaining standing.

‘Have it your way.’
God, she was like her father.
‘Tell me, do you
really
want to stay with Zoey and Oliver, after everything that’s happened?’

Nell shrugged.

‘Think about Richard,’ she said softly. ‘He’s practically raised you for the last eight years, and she dumped him without a second thought. She’s broken
Florence’s heart. Not to mention selling the whole sordid story to the newspapers and washing our dirty linen in public—’

‘It wasn’t Mum who sold that story,’ Nell interrupted, her eyes suddenly bright with tears. ‘It’s all my fault. I told my friend Teri. I thought I could trust her!
I told her everything, and she went and sold it to the papers! How could she do that to me? We were supposed to
befriends
!’

Harriet stared helplessly. She ached to wrap her arms around Nell, but didn’t dare. ‘Just because she let you down, it doesn’t mean she didn’t care about you,’ she
said gently. ‘We often hurt the people we love the most. She must have had her reasons.’

‘Money,’ she said bitterly. ‘Like, thirty grand. Thirty pieces of silver, more like.’

The same words she’d used to Zoey.

Nell grabbed a tissue from her pocket. ‘We need the money just as much as she does, but
I
didn’t sell the story when that woman tried to talk to me.’

‘What woman?’ Harriet said sharply.

‘The journalist who wrote that story. She came to our flat a few weeks ago and asked me about Florence, but I just told her to fuck off – sorry – and she left. She never came
back, so I thought that was it.’ Noisily, she blew her nose. ‘I told Teri about it, but I didn’t mention anything to Mum – I didn’t want her to freak. Teri
must’ve called the woman later and spilled her guts. I didn’t know it would end up in the papers, I swear!’

Harried sighed. ‘Neither of you could’ve known what would happen. Teri probably thought the story would just be about you and Florence. Maybe she even thought you’d like being
a bit famous for five minutes. She couldn’t have guessed it would get so out of hand.’

‘That’s what
she
said.’

‘So let it go, sweetheart. I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘I can’t trust her again,’ Nell said simply.

How could she argue with that?

‘Now you know it wasn’t Mum, you’ll stop all this legal stuff, right?’ Nell added eagerly. ‘You can’t punish her for something she didn’t do. It’s
not fair.’

‘Nor was stealing my husband,’ Harriet snapped before she could stop herself.

‘So this is
revenge?’

She flinched, stung by the sudden contempt in Nell’s voice. ‘No! I admit I’m angry with the pair of them, so angry and hurt I can’t breathe sometimes, but I’m doing
this for
you.
I’m not trying to punish Zoey! Whatever you may think of me, I wouldn’t do something that low.’ She hesitated, choosing her words with care. ‘But what
d’you think will happen if you stay with her? How is that going to work, now Oliver’s part of the picture? And if he leaves, you’ll end up looking after her for the rest of her
life, just like you have so far.’

‘I’m not just going to
abandon
her!’

‘I know you love her, Nell. But soon you’re going to want your own life, and what happens then? I could give you so much,’ she said earnestly. ‘A proper family life and
the chance to really get to know Florence and your brothers, the best education, travel, everything you need or want. You could still see Zoey as often as you wished. I’d never try to stop
that. But you wouldn’t be responsible for her any more. You could have your own space and freedom. Isn’t that what you want?’

‘She needs me! I can’t go off and leave her on her own!’

‘You’ll be going to college in three years. Or do you plan to study in London and stay with her then, too? It’s not like your mother will be alone,’ she added painfully.
‘She’ll still have Oliver.’

‘He only went back to her because you froze his credit cards,’ Nell said scornfully. ‘He couldn’t afford to stay in the hotel. If you’d just stop all this legal
stuff, he’d come home to you, I know he would. And then we could all go back to normal.’

He’d come home to you.
Her heart twisted longingly. Nell made it sound so easy: all she had to do was drop the lawsuit, call off the dogs, and she could have her husband back. Was
she throwing her marriage away out of pride?

No. Nell was wrong. Oliver could have gone to stay with his brother if he was that desperate for a bed; shit, he could’ve slept on a park bench.

He could have come to her and begged her to take him back – but he hadn’t even tried.

Zoey had seen it all before, sixteen years ago, in another man’s face. Surprise, delight, pride even; and then, as reality sank in, the surprise turning to shock, delight
to horror, pride to fear. And after that, the careful distancing; the gentle, but firm and implacable, rejection.

It was happening all over again, and she was powerless to stop it.

Checking out of the hotel alone had been a calculated gamble. She’d realized she ran the very high risk he’d go straight back to Harriet. She knew how much he loved his family,
including –
especially –
his wife; no matter how much he may have liked going to bed with Zoey (and she knew, without vanity, that he did, very much), he’d never have
walked out on them for her. But Harriet had made the cardinal mistake of letting her pride rule her heart, and had handed Zoey an unexpected gift, effectively pushing her husband into her arms.
Harriet had left
him.
Or left him behind in her hotel bedroom, which had amounted to pretty much the same thing.

Zoey had seen immediately that it was her one chance, a chance she’d neither expected nor sought but had no intention of wasting, so she’d deliberately appealed to his masculine,
primitive need to protect, knowing it was his greatest weakness. And as he’d put a consoling arm around her shoulders, she’d allowed him to see a tantalizing glimpse of her breasts.
She’d let her robe slip open. She’d unfastened her belt and lain back on the bed, spreading her legs and waiting for him to make love to her – and it
was
making love, for
her, at least, not just sex – determinedly refusing to think about Harriet, or Florence, savouring instead the sweetness of his kisses, the fullness of him inside her, the salty smell of his
sweat on her slick skin. She gave herself to him without reservation, revelling in her own greedy, animal hunger, binding him to her with her body. He poured himself into her and as she came around
him, again and again, her legs pretzelled around his hips, fingernails digging into his back, she’d known he was hers, completely hers, for this one night at least.

But the next morning, she’d woken to find him gone, leaving just his scent on the pillow and a note saying he’d had to go into the office – on a Sunday! – and she’d
realized winning him by default wasn’t winning him at all. A friend of hers who’d had a passionate four-year affair with a married man had once explained why the relationship had
swiftly turned to ashes when the long-suffering wife had finally left
him.
‘He never
chose
me,’ she’d told Zoey sadly. ‘He only came to me because he
couldn’t bear to be alone. He never picked
me.
I was always second best.’

She didn’t want to be second best. She had to be sure Oliver
wanted
to be with her. She had to know.

And so, in the biggest gamble of her life, she’d written that note to him and checked out of the hotel.
I don’t want you to be with me because you have nowhere else to go. If you
choose me, you know where I’ll be.

When he’d turned up on her doorstep just hours later, she’d been dizzy with gratitude and joy.
I didn’t steal him!
she told the nagging voice of her conscience.
Oliver came to me of his own accord. He could have gone back to Harriet. But he didn’t. He came to me. He chose me!

Except he hadn’t, of course.

‘I can’t,’ he’d said painfully as she’d thrown herself into his arms. Gently, he’d unwound her from his neck. ‘I’m so sorry, Zoey. That’s
not why I’m here.’

‘I don’t understand . . .’

‘Zoey, please. Let me explain.’

And he had. It wasn’t her fault, of course, it was his. He’d been wrong to give in to temptation,wrongtomakelove to her, wrong to let her believe he was responding to her note when
the truth, the depressing, prosaic truth, was that he really
did
have nowhere else to go. He cared about her deeply, would always care about her, and there was Nell, and Florence, of
course, but more than that, he had genuine feelings for her, Zoey, and he hoped they could always be friends. But he loved his wife, there was no getting around that. He loved Harriet and even if
she refused – as seemed increasingly likely – to take him back, he couldn’t short-change Zoey like that. She deserved better than to be second best.