Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [207]
“Of course. Yes.” Alatea had thought about it. “I shall say, ‘No, I’m sorry. I’ve sent for no package.’ And then I’ll ring you back as soon as I’m able. But it might not be at once. It might not be until the next day.”
They’d agreed to this arrangement, and as things developed between them, Lucy had had no reason to phone. Because of this, all the uneasiness Alatea naturally felt in embarking upon a confidential journey with this woman had faded over time. So when Lucy rang not terribly long after their rendezvous in Lancaster, Alatea knew that something had gone wrong.
How badly wrong became clear within moments. They’d been seen at the university together, Lucy told her. They’d been seen inside the George Childress Centre. It was probably nothing, but a woman had followed them from the university back to the disabled soldiers’ home. She wanted to talk about surrogacy. She was looking for a surrogate mother to carry her child. Again, it could be nothing. But the fact that this woman had settled on Lucy to talk to instead of Alatea …
“She claimed you have the ‘look,’” Lucy said. “She claimed it was a ‘look’ she recognised well because she knows she has it herself. And because of this she reckoned I was the one to talk to about the possibility of surrogacy and not you, Alatea.”
Alatea had taken the call in the inglenook of the main hall. It was a sheltered place, topped by a whimsical minstrel’s gallery, and she liked it because it gave her a choice between the L-shaped window seat at one end of the inglenook, looking out on the lawn, or the confines of a pew-like shelter at the other side of the fireplace, one that hid her from anyone who might come into the hall.
She was alone. She’d been leafing through a design book relevant to the restoration of Arnside House, but she’d been thinking not of the house but rather of the progress she and Lucy were making. She’d been considering how each step of the process was going to be successfully managed. Very soon now, she’d decided, Miss Lucy Keverne, a struggling playwright from Lancaster who made ends meet by working as a social director in the Kent-Howath Foundation for Disabled Veterans, would come into her life as a newfound friend. From that point forward, things would be easier. They would never be perfect, but that was of no account. One had to learn how to live with imperfection.
When Lucy mentioned the woman who’d followed them, Alatea knew at once who this woman had to be. She thus put the pieces together very quickly, and she arrived at the only possible conclusion: She herself had been followed from Arnside and the red-haired woman called Deborah St. James— she of the faux documentary film— had done the following.
Alatea’s earlier fears had revolved around the newspaper reporter. She’d seen The Source, and she knew its appetite for scandal was insatiable. The man’s first visit to Cumbria had been an ordeal for her, his second a torment. But the worst his presence had ever suggested was a photograph that might lead to discovery. With the red-haired woman, discovery was here, just a knock-on-the-door away.
“What did you tell her?” Alatea asked, as calmly as she could manage.
“The truth about surrogacy, but she already knew most of it.”
“Which truth are we talking about?”
“The various ways and means, the legalities, that sort of thing. I’d thought at first there was nothing in it. It rather made sense in a bizarre sort of way. I mean, when women are desperate…” Lucy hesitated.
Alatea said quietly, “Go on. When they’re desperate…?”
“Well, they will go to extremes, won’t they? So, considering everything, how extreme was it, really, that a woman who’s gone to the George Childress Centre for a consultation would see us at some point in one corridor or another, perhaps as she’s coming out of someone’s office…”
“And what?”
“And think there was a chance. I mean, essentially that’s how you and I met.”
“No. We met via an advertisement.”
“Yes. Of course. But the feeling is what I’m talking about. That sense