Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [230]
Lucy finally said, “There is no story. At least, there is no story that could possibly interest The Source. All there is is an arrangement between two women. I’d make more of it if I could, believe me, because I could use the money. I’d prefer not to work here. I’d prefer to sit at home and write my plays and send them off to London and see them produced. But that’s not happening any time soon, so I work here in the mornings and I write in the afternoons and occasionally I top up my income by donating eggs, which was why I placed the advertisement in Conception magazine. I told you this.”
“You also told me you would never consider being a surrogate.”
“All right. That part wasn’t true.”
“So why did you lie about this yesterday?”
“Obviously, it was a private matter. It’s still a private matter.”
“And the money?”
“What about it?”
“As I understand how everything works,” Deborah pointed out, “you’re paid for allowing your eggs to be harvested. But if you’re a surrogate for someone, you receive nothing. Just your expenses. Eggs equal profit while surrogacy comes from the goodness of your heart. Isn’t that how it works?”
Lucy was silent. Into her silence, Deborah’s mobile rang. She jerked it impatiently from her shoulder bag and saw the incoming number.
“Are you playing me for a bloody idiot?” Zed demanded when she answered. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I’m going to have to ring you back,” she said.
“No sodding way. I’m coming in.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“No? Well, it’s the best I’ve come up with. And when I get there, there’d better be a story waiting for me and it’d better have to do with Cresswell’s murder.”
“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