Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [231]
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,