Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [250]
There was a bench seat opposite Alatea’s position in the inglenook. Lynley went to it and sat. He said, “The death of Ian Cresswell— ”
“I had nothing to do with that. If I were to kill anyone, it would be Raul Montenegro, but I don’t want to kill him. I never wanted to kill him. I just wanted to flee him, and even then it wasn’t because Raul’s intention was to betray who I am. He wouldn’t have done that because he needed to have a woman on his arm. Not a real woman, you see, but a man who could pass as a woman, to safeguard his reputation in his world. What he didn’t understand and what I didn’t tell him was that I didn’t want to pass as a woman because I already was one. I only needed surgery to make it so.”
“He paid for it?”
“In exchange, he thought, for the perfect relationship between two men, one of whom looks to all of the world like a woman.”
“A homosexual relationship.”
“A form of one. Which really cannot exist when one of the partners is not of the same sex, you see. Our problem— mine and Raul’s— was that we did not clearly understand each other before we began this… this venture. Or perhaps I deliberately misunderstood what he wanted from me because I was desperate and he was my only way out.”
“Why do you think he’s pursuing you now?”
She said without irony or self-congratulation, “Wouldn’t you, Thomas Lynley? He spent a great deal of money to make me, and he’s had little enough return on his investment.”
“What does Nicholas know?”
“Nothing.”
“How can that be?”
“I had the final surgery many years ago in Mexico City. When I knew I could not be what Raul wanted me to be, I left him. And Mexico. I was here and there, never remaining any place long. Finally, I was in Utah. And so was Nicky.”
“But you would have had to tell him— ”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because…” Well, it was obvious. There were certain things her body was never going to be able to do.
She said, “I thought I could go forever as a woman without Nicky knowing. But then he wished to come home to England, and he wished even more to make his father proud. He saw a single way to do it, a certain guarantee of his father’s happiness. We would do what neither of his sisters had managed to do. We would have a child and give Bernard a grandchild and this would heal forever the damage Nicky had done to his relationship with his father— and his mother— during all his years of addiction.”
“So now you must tell him.”
She shook her head. “How can I tell him of such betrayal? Could you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I could love him. I could be a lover to him. I could make a home for him and do everything a woman might do for a man. Except this one thing. And to submit to a doctor’s examination as to why I haven’t yet become pregnant…? I’ve lied to Nicky from the first because I was used to lying, because that’s what we do, because that’s what we have to do to get on in the world. It’s called stealth and it’s how we live. The only difference between me and the rest of the people who have transitioned from male to female is that I hid it from the man I love because I thought if he knew he would not wish to marry me and take me to a place where Raul Montenegro would never find me. That was my sin.”
“You know you must tell him.”
“I must indeed do something,” she said.
ARNSIDE
CUMBRIA
He was drawing his car keys from his pocket when Deborah drove her hire car up to Arnside