جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 339

Mum came into the room. She put a tray down on my bedside table.‘I brought you dinner,’ she said.I looked at the food, then back at her. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’‘What do you mean?’‘You spent more than twenty years keeping this a secret. Why did you decide to tell me now?’Mum fell silent. She looked down at the tray, and her fingers twisted together.‘Is it because of Aaron Lockwood?’ I asked. ‘He’s been behaving strangely since the day I met him, and he kept visiting you to ask questions.’Mum’s voice was low. ‘He would’ve found out eventually. I couldn’t let you be the last person to know the truth.’‘It doesn’t change anything, you know,’ I told her.‘Hyacinth, please,’ she began.‘It doesn’t. You are still my mum, and Dad is still my dad. Aaron Lockwood is my biological father, and that’s all he’s ever going to be.’‘I know you are upset and confused right now. I know we dropped this on you without notice and it’s unfair to you. You might need some time to think it th

‘His guilt might override his loyalty to Gloria,’ Lochlan said. ‘It should be just enough. Besides, for the plan to work, we don’t need him to actually make a decision.’‘Just the illusion that he has,’ I said.‘That’s right.’I thought about it for a moment. ‘Do you think Gloria would leave me alone if I told her I have absolutely zero interest in taking the surname Lockwood? What if I tell her I don’t care about the apparently vast Lockwood fortune? Actually, just out of curiosity, how much money are we talking about?’‘The Lockwoods are an old family. Their wealth has accumulated over generations.’‘So, are we talking about seven or eight figures?’‘It’s substantially more than that.’ Lochlan gave me a number.I let out a low whistle. ‘And if Desmond dies and I die, all that money goes to Gloria and her daughter?’‘Yes.’‘No wonder she wants me out of the way.’‘Words won’t change her mind,’ Lochlan said. ‘As long as you are alive, you are a threat to her. That is Gloria’s logic.’I

Four days of pub-crawling in the service of a sting operation, and what I had to show for it was a comprehensive knowledge of which establishments on the Marylebone-to-Paddington corridor served the best sparkling water and which barmen were least likely to notice you weren’t actually drinking the wine they’d poured you.I’d been nursing drinks mostly. Swapping them when no one was looking. Sitting in corners with the carefully arranged posture of a woman who had been badly let down by a man and was doing something about it one glass at a time.The performance was, I felt, reasonably convincing.The tabloids seemed to think so, anyway.The baby thought so too, in the sense that the baby appeared entirely indifferent to the ambient lighting and sad background music of Marylebone’s hospitality sector and continued going about its business regardless.Lochlan’s team had given me an earpiece on the first day. A tiny thing, nearly invisible, with a range that meant someone from the team cou

‘Your daughter is fine,’ Cameron said.The man stared at him. ‘But the photo… I couldn’t reach her…’‘Soraya had just come back to London. She didn’t have the resources to take anyone.’ Cameron was already dialling. ‘She staged it. Your daughter has been at a friend’s flat the entire time.’ He held out his phone. ‘That’s her. Talk to her.’I didn’t wait to hear what was said.Lochlan came with me. We stood in the hospital hallway. I looked at the wall opposite and tried to locate myself in the sequence of events that had led me here.‘Thank you,’ I said eventually. ‘For bringing me.’‘You deserved to know.’‘I know.’ I pressed my lips together. ‘I know she was my mother. I know this is supposed to feel like something – closure, or justice, or – I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like.’ I paused. ‘Mostly I just feel numb. Like I’m sitting in the audience watching someone else’s story and waiting to feel the thing I’m supposed to feel about it.’Lochlan said nothing. He found my han