Her Husband's Lie by Amanda Reynolds

Author:Amanda Reynolds [Reynolds, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Published: 2024-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

22

SUNDAY 9 JUNE 2024 – 5.30 P.M.

Grace looked past her niece to a very fancy-looking sports car executing a noisy three-point turn in the quiet cul-de-sac. Ed was watching too, stood behind her in the hallway, and she noticed a neighbour who was watering the flower beds, also staring.

‘OK if I stay a while, Aunt Grace?’ Lily asked, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, the other hand clutching an overly stuffed holdall. ‘I’ve left home.’

‘Oh my goodness, what on earth?’ Grace asked. ‘Yes, come in, of course!’

Ed cupped his niece’s shoulder, then wordlessly carried her bag upstairs. They had a spare room, but it was filled with Ed’s train set. The girls would just have to share. They could drag the old camp bed out the garage if needs be, but hopefully it wouldn’t be for long.

‘Right, let’s go in my study, shall we?’ she told Lily, guiding her niece towards her consulting room. ‘I think you and I need a chat.’

Grace muted her phone and then sat Lily in the client chair and took the one facing her. The desk was beside them, by the shuttered window that overlooked the front garden and her nosey neighbour. The chairs had come from Ikea and were comfy and informal, and a low table between them was set with a napkin-covered carafe of fresh water and a glass, ready for clients, and of course, a box of tissues.

‘Can you talk to me about what’s happened?’ Grace asked. She had tried not to fall into her usual pattern of speech when opening a session with a client, but it still sounded like one of her stock openings.

Lily looked up. ‘She’s not my mum. You and Dad and Elan are my blood, not her.’

Grace paused, choosing her words carefully again. There was clearly no point pretending they hadn’t both read Nic’s account of the painful set of circumstances that led to Lily’s adoption. The offending red notebook was still in Grace’s bag, right beside her, but she could barely believe that it was out in the open at last, and that she would be the one to help Lily work out her feelings about a family secret that had been buried for the last eighteen years. That Matt was Lily’s biological child.

‘I understand that what you read must have been very hurtful to you, but we can’t know for sure the full story, or your mother’s true feelings, not from those few lines written last summer when, let’s face it, she was very unwell.’

‘That wasn’t how I found out. Dad told me himself, then I went looking for proof and read it in her own words.’

‘Matt told you?’ Grace asked, leaning forward in her chair. ‘When?’

‘He called me, Friday morning, then I went home to talk to Mum and when she wasn’t there I⁠—’

‘He told you the day he went missing!’ she said, fingers pressed to her lips.

Lily nodded and pulled on a tissue, wiping her nose. ‘I was at Will’s. Dad called first thing to wish me happy birthday, then he just blurted it out.

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