Believing the Lie

“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 said to Deborah, “Enough of these Scotland Yard double crosses. We’re doing this together or not at all.”

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,” Alatea told her. “It’s Nicky. It’s the fact that his cousin drowned.”

“What cousin? When? What’s this got to do with you?”

“Nothing. It’s got nothing to do with me and nothing to do with Nicky. It’s just what brought Scotland Yard up here in the first place. The journalist was here to do a story on Nicky and the pele project, but that was weeks ago and I don’t know why he’s come again.”

“This is a mess,” Lucy said. “You do know that, don’t you? Look. I do think I’ve managed to keep the reporter from getting a story out of all this. What’s there to report? You and I talking about a surrogacy arrangement? There’s no story in that. But as to the woman… She claimed that she could produce the detective from Scotland Yard with a wave of her hand and he said that she was the detective, which she denied. But she wouldn’t say more and by that time things were falling apart and… For the love of God, who was this woman, Alatea? What does she want with me? What does she want with you?”