Tell her the truth. Tell her why you canât make Laurieâs film. You have nothing to be ashamed of .
âBollocks to that!â Tamsin bangs her fist on the table. âIf youâre going there, Iâm going to the Science Museum instead as a protest at your . . . dickery. Fliss, people dream of things happening to them like whatâs happened to you today. Youâve got to take it. Even if you decide to leave me to rot in the gutter while you stock up on diamonds.â
âIâm being serious.â
âSo am I! Think of all the time youâll get to spend with Laurie, him helping you unofficially â hah!â She gurgles with laughter. âItâs so obvious youâre in love with him.â
âIt canât be, because Iâm not,â I say firmly. Maybe itâs not such a huge lie. If Iâm aware of all the reasons why I shouldnât love Laurie, which I am, then that has to mean I donât, not wholly. At the very least, Iâm halfway in and halfway out. If Iâm in love with him, how come I can so perfectly inhabit the mindset of thinking heâs a git and the bane of my life?
âYou spend hours staring out of your window at his office, even when heâs not in it.â Tamsin chuckles. âIâm not going to waste my breath saying no good can come of it. Some goodâs already come of it â a hundred and forty grand a year for us to split between us.â She gives me a narrow-eyed grin to let me know sheâs been winding me up about the money. âYouâve been rewarded for your good taste. Laurie might be a freak, but heâs a shrewd freak. Heâs seen the way you babble like an idiot in front of him, crazed with lust. Youâre his perfect pawn: he gets to distance himself from the film in public while retaining control in private.â
âWhy would he want to distance himself?â I say, determinedly ignoring everything else Tamsinâs just said because if I allowed myself to take it in and believe it, I would have to devote the rest of my life to muffled sobbing. âHeâs obsessed with it.â
âIn case it goes tits up, which it might very well, now that Sarahâs pulled out.â
âSarah?â
âJaggard. Oh, my God! Laurie hasnât told you, has he?â
My phone starts to ring. I snap it open. âHello?â
âIs that Fliss Benson?â a woman asks.
I tell her it is.
âThis is Ray Hines.â
My heart leaps, like a horse over a fence. Rachel Hines . I have the oddest sensation: as if this moment was always going to come, and there was nothing I could have done to avert it.
She canât know how significant she is to me, how it makes me feel to hear her voice.
âWhy is Laurie Nattrass leaving Binary Star?â She doesnât sound angry, or even put out. âDoes it have anything to do with Helen Yardley dying? Iâm assuming she was murdered. I heard on the news that her death was âsuspiciousâ.â
âI donât know,â I say brusquely. âYouâll have to ask the police about that, and youâll have to ask Laurie why heâs leaving. Iâm nothing to do with anything.â
âReally? I got an email from Laurie saying youâve taken over the documentary.â
âNo. Thatâs . . . a misunderstanding.â
Tamsin has found a pen in my bag and written âWho?â on a beer mat. She shoves it towards me. I write âRachel Hinesâ beneath her question. She opens her mouth as wide as itâll go, flashing her tonsils at me, then scribbles furiously on the beer mat: âKeep her talking!!!â
Even if I donât want to?
I heard two women on the tube discussing Rachel Hines, the day after she won her appeal. One said, âI donât know about the others, but the Hines woman murdered her children, sure as Iâm born. Sheâs a drug addict and a liar. You
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