the entire world on his shoulders. He can’t keep this quiet any longer. ‘I’m going to have to tell Niall about this. I can’t hide the inquest from him. I’ll have to be off work and it’s probably going to be in the news.’ He opens his weary eyes and sees his wife’s frightened face. Patrick adds bitterly, ‘I wonder how he’ll feel when he realizes the kind of woman he’s been sleeping with?’
‘When will you tell him?’ Stephanie asks.
He runs a hand anxiously through his hair. ‘Tomorrow, at the end of the day.’
The following day, Niall sits behind his desk, long after everyone else has gone home, overcome with shock and disbelief. He dreads facing his wife. He will have to tell her.
He knew something had been going on with Patrick – something more than just colicky twins. He was right – Patrick’s being blackmailed, by the very woman Niall had been sleeping with. And now he has to tell Nancy – it’s going to be in the news, their business will probably take a hit. And Nancy still hasn’t decided whether she’s going to divorce him.
Patrick doesn’t know Niall was sleeping with Erica, and Niall’s going to keep it that way. He’s horrified at the lies Patrick said she’s telling about him. Erica is a blackmailer – maybe it’s a good thing that Nancy discovered their affair on her own, before Erica had a chance to ask him for money to keep it to herself. All of it makes him terribly uneasy. Patrick and Erica had known each other all along and had pretended not to. And he’d had no idea.
Niall drives home and lets himself into the house. He finds Nancy in the kitchen, cleaning up. She turns around, and for the first time in days she actually has a smile on her face – until she sees him.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks quickly.
‘We have to talk,’ he says, and sits down heavily at the kitchen table. She joins him, alarm in her eyes.
‘I’ve had some terrible news today,’ he says. He tells her in detail about the pending inquest, that a woman has been trying to blackmail Patrick, making up lies, accusing him of murdering his first wife, a death that was clearly an accident.
‘Oh my God,’ Nancy whispers, shaken. ‘Of course he didn’t do it. He did the right thing to stand up to her.’ She brings a hand to her mouth. ‘Poor Stephanie.’
Niall nods. ‘She’s telling terrible lies – but what if they believe her over him?’
‘They won’t – of course they won’t.’
He hangs his head, takes her hand in his. ‘Honey, there’s something you need to know.’ He can feel his face draining of colour, he feels light-headed, as if he might be sick.
She looks intently at him. ‘What is it? Niall, you’re scaring me.’
‘The woman who’s accusing him – it’s Erica Voss.’
Nancy stares back at her husband, speechless. She can’t quite get her mind around what he’s telling her. It takes her a few seconds to process what he’s saying. But it must be true because Niall looks awful. ‘How is that possible?’ she says stupidly.
‘I didn’t know, Nancy,’ Niall insists. ‘I had no clue about any of this! If I’d known what she was like, I would have stayed a million miles away from her!’
Nancy remembers then, her confrontation with Erica in her apartment, her sense that this woman was no pushover, like Anne O’Dowd had been. No, she’s something else entirely.
Nancy is struck suddenly with a horrible, overwhelming fear that crowds out everything else. She whispers to her husband, ‘Do you think she knows?’ Her fear is enormous – she can see it reflected in his eyes, and she knows he’s already arrived at the same terrifying thought.
‘No. She can’t. How could she?’ he says. But he looks petrified.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Six weeks later
CHERYL AND GARY have started to relax a little. They haven’t seen Erica since Cheryl found her sitting in a convertible outside their house several weeks ago. Maybe they’ll never see her again; that is what they both hope for.
In these last few weeks, Cheryl has begun to notice some subtle changes in Devin – moodiness, a certain self-centredness that she’s not used to. Kids go through phases, everybody knows that. But she’s keeping an eye on it.
She takes the newspaper and her coffee into the living room. Gary has gone to work and Devin has already left for school. She sees an article on the front page of the