Trust Me - Sheryl Browne Page 0,51

far as gossip goes, I’m only surprised she hasn’t got a loudhailer.’

Jake continued to study her. Still he didn’t say anything, which spoke volumes.

He’d made up his mind. Did he really have such a low opinion of her? Or was this a way for him to justify his own despicable actions?

‘Have you considered that it might be Nicky who’s sending the letters?’ Emily asked, careless of the tears now spilling down her cheeks. As was Jake, it seemed. He saw them, looked agonised for a second, but didn’t move towards her.

Massaging his temples, he glanced down. ‘That’s not likely,’ he said, looking confusedly back at her. ‘She hasn’t been here that long. Why would she do such a thing?’

‘I don’t know. But that’s my point, we don’t know her,’ Emily said, determined now to fight her own corner since she seemed to have no one else in it. ‘We don’t know who she is. She could have any number of personal issues.’

Jake looked highly sceptical, which fired her temper further. He believed his wife – someone he’d lived with, someone he loved, or so he’d said – capable of doing something so deplorable, clearly, but not Nicky, a woman he’d known for five minutes.

‘You do realise her initials are NJA, don’t you?’ Emily couldn’t let him go on making – and possibly believing – these accusations against her. Whether he truly believed it was her, or whether he was using it as an excuse to get rid of her, she didn’t know. She wouldn’t creep off meekly, though, from her marriage or from her job. Being her husband’s office manager hadn’t been what she’d wanted to do with her life. She might not have been the clever one, as her parents had made patently obvious, but she’d had talent. Over the years she’d convinced herself that her ambitions of picking up her art training had been unrealistic, and had channelled her energies into this instead: into her marriage and her family. She’d given everything she had to give. She had loved Jake unconditionally, with her whole heart and soul. He might want to throw her love away, but she wouldn’t just simply abandon the relationship. She couldn’t.

Jake looked at her askance. ‘And?’

‘The emails I believed you were exchanging with Natasha.’ Her heart pounding, Emily reminded him of what she’d asked him after the summer fair. ‘I saw one sent to you from an address beginning “nja123”. It wasn’t quite as calculatedly nasty as the letters sent to Dean and Michael, but it was definitely of the same ilk, threatening to expose secrets.’

‘Secrets?’ Jake’s expression was now a mixture of incredulity and wariness. ‘What bloody secrets? You need to show me.’

‘I deleted it.’ Realising how implausible that sounded, Emily felt her cheeks flush. ‘But I remember it, every single word,’ she added quickly. ‘“Unless you want a certain person to find out about your extracurricular activities, meet me in the designated place, 3 p.m. tomorrow”,’ she recited.

Jake narrowed his eyes. ‘And you’re sure it was addressed to me?’

‘It was addressed to you, yes.’

‘And you deleted it?’ He looked sceptical again.

‘Because I panicked,’ Emily tried to explain, though why it was her suddenly in the position of having to defend herself, she wasn’t sure. ‘I didn’t want you to know that I’d seen it. I … needed some time. To think.’

‘I see.’ Jake faltered for a second, glancing away and back. ‘It was obviously some kind of prank or scam,’ he said, raking his hand through his hair and dropping heavily into his chair.

‘Like the letters?’ Emily reminded him of those. ‘Because of the address, I thought Natasha Jameson had sent it, as you no doubt gathered.’

‘Jesus.’ Shaking his head, Jake looked hard at her. ‘And you really believed that I … With Natasha?’

Emily searched his eyes, looking for the lies there. Jake seemed totally bewildered. But then it was all a bit bewildering, she supposed. ‘I did, but then she was targeted herself, wasn’t she? I’m thinking it must be someone closer. Sally, for instance, who is definitely close and who we do know. Intimately. Or at least you do.’

‘Excuse me?’ Jake squinted at her, disbelieving.

‘Sally,’ Emily repeated calmly, despite her manic heartbeat. ‘She has access to files and computers, doesn’t she? Information at her fingertips. It occurs to me that she might have wanted me to see that email. She also wouldn’t have wanted Natasha to get her claws into you, would she?’

Paling visibly, Jake scanned her face. ‘I have