Chapter 9: On His Knees

The dinner ended at nine, with six investors in the cloakroom and my mother driving my sister home.

At midnight someone pounded on my hotel door.

I looked through the peephole.

My husband was standing in the corridor with his tie torn open and his hair standing up.

I put my phone on the table by the window, with its recorder running and its screen face-up.

Then I opened the door.

"Ms. Coleman," Neal said, and pushed in past me.

He smelled of scotch and fear.

"I have to talk to you. Please."

"You have two minutes."

"Lindy's lost her mind."

He walked to the window and back, his hands opening and closing.

"She's had a breakdown.

She's been like this since Gillian, she cries, she sees her in shop windows, and the doctor says it's grief."

"The doctor," I said.

"A friend of the family's. Not important."

He stopped in front of me and looked into my face.

It was the first time in all those weeks that he really looked.

His eyes went over my cheekbones, my mouth, the small scar through my eyebrow.

"My wife had a scar just there," he said slowly.

"Everyone has a scar somewhere," I said.

I watched the blood leave his face, and I wondered what it would take for him to say it.

Then he shook himself.

"No," he said. "No. Gillian could never."

"Never what?"

"She'd never have had the nerve."

He gave a cracked little laugh.

"She was soft, Faith.

She was a good girl who did what she was told.

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