He Saved Her Child, Abandoned Ours novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Original

Cressida was sitting at the desk of Rafe's late father with her shoes off and a laptop open in front of her.

She had not put on the lamp.

The only light in the study came from the screen, and it lit her face from below.

"You came," she said. "I wasn't sure you were brave enough."

"The housekeeper let me in," I said. "She wouldn't look at you."

"She never does. Sit."

I stayed standing.

I laid two pages on the blotter, the printed cancellation and the concierge's copy of the visitors' book.

"Forty times in a year," I said. "Signed in by my husband. And this, from twelve past four on Monday, from this room."

She glanced at them and did not pick either up.

"A woman visited a friend's flat," she said. "A woman used a desk in a house where she lives. Do try to be interesting, Rhiannon."

"Rafe has the real recording of the call you cut."

"Then Rafe has a recording." She smiled. "And I have two nights of your daughter."

My throat closed, and I made it open.

"Why?" I said. "Not the money. Why Tilly?"

She was quiet for a while.

Rain started on the long windows.

"Do you know how it began?" she said. "He came home because I let him."

"I don't understand."

"At twenty-seven I rang a man who had married somebody else and I told him I was having his baby. He cried, Rhiannon. He sat on the kitchen floor in Chelsea and cried, and then he stood up and said he would see to everything."

"And you let him see to it."

"I let him choose me every Tuesday," said Cressida. "For five years. Do you know what it's like to be somebody's Tuesday?"

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