Paul couldn’t stop gazing at Freya’s sleeping face, the halo of her hair on the hospital pillows. He was afraid to look away, or close his exhausted eyes, in case she was gone when he looked back. There were cuts and bruises on her skin and an antibiotic drip attached to her arm, but the steady beep of her heart monitor was the most comforting sound he’d heard in a long time.
Stop staring at me while I’m asleep, Dad, she might say if she woke now. It’s weird.
This is how it’s going to be from now on, Frey. Mum and I are never letting you out of our sight again.
Oh, God. That’s worse than nearly dying.
Maybe they would get through this by making light of it, but it was hard to imagine a time when the tension would melt from his muscles. Paul felt like he’d been catapulted through a week-long war. And he was somehow on the other side, sitting dazed amid the debris, trying to get his breath back and understand what had happened.
“I’m so sorry, Paul,” Steph said, beside him. “More than I can ever say.”
Paul turned to his wife, who looked every bit as shell-shocked as he felt.
His wife, who was not really Stephanie. Who had killed a man when she was just a teenager and indirectly caused all of this. These facts staggered inside him each time he tried to make them seem real.
“I let you assume this was your fault,” Steph said through tears. “I even assumed that too. I didn’t want to believe it could be anything to do with me. I never thought Becca would . . . I didn’t think she had the resources, let alone that she would want to hurt me this badly . . .”
Paul twisted his hands in his lap, his emotions seesawing. “It could’ve been either of us, Steph.”
She stalled and dabbed at her eyes. Freya’s green scarf was still wrapped around her neck, filthy now, but Steph wouldn’t be parted from it.
“In the church,” she said. “When I asked if you’d killed someone. It was because I recognize something in you. Always have, I suppose. I think that, like me, you know what it’s like to carry the darkest kind of guilt.”
Paul looked steadily back at her and, for just a moment, her face was Nathalie’s. He could still hardly process the fact that she wasn’t dead. But one day he would, and then maybe he’d allow himself a glimmer of relief.
He hadn’t asked Yvette anything about her whereabouts. She wouldn’t tell him where she’d fled to, he was sure, but that wasn’t why he’d resisted asking. Somewhere out there was more than enough now. He just prayed she’d found some happiness, some peace. Perhaps Billie was somewhere out there too. Poor Billie, who would probably remain a tragic unanswered question forever. Had Paul been wrong about Daniel’s role in her disappearance? It was possible, he now saw. They’d hated each other from a distance for too long, wasting energy, wasting their lives.
Paul slipped his hand into his wife’s and her fingers curled around his. All these years they’d been carrying similar burdens. Guarding their secrets, burying their pasts. It had almost lost them everything.
“You’re right,” he said. “I caused a death too . . . or thought I had. Someone I loved, and lied to. Someone I didn’t want you to know about.”
Steph closed her eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was with distress or relief at finally hearing this.
“I know what it does to you,” Paul continued. “How you want forgiveness but you don’t feel like you deserve it, only punishment . . . except you can’t ask for that either. And you want to tell the people you’ve been lucky enough to find a new life with”—he gripped her fingers—“but you’re terrified they won’t love you anymore.”
Steph’s eyes were still leaking. “Even when my punishment came, I didn’t recognize it straightaway. Now we’ve all been punished, Freya worst of all.”
“But we’re all still here.” Paul shuffled nearer to her, and they both looked at Freya again. “We can forgive each other. We have to, don’t we?”
Steph laid her face against his shoulder. Her hair, though unwashed in five days, still smelled faintly of vanilla. She was still the same person, despite the name change, despite the part of her life he hadn’t known—just as she’d been oblivious to a part of his. Paul felt a blast of sympathy as he pictured her as a frightened young girl, making a mistake that would haunt her entire life.
Of course, he knew what that felt like. They could have forgiven each other, maybe even themselves, a long time ago.
Freya’s eyelids fluttered and Paul was overcome with love. The memory of finding her at last, in that tiny locked room, kept bowling into him. Somehow he’d been given a third chance. And this time he wouldn’t squander it with half his head still in the past. He would be present. Grateful. Real.
He wrapped his arms around Steph. Their breathing evened out as they sat there, eyes closed, lulled by the musical beeps of their daughter’s heart.