1 June
Sometimes, I wonder about telling a complete stranger the whole truth. Instead of a person I actually know. And I don’t mean talking to a professional either. I mean an elderly man I meet on a park bench. Or the woman sitting next to me on the bus. Or the teenager who’s lining up behind me to order fish and chips.
I imagine how I might tell my story. In a whisper? Or a shout?
I imagine how they might react.
They’d be horrified, of course.
* * *
Annalise hadn’t told anyone her news yet. It was two days after she had taken the test and she was doing paperwork at her desk, checking off deliveries and sorting out invoices that needed to be sent upstairs to accounts. The secret weighed on her like sandbags dragging a body down to the ocean floor.
Things were still more than strained between her and Poppy, so she couldn’t confide in her friend. Although even if they had been getting on like a house on fire, this wasn’t a secret she’d want to take to Poppy, considering they’d bonded over a shared desire not to have children.
And she wasn’t ready to tell Lawrence either. Not yet. At least she knew he was the father. Not too long ago it would have been difficult to work out, but lately he was the only one she’d been sleeping with.
And she hadn’t done a thing about it. No trip to the doctor or family-planning clinic to talk through her options.
She was sort of ignoring it, to be honest. Although at least it was putting an end to her drinking problem. Yeah, okay, she’d known it was a problem, all along she’d known it. But at least she was giving it up now, when it mattered. At least she cared enough to do that one thing.
Would she tell Lawrence first? Did he have a right to know? But why? It was her body, wasn’t it? Why did she have to tell him about something that was going on with her body?
Because it’s a part of him.
Fuck that. Fuck him.
And then something happened that changed everything. Something that was going to give her the opportunity to reconcile with Poppy.
She found out Frankie’s secret.
Frankie was careless. Annalise went to her desk looking for a warehouse clearance form she was supposed to have had Paul sign and return to her. She couldn’t find Frankie or Paul but she needed that form. She was searching the desk when she knocked the mouse and her screen lit up.
When she glanced at it and saw Facebook open on the screen, at first she was smirking at the fact that Frankie was just as bad as everyone else, slacking off at work. But then she saw the name at the top of the page. She wasn’t logged in as Frankie Macchione, but as ‘Viv Fairweather’. Annalise knew that name. She knew it well. One of the original, earliest members of NOP. One of their favourites.
It took her a second. She blamed the little cells that were converging in her belly. They were making her slow. Why is she logged in to Viv’s account? The synapses in her brain sparked and she understood. Frankie was Viv. She was the mole. She was the one who had been bringing NOP down from the inside.
That’s when Frankie’s mobile phone started ringing on her desk. Who the hell leaves their phone sitting on their desk anyway?
She should have just let the thing go to voicemail, but she was so angry she wasn’t thinking, and she snatched the thing up and answered it. She took the message with the blood running through her body, pounding in her ears. She would pass the message on later, when she’d simmered down. But first she needed to go and talk to Poppy. This was going to fix things between them. This was going to put things right. They’d have a common enemy.
By the time she realised she hadn’t passed on the message, it was too late.
Frankie’s kids had already gone missing.