Months earlier
They had spent the morning in their usual spot, seated at the back of one of the chain coffee shops on Caledonian Road. It was a stone’s throw from the football pitches where David played on Saturday mornings, and a short walk from the library where Maria had spent the past two hours staring at a blank page, no longer interested in the pile of books in her backpack, passing the time before David’s weekly football was over and they would take their usual place opposite one another under the strip-lighting illuminating the Formica countertop.
It was the sort of place David could count on not being discovered by anyone he knew, and his hand rested on hers, his thumb moving back and forth against her knuckle.
He had been distant all morning. Driving from the house he remained silent, without so much as attempting to stroke her knee. By the time he finally joined her at the coffee shop, she was terrified of what might be on his mind. But then, with only the slightest prompting, the floodgates opened. If ever she needed proof that she was his confidante, this was it. As soon as he had started to speak, he could not stop.
‘I didn’t believe my father at first, when he told me. We had gone for dinner, the three of us, to celebrate Anna’s promotion. It was the loveliest night, and then she went home early and my dad and I went on for a drink at his club. We’d just found out Anna was pregnant and I knew she didn’t want me to say anything, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was so bloody excited.
‘As soon as we were in the cab on the way there, I felt him change. I assumed, at first, he was distracted by work or something else. We got to the club, we ordered drinks and as soon as they arrived, I told him. I blurted it out. Anna was pregnant. We were having a baby. I didn’t know then, that there were two of them. But it turns out that was the least of the things I didn’t know.’
David let out a laugh and shifted slightly in his seat, silent for a moment before continuing. ‘When I told him, he didn’t say anything at first. It was as if he hadn’t heard me; he just answered that he had something important to tell me. I remember his words exactly. He said, “David, I’m not sure how else to say this, but your friend, Anna, she’s not who you think she is.”’
The movements of David’s thumb stopped and he looked up at Maria, his eyes almost glazed.
‘It was the night of my father’s party in Greece that they had found out. The one where I finally saw you again. The funny thing was, he already knew there was a mole. He’d got wind of it from one of his contacts, but he thought it was Jeff. Jeff was always a loose cannon, and my father assumed he was the one selling him out. So he had Jorgos follow him, and Jorgos caught her coming out of the study. After that, my father checked the camera, and it was all there. My girlfriend, the love of my life, snooping around in his office.’
David shook his head, laughing to himself, before biting his lip.
‘And you know, I still didn’t believe him. Despite everything. I convinced myself it was an honest mistake, that she had just been looking for a pen or …’ He shook his head. ‘I know, fucking ridiculous. But what … I was supposed to believe that she was a spy? I was supposed to believe the woman I was in love with, the woman carrying my baby, was using me to …’
His voice trailed off, and then started again.
‘For a while I blamed Jeff. I thought he and Jorgos must have been in on it together … setting Anna up in order to cover their own tracks.’
Maria’s throat was constricting. For want of something to distract her hands, she reached for her cup and took a sip, the coffee unexpectedly hot, scalding her lip.
‘But my dad, he wouldn’t give up; he wouldn’t stop going on and on about how she was a fraud. He had seen her passport. She wasn’t born in Wiltshire at the airbase at Boscombe Down, like she told us; she was born in Surrey, and that was where she grew up. An unremarkable life in an unremarkable family, as she stayed until she met me … Her mother wasn’t even dead.’
His fingers were pressed against the side of the table, his knuckles white, his voice wavering with disbelief rather than anger.
‘But even then, I kept thinking there’s got to be an explanation. For months, I believed there had to be an explanation. But my dad wouldn’t drop it, so eventually, I set a trap. A few weeks before she was due to give birth, I went out and left my father’s laptop on the table next to my bed. And I actually felt bad. Even doing that, doubting her just for a second. Then I came home, and it was the day she went into labour – in our room. I came back and her waters had broken, and next to her was the computer, under the duvet on the floor, and it was on. And when I looked at her, her face … That was it. I knew.’
Unaffected by Maria’s silence, David had hardly paused for breath, something inside him having opened that could not easily be closed again before purging years’ worth of stale, festering emotions. And then he stopped.
For several minutes they sat in silence, his eyes set somewhere in the distance while the memories churned around his head, until once more the words spilled out.
The coffee in front of her was cold and grey by the time he spoke again.
‘You know, I might have felt like a fool, if it hadn’t also been made clear that she had no idea who she was actually working for. All of this, and she hadn’t even bothered to check. Can you imagine that?’
Maria felt a prickle of hairs along her arms.
‘That man, that reject journalist scum she was fucking – did I tell you that bit? No? Oh yeah, she was bending over for him at the same time as taking every penny my family ever gave her, lapping up every opportunity we offered. And the girls, they—’
He looked up, and then something stopped him continuing with his sentence. He picked up the stirrer and moved it absent-mindedly around in his cup.
‘You know, sometimes I try to picture her face the moment the penny drops at how she’s been played. Oh, to be a fly on the wall the moment she discovers that all along she was actually working for one of the biggest crooks in Central Africa.’
He was talking to himself now. Whether or not Maria was present was neither here nor there. She was the one into whose arms he fell, believing he had already been more betrayed than he could ever be.