Page 108 of Dead to Me

‘Aria Lauder?’Marcie asked.She sounded both alert and anxious.‘She’smissing?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Reid said.‘Though of course that isn’t her real name, as your husband has no doubt told you by now.’

Marcie’s large, dark eyes stared at him with a troubled, soulful, desperate look.She looked so much like James.‘I don’t… He must have…’

‘Philip has kept a lot from you over the years, hasn’t he?’he said, gently but relentlessly.‘Did you realise?That there were things everyone knew about except you?’

She turned away from him and he realised that she was trying not to cry.

Some part of her guessed,he thought.

Reid saw a box of tissues on a bookshelf and rose to get them.They were placed artfully in front of a display of photographs.Multiple prints were laid out in each frame.

Several of the photographs featured a man he didn’t immediately recognise, but Reid found his gaze lingering on him.He was brown-haired and had the same large, dark eyes as Marcie and James.But unlike them, his hair was cropped close.In two of them he had an arm slung round a younger James.And in one of the photos he was wearing military uniform and being presented with a medal.

She’d said she had a brother in the forces, hadn’t she?She’d told Anna about him.

Reid was slow turning to hand Marcie the box of tissues.And slower still to sit in the armchair again.God, his headache needed to go.He needed to work out what was bothering him about the photos.

Marcie took a tissue with a terse ‘Thank you’.And he realised that she had pride, as well as a softer side.He could use her pride.

‘I’m surprised he didn’t tell you about Aria,’ he said.‘Wouldn’t it have been useful to know that she was really an undercover journalist?I mean, Roland Frankland, Marcus Jaffett and Clarisse Thomas all know.Everyone else.’

He saw Marcie’s expression harden slightly.‘What are you talking about?’

‘Aria was never a student, though she does a good job of playing the part,’ Reid said with a half-smile.‘She’s a very good journalist.And she’s also the kind of person who doesn’t let go once she’s realised an injustice has happened.’He broke off for a moment, suddenly sure he heard a sound somewhere else in the house.

She’s here,he thought.And he got to his feet and startedto move towards the doorway to the hall, drawn irresistibly towards the possibility of Anna being here.Of her being alive.

‘Where are you going?’Marcie asked.

Reid paused at the doorway, listening, and then turned to her.She’d followed him and was now standing in the big kitchen, her feet in sunlight but her face shadowed.Hollow.

‘Have they asked you to help them?’he asked Marcie, quietly.‘Did they explain why?’

Marcie’s jaw tightened.‘I honestly don’t know why you think it’s all right to come in here and throw out…spite.’

‘That necklace of Holly’s you found,’ he said, deliberately.‘Did you ever realise that it wasn’t Holly who’d been wearing it?’

Marcie’s face changed completely now.It lost all its colour and half its structure.But Reid couldn’t stop to feel guilty.

‘Is she here?’he asked.‘Did they ask you to help hold her?Or did they lie to you about that, too?’

‘Hold who?’Marcie asked, her voice full of a startling, extraordinary rage this time.‘That–whore?Why would I let her through my door?’

Reid blinked at her, stunned.There was another sound behind him, but he couldn’t even spare a thought for it because the woman he was seeing was so wholly different to the one he’d walked into the house to talk to.

‘Anna is a journalist,’ he said.‘She’s never been a whore.’

You thought she was a whore, too,a tiny voice told him, and with it came profound shame.Here was his absolution, the moment where he proved that he’d been wrong.

‘She came to Cambridge to find out what had happened to Holly Moore,’ he said.

‘Maybe she did,’ Marcie spat, as though struggling to hold firm.‘But it was just an excuse.I knew.All the signs werethere.The calls, the overnight stays, the lies…’ Her mouth twisted.‘It was her.She was all over him from that first night, and I could tell it had been going on for months.A perfect set-up with her godfather’s friend.I could see it all, so I followed her.And I saw her– Isaw her–at the Caledonian Club with him.I tried to warn her off but that fucking bitch justsmiledat me and went right on.’She took a long, shaky breath.‘I wanted the truth from her.I wanted the truth, this time.I missed my chance with Holly, and I regretted it.I wanted her to tell me how she did it.How she tempted him away.’

Marcie was standing in front of him, shaking with fury and a pain so apparent that it made him wince.

It was then that Reid understood that Esther had been totally wrong.

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