Page 99 of All Right No
Who were any of them really?
Their friendship had been real, but she didn’t know what Spook had said to know if it was accurate. As for the last part, did Dani really think she needed that point spelling out? She was perfectly aware of how badly she’d hurt Ash, and in the process herself.
“Why would you do that? Why deceive everyone you know? You’ve crushed him. Absolutely crushed him. He thought he’d found his soulmate, but Ginny Walters doesn’t even exist. She’s a fake. You’re a fake.”
Ginny was not a fake. Geneva was the fake.
“Tell me. Explain it to me. Why aren’t you saying anything?”
A dark figure shot into the room, and bundled Dani up inside an embrace. Xane held her tight, while she snuffled against his shoulder. “You have to give her a chance to speak, Dani. Why don’t you wait in the kitchen with Luthor? He’s making some brews. Let me talk to Ginny.”
“Okay,” Dani snuffled. She left after another encouragement to do so from Xane.
Xane quietly closed the door behind her. “She’s angry. She thought she knew who you were, and the construction in her head of you as a person has had to undergo a rapid shift. It’ll take a while for her to adjust.”
Ginny watched him pace back and forth over the same three gaudy flowers on the carpet. “Why are you here, Xane?”
He crossed to the bed, and moved the pillow so that he could sit. “I want to hear your side. Tempers are frayed, much as you’d expect right now, but we shouldn’t let that get in the way of sound judgement. I don’t think you saved that bit of information about being married up so that you could take some sort of sadistic pleasure in revealing it at the worst moment. I think you kept it quiet for a reason. I want to know what it is.”
She stared at the pattern of black hearts and funky spiders on the duvet cover and refused to look at him.
“Ginny?”
“What does it matter, the damage is done. There’s no means of undoing it.”
“Maybe.” He reached out a hand and rested it against her covered knee. “The others are all focussed on what you hid from them. I’m more interested in why. I don’t believe for a minute it was spite, or to hurt anyone. If anything, I think you were trying to prevent that possibility. Did you think you could keep it quiet forever?”
“Of course not.”
She peeped upwards, and found him looking straight at her.
“I know who you are Ginny, and I mean that in both ways you might interpret me. I know you love Ash, and this outcome was the last thing you wanted. It’s hurting you as much as him. And I know who Geneva Winters is too.” He squeezed her knee again. “It’s a small world.”
“How could you know?”
“I might not be Mister Corporate, but I’m unfortunately related to him—Arthur Bletchley, of the Bletchley Group. There’ve been rumours ever since she disappeared that Miles Winters murdered his wife and hid the body.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
He gave a snort. “I’m glad to discover it isn’t true. That man’s a crook. And I know that because I’m related to a bigger one.”
It was easy to forget that while Xane Geist was a scion of the gothic rock scene, he was also Alexander Liddell, whose father had been a high-up diplomat, and whose siblings were big players on the corporate stage.
“I see you still have the ring on.”
Ginny curled her fingers and pulled her hand out of sight. “Is that why you’re here? Did Ash send you for it?”
Xane pitched back against the wall, so that he was sat alongside her. “Ash doesn’t know we’re here. I haven’t spoken to him, only to Spook. Both he and Paul are with him, and Ash is pretty rat arsed by the sound of it.”
Too bad there was no booze around here so she could sink into a similar stupor.
As if he’d read her mind, Xane opened his leather jacket and drew a half bottle of something amber and potent-looking from his inside pocket. He offered it to her, but pulled back from handing it over so that her fingers closed upon thin air. “In exchange for your side of the story.”
“What’s the point? It’s over.” She’d blown her chance of genuine happiness.
Xane cupped his hand around his ear and strained as if listening carefully. “I can’t hear any fat ladies singing. So spill.” He handed her the bottle. “Start with Winters. I’m not seeing you as an obvious match.”
Ginny swallowed a draft of whisky before sagging deeper into the duvet coiled around her like a giant snake. She wished it were real, and that it would eat her. “There’s not a lot to tell. I married Miles at seventeen. My mother agreed, obviously, despite the age difference, in fact, she was not just ecstatic about the whole thing, she more or less arranged it.” Ginny bowed her head. Christ, did she really want to admit this stuff? It made her sound like an absolute noodle-brain. “I was an idiot, okay? I let myself believe presents and charm were the same as love. If he went to such trouble to impress me, that meant he must care deeply. What he in fact was doing, was buying me, and I was cheap. God, was I cheap!”
