He had stared at her in disbelief. ‘No,’ he said, tentatively putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘No, shush now, I don’t hate you … no, I, OK calm down, don’t cry, just tell me from the beginning.’
And so she had. How Oliver had taken advantage of one of his young students, how he’d got her pregnant then abandoned her, wanting nothing to do with Hannah when she was born. ‘Rose found out,’ she said. ‘She found out and she arranged to meet my mother near where they all lived, at Dunwich, you know the cliffs there?’
‘Yes,’ Mac said his unease deepening.
‘My mother met her up there, she had me in my buggy with her. Rose was the last person to see her alive.’
‘She … what? Hannah, what are you saying …?’
‘The papers said it was suicide. But I … I don’t know, I don’t think …’
‘Oh, come on now! You can’t be serious …’
But Hannah continued to tell him her story, the long sad tale of her childhood, how she’d tracked down the Lawsons, spied on their wonderful life, watched as her father doted on her siblings without a second thought for her. ‘My father, Mac, the father who’d given me away like I was rubbish.’ She’d wiped her tears. ‘Mac, even if you don’t believe that Rose killed my mother, her death was still Oliver’s fault, because of the way he treated her, the way he threw her away, threw both of us away.’
He’d stared at her. ‘So what do you want with me?’ he asked at last. ‘Why am I here?’ He was still trying to get his head around how completely he’d been duped, how entirely he’d believed their meeting had been mere chance.
She’d leant forward. ‘I want you to help me teach Oliver a lesson. I want to make him see that he can’t treat people like that, his own daughter, and get away with it.’
Mac had begun to search around for his clothes then. ‘I’m sorry but I think you better go now.’
‘I’m telling the truth!’ she cried. ‘My mother was Nadia Freeman. Her body was found washed up in the sea at Dunwich in 1981. It would have been in all the local papers. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Nadia Freeman was my mother. And Oliver Lawson is my father.’
He couldn’t look at her. ‘I don’t want any part of this. I don’t think we should see each other again.’
He didn’t hear from her in the weeks that followed, but he thought about her often. Could her strange tale be true? He could go to the library in Suffolk, look Nadia Freeman up in the local papers archive, but even if someone had died with her name, it didn’t mean Oliver or Rose had anything to do with it. All the same, something kept nagging at him. He had always thought Hannah seemed vaguely familiar, and as soon as she began telling him who she really was, he had realized why: she was the absolute spitting image of Luke and Oliver. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before, but now that he had, it was undeniable. Every day his unease grew. She’d been so convincing. She hadn’t seemed insane at all.
At the end of the second week he got a call from Luke. ‘All right, stranger? Where’ve you been hiding? What you up to this weekend?’
‘Oh you know … work. Not really got any plans, why?’
‘It’s my dad’s birthday this weekend. Me and Clara are going up there for the party. You fancy it? I know you said you were planning on going up to see your mum soon anyway. Clara was only saying this morning that she misses you. Come, it’ll be fun.’
He realized as soon as he got to The Willows and saw Clara that it had been a mistake to go there. She looked incredible. He wasn’t even sure what it was about her that pulled her to him so. She was nowhere near as beautiful as Hannah, yet she was everything. When she saw him she gave a cry of delight and went to hug him, her familiar scent filling his nostrils, the feel of her small, compact body in his arms. It was agony. He’d hoped that the short time away from her would have helped, but he realized he loved her more than ever.
Towards the end of the evening he’d stood at the edge of the party, drinking solidly, morosely, by himself. When Luke bowled over to him, bright-eyed and flushed with drink, enthusiastically slapping him on the back, he had looked at him and said quietly, ‘What’s happening with that girl from work? Sadie? Did you really finish it with her?’
Luke’s eyes had widened. ‘Yes! Of course I bloody did! Jesus, Mac, I told you that. It was one night, months ago, the worst mistake I’ve ever made. I just want to forget it ever happened.’ He’d glanced around uneasily.
Mac had nodded. ‘Yeah. OK, I just wanted to make sure.’
But still, anger had burned inside him as he’d watched Luke wander off to where Clara was talking to his mother, draping his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulder with casual propriety. When an extremely drunk Oliver had approached Mac a few minutes later, wine bottle proffered to top up his glass, Mac had said, raising his voice over the music and voices, ‘Oliver, do you know anyone named Nadia Freeman?’
And the expression in Oliver’s eyes had told him all he needed to know. ‘What?’ he said, the colour instantly draining from his face. ‘What did you say?’
‘Natalia,’ he had almost shouted. ‘Natalia Fellum. Just a girl I met in London the other day, said she used to live locally. Oliver? Are you OK?’
‘Yes, yes, sorry, I thought …’ he took a large gulp of wine. ‘Um, Natalia? No, doesn’t ring a bell I’m afraid.’ And with that he’d patted Mac on the shoulder and staggered drunkenly off. But Mac had seen it: that initial reaction of pure, unbridled fear. He had seen it, and he had known.
In the days that followed, his thoughts kept returning to Hannah. He was surprised how much he missed her; there had been a connection between them, a sympathy, a sense that she was as alone as he was in her own way, that they shared a singular misery, a longing to make peace with something impossible. Since the party he’d found himself brooding on Luke’s selfishness, his undeserved good fortune, more and more. Finally, late one night when he’d been drunk and wretched, he’d texted Hannah. What did you want me to help you with? he wrote.
Her reply had been instant: Can we meet?
At first the plan had sounded so outlandish that he’d refused. ‘Are you joking? No fucking way.’
‘Three days,’ Hannah had said. ‘It’s only three days. Long enough to teach Oliver a lesson, that’s all, make him see that I haven’t gone away, that I’ll never go away.’
‘Hannah …’
‘He threw me away, Mac. Like rubbish. He threw me away, and my mother too. She died because of him.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Listen. You love Clara. Don’t you?’
And he’d looked at her, the only person in the world he’d ever admitted that to. ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘And Luke cheated on her, treated her like shit. The woman you love. Do you really want Clara to stay with him? With Luke out of the way, you could be alone with Clara, let her find out about Sadie, show her how much she means to you.’ Tears had filled her eyes. ‘Please, Mac, please. You’re my only hope, I feel as though I’ll never get closure on this if I don’t do something.’
Mac had thought about the guilt that had been plain to see on Oliver’s face and put his arms around her. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘it’s OK, take it easy.’
‘Look, I’m not going to hurt him. I just want Oliver to admit the truth, jolt him out of his smug little life, make him face up to what he did.’
‘How are you going to get Luke to your flat?’
‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ she’d said. ‘I just need your help with a few things first.’