Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(45)

Seth’s all casual. ‘Oh we’d just cleared up that business about the joint account.’

‘Ah right, OK.’ I say, nodding. ‘You know, my dad did it to me once. I had a bit of a blow-out, island-hopping across Greece one summer and he only went and cancelled my allowance, stopped my credit card. It worked though. I was back the next day.’

‘Unlike Alice,’ Lapaine says, coldly. Reporting a fact, not lamenting a loss.

‘Unlike Alice.’ I leave it there for a few seconds then turn to Seth again. ‘Did you ask about the phone numbers?’

Lapaine sits up, confused. ‘What phone numbers?’

‘We hadn’t got to the phone numbers,’ Seth confirms.

‘What phone numbers?’ he repeats, growing antsy.

I make a bit of a performance of sifting through my papers. Lapaine tries to flash-read but frankly half of them aren’t relevant, just whatever I could grab in the squad room, most of it bound for the shredder.

Thing is, paper makes people nervous. Far more than technology, surprisingly.

I find what I’m looking for, slide the piece of paper towards him. ‘Do you recognise either of these numbers?’

His eyebrows knit together. ‘No, but then I don’t recognise many numbers off-hand. Just Alice’s and maybe my parents. Whose are they?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Alice made several calls to both over the past few weeks.’

‘Well, I can’t help.’

I flick my hand. ‘No worries. We knew it was a bit of a long shot.’ I draw in a little closer, watch his jaw set as the chair legs make a scraping sound across the floor. ‘Tom, you said that Alice had initially been very keen to start a family. You sort of implied it was the main reason she agreed to come back to the UK.’

Impatient. ‘Yes.’

I take a deep breath, a warning to him that he’s not going to like what I say next. ‘You see, the post-mortem report has confirmed something that may, or may not, come as a shock to you.’

That gets a laugh. ‘My wife turned out to be a completely different person to who I thought she was, Detective. I’m not sure anything can come as a shock anymore so please, say what you have to say.’

I take him at his word and don’t bother with a preamble. ‘Your wife had at some point given birth to a child, Tom. Not just got pregnant – that’s not what I’m saying – she’d actually delivered a child.’

It’s subtle, so subtle that I’ll probably doubt later that it was ever really there, but there’s a momentary rigidity to him – from the set of his eyes to the ram-rod straightness of his spine, that tells me he’s thunderstruck.

‘What exactly are you telling me?’ he says, eyes boring into mine. ‘That my wife carried and delivered a child and somehow managed to conceal it from me? Clearly Alice’s ability to deceive was far beyond what I imagined but still, I think I’d have noticed that.’

I answer coolly. ‘Then it must have been before you met. So can you tell us, did she ever speak to you about it? Or did you ever suspect that she’d had a child?’

‘Did I ever suspect she’d had a child?’ He repeats it back, seeming to consider the question, and for one bright moment I think he might be gearing up for a revelation. A little nugget to bring this case into some sort of focus.

‘Yes, she had a child when she was a teenager, by an older man who was visiting on holiday.’

The thought ambushes me before I can block it out. My head buzzes as it starts to take root. Suddenly, Thomas Lapaine’s voice seems echoey and distant.

‘Alice always said that she was born to be a mother, Detective. She said it was all she ever wanted, until one day in late October she decided that apparently, it wasn’t. And do you know all I suspected then? That she was looking into the adoption route, or maybe surrogacy. I thought perhaps she wanted to do all the research first and get all the facts before suggesting it to me.’ He leans in close, as if it’s vitally important we understand what he’s about to say. ‘Because that’s how the Alice I knew would have behaved. How this Maryanne Doyle would have behaved, and whether she’d given birth to a litter of children, I honestly couldn’t tell you, and if I’m being perfectly straight with you, Detectives, the way I feel right now, I really couldn’t care less.’

Seth nods. ‘You’re understandably very angry, Mr Lapaine. Who wouldn’t be?’

‘Angry,’ Lapaine muses. ‘It doesn’t seem strong enough a word but yes, I am angry. I’ve felt more anger towards Alice in the past thirty-six hours than I ever felt in our entire relationship. And I’ve got nowhere to direct that anger. I can’t speak to her. I can’t ask her any of the questions that have been running around my mind ever since your colleague walked into my sitting room and told me my wife was a completely different person to who she claimed to be.’

I figure he might as well direct his anger at me. Anything to distract from the anxious knots clustering in my brain, in my stomach, in my whole being.

I go for broke. ‘Did you ever suspect Alice had boyfriends?’

‘Boyfriends!’

I’m not sure if he’s shocked by the accusation or the word.

‘Lovers,’ I say, holding his gaze. ‘A bit on the side?’