The Guilt Trip(67)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says through a forced smile, refusing to give Ali any more power to wield over her.

“I need to know if Josh is my son,” says Noah.

Her head snaps round to face him; she’s so incensed that she doesn’t care who might be watching anymore. “And have you thought about what he might need?” she hisses. “What do you suppose would happen to him if it turned out you were his father? That Chloe is actually his half-sister? How do you think that would make him feel? But yet, like everybody else, all you can think about is yourself. How you need to know. How it will make you feel. Well, guess what? This isn’t just about you.”

“Are you honestly telling me that it has never occurred to you?” asks Noah.

“Yes,” she lies. “Why would it?”

“Because it’s a very real possibility,” he says, his voice high-pitched.

She shakes her head in disagreement, though she’s not convincing herself, let alone anyone else. “Whatever you may remember of that time is wrong,” she says.

“I remember that you cut off all communication while I was away,” says Noah. “How could you not have had the decency to at least tell me what was going on? Why would you have denied me that?”

“Because it had nothing to do with you,” she snaps, desperately looking around for a way out of the conversation.

“So, I went from being your best friend to a stranger who wasn’t entitled to know that you were pregnant and getting married?”

Rachel shifts from one foot to another while she thinks of a logical reason to counteract his argument, but the only one she can think of is the truth. So instead, she lies.

“You were on the trip of a lifetime,” she says. “You didn’t need to be bogged down with the minutiae of my life back home.”

“You didn’t tell me because you knew there was a good chance that Josh was mine.”

She looks at him exasperated, but tears are springing to her eyes as the skeleton in her cupboard falls out and lands in a jumbled mess of bones at her feet. The relief at having someone to share the burden with is almost as powerful as the fear of the consequences.

“I would never share the results with Josh,” Noah says, leaning in closer as the strains of Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” start up. “I just need to know.”

Rachel looks out at Paige and Jack, deeply engrossed in animated conversation, and wants to scream that, actually, it doesn’t matter anymore, because whatever Jack is doing with Ali, it will pale into insignificance if it turns out Noah is right.

“And how do you think that would sit in your marriage?” asks Rachel, acerbically.

“Paige would never know,” says Noah.

“But you knowing would affect your relationship—it has to. And Paige is my best friend. It would change everything.”

“Maybe everything needs to change,” says Noah, looking at her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” comes an announcement over the speaker. “Would you please welcome Mr. and Mrs. Hunter onto the floor for their first dance.”

Paige comes up to them with a fixed smile on her face, though Rachel can tell it’s fake from a mile off. “Can you get me a gin and tonic, please?” she says to Noah.

“Yep, sure,” he says resignedly. “Rach?”

She looks at her half-full glass of wine, disappointed that her emotions are still crystal clear and her feelings on high alert. “I’ll have a gin as well, please,” she says, hoping that it might be what’s needed to numb her nerve endings.

Noah’s not even a meter away when she turns to Paige. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

Paige shakes her head, exasperated, but Rachel can’t tell if it’s because of Jack or the fact that Ali and Will are recreating the dance from the song’s video. The audience stands watching, transfixed by the grace with which Ali moves and the obvious hours they’ve both put into rehearsing. If Rachel could concentrate for more than a second, even she would admit to being captivated.

“Not exactly,” says Paige quietly, when she eventually finds her voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just told him what it looks like,” says Paige. “That the way Ali’s behaving is going to raise a few hackles, and that he might need to have a word with her, because it’s only going to be a matter of time before you or Will pick up on it.”

“And what did he say to that?” asks Rachel, her heart thumping in her chest.

“He said she was just a silly little girl who didn’t know what she was doing.”

Rachel inhales sharply as relief floods through her, closely followed by the realization that he was never going to say anything else. He’d never be as stupid as to incur Paige’s wrath by admitting it; it’d be worse than her own.

“And you believe him?” asks Rachel.

“Well, considering we know her to be a pathological liar, then yes. Perhaps she’s wishing it so hard, she believes it. That’s what I think folk like her do.”

Rachel nods thoughtfully as Noah hands her a fishbowl glass with a straw and a long cucumber shaving sticking out the top of it. This should do the trick.

“You okay for a drink, darling?” asks Jack as he sidles up to Rachel and puts an arm around her waist. She can’t help but notice the tumbler he’s holding, with an inch’s worth of whiskey in it—the drink he refers to as alcoholic’s ruin, because it’s so strong, you only need one.