The Girl in the Mirror(47)

I’m familiar with female fertility from when Noah and I were trying to conceive. I figure, based on what Summer told me, that she conceived around the seventh of March. Today is the tenth of April.

I connect to the marina Wi-Fi, switch on private browsing, and search for a pregnancy calculator. Turns out Summer’s baby is due on the twenty-eighth of November.

And now I calculate the due date if I conceived today.

The first of January next year.

Not even the same year. Just my luck. It’s all going to be too late.

I play around with the dates. Adam surely won’t remember the date Summer conceived. How much of that story about making love on the deck was true, anyway? Will he know her due date? Do guys remember that sort of thing?

According to Google, it’s okay to have your baby a couple of weeks early or late. By the time Summer is overdue enough for the doctors to induce labor, my sprog will be close to term. It might be small, but it won’t be obvious that it’s early rather than late, since newborns vary in size.

Perfect. I’ll have it while it’s still nice and small, but it’ll look close enough. No one will know the difference.

As long as today’s encounter did the trick. Something about my monstrous spasm as Adam spilled his seed inside me made me feel fertile. As though my body was sucking his DNA into my womb.

At the thought, another heat wave surges through me. I feel betrayed by my body. While my brain was insisting that Adam’s dirty talk was disgusting, the rest of me was lapping it up. Who cares what he was saying? Summer’s perfect husband was having sex with me. Crazy-hot sex. Daytime sex on our luxury yacht.

Adam’s an innocent bystander in this mind-fuck, the loving husband I’m blaming for my own fantasies.

The truth is, Adam didn’t rape me this morning. I set the situation up; I am to blame. I made him do something he would never do. And there’s only one way to stop him from ever finding out. I’m in this game for life.





13

The Blood




Nobody mourns for Iris.

While I’m calculating due dates, Summer’s emails flood in. There’s one from my brother, and I’m so eager to read it, I can’t even click in the right place. Finally I open it.

Hi Summer,

I’m terribly sorry to hear what has happened. Mum phoned me yesterday, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It’s awful, so awful.

Mum says the funeral will be in Australia. She called it a funeral, even though there is no body. Unfortunately I won’t be able to make it because of my final exams. I hope you understand.

I volunteered to tell Noah. I gather you know that he left her, but Mum doesn’t know and maybe doesn’t need to know. Noah’s been in touch with me recently. He’s split up with Lori and moved back into the apartment, so there’s nothing to tip Mum off that they weren’t together. I’ve already phoned him, so at least you don’t need to do that. I suggested he stay in New Zealand for the time being to spare Mum the pain of finding out about the marriage breakdown, which would be bound to come out if he went to Australia.

Let me know if there’s anything I can do. I’m glad you have Adam to look after you.

All the best,

Ben





I read the email three times.

Ben doesn’t even mention my name. This is like an email from a distant cousin, one who met the deceased a few times. A polite expression of sympathy for the bereaved sister.

Tears stream down my face and splash onto the iPad’s screen. Ben is the one person I thought would mourn me as much as he would Summer. I haven’t seen him since he moved to New York, but we have kept in touch a lot. Not so much on the phone, but through messaging apps. He was upset for me when Noah left, as far as you can tell through typed words.

He isn’t coming to the Seychelles. He isn’t hurrying to our mother’s side. I died, and my brother sent an email.



I’m still mining Summer’s emails an hour later when there’s a knock on the hull, and I step outside to see Daniel standing on the pontoon, swinging his car keys.

“I know you wanted to be left alone, but Adam’s worried about you,” he says. “He’s at my mother’s house with Tarquin and he wants me to bring you. I’ve been looking up flights, by the way. There’s a flight home via Colombo tomorrow.”

“Home?” I say. “Isn’t this our home for now? Adam wants to be with his family. We’re meant to stay till September.”

Am I messing up, saying this? When Summer and Adam bought Bathsheba, they were going to sail the Seychelles for six months, but maybe the pregnancy changed their plans.

“But do you want to keep sailing?” Daniel asks. “Adam’s worried about bringing Tarq on board after what happened. Summer, please, would you let me take you to a doctor? I understand if you don’t want me to examine you, of course, but I have a lovely colleague, a woman—”

“No,” I say. “I’m fine.”

But he keeps slipping it into the conversation. He looks and sounds so like Adam, apart from his startling gold eyes, but Daniel’s is a different mind, sharp and determined. I need to distract him.

“I need to see my son,” I say at last. “Please, would you take me to Tarquin.”