Behind Every Lie(46)

A woman in a severe black business suit smirked as she slowed to watch them.

“The Ponte Vecchio and the Golden Gate Bridge are all fine and good, but only in London do you get to stomp on willies,” she said to me.

Hysterical laughter bubbled up my throat, wave after wave of it until tears glossed my eyes. For the first time in days, the sharp-toothed fear that had been hot against my neck lessened.

The woman looked at me like I’d completely lost it.

“Sorry!” I waved my hand, a white flag of apology. “Sorry.”

She rolled her eyes and walked away.

The laughter finally tapered off. I took a deep breath and headed across the bridge. I needed to talk to David Ashford and get the hell out of here.

Before I became Sebastian Clarke’s next victim.





twenty-three

eva




ST. THOMAS’ HOSPITAL was an expansive network of stone buildings and glass-encased wings. I wandered around bewildering loops and abrupt turns before finally finding the hospital’s main reception hall. A chubby woman with a neat brown bob, thick glasses, and a string of heavy pearls greeted me.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for one of your patients. His name’s David Ashford.”

“David Ashford.” She typed it into her computer. “I’m afraid Mr. Ashford is on St. Ann’s Ward, and he is only accepting family.” She peered up at me, her eyes huge behind her glasses. “Are you family?”

I stared at her. Was I family? He was, possibly, my biological father. Did that make him family?

She took my silence as a no. “You’re welcome to put in a visitor’s request, and we’ll pass it along to his family for you.”

“Oh. Okay,” I replied, but she’d already moved on to another customer.

I turned around, disappointed, and slammed hard into someone. Papers and folders flew everywhere, blown by a gust of wind puffing through the open front door.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I dropped to my knees, scooping papers into a pile.

“It was my fault, honestly.” The doctor I’d hurtled into knelt next to me. She was in her early to mid-thirties with smooth, olive-toned skin and shoulder-length dark hair, straight and glossy as a shampoo ad.

“My father always tells me not to rush everywhere, and yet I persist,” she said. I handed her the last folder, and she stood, smiling cheerfully.

“Can you tell me how I’d get to St. Ann’s Ward?” I asked.

“It’s on the fifth floor.” She pointed in the direction I needed to go. “Just take the lift and turn right.”

The elevator deposited me onto a quiet floor decorated entirely in white and blue: white walls, white ceiling, blue-tiled floor, blue signs. To my right was a pair of doors, a sign above them blaring ST. ANN’S CANCER WARD.

David Ashford really was sick.

I pushed through the doors. There was an unmanned reception desk to my left. I strolled down the corridor as if I knew where I was going, trying to look confident. But there was no need. None of the doctors or nurses paid any attention to me. I peered inside each room, but I couldn’t see much because the curtains were all pulled. I was working out a lie to tell a doctor in order to find David Ashford when I heard a familiar voice.

“Lie down, Dad. Save your strength. The chemo will wipe you out before you know it.”

A bed creaked as a weight settled on it. I followed the voice and peered around the corner. It was that girl from the art gallery, Charlotte, tucking a sheet around a man’s waist. He was small for a man, thin as paper. His skin was patchy and dry, the ashen gray of the very ill.

Charlotte looked even more exhausted than yesterday, older and harder too. The harsh fluorescent light cast stark shadows on her face. She was wearing jogging bottoms and an oversize gray sweater—clothes you pull on when you’re too tired to care.

She looked up, catching my stricken gaze, and her eyes widened.

“You!” She strode angrily toward me. “What are you doing here? I told you no interviews!”

I ignored her and walked toward the hospital bed. It was him. The man from the articles at the British Library. Older, balder, sicker, for sure, but this was David Ashford.

Once when I was little, Mom and Dad took Andrew and me on a road trip to Pismo Beach. I stood where the sea meets the sand and let the waves crash against my ankles. As the water sucked back out to the Pacific, the sand shifted under my feet, my heels hovering over nothingness. That was what it felt like now. Like there was nothing holding me up, nothing to catch me if I fell.

David blinked up at me from behind round glasses. His jaw hinged open. He stood slowly, the sheet dropping to the floor, exposing thin, bony knees beneath his blue hospital gown.

He opened his mouth and said one word: “Laura.”

Goose bumps skittered up my arms as a memory unfolded over me. A woman with red hair, the same straight nose and milk-pale skin as me, bent to lift me in her arms. She nuzzled my neck, and I giggled as her hair tickled my nose.

“Mummy, that tickles!”

“I love you, Laura-loo!” she exclaimed, blowing a raspberry on my cheek.…

“Laura,” David Ashford said again.

That one word splintered everything inside of me.

Laura.

David and Rose Ashford’s daughter.