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‘I haven’t been telling you the truth,’ Helen said. ‘Not that I’ve been lying, exactly, just not telling the truth, and I want to be honest. Here … like this. I need to be honest.’

Since they had called and demanded to speak to Mitchell, Akhtar had been prowling back and forth like one of those creatures in a zoo that have gone slightly mad. From storeroom to shop and back again. As though it were only a question of which way they were going to come for him.

Now, he stopped and stood a few feet in front of her, holding the gun.

Waiting.

‘I can’t say for certain that Paul was Alfie’s father,’ Helen said. ‘That’s it, basically.’ She looked up at him. ‘That’s the truth of it. I know I’ve been talking as though he is, and that’s the way I always talk, even to myself, but the fact is I can’t be certain. Paul wasn’t certain either, which was why things were so difficult between us when he was killed. He died not knowing one way or another.’

Akhtar backed slowly away until he reached the desk and lowered himself on to the chair. ‘Why are you telling me these things?’

‘I don’t really know,’ she said.

Why was she telling a man who had threatened to kill her, knowing full well that at the same time she was announcing it to whoever was listening in on the outside? Why did she feel the need suddenly to get this stuff off her chest? Did she really think she would absolve herself?

Because she knew that Akhtar was right and it was only a question of how and not when they would be coming in. Because although the men with the guns would do everything they could to avoid discharging their weapons and to keep her safe, things did not always go according to plan. Because people got over-excited and accidents happened.

Because she did not want to die without saying it.

‘Because I need to tell someone,’ she said.

Akhtar looked at her, cocked his head slightly. He rested the gun on his knee, the barrel pointing towards her. ‘I am a newsagent,’ he said. ‘Not a priest.’

Helen’s impulse was to smile back, but her mouth could do no more than say the words. Her tongue felt thick and heavy and her heart was thundering against her chest.

‘I met a man on a course,’ she said. ‘A firearms officer, of all things. Right now, I’d be seriously thinking that he might be one of the ones out there with a gun in his hand, except that he moved away, after what happened to Paul …

‘It was a fling, that’s all. Stupid. Just half a dozen times in some hotel or other and I’m not saying that as any kind of excuse. I still did what I did, and at the time I wanted to do it. He was everything Paul wasn’t, in all sorts of ways. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed being wanted that much. I’m just saying that I never actually thought about leaving Paul, that’s all. He was the one who talked about leaving, when he found out. It was awful for a while and things never got back to how they’d been before, but we decided we were going to carry on.

‘For the baby’s sake.

‘Things were said when it all came out. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. Horrible things, but I knew he was only saying them because he’d been hurt and because he wanted to hurt me back. I was happy to take whatever he was dishing out, because I knew I deserved it, and I thought everything would be all right because of the baby. I just kept telling myself that it would all be OK once the baby came along.

‘After Paul was killed, guilt was one of the things that made me so desperate to find out what had happened. The main thing, if I’m honest. Just like I’d been kidding myself about the baby solving all our problems, I told myself that if I found out what had happened to Paul, if I found out the truth, I might feel a bit less guilty about what I’d done to him.

‘Like I say, kidding myself.’

Helen was leaning back with her head against the radiator, her eyes fixed on a space a few feet above Akhtar’s head, and she did not see him grimace and look away.