to do what you did and I realise that you put yourself on the line. That there still might be consequences for you.’
‘Well, I didn’t do the right thing for a long time,’ said Victoria, looking towards the trees peeking over the brick wall of the garden, their leaves still now after the storm.
‘I stayed with a man for money and social position, even when I knew he didn’t love me. But then there comes a point when you realise enough is enough.’
She paused before she continued.
‘I didn’t need you to tell me that Michael was having an affair, Lara. That was just his latest. He was cheating on me all through our marriage. He even has a little flat in St John’s Wood – he doesn’t think I know about it.’ She smiled to herself. Wintry, sad. ‘I know about all of it.’
‘What happens now?’
‘What happens now is that I work with the police and testify against him.’
‘You’d do that?’
Victoria’s eyes flared.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, with a cold laugh.
Lara realised at that moment, that Victoria Sachs didn’t just want to hurt her husband. She wanted to ruin him.
‘You played him, didn’t you? You wanted a divorce all along.’
Victoria snorted.
‘And he would never have given me one, never. Not easily, anyway, not with all his money tied up with ClearView. It would have been a very, very bitter fight. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that Michael Sachs liked control. Where I went, who I spoke to, what money I had access to. But now?’ She met Lara’s gaze. ‘Soon I will be free.’
Had she engineered everything? Lara wondered suddenly. Had this whole thing been a giant game of chess for Victoria Sachs, moving herself, Helen, even Sandrine like pawns to be sacrificed? No. Surely not.
‘Did you…?’ began Lara, but Victoria stopped her by raising a hand to signal her driver to pull alongside.
‘I adapted to the circumstances,’ she said. ‘And I’ll keep doing so. Now I’ll have money and the freedom to spend it on the charity.’ She opened the door and folded herself elegantly inside. ‘And myself of course.’
Lara watched her go, then turned back towards the river. The gate to the wharf still creaked, but perhaps that was a good thing, thought Lara. Not everything needed to change. She stopped by the boatyard office, using her little gold key to open her mailbox. Bill, bill, junk mail, she thought, flipping through her post as she walked back to the pier. ‘And finally… something for me,’ she murmured. It was a letter in an old fashioned, pale blue envelope, handwritten in dark blue, no stamp. She walked up the gangway onto Misty, sitting down on the deck to tear it open. Inside was a single sheet of crisp white writing paper, folded in half. Two lines were written down:
Your mother is dead.
Your father is alive.
She re-read it, her fingers gripping the paper until it creased at the edges, and looked around. She was on-edge again. As an investigative journalist, it was an occupational hazard having enemies. She’d received many crank calls, threats and letters over the years. Most of them went straight into the bin, some of them went to senior management or the legal team at the Chronicle. But this. This felt like something else.
You didn’t have to make a threat or throw a punch to hurt someone. Sometimes just a few words were all it took to throw you off your axis and as Lara re-read the words one more time, she knew that something had changed, possibly forever.
She took a deep breath. There was nothing she could do about it now. Not yet. She would show it to Alex, maybe even Nicholas. She folded the letter in two and slipped it back into the envelope. She would think about it tomorrow.