Page 40 of Love and Lies

And what then? Your parents would send you to the moon before they’d let you see him again.

Eleanor shook her head. “He inherited those restaurants from his father. And those other projects… that’s not respectable work. More like a hobby for someone who doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life.”

“I think it’s pretty respectable to help other people build something of their own,” I said, drawing my parents’ attention back to me again.

Careful, Helena, the voice in my head warned. You’re on really thin ice now.

My father had fixed me with that piercing stare again, but he let it drop sooner than I expected. “I think we can be glad that our children chose more traditional routes for their futures,” he said diplomatically in the Irvines’ direction. “Lincoln is doing a really great job at the firm, and Helena will carve out her own path too, I’m sure.”

“You’re not going to join the business?” Clive asked, in such an affable tone you’d think he was speaking to a five-year-old. Perhaps he was worried his horrible wife would chime in again.

“I don’t have any firm plans yet. I actually wanted to start my own business with my sister.” I swallowed. “But sadly that’s not going to happen anymore.”

“Your own business? Very ambitious.” Clive nodded his approval. “And in what area? Real estate, surely—I can’t imagine anything else from a couple of Westons.”

“No, not real estate,” I said, struggling to keep my emotions in check. “We wanted to offer city tours.”

“City tours?” Paige’s eyes grew wide. “You wanted to schlep around New York showing a load of tourists with cameras and fanny packs the Empire State Building? Why on earth would you want to do that?” She pulled a face.

I’d have liked to give her a few choice words on the subject, but I kept myself under control and turned back to Clive. “We created this new concept—‘Friends and the City.’ It was supposed to be like being shown around the city by one of your friends, instead of some grumpy tour guide who has to deal with a dozen different groups every day. It was going to be a whole three-hundred-and-sixty-degree experience, with sights, food, and nightlife, but also leisure, trips to secret corners of the city—and always with a guide in the same age range.”

My mother pursed her lips, and my father refilled his glass. No one could do silent disapproval like those two. They had always hated my and Valerie’s idea, and had tried to talk us out of it—unlike Adam, who had even promised to support us financially. I bet they were glad nothing was going to come of it now.

“That sounds like a really great concept,” Clive said, and I was glad at least one person at the table saw it that way. “This city has a lot more to offer than Liberty Island and Times Square. It would be a shame if everyone missed it.”

“Yeah, that’s what Valerie and I always said.” I smiled.

“If you do decide to do it someday, let me know. I have several overseas business partners who would be enthusiastic customers.”

“I—” I began, but my mother interrupted me.

“I’m sure Helena doesn’t intend to follow in her sister’s footsteps in any way. Right, darling?” The look she gave me was clearly an unspoken instruction not to say the wrong thing, for God’s sake. And suddenly, I understood why they were going to so much trouble over this dinner. They wanted to make it clear to the Irvines that Valerie had been a one-off, an exception, the black sheep in the perfect Weston herd. That’s why I was wearing this dress—I was the display model, the good daughter; Valerie would never have worn something like this.

I felt rage bubbling up inside me, irrepressible rage that cut off my air supply and left my hands shaking. I shouldn’t have been surprised they thought of Valerie that way—I’d always known my sister and her headstrong ways had been a pain in Mom and Dad’s ass. But it was still incredibly hurtful to see firsthand how unprepared they were to stand by her. They were distancing themselves from their own daughter as though she were a diseased branch that had to be cut off to save the rest of the tree. And just then I hated them for it.

Yet I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t express my fury. If I did, I’d be back in England first thing tomorrow, and my chance to try and clear Valerie’s name would be gone. So I fought to control myself—fought with all my strength—and won.

“No,” I said, smiling as sweetly as I could. “Of course not.”

Then I picked up my fork and proceeded to eat silently, my heart heavy with sorrow, because the only person I wanted to talk to about how wretched I felt was Valerie, and she was dead.

19 Helena

It was after midnight when I finally closed my bedroom door behind me, changed into pajamas, and went into the bathroom to take off my makeup. The Irvines had stayed late discussing wedding details, and I hadn’t dared asked my parents if I could bow out. So I’d sat there in the living room, listening in silence to the discussion about whether a summer or a winter wedding would cause more of a stir, and which luxury hotels should be considered for the venue. The whole time, I was thinking about what Valerie would have had to say about the wedding. Try-Hard Barbie, really, Linc? You can’t be fucking serious. She would have left us all in no doubt as to what she thought of Lincoln’s decision. Only she wasn’t there to give her opinion.

She wasn’t there at all anymore.

I went to the closet, pushed the loose board aside, and fished around for the notebook. My fingertips brushed Valerie’s sweatshirt, but I didn’t want to risk bringing it out. Instead, I took the notebook over to my bed and got in, switching the overhead light off and my bedside lamp on instead. I paused, my fingers resting on the thin elastic band around the book. Would I find what I was looking for? Or would it all have been for nothing, and I’d have to start again from the beginning?

I wasn’t going to find out by staring at the binding, so I pulled myself together, took the elastic off, and, with bated breath, opened the notebook. The pages crinkled softly as I leafed through them to see what was written there. Then my throat tightened and I gave a sigh of relief: names and amounts, just like Simon had said. If I could just find the guy Adam had thrown out of the suite, I’d have a real shot at getting to the truth at last.

It made sense to look for the most recent entries, so I flipped to the back. Simon said that Adam had given the dealer money so he could stop selling drugs, so it couldn’t have been all that long before the engagement party. I combed through the entries for someone whose name began with P and found one on the third to last page: C. Pratt, and beside it, 5k, which had to be the five thousand dollars Adam had given him. Other than that, there were two names farther down that also began with P. I wrote them in my phone, but something told me that Pratt was my guy. Sure enough, it took just three minutes to find him on Instagram; he mainly posted photos of himself in New York clubs, in expensive clothes, with pretty girls. The account handle was @colton4prattident, and I rolled my eyes at the wordplay before I realized that this was it—I finally had a real lead. One with no sense of subtlety and a preference for suits, sure, but I didn’t care. I looked down at my phone with a grim sense of anticipation. “Colton Pratt,” I mumbled softly. “It’s time we had a little talk.”

The Glowfly was one of those clubs everyone was desperate to get into, but most hopefuls got rejected at the door. The place was a little sketchy, a little clandestine, and, as a result, extremely exclusive. Situated on the edge of Nolita, it wasn’t exactly a spot where the rich and famous usually hung around, but that was exactly the draw—for Colton Pratt, too, it seemed; he plied his trade here on a regular basis.

It had been almost five weeks since I’d arrived back in New York, but I hadn’t been out partying yet. For one thing, I’d been too busy with college and all the Valerie research, and for another, my parents had stopped me from going out nights by roping me into business dinners at home or taking me with them to events. My first two weeks back had clearly been a kind of grace period, but now I had to sit at various people’s dining tables at least three times a week and prove to them I wasn’t like my sister. Because although they didn’t say it out loud, I knew perfectly well what my parents expected of me. If I hadn’t enjoyed being paraded around these events like a young horse at a fair before, I hated it now with a passion. But I had no choice if I wanted to stay in the city. So I gritted my teeth and did as I was told.

Most of the time, at least. Today, I’d taken advantage of the fact that Mom and Dad were out of town for the weekend and finally decided to go after the lead that Simon, and Adam’s notebook, had given me. Finding out where Pratt hung out hadn’t been hard, since he tagged the clubs he frequented on Instagram. The times when people like him were just a name whispered between clients seemed to be long gone.