Page 49 of The Trap by Catherine
“Why do you need to know?”
She looked at him like he was insane. “What kind of a question is that?”
“One I’m asking you to really consider. Why do you need to know? Think about it. You find out every single detail in the morning. Every single one. What will it change? How will it help?”
But Lucy had considered it, already, many times.
“This is like when people say money can’t buy happiness,” she said. “No, it can’t, but you’ll definitely be a lot bloody happier if you can afford food and light and heat, and you’re able to sleep at night without worrying about being able to afford it tomorrow. If I know, yeah, OK, it won’t magically make everything better. It won’t make me happy. It probably won’t bring anything like peace. But I willfeelbetter because I won’t have to deal with the... the torture. The endless, constant, excruciating torture ofnotknowing. I’ll have some headspace. A little bit. And maybe I’ll be able to keep a thought in my head for a minute that isn’t about Nicki.”
Chris looked at her for a long moment and then sighed.
Mercifully, Lucy’s phone rang.
“I have to take this,” she said, even though there was no name on the screen, just a Dublin area-code number. “Hello?”
“Lucy? It’s Jack. Can you talk?”
“Um, hang on...” She walked away, far enough that Chris wouldn’t be able to hear the other side of the conversation, but not so far that she could presume he couldn’t hear hers. “Not really. But I can listen. Or I can call you back in a while?”
“I talked to my news director,” he said, “and we’re go for launch.”
“Really?”
“So long as you agree to say you have concerns about Operation Tide, we’re happy to go ahead with just you. You’ll be live tonight on the six o’clock bulletin. You’ll have about ten minutes, but it won’t be me interviewing you. It’ll be Rachel O’Leary—do you know her?”
“I know the name, but...”
“She usually anchors the ten o’clock,” Jack explained, “but they’re swapping things around tonight so she can talk to you. They think a woman will be better. I’ll be doing the pre-recorded reports that will play before and after, but I can tell you more about them when you get here.”
Lucy groaned inwardly. If she’d known that yesterday, before the family meeting at the cafe, she might have been able to persuade them to do it. Although Margaret would probably still have found some excuse not to.
“Where do I go?” she asked. “And what time do you need me there?”
“I’ll text you the address. I’d say... five o’clock? You’ll get hair and make-up. Don’t wear any small patterns, prints or lines, they bleed on screen. We’ll have a chat beforehand about what you’ll be asked and what you’re going to say.” He paused. “I think that’s it for now. Do you have any questions?”
Only: was she actually going to do this?
Really?
She looked back at Chris, who was leaning on the car, scrolling on his phone.
“And, ah, listen,” Jack said. “There’s something I have to tell you now, because it’ll be in our report and I don’t want you finding out live on air. Or just before you go on. It might be upsetting. I could’ve told you yesterday but I didn’t know if we were going to report on it or not, and if we weren’t...”
“What is it?”
“It’s, ah, Lena Paczkowski. They’ve been trying to keep this under wraps for operational reasons, but... I’m sorry, Lucy, but she passed away. In the ambulance. She never even made it to the hospital.”
Her heart sank.
And then a crushing, suffocating disappointment settled on her chest, pushing it down deeper, making it difficult to breathe.
She wanted to sink to the ground, but she could feel Chris’s eyes on her.
And this was another thing she couldn’t tell him, unless she told him everything else first.
“Thanks for letting me know,” she managed to say into the phone.
Jack had actually just told her three things.
