Page 121 of The English Wife

“What I told you then was true, Bay. Annabelle was my half sister. My real name is Georgiana. Georgiana Smith. You would think they could have come up with a more inventive surname, couldn’t you?” Georgie tried to smile, but it didn’t come out quite right. It hurt, that smile.

“You’re not Annabelle Lacey,” said Bay. He said it as though he hoped he were wrong.

“Annabelle is married to a sheep farmer in New South Wales. We had an arrangement. I would help her escape, and in return—” You can have Giles if you want him. “In return, I would take her place. It just didn’t work out as well as we had planned.”

“You told me you were Annabelle.”

“No.” She couldn’t let him think that. She might have lied by omission, but never on purpose, not to Bay. “You decided I must be Annabelle and … it was too much trouble to disabuse you.”

Even as she said it, she realized how weak it sounded. She could see it in Bay’s face in the way he looked at her, as though she were something unpleasant that had come out from under the carpet.

“Bay. Everything else was true. Everything else I told you. I did grow up at Lacey Abbey. I did have a brother named George who died. Annabelle and I were sisters, Bay. Blood sisters.”

Georgie reached for her husband, and he stepped back, away from her. She felt something in her chest turn to ash, like the coals on the hearth.

Why was it always like this? Why, why, why? Always apologizing for not being Annabelle, for being the lesser one, for wanting anything of her own.

Georgie’s voice rose. “I might have been Annabelle, if circumstances had been different. We had the same father and the same upbringing. My mother just lacked the marriage lines.”

Bay’s Adam’s apple moved up and down. He pressed his eyes closed and then said hoarsely, “Who else knows?”

Georgie swallowed a wave of hurt. That wasn’t what she’d wanted; she’d wanted Bay to fold her in his arms and press her head to his chest and tell her not to worry, that a name was just a name, that she was the one he cared for, that he would make it all better. That he loved her, whoever she might be.

Georgie forced her lips to move. “Giles Lacey. He came because of David.”

And wasn’t that something? She wasn’t the only one who had omitted the truth. But Bay didn’t seem to realize the parallels. “Will he expose you?”

“He says he will.” There was only a yard between them, but Bay felt a very long way away. “But, Bay, I don’t see how. It’s just his word against ours. Who would believe him?”

“Unless he can find proof.”

“What sort of proof? Our nurse used to say she could only tell us apart when she saw us side by side. Even if someone were to see me—someone who knew us both—it’s been seven years, Bay! I’ve changed. Annabelle will have changed, too. Why couldn’t I be Annabelle now? Even if someone had pictures of us both … who’s to say which is which now?”

“Pictures,” Bay muttered, a strange expression crossing his face. He turned on his heel without another word, moving rapidly from the room.

Georgie hurried after him. “Bay, wait—”

But it wasn’t the stairs he was heading for, it was their old bedroom. Georgie felt her chest constrict at the onslaught of memories, the way Bay had rubbed her feet when she was heavy with the twins; the way he had cradled her and read her poetry by the light of a single candle when their stirring and kicking had meant that she couldn’t sleep, and Bay had said if she wasn’t sleeping, then he couldn’t either. Until he had fallen asleep, that was.

“Bay,” began Georgie, thinking of everything they had shared, of the children. “We can make this right—I’m sure we can.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” said Bay tersely, dropping to his knees and pulling out a box from underneath the bed. It was an old hatbox filled with a miscellany of papers and photographs. He brushed past her, the hatbox round in his arms. “Making this right.”

He was making back for the nursery, for the warmth of the nurse’s room, where the coals cracked and popped on the grate.

“What are those?” Georgie asked breathlessly, half tripping on her skirt as she stumbled after him, trying to close the distance.

“Proof,” said Bay in a clipped voice, and before she could stop him, he dropped a handful of papers on the grate.

Georgie coughed at the acrid smell as the photograph paper caught fire. She could see her own face begin to blacken and curl.

“Bay!” She lunged for the grate, but her husband caught her by the wrist. Papers scattered.

“Don’t you see?” Bay’s strong arm was between her and the grate, and Georgie could hear the desperation in his voice, the fear. “It’s the only way to make it go away. If he doesn’t have any pictures, he can’t compare them.”

Georgie smacked hard against his chest. That had been a picture of them both with the twins, her babies when they were still small enough to be held one in each arm, gone, gone up in smoke as though it never was.

“And what about me, Bay?” She smacked him again, her eyes blurred with tears. “How do you make me go away?”