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After they told me what had happened, I fell into deep shock and depression. Especially when I learnt that the baby had been stolen by another girl – someone called Molly. And that’s how I became indebted to Darren and Vaughn. Through my grief and guilt, I agreed to clean up their drugs money, while in return they said they’d keep quiet about how I’d let Hannah die. How I’dkilledher. My shame overrode rationality, driving me to do their dirty work. It was only when I’d had enough, several years later, when I told them I wasn’t doing it any more and returned to the city where I’d studied at university – I had some contacts in Bristol, after all – that my fortunes changed, though the guilt of what I did has never left me for a minute. It was the email that did it – and usually they got deleted straight away, unread – but for some reason, I clicked and opened this particular message. It was a university alumni newsletter that I’d signed up for when I graduated, bragging about how well their past students had done, a new department opening, various scholarships awarded, and so on. But one story caught my eye, made me catch my breath as I read the headline – ‘Eco-minded Business Owner Scoops Award’. A local start-up company had won, and there’d been a presentation and a small cash prize. I clicked on the photograph and studied it. A group of about six people were beaming at the camera, and the winner, who was standing at the centre of the group holding a small trophy, had her name printed beneath: Hannah Greene.
I suddenly felt sick, told myself it was just a coincidence, not an uncommon name at all. But when I enlarged the picture, I was in for a shock.
It washer. The girl from the Cloisters. Molly. I was sure of it. I’d studied her photograph in the folder of girls they kept under the counter enough times to know there was no doubt. And in the picture, she had a small child.
Mychild.
Finding her and engineering a chance meeting with her had been easy – and so had falling in love with her and her daughter.Mydaughter. Though I’ll forever regret that, years later, my past associations with Darren and Vaughn had also led them directly to Hannah and Belle.
‘Hannah,’ I say now, one hand sliding down to my pocket. I take out the ring box as our song plays, the piano chords floating between us. I bring it up, flipping it open. Tears fill my eyes as I speak. ‘Will you marry me?’
Hannah stops swaying. Her gaze flashes down to the diamond, the fire of it reflecting in her eyes. Slowly, she tilts up her face to look at me. I can’t read her…I can’t read what she’s thinking at all.
She opens her mouth to speak and it’s as if all the years leading up to now are rolled into one, as if she’s Hannah and Molly all at the same time and I’m the luckiest man alive to have them both.
* * *
Did Hannah’s nail-biting fight to save her daughter have you racing through the pages, right up to the final jaw-dropping twist?Date Nightis your next keep-you-up-all-night obsession: returning early from a disastrous date night with her husband, Leah’s heart turns to ice when she finds her little girl alone in the house, and the babysitter, Sasha, missing…
