Ellis Prentiss is her father. On paper, stamped, before she drew a breath.
And then my phone buzzed with the address, and there was a document attached, because Ondine Marr is the sort of woman who sends her guests a six-page briefing pack.
And on page two, along the bottom, there was a row of logos.
***With thanks to our corporate partners.***
And I knew the middle one. Yardley Rowe Capital.
Because it is on eleven of the statements in that folder.
Where I was for eight months.
People assume I hid. I did not hide. I moved.
I gave up the flat in the March and went to my grandmother’s house, which had been sitting empty since the August, and which everybody in that family assumed had been sold with everything else.
Eleven miles from where Ellis lives, on a road he has driven down.
I told four people I was pregnant: my aunt, Ines Talbot, my friend Dara, and my GP. My own mother found out in the July and she is not a person who can hold anything, which is why she found out in the July.
I did my midwife appointments under Halliday. I registered at a different practice. I did not put one thing on the internet, not one photograph, for eight months, which if you are thirty-four is a form of disappearing.
