CHAPTER SEVEN
ISABELLA
“Mum.”
I keep buttering a piece of toast.
“Mm?”
“Mum.”
“Yes, Lily.”
“Mum!”
I turn around and find my daughter standing on the sofa in one sock, a purple tulle skirt, and a crooked plastic tiara. Her school polo shirt is on backwards, and there are no trousers anywhere on her body.
“Why aren’t you wearing trousers?”
Lily looks down at her legs as though she has only just noticed.
“Because I’m a fairy.”
“Fairies wear trousers when it’s eight degrees outside.”
“It isn’t cold.”
“You said that yesterday, then tried to put both feet inside my coat.”
She lifts her chin. “That was cuddling.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, because showing weakness during negotiations with Lily means forfeiting any remaining chance of victory.
“Trousers.”
My daughter sighs with the existential weariness of a woman who has been paying taxes for forty years.
“Fine.”
She jumps off the sofa, loses the tiara on the way down, and runs into the hallway. A drawer opens, followed by the crash of something hitting the floor.
“No climbing the wardrobe!” I call.
“I’m not!”
A second crash contradicts her.
Five years.
Sometimes I still cannot believe that much time has passed. On other mornings, it feels as though I have lived several different lives since the day I walked out of Alexander’s house carrying a suitcase and a pregnancy he called a lie.
Lily reappears in glittery leggings, one pink sock and one yellow one. Her dark brown hair is tied into two uneven ponytails because she lost patience halfway through my attempt to fix them.
Some parts of her face are mine: the shape of her mouth, the rounded tip of her nose, and a tiny mark near her left ear. Others are not. The green eyes, expressive brows, and dimple in her chin all came from the Thornes.
For a long time, every trace of Alexander hurt. I would wake to feed Lily and find in her face a reminder of the man who had refused to believe me. Then she would smile, close her hand around my finger, or fall asleep against my chest, and those features would stop belonging to him.
Now they are simply hers.
Lily is not a reminder. She is Lily: my favorite person, my personal chaos, and proof that something beautiful can come from the worst day of your life.
My phone rings while I pour milk into a cup. Clara’s name appears on the screen.
I answer on speaker.
“Your goddaughter has decided clothes are optional.”
“Again?”
“Today she’s a fairy.”
“Ah. Then there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
Lily appears beside me.
“Auntie Clara!”
“Good morning, Your Majesty.”
“I’m a fairy.”
“My apologies, Your Faerie Highness.”
Lily accepts the correction and climbs onto a chair, dragging the tiara by its elastic.
“Why did you call?” I ask.
“To remind you about tonight.”
“I know.”
“You said that last time and arrived an hour late.”
“I had an emergency.”
“Lily cut three centimeters off her own hair.”
“Exactly. An emergency.”
My daughter touches the uneven fringe she gave herself after finding a pair of scissors while I was on a call.
“It looked pretty.”
“It did,” I confirm.
Clara laughs. “Seven o’clock at the Beaumont. Black tie, and no excuses involving fairies, fringe, or violations of hair-related civil liberties.”
My body reacts before my mind can finish processing the name.
The Beaumont.
The hotel where Richard saw a fraction of a second of my life and turned it into suspicion. The place Alexander mentioned when he decided that two years beside him mattered less than an observation made from across a lobby.
I take a breath.
I will not let a building continue to have power over me.
“I’ll be there.”
“And the tiny terrorist?”
“My mother is coming to stay with her.”
“Good. And, Bella…”
Clara’s silence tells me what she has not yet worked up the courage to ask.
“No.”
“I was only going to—”
“If Alexander is there, I’ll survive.”
“I was actually going to tell you to wear the blue dress.”
“Liar.”
“The blue does incredible things for your—”
I hang up before she can finish.
Lily watches me solemnly.
“Bad word.”
“Very bad.”
“Are you going to be punished?”
“Probably.”
She considers this. “Can I choose?”
“Choose what?”
“Your punishment.”
“Of course.”
“No chocolate for a week.”
I press a hand to my chest. “That violates human rights.”
Lily laughs, takes a piece of toast, and starts spreading jam with a concentration that lasts only a few seconds.
“Does my dad like chocolate?”
The knife stills in my hand.
The questions began not long after she turned four. At first they were vague: Do I have a dad? Then they became specific. Where does he live? Is he tall? Why doesn’t he come to my birthdays?
The worst one came on an otherwise ordinary night while I was tying her hair before bed.
Does he know I exist?
I told her that adults sometimes make very big mistakes, that her father and I were not together, and that I would explain more when she was old enough to understand. I have never told her that he did not want her.
Because that is not exactly true.
Alexander rejected an idea, an abstract child he believed belonged to another man. He never met Lily, never saw her fingers on an ultrasound, and never heard her cry in the delivery room.
That distinction matters to me, even if it means very little to a five-year-old who watches other fathers waiting outside the school gates.
“I don’t know if he still does,” I say.
“Did you know before?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can ask him.”
My chest tightens.
“Maybe one day.”
Lily swings her legs beneath the chair.
“Does he know my name?”
I swallow before answering.
“No.”
She thinks about that for a few seconds with the seriousness that sometimes makes her look older than she is.
“That’s sad.”
Yes.
Alexander does not know that his daughter is called Lily, that she sleeps hugging a stuffed rabbit named Oliver, or that she refuses to eat eggs if the yolk is broken.
He does not know she took her first steps at eleven months or that her first word was light.
He has never heard her laugh, does not know what frightens her, and has no idea how efficiently she negotiates for five more minutes before bedtime.
“It is,” I admit.
Lily bites into her toast and asks for more jam.
Children do that. They split your chest open with one question and then, a second later, continue living.
After I drop her at school, I spend the day at the consultancy. There is an important presentation in the morning, interviews for two open positions, and a crisis involving a client who has decided to change an entire campaign three days before launch.
Work saved me after Lily was born.
I started by taking small projects from Clara’s kitchen table while my daughter slept in a borrowed cot. My mother watched her during meetings, and Clara took over on the nights when I was too exhausted to tell the difference between a hungry cry and a tired one.
During the first year, I thought about giving up dozens of times. In the third, I rented my first office. Now I have twenty-three employees, international clients, and enough money to pay Lily’s school fees without thinking about Alexander.
I built a life that does not depend on his surname.
By seven that evening, I am standing in the ballroom of the Beaumont Foundation Gala wearing the blue dress Clara chose.
My mother has already sent three messages assuring me that Lily has bathed, eaten dinner, and attempted to convince her that brushing your teeth is optional if you are a magical creature.
I put my phone away and look around the room.
Returning to the Beaumont feels like walking through an old version of my life. The hotel is still elegant, discreet, and filled with people accustomed to discussing millions while holding glasses of champagne. Five years ago, in a room like this, I would have searched for Alexander instinctively.
Tonight I am here as the director of my own company and the guest of one of the sponsors.
“Isabella Costa.”
I turn and greet an investor I met at a conference. We talk about a brand expansion, then I am approached by a client, a journalist, and a businesswoman interested in hiring my team.
Gradually, I begin to relax.
Perhaps Alexander will not come. Thorne Holdings is listed among the sponsors, but he does not attend every foundation event. He could be traveling or occupied with an acquisition on the other side of the world.
Perhaps he has more important things to do.
He always did.
Forty minutes later, I feel his presence before I see him.
I cannot explain it. Perhaps the body keeps memories the mind cannot erase.
I turn.
Alexander is standing on the other side of the ballroom.
Five years should have changed more.
Time has not softened his features or lessened the impact of seeing him.
He is slightly older now, with faint lines at the corners of his eyes, shorter hair, and a face even more guarded than I remember.
He wears a black suit, and that same impossible presence still makes people shift out of his path without realizing they are doing it.
He is looking directly at me.
I forget how to breathe.
The ballroom falls away, taking the music, conversations, and clink of glasses with it. For one suspended moment, I am the woman who knew every expression on that face and slept with her head against his chest.
I hate that my body still recognizes him. I hate remembering the weight of his hands around my waist and the sound of his voice in the dark. Most of all, I hate the small part of me that immediately wants to know whether Alexander looks happy.
He does not.
Alexander takes one step toward me.
Before he can take another, a side door opens and a child’s voice carries across the room.
“Mum!”
My blood turns cold.
Lily comes running toward me in a coat over her pajamas, glittery shoes, and her fairy tiara. My mother follows behind her, breathless and horrified.
“Bella, I’m sorry. She left the rabbit in your car, and I thought we could get the key from reception, but then she saw you…”
Lily throws herself against me. I crouch automatically and hold her by the shoulders.
“What are you doing here?”
“Grandma said I wasn’t allowed in, but I told her I’m your guest.”
“Of course you did.”
My mother reaches us.
“I tried to stop her.”
“It’s fine.”
Nothing is fine.
My body recognizes the danger before I force myself to look across the ballroom again.
Alexander is no longer looking at me.
He is looking at Lily.
His gaze moves over her dark hair, her face, her eyebrows, and her chin. Understanding has not arrived yet, but the possibility already has.
Lily turns toward him, curious about the attention. Then she smiles at something a woman beside us says.
The dimple appears.
The same dimple Edmund Thorne had, and the same one Alexander reveals on the rare occasions when he forgets to control his smile.
All the color drains from his face.
My heart seems to stop with it.
For five years, I have protected Lily from the consequences of that night. Now the truth has walked into a crowded ballroom wearing glittery shoes and carrying a stuffed rabbit by one ear.