Free Krysalis: Krysalis by John Tranhaile

went on. “None of that matters. All that counts is that
David doesn’t know!”
    He could not but admire her. She was talking itthrough calmly, like a true professional. All she needed now was gentle encouragement.
    “… If I’m going to save my marriage, we need to prepare David. Hearing everything at once could knock him out.”
    The time had come to test his theory. Oppose her. Force her to step up the argument. He drew a deep breath, “But if you let me talk to David …”
    “After nine years of marriage? Suddenly tell him I’ve been in therapy before and after I met him and he never knew about that, about you!”
    “He’d understand.”
    “No!”
She clenched her fists and began to pound his chest. “He
wouldn’t!
Gerhard, I live with that man and I’m telling you, he would not. So I have to go. Just for a day, maybe two, while we sort out what to do.”
    “But you’ll be incriminating yourself!”
    “You
must
keep a sense of proportion. This is serious, but not a major crisis. The file hasn’t disappeared, it’s
there,
on the desk. David knows that I was thinking of taking a few days abroad; he won’t be totally surprised to find me gone.”
    It was working. Don’t stop, he told himself. “But, Anna, he’s bound to call the police when he finds the file out of the safe.”
    “Of course.”
    “They’ll discover your fingerprints on it, they’ll assume you’ve taken a copy.”
    They argued it back and forth for ages, but Gerhard forced himself to ignore the passage of time, knowing that this could not be rushed, that every long minute spent reasoning with Anna was an investment in his own, uncertain future. All the while his brain kept leaping two, three moves ahead, anticipating how tomeet his objections and overcome them, until at last Anna found the words that signalled she was ready.
    “Gerhard,” she said, “Gerhard, do just think for a moment.
Think!
All these things are true whether we call the police ourselves, now, or David does it later. They’ve only got my word for it that I opened the safe last night, not weeks ago. Forty-eight hours won’t make the slightest difference to either the file or my chances in a criminal court. But they
could
just save my marriage.”
    He hesitated, pretending to consider. Suddenly Anna surprised him by saying, “I know what you’re thinking.”
    Stricken, he raised his head and stared at her.
    “You want me to wipe my fingerprints off the file and the safe, don’t you? Then there’d be nothing to connect me with either of them. I could just say I came down to find the file lying on top of the safe.”
    Gerhard swallowed. It was perfect, so perfect that he couldn’t think of a way to knock it down.
    “No.” She shook her head with a smile. “I couldn’t do it.”
    “Why?”
    “First, I’d trip myself up. I’m not a good liar. And second, if they believed me, it would mean that David had been almost unbelievably careless. Mean the end of his career. My fault. Do you think I could live with that?”
    He was tempted to tell her that since Saturday’s hypnosis session he already knew how to open the safe, that they could put the file back and no one would know. But he had to have that file.
    “There’s another reason why I have to come clean,eventually,” Anna said, and he looked at her fearfully, as if she really could read his mind.
    “What?”
    “You’re assuming this file was the only thing in the safe. I don’t know what David kept in there. Suppose there were other papers, I’ve taken those as well, hidden them somewhere else?”
    “I have to think.” Gerhard began to stride around the room. At last he came to rest by the window and stood there looking out over the square. Muscles twitched beneath the skin of his face, turning it into a restless sea of anger. Now it came down to it, he genuinely did not know what to do.
    Anyone with Anna’s best interests at heart would persuade her to stay, be utterly frank, and face