Free In The Presence Of The Enemy by Elizabeth George Page A

attention, and he could imagine it being scooped up by the thousands as commuters sought something diverting to read on their way to work. But surely its very shoddi-ness declared the level of impact it might have on public opinion. Who read this sort of shit, anyway, aside from people like Mrs. Maguire who could not exactly be described as a major intellectual force in the country.
    Eve was walking back to the rattan holder.
    She rooted out three more copies of the tabloid and laid them carefully on the bar before him.
PM’s Latest Skeleton: Top Aide on the Take!
    took up one entire front page.
Tory MP Mistress X4!
decorated another.
Royal Flush: Who’s
Keeping the Princess Warm at Night?
leapt from the third.
    “I don’t get it,” Alex said. “Your case is different to these. What are the newspapers going to crucify you about? You made a mistake.
    You got pregnant. You had a baby. You’ve raised her, cared for her, and gone on with your life. It’s a non-story.”
    “You don’t understand.”
    “What’s there to understand?”
    “Dennis Luxford. This is his newspaper, Alex. Charlotte’s father edits this newspaper and he was editing another one just about this disgusting when we had our little—” She blinked rapidly and for a moment he thought she would actually lose her composure.
    “That’s what he was doing—editing a tabloid, digging up the most salacious gossip he could find, smearing whomever he wished to humiliate—when we had our little fling in Blackpool.”
    He tore his eyes from her and looked back at the papers. He told himself that if he hadn’t heard her correctly, he wouldn’t have to believe. She made a movement, and he looked to see that she had taken up her wineglass and held it in a toast, which she did not make.
    Instead, she said, “There was Eve Bowen, future Tory MP, future Junior Minister, future Premier, the ultra-conservative, God-is-my-bedrock, morally righteous little reporter making the two-backed beast with the King of Sleaze. My God, what a field day the papers will have with that story. And this one will lead the pack.”
    Alex searched for something to say, which was difficult because all he was able to feel at the moment was the coating of ice that seemed to be growing rapidly round his heart. Even his words felt deadened. “You weren’t a Member of Parliament then.”
    “A fine point that the public will be more than willing to overlook, I assure you. The public will take great tickling pleasure imagining the two of us slinking round the hotel in Blackpool, hotly setting up our assignations, I spread-legged on a hotel room bed, panting for Luxford to plumb my depths with his mighty organ. And then the next morning rearranging myself to look like Miss Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt for my colleagues. And living with the secret for all these years. Acting as if I found morally reprehensible everything the man stands for.”
    Alex stared at her. He looked at the features he’d been looking at for the past seven years: that unruffled hair, those clear hazel eyes, the chin too sharp, the upper lip too thin. He thought, This is my wife. This is the woman I love. Who I am with her is not who I am with anyone else. Do I even know her? He said numbly, “And don’t you? Didn’t you?”
    Her eyes seemed to darken. When she responded, her voice sounded oddly removed.
    “How can you even ask me that, Alex?”
    “Because I want to know. I have a right to know.”
    “To know what?”
    “Who the hell you are.”
    She didn’t answer. Instead, she met his gaze for the longest time before she took the pot from the cooker and carried it to the sink, where she dumped the fettuccine into a colan-der. She used a fork to lift a strand of it. She said quietly, “You’ve overcooked your pasta, Alex. Not the kind of mistake I’d expect you to make.”
    “Answer me,” he said.
    “I believe I just did.”
    “The mistake was the pregnancy,” he persisted, “not the choice of