Free Woman with a Secret by Sophie Hannah Page A

with you?” Gibbs asked him.
    A good moment to leave them to it, Charlie decided. Even stone-cold-sober cultural awareness was preferable to this.
    “I CAN’T PROVE THAT Damon never loved me, so if it’s evidence you’re after, you’ll be disappointed. As I have been.” Hannah Blundy faced Simon and Sam across the large oval-shaped wooden table in her kitchen. The family liaison officer, a young woman called Uzma who seemed incapable of performing any action quietly, was making them all tea, if the available visual evidence was reliable and if you considered it in isolation; the sound effects suggested a train crash at close range. Irritating though it was, Simon welcomed the background noise; it helped to add a veneer of normality to one of the most unlikely conversations he’d ever had, and he’d had a fair few.
    “I understand,” said Sam. “You mean there was nothing concrete, only a . . . feeling you had?”
    “No, if I’d allowed myself to be guided by feelings alone, I could have been blissfully happy in my marriage,” said Hannah. “Damon told me he loved me all the time. He behaved as if he loved me. Our physical relationship was great—very passionate.” As she spoke, she seemed to be conducting a kind of inner audit: Is that statement true? Yes. And is this statement also true? Yes. Am I sure? Yes .
    “But . . . you didn’t feel loved?” Sam tried again.
    “Well, no, I did,” said Hannah. “It was hard not to. Damon lavished attention on me—physically, emotionally. In every way. I’ve never known anyone give another person such care and consideration. You could put Damon’s treatment of me in a Hollywood romance and it wouldn’t be out of place.”
    Simon and Sam exchanged a look: where to go from here?
    “He complimented me constantly. He had great respect for my intelligence. Took all my needs and wants seriously. There’s nothinghe wouldn’t have done for me, as he demonstrated over and over again.” Hannah spread her hands and stared down at her palms. Simon couldn’t help but look at them too: white and dry like creased paper gloves.
    “I’d ask the impossible of him sometimes, to test him. More often than not, he’d prove it was possible. He really didn’t put a foot wrong, never once let the mask slip. That was the problem: his deception was so seamless that I did feel loved.” Hannah let out a jagged sigh. “At the same time, I knew that euphoric feeling he gave me was based on a lie, so I tried not to allow myself to trust it.” She laughed abrasively. “Easier said than done. My emotions were responding to Damon’s . . . rolling program of false stimuli. I was being manipulated. Brilliantly, to give him his due, but . . . I didn’t want to feel loved if I wasn’t. I wanted to know the truth. And from the day we met until he died this morning, he would never tell me. He denied there was anything to tell.”
    “When did the two of you meet?” Simon asked. He was going easy on himself, starting with questions likely to yield answers he’d understand. Getting to grips with dates and times was easier than trying to make sense of Hannah’s bizarre account of her husband’s spotlessly plausible hoax love. “How long were you and Damon together, and how long married?”
    “We met on November 29, 2011, and married in March 2012,” said Hannah. “On March 18.”
    “And . . . no children?”
    “No. I’m not too old—I’m only thirty-nine—but Damon wasn’t keen. He said he loved me too much to be willing to share—another lie. He wasn’t keen on children at all. Used to say they were boring and pointless. I could probably have persuaded him, though. He’d have given in if I’d framed it in the right way—‘Prove you love me by giving me a baby’—but I didn’t want children either, not with him. Not until I’d found out what he wanted from me.”
    “How long after you married Damon did you, er, start to suspect that his love for you wasn’t