Free You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sarra Manning Page A

even sure that they’ll have—’
    ‘It’s no trouble. I’m due a visit,’ Neve said eagerly. Every few weeks or so, she’d invent a reason to slope off to the British Library, and after she’d spent ten minutes diligently checking a source note, she’d while away a couple of hours on non-Archive business. She always felt guilty about it and lived in fear that Mr Freemont would suddenly appear to check up on her, discover the awful truth and sack her, but she still did it nevertheless. ‘Why don’t you email me the references and I promise I’ll have them checked before the end of next week.’
    ‘Thank you so much,’ William breathed, and Neve clutched the phone tighter because even though there was a tiny transatlantic delay each time he spoke, she imagined she could feel his breath stirring her skin. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
    ‘Really, it’s nothing,’ Neve said, turning her head away from the receiver so she could momentarily grin like a loon. ‘Always happy to help,’ she added, when she could trust herself to speak.
    ‘Well, now we’ve got that business out of the way, maybe you can explain why you lied to me,’ William said briskly.
    ‘What? I haven’t lied. What have I lied about?’ Neve demanded, even as she racked her brains for anything she might have written to William that veered away from the truth. Maybe he meant lying by omission because she hadn’t told him about …
    ‘I can tell that you’re not fine, even though you said that you were. I knew as soon as you picked up the phone and said hello that something was troubling you.’ William’s voice softened. ‘I’d like to think that you trust me enough to confide in me.’
    ‘I do trust you,’ Neve said quickly, and though she’d give anything to be able to tell someone about last night and beg for some sound advice, William was the last person she’d tell. She’d tell her mother before she told William. ‘And really, I’m fine. It’s nothing.’
    ‘You are not fine and it’s obviously something rather than nothing. I’m going to have to resort to cliché and tell you that a problem shared is a problem halved.’
    ‘Well, I’m not sure that’s true,’ Neve groused and William tsked, and more to keep him on the phone than anything else, she said, ‘I, well … um, I made an error of judgement and it led to all kinds of er … wrongness and there was someone else involved and I think I may have upset them.’ She frowned, and if she hadn’t been holding the phone, her head would have been back in her hands. ‘Or they might have told other people what I did. Oh God, I’m in such a pickle.’
    ‘But what did you do?’ William asked. ‘I’m sure it couldn’t have been something that bad.’
    ‘But it was bad. Very, very bad.’
    ‘Neevy, you haven’t got a bad bone in your body and if you did upset this other person, I’m sure you didn’t mean to,’ William said soothingly, and it was at times like this, when he was so simpatico , that Neve wondered if he took a pill every morning that gave him the ability to always know exactly the right thing to say.
    ‘I just don’t know what to do to make the situation right,’ Neve admitted. ‘Or to make myself feel better.’
    ‘You could apologise to them,’ William suggested. ‘Explain the circumstances that led to this um … error of judgement and I’m sure they’d realise that you’d never normally behave like that. You haven’t been plagiarising, have you, Neve?’
    ‘God, no! Of course I haven’t,’ Neve spluttered, shocked that William could even think such a thing. ‘I would never do something like that.’
    ‘Well, then it really can’t be so bad. You do have a tendency to fret. Just explain, apologise, move on,’ William said firmly, and it was just the advice Neve had been hoping for, except …
    ‘When you say apologise, do you mean in person? Or on the phone so that I’d actually have to speak to them –