Free The Turning Tide by Brooke Magnanti Page B

something a little less . . . severe? And maybe, I don’t know, softer make-up? The press will be here any minute.’
    Erykah gritted her teeth but obliged. It had been a long time since anyone had told her how to dress, when to smile, and how to do her make-up, but she wanted this over with and quickly.
    By the time she came back downstairs in a prim tea dress that she hated the reporters were already waiting. The photographer shoved her outside. Pots of hothouse flowers had been dotted around the garden, and lights were set up to make it all look warmer and more spring-like than it really was.
    ‘That’s it; now pop the champagne, Rab. Erykah, if we can get you with a glass in there . . . perfect.’ They were ordered this way and that. Sitting on the stone garden seat, standing by the glossy black door to their house. With the cheque, without the cheque. Standing together, standing alone. Erykah under the horse chestnut tree in the back garden, close cropped so the bare branches didn’t show, trying to hide her chattering teeth. Rab put his thumb over the top of the bottle of fizz and shook it up, spraying it all over his wife. The cameras snapped away.
    ‘She’s a great looking lady,’ one cameraman murmured to his assistant. ‘And look at this place. This guy’s got to be the luckiest slob in the world.’
    Erykah had misgivings about playing house for the cameras but did her best to go along. She bared her teeth in the perfect imitation of a spontaneous laugh over and over. Meanwhile she was totting up the sums in her head. Maybe her initial reaction to the news had been over the top. Even subtracting Rab’s outstanding loans, they were still going to end up with more cash than she could ever have expected to see in her life.
    Her married life up until now had been only merely wealthy. This? This was Rich with a capital R. The kind of money that made even people in Molesey stop and stare: vulgar, shameless. The kind of rich that hip-hop songs were written about, that kids back in Streatham dreamed about. She didn’t stop herself from doing the mental maths, calculating how many childhoods of growing up in poverty this would have bought. It would have paid for her first sixteen years a hundred times over. With cash to spare.
    In between shots she grabbed a bile-coloured chenille throw that had been draped over the sofa and wrapped her hands around a mug of tea. ‘Warming up,’ she smiled at the photographer’s assistant who noticed her trembling hands. ‘Do you have to do an outdoor shoot in February?’ He shrugged and mumbled something about the light. She fumbled with her mobile, clocking the missed calls and voicemails. She decided to ignore those for now.
    Because she was scared. Really scared. How much longer? she wondered. How much longer until someone in the press figured out who she was? Before her name pinged some newspaper editor’s memory bank and they dug out those photographs?
    Maybe not, though. Maybe they would miss it. It was all back in the time before the Internet, and who knew for sure, maybe by now it was gone for good. Maybe no one would care. Maybe her married name would be enough to trip up anyone who went looking. The trial had been big news at the time, sure, but who would remember the girlfriend of an accused murderer from over twenty years ago?
    Erykah put the mug back on the counter. What would her life be like now if things had gone differently? She might have stayed at university, never met Rab, and had a career. Or she might have stayed with Grayson and life would have been, if not much like her dreams, at least interesting. In the three years they had been together, he had never bored her.
    She smoothed the ditsy flowered fabric of the dress down over her thighs and scrunched her fingers through her hair. Grayson would have liked the first outfit better, the sex kitten look, not this fake ’50s housewife image.
    God, it had been ages since she last thought of Grayson.