Her Guilty Secret

by Clare Connelly

  ‘Damn it!’ The words are angry, heavy, dark. I shake my head, unable to look at her. ‘Stop complicating this. I’m a defence lawyer. This is what I do. Just drop it, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘But you don’t want to,’ she says, refusing to let the subject go.

  I don’t answer. I can’t.

  ‘So don’t! You don’t have to do what you’ve always done! The Connor Hughes who kept Donovan out of jail isn’t who you always have to be.’

  ‘Yeah, it is!’ The words are louder than I intended. Everything about this is wrong. ‘I have made a life out of doing this. My life. You don’t approve and I understand that. You will never approve, Olivia. But the man you thought I was, the man you thought you could make me—he doesn’t really exist.’

  ‘I never tried to change you,’ she says angrily, disputing the accusation with a sharp jerk of her head.

  ‘Separating me from the work that I do is trying to change me!’

  ‘Bullshit!’ And it’s so unusual for her to swear that I’m silenced. ‘I only want you to be a person you’re happy with. This Donovan thing has been on your shoulders like a weight since you got to London. I want you to face up to why that trial win bothers you so damned much.’

  I don’t answer her. I can’t. The words are lodged deep inside me, and saying them to Olivia will make them real and I can’t have them be real when I have a job to do.

  ‘You’re going to graduate from university and you’re going to get a place for your training contract—somewhere amazing. And you’re going to follow your moral compass and life will be easier for you, Olivia, because of that. Because you see things as black and white and I see everything as a thousand gradients of grey. But I can’t be a part of your life.’ I pin her with my gaze, needing her to know that I mean this. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I mean this. ‘My life is in Dublin and it’s defending the kind of people you want to lock up. You will never accept that this is my life. You’ll never be proud of who I am and what I do. And every day that we’re together, I’d have to see you lose respect for me. It would kill me.’

  I move to her, catching her sadness on my breath. Her eyes are wet with unshed tears. I’m hurting her for the last time.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ she asks, the question ripping right into my chest.

  ‘It’s my life,’ I say with a slow shake of my head. ‘Again, there is no black and white here. Do I want to go? No! And yes! Am I driven to take this case and to win it? Yes.’

  She flinches.

  ‘Do I hate the idea of leaving you? Yes. Do I hate the idea of staying here and hurting you? Of putting everything you’ve worked for in jeopardy? Do I hate the idea of you starting to see me as I really am and realising you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life? Abso-fucking-lutely.’

  ‘Why do you think I don’t already see you as you are?’ she demands, wrapping her arms around my waist, holding me tight.

  ‘Because you think I won’t go back to Dublin. You think I won’t take this case on. And you’re wrong. Whatever there is in me that you hope is in alignment with your ethics and values just isn’t there. I have a compulsion to fight these fights. And I tell myself it’s because I need to be able to redeem everyone so I can make some kind of fucked-up peace with the way my parents died, and I tell myself it’s because I have devoted my life to the legal system—a system which can’t work without defenders like me. But I don’t know if any of that’s true. I know only that I need to do what I do just like I need to breathe and eat. This. Is. Who. I. Am.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she says, shaking her head sadly. And she lifts up on her tiptoes, pressing her lips to mine. ‘You’re a man who knows right from wrong and just needs the courage to admit that to himself. And if you do I’m right here with you. I’m standing with you now, asking you to stay. Not to go back to Dublin, not to fight for someone who doesn’t deserve to have you there.’

  I shake my head, rejecting the impossibility of what she wants from me.

  ‘You’re Connor Hughes and you’re the man I love.’

  Her words slam into me, and push something like hope into my chest. Hope, and a dawning of new pains, new hardship. Love?

  I can’t even process that. I home in on her argument instead. ‘Everybody deserves—’

  ‘Representation,’ she interrupts angrily. ‘But not you. Not the best. Stay here and teach. Stay here with me.’ She drops her hands to mine, interlacing our fingers.

  ‘And risk people finding out about us?’

  ‘The term’s over in two weeks. Who cares what happens after that?’

  ‘I care. Just let me prove to us both that I have the guts to do what’s right for you, okay? Just this once let me be the man you deserve.’

  ‘Don’t you dare make this about me,’ she says with a shake of her head, stepping back. ‘Don’t pretend this is an act of nobility when we both know it’s cowardice.’

  My blood runs cold inside me. ‘Cowardice?’

  ‘Damn straight. You’re too scared to fight your demons. Too scared to face up to the fact that you hate what you’ve been doing and you want a fresh start. Too scared to stay and fight for what we are, even when it’s messy and imperfect and complicated as all hell. That’s cowardice.’

  ‘Fuck.’ I drag a hand through my hair. ‘You are something else. I’m trying to protect you!’

  ‘I can protect myself!’ We are both breathing hard and fast, passion wrenching us apart now, instead of binding us as it has done in the past.

  There’s no answer here—except one. I have to leave. I have to pull myself away from her. These arguments will chase us around all night, and I know what I have to do.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, the word stiffened by a detachment I don’t really feel. ‘But I’ve made up my mind.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ she snaps, pushing at my chest. I can tell she’s never had a violent impulse in her life, much less acted on one. ‘You don’t even love me, do you?’

  The question tips everything off the edge of the world. You don’t even love me, do you?

  I’m standing in one of those mirrored rooms at a fair, a thousand versions of myself reflected back at me, and a thousand versions of Olivia are there, too. I try to catch her and can’t—which mirror is real? I love the way she speaks and laughs, I love the way she is good and sweet, I love her brain and her mind and her absolutism. I love that she sees me and wants to know all of me. I love that she loves me—and I hate it, too. Her love is a poisoned chalice. The answer to everything I’ve ever wanted—with the power to destroy us both. I blink and the mirrors disappear; there’s just her and me and this moment.

  ‘It’s a yes or no answer,’ she says, the words shaky.

  But it’s not. There are different types of love, and love demands different things of us all. What I feel for Olivia is a need to protect her, a need to give her everything she deserves in life, even when I know I can be no part of that.

  ‘I love you enough to walk away,’ I say eventually, the words heavy with finality.

  ‘But not enough to stay and fight for this.’

  ‘You deserve someone better than me...’

  ‘Don’t you dare try to take the moral high ground here! As though you’re being selfless and honourable. You’re walking away because it’s the easiest thing you can do.’

  ‘If you think this is easy then you don’t know me at all,’ I roar, my heart racing, my chest bursting. ‘But it’s what I have to do.’

  She glares at me, her cheeks red, her eyes furious. ‘Then go! Get the hell out. But when you get to Ireland and realise you’ve made a big fucking mistake, don’t even think about coming back to me. If you walk away from me now, that’s the end.’

  Her words are like bullets in my soul, tearing through the fibre of all that I am. I stalk across the room and pull her into my arms, dragging her to me, kissing
her with all the aching love I know I do feel, a love I can’t acknowledge and don’t know how to give. I kiss her one last time and then I straighten, and I stare at her for several beats of time, committing everything about her face to memory.

  And then I walk away.

  * * *

  Professor Winterbourne took over Connor’s classes. I turned up on that first day, still half expecting to see him. Hoping, against any reason or logic, that Connor had changed his mind.

  That my arguments had got through to him and he’d stayed.

  Hoping that it wasn’t as over as my heart knew it was.

  But there was no Connor, and I wasn’t the only one who felt his absence. It was only with his disappearance that I realised how much his dynamism had changed the classroom. And now he’s using that skill in court.

  A bitter taste filled my mouth and I resolutely avoided newspapers and refused to Google his name.

  I didn’t want to know about whoever he was defending. I didn’t want to know anything about the life he’d chosen. It was a life away from me. That was all I needed to hold onto. I’d laid everything out for him, I’d begged him to stay with me. And he’d left.

  Days dragged. Nights dragged more.

  His absence became a presence. I became a bystander in my life—I was there, and not. I ghosted through family lunches, I studied and sat my exams, and I know I did well, but I couldn’t tell you anything of what I wrote.

  I became half of myself.

  I thought not reading about him would help; I thought refusing to search his name on the Internet made me strong, but it kept whatever was missing inside me missing.

  I came to like the brokenness.

  I have heard it said that in darkness there is light, and it’s ironic that it took Connor’s departure for me to understand that this idiom is something that drives him. He spends his life looking for light in people who are all dark, and perhaps he’ll never find it. He won’t stop, I think, until he does. Until he can find some sort of redemption for humanity.

  What if there is none?

  I have heard it said that in darkness there is light, but in my darkness there is only more darkness. I fall into it, deeper, darker, letting it throb around me and rob me of breath. I wake in the middle of the night, sweaty, breathing hard and fast, convinced our fight was a nightmare.

  Then I remember that it happened and that he’s gone, and I am broken anew.

  It has been one month since he left.

  The first milestone of many I know I will have to mark and move past.

  One month and now there is no Connor, no LLS—nothing.

  There is no light in this darkness, and I’m glad of that.

  * * *

  A week later, the letter arrives. The beautifully embossed envelope carries the Queen’s seal. I am shaking when I hold it in my hand and tears spring to my eyes because I have a letter from the Crown Prosecution Service and all I want is to take it to Connor’s and open it with him beside me. Good news or bad, there’s only one person I wish to share that with.

  My dependence on him angers me.

  I rip the envelope open unceremoniously, as if to prove a point to myself and my addiction, and pull the paper out. My fingers shake.

  Dear Miss Amorelli,

  It is with great pleasure that I write to offer you the chance to undertake a trainee position through the Crown Prosecution Service.

  The rest of the letter blurs before my eyes. I read the opening sentence of the letter again, and sink to the floor.

  I sit there, my eyes squeezed shut for several seconds, before forcing myself to continue.

  Your application was exemplary in all aspects. The Crown Prosecution Service seeks individuals of the highest academic calibre, applicants who have consistently proved their dedication to the study of the law, and who have the resilience and strength to strive for the highest level of success in their career.

  Your academic results, references and interview have left the committee with the firm opinion that you will be a valuable addition to our team.

  Please advise of your acceptance of or withdrawal from the traineeship programme in writing, no later than 30th August.

  Yours faithfully,

  Anita Martin

  My breath is on fire. I push to my feet and let out a squeal of jubilation. For the first time in five weeks, I feel something other than misery and it’s a good feeling!

  Connor has taken so much from me, but nothing can touch this. Nothing. I’ve fought hard for this, and I’ve won.

  It feels good and, for a moment, so do I.

  * * *

  The River Liffey is glistening in the late summer sunshine. I stare out at it from my corner office, my eyes chasing the dancing lights atop the current’s ebb and flow, but I’m thinking of a different river—that which flows fast and powerful through the centre of London. That which I can see from my Canary Wharf penthouse.

  And I’m restless again.

  I stand, pacing across my office, grabbing for the ball I keep on the edge of my desk—a gift from a client I defended many years earlier—one of the few I genuinely believed to be innocent. I toss the ball from one hand to the other, the expression on my face grim. The ringing of a phone doesn’t help my mood.

  I want to be alone with my scowl and my impatience, and preferably a litre of whiskey.

  But I’ve done that. Weeks one, two and three after leaving London were punctuated by a haze of alcohol and anger.

  It didn’t help.

  I snatch up my phone and answer it without checking who’s calling. Only a handful of people have my private mobile number.

  Olivia is one of them.

  Olivia.

  I close my eyes and see hers. Will it always be this way?

  I close my eyes and see her as she was that Sunday in her flat, and her disappointment and devastation wrap around me like a localised thunderstorm.

  ‘Con?’ the voice says.

  I frown. ‘Dash?’

  ‘Hey. What’s up?’

  His voice is so...normal. Like he’s the same person he was five or so weeks ago. Like he has no idea that my life is tipping itself over the edge.

  ‘Nothing.’ It’s barely a grunt.

  ‘Is it a bad time?’

  Spectacularly. But that doesn’t feel likely to change any time soon. ‘No. Not especially.’

  ‘Good. I just wanted to thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Olivia Amorelli. You were right about her.’

  I stop breathing. I stop everything. ‘Was I?’ It takes several long seconds for me to answer.

  ‘Yeah. We’ve offered her a traineeship. I didn’t even have to fight hard for it. She’s a unique candidate. She’ll be an asset to the CPS.’

  Pride bursts through me, unmistakable and fierce. It rips me apart, making all my organs glow. ‘Yeah,’ I say, my grin spreading like wildfire. This is the happiest I’ve felt in for ever.

  ‘I haven’t met anyone with her conviction in a long time.’

  ‘She’s unique,’ I say with a nod, a stupid, happy, euphoric nod. Olivia is going to live her dream. She’s going to live her fucking dream!

  Then he chuckles. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to be working with someone who wrote a high school paper on one of my cases.’

  It takes me a second to compute his reference. She mentioned something about it that night—Dash’s case against the Robinward Council.

  ‘Anyway, I thought you’d want to know.’

  Jesus. Of course I want to know. I disconnect the call as soon as I can and even as I’m getting off the phone I’m walking to the door, the rest of my day’s schedule forgotten.

  It’s not logical and it’s not sensible—but I need to see her. I need to hug her and tell her I’m proud of her. This i
s just the beginning for Olivia and she’s going to go far.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I AM SO HAPPY. I am so happy. I am so happy. I tell myself that over and over and over again as my parents smile at me and my sisters laugh with me, and Pietro stands beside me, his pride in my achievements muddied by an unmistakable air of propriety and expectation. As though I am now available to date and I will choose to date him.

  I know I have to find a way to crush his hopes once and for all. And I will.

  I have nothing but newness on my horizon.

  I am so happy.

  And I am happy, but I am also still hurting. It’s been a day since I got the letter and this hastily pulled together celebration in my front room is making my little flat feel ready to burst.

  But I’m happy everyone’s here.

  Not everyone.

  Damn it! I don’t want to think about Connor. Not now!

  My father opens a bottle of champagne—they brought one of the bottles they put into storage when I graduated from high school. It’s a tradition they’ve kept for each of us.

  We drink it and I make happy noises all evening, until I’m exhausted and it shows. My mother notices and corrals my family towards the door.

  ‘I’ll call you in the morning, darling.’

  ‘When do you start?’ Pietro asks, shrugging into his jacket.

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘Let’s have dinner before then. For luck.’

  I smile without answering. ‘Goodnight. Thanks so much for coming.’

  It’s a relief to be alone again. I push the door shut and lean against it, looking around my small living room with the remnants of a happy, celebratory evening and wonder if I’ll always have to fake happiness from now on.

  The euphoria of having got my dream traineeship has faded in the face of not being able to share it with the one person I want. That’s pathetic, right? My parents are the ones who’ve championed me, and I’m the one who did all the damned work! Why does he have this power over me?