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Her throat felt as if it had completely closed over. She fumbled for her sunglasses, desperate to cover the wetness in her eyes.
‘Let’s just take this stupid picture,’ she said, her words strangled.
His eyes widened, but he nodded.
Awkwardly, they posed—only their shoulders touching. April took the photo quickly, without any thought at all...but amazingly the beach in the photo’s background was perfectly empty just for that millisecond as she pressed the button on her phone.
To her followers it would seem perfect.
A private beach, a handsome, loving husband, a glorious sunset...
Silently she cropped the image, then added her caption and hashtags.
Three amazing years with this guy! #anniversary #threeyears #love #romance
But she deleted the last hashtag before she posted it:
#over
* * *
Hugh Bennell’s gaze was drawn to the black door at the top of the grey stone stairs. The paintwork and brass door hardware all looked a bit dull—and not just because the sun was only just now rising on this rather dreary London morning. A handful of leaves had gathered where a doormat should be, and a single hopeful weed reached out from beneath the doorstep.
He’d have to sort that out.
But for now he simply wheeled his bike—lights still flashing from his pre-dawn ride—straight past the steps that led to the three-storey chocolate and cream Victorian end-of-terrace, and instead negotiated a matching set of steps that led downwards to his basement flat.
Inside, the cleats on the base of his cycling shoes clicked on the parquet flooring, and his road bike’s wheels squeaked noisily. He hung the bike on its wall hanger, immediately across from the basement front door. Above it hung his mountain bike, and to the right of that was the door to one of his spare bedrooms.
That door was painted white, and the paintwork still gleamed as fresh as the day he’d had the apartment painted. He noted that the brass knob still shone—in fact his whole house shone with meticulous cleanliness, just as he liked it.
Hugh settled in at his desk after a shower, his dark hair still damp. The desk was right at the front of his apartment, pushed up against the window. Above him foot traffic was increasing as London got ready for the workday. From his viewpoint all he could see were ankles and feet—in heels and boots and lace-up shoes. The angle was too acute for anyone passing to see him—he’d checked, of course—so he could leave his blinds open, allowing natural light to filter across his workspace.
He placed his mug of tea on the coaster immediately to the right of his open laptop. Beneath that lay the day’s to-do list, carefully formulated and handwritten the previous evening.
He’d always loved lists, even as a young kid. He remembered his mum’s bemusement when he’d stuck a list above his bedside table to remind himself what to pack for school each day of the week. He’d found it calming to have it all written out—a much better alternative, he’d thought, to his mother’s panicked realisations at the school gate and her frantic delivery of forgotten sports shoes at morning break.
‘A neat freak with lists!’ His mum had laughed. ‘How could you possibly be mine?’
To the bottom of his list for today he added Paint front door and polish brass.
He was certain the team at Precise thought his penchant for paper lists eccentric for a man who owned and ran a multi-million-dollar mobile app empire—but then, the team thought him eccentric for many more reasons than that.
A reminder popped up on his screen for a nine a.m. appointment, and he clicked through to sign in for the online meeting. Already four of the five other attendees were logged in, their faces visible via their webcams in a grid to the right of screen.
But in Hugh’s box there was only the generic grey silhouette—he never chose the video option, and he kept the camera at the top of his laptop taped over just in case.
Because, for Hugh Bennell, maintaining his privacy was non-negotiable.
He was in control of exactly what he revealed to the world.
His laptop dinged as the final attendee arrived.
‘Looks like everyone’s here,’ Hugh said. ‘Let’s get started.’
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_0e6df5fb-cfcb-574d-865a-d6035432c058)
Six weeks later—London
APRIL FELT GOOD.
She was thirty-two, and her first ever job interview was today.
Sure, she’d been interviewed for the couple of internships she’d had back at uni, but they didn’t count. Today was her first real-life I actually really, really want this job interview.
That was significant.
She smiled.
Around her, the Tube train was packed. Everyone looked completely absorbed in their own world—reading a book, swiping through a phone, gazing out of the window into the blackness of the tunnel.
Nobody noticed her. Nobody realised how momentous this day actually was.
Since her disastrous wedding anniversary there’d been weeks of numbness for April. There’d been shock, then anger, then the awfulness of telling her mum and her sisters, Ivy and Mila. There’d been weeks of meetings with lawyers and endless discussions about property settlement. There’d been tears and wine and long conversations.
Time had seemed to go on and on. Especially at night, when she’d been alone in her ridiculously too big concrete-and-angles home. Mila had stayed a few nights to keep her company—but she had her own life and a partner to worry about. Her mum had stayed every night for a fortnight, determinedly focusing on the practicalities of lawyers and legal details. Ivy had brought her son, Nate, to visit regularly—although she had been mortified when the toddler had accidentally pushed a salad bowl off the table, shattering it into millions of pieces.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ April had reassured her. ‘It’s one less thing we need to decide who gets to keep.’
At first, sorting out the things that she and Evan had bought together had seemed vitally important. Maybe it was the focus it had given her—or maybe there was more of her ruthless businesswoman mother in her than she’d thought.
But as the weeks had worn on, and she’d spent more time staring at her ceiling, not sleeping, all their stuff had begun to feel meaningless.
As it probably should for a woman with a billion-dollar family trust that she held with her sisters.
So Evan could have everything. Of course he could have everything.
I don’t love you...
April didn’t sugar-coat what Evan had said. He’d wrapped it up in superfluous words to blunt the blow, but that didn’t hide the reality: Evan didn’t love her. He’d never loved her—at least not the way April had loved him.
In those endless nights she’d analysed that relentlessly.
How could she not have known?
I don’t love you.
You.
Who was she, if not married to Evan?
The feminist within her was horrified that she could even ask herself this question. But she did. Again and again:
Who was she?
This woman Evan hadn’t loved enough. This woman who had been oblivious to the end of her marriage.
Who was she?
She was thirty-two, single and had never worked a day in her life.
Her home had been a wedding gift from her mother.
Everything she’d ever bought had been with a credit card linked to the Molyneux Trust. She had been indulged by a family who probably didn’t think her capable of being anything but a frivolous socialite. Why would they? She’d applied herself to nothing else. Her days had been filled with shopping and expensive charity luncheons. Her evenings with art gallery openings and luxurious fundraising auctions. She’d spent her spare time taking photos of herself and posting them online, so millions of people could click ‘like’ and comment on her fabulous perfect life.
What a sham. What a joke.
She hadn’t earned a cent of the fortune she’d flouted to the world.
And her husband hadn’t loved her.
She was a fraud.
But no more.
April smoothed the charcoal fabric of her pencil skirt over her thighs. It wasn’t designer. In fact it had probably cost about five per cent of the cost of her favourite leather tote bag—which she’d left back home in Perth.
She’d left everything behind.
She’d booked a one-way ticket to London and opened up a new credit card account at her bank—politely declining the option to have the balance cleared monthly by the Molyneux Trust. From now on she was definitely paying her own way.
She’d also located her British passport—a document she had thanks to her mother’s dual citizenship of both Australia and the UK.
Only then had she told her family what she was doing.
And then she’d ignored every single one of their concerns and hopped onto her flight the next day.
Now here she was. Three days in London.
She’d found a flat. She’d bought reasonably priced clothes for the first time in her life. She’d researched the heck out of the environmental sustainability consulting firm where she was about to have an interview.
Oh—as she noted her long ponytail cascading over the shoulder of her hound’s-tooth coat—she’d also dyed her hair brown.
She felt like a different person. Like a new person.
She even had a new name, of sorts.
The name that was on her birth certificate and her passport: April Spencer.
Like her sisters, she’d made the choice to use her mother’s surname within a few years of her father leaving them. But she’d never bothered having it formally changed.
Turned out that had now come in handy.
Today she didn’t feel like April Molyneux, the billionaire mining heiress whose life had collapsed around her.
Today she was April Spencer, and today she had a job interview.
And for the first time in six weeks she felt good.
* * *
As Hugh probably should’ve expected, it had rained through the remainder of September and then most of October. So it was a cool but clear November morning when he retrieved the tin of black paint from beneath his stairs and headed out from his basement to the front door of the main house.
It was just before sunrise, and even on a workday Islington street was almost deserted. A couple walking a Labrador passed by as he laid out his drop cloth, and as he painted the occasional jogger, walker or cyclist zipped past—along with the gradually thickening traffic.
It didn’t take long to paint the door: just a quick sand-down, a few minor imperfections in the woodwork to repair, then a fresh coat of paint.
Now it just needed to dry.
The door had to stay propped open for a few hours before he could safely close it again. He’d known this, so he’d planned ahead and dumped his backpack—which contained his laptop—in the hallway before he’d started work. Now he stepped inside, his work boots loud on the blue, cream and grey geometric tessellated tile entryway.
He yanked off his boots, grabbed his laptop out of his bag and then on thick socks padded over to the grand staircase ahead of him. To his left was the first of two reception rooms on the ground floor—but he wasn’t going to work in there. Instead he settled on a stair third from the bottom, rested his laptop on his jeans and got to work.
Or at least that was the plan.
Instead his emails remained unread, and the soft beep of instant message notifications persisted but were ignored.
Who was he kidding? He was never going to get any work done in here.
It was impossible when his attention remained on insignificant details: the way the weak morning sunlight sauntered through the wedged-open door to mingle with the dust he’d disturbed. The scent of the house: cardboard packing boxes, musty air and windows closed for far too long. The light—or lack of it. With every door but the front door sealed shut, an entryway he remembered as bright with light seemed instead gloomy and...abandoned.
Which, of course, it was.
He hadn’t stepped foot in here since the day he’d moved into the basement.
Back then—three years ago—it had been too hard. He hadn’t been ready to deal with this house.
Hugh stood up, suddenly needing to move. But not out through the front door.
Instead he went to the internal door only a few steps away and with a firm grip twisted the brass knob and yanked the door open.
He hadn’t realised he’d been holding his breath—but he let it out now in a defeated sigh. As if he’d expected to see something different.
But he’d known what was in here.
Once, this room had been where his mother and her second husband had hosted their guests with cups of tea and fancy biscuits.
That would be impossible now. If any antique furniture remained, it was hidden. Completely. By boxes. Boxes that filled the room in every direction—stacked neatly like bricks as tall as he was—six foot and higher.
