Chapter 11

“I had a PI dig backwards when I couldn’t find you. He tracked you down to Hackney after pinpointing English women and Texan men married with one registered daughter, born in the States. I pay him the big bucks because he is thorough. It took a while, and he found these in an abandoned apartment in a derelict building when he went there to find out more about you. Or should I say about Lisa?”

And time seems to stop.

My face is freezing over with the realisation this goes beyond reading about my past. His PI stood in that very place that I left to rot after I ran. No one else would have moved in after, the whole area was scheduled to be levelled, and they had been slowly evicting tenants over those years. I’m surprised it was still standing. I left such a long time ago.

He knows my name is not Camilla.

He knows I’m not who I pretend to be.

I have no words, no breath in my body. I sit like a startled deer in the headlights. Unmoving, afraid to feel becaus