Her heart was racing, pounding in her chest, as she sat down in his executive leather chair and set to work. Her coffee she placed to her left, but it was quickly forgotten.
She wasn’t really being sneaky. All she wanted was to see their emails. Surely she had every right to go through the correspondence that she herself had sent him? They had sent copious love letters to one another in the early days, and she just knew it would have been a component of their rediscovered relationship. She was so certain that the truth would be in their shared emails, that she hadn’t dared ask him, lest he say no. Because, for whatever reason, her husband was hiding something from her, and she needed to know what it was.
With unsteady fingers, she typed her own email address into the search bar at the top of the email program, and waited while a little wheel spun frantically, telling her the search was underway.
The screen remained mostly blank, though. There were hardly any emails, she realized with a frown, and most of them dated back years.
One in particular had an attachment, and with a curious frown, she clicked into it immediately.
And froze.
The first picture didn’t make any sense. She checked the date on the email and made a small noise of shock. It had been sent four years ago, and from her email account, but she’d never seen the photos before in her life.
It looked like her. Lying on the bed like that. She leaned in closer and looked properly at the picture. It was her. Unmistakably. There was the mole on her left thigh, clear as day. Why did he have these pictures, and where had he got them?
She scrolled lower and her sense of disbelief grew. Andrew! What the hell? Photographs of her and Andrew in bed together? It was unbelievable. Preposterous. And damned invasive, too.
She leaned back in his chair and closed her eyes, as his gently voiced enquiries yesterday came back to her. He’d been insistent that she’d been in a relationship with Andrew. He hadn’t seemed to believe her when she’d denied it. And now she knew why.
In the background of the pictures, she could just make out a gold statue, and a sense of panic gripped her as she realized what night these photos had been taken.
The end of year dinner, her first semester at law school. She should remember it well except she hardly remembered a thing. Different to her current memory loss, this one had been an instant black hole in her knowledge. She’d woken up the morning after the awards dinner feeling groggy and confused, with no recollection of the prior twelve hours. The last thing she recalled clearly was accepting the academic award, and then a champagne or two later, she’d been out of it.
Bile rose in her throat and she clamped her lips shut. She refused to vomit. She refused to give in to the grief and realization that were threatening to tear her apart. But like dominoes that had been stacked too closely, memories seared into her brain, flying at her hard and fast, collapsing noisily all around her.
It happened instantly and completely, so that she blinked, and remembered who she had married and why.
Julia had never felt angrier in her life, and she knew it for a fact, because now she remembered everything.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She wasn’t sure how long she sat on the balcony, waiting for Zayn. It could have been just a few minutes, for all she was aware. Only the steady progress
of the sun through the sky gave her any idea that a more considerable block of time had passed. In the end, it must have been hours, because the stars were starting to twinkle overhead when his convoy made its stately entrance through the security gates.
She gripped the pictures tightly in her fingers, then forced herself to relax her hold as the paper began to crease under the pressure of her thumb. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to him, but she needed answers.
She heard him walk out onto the deck, but she didn’t turn to face him. Her face was a mask of grim reflection, and she kept her head forward, looking out but not seeing dusk blanket the city.
“Julia,” Zayn said, and his tone of voice was so wary that she knew instantly. He knew something was different.
“Why didn’t you tell me about these?” She asked stonily. She couldn’t look at him, so she simply extended a hand in his direction, waiting for him to take the pictures. He didn’t need to. The images were burned into his brain, so that one quick glance at the paper told him what she had discovered.
“You have remembered?” He ran his hands through his hair, and came to stand beside her.
“Yes,” she hissed, whipping around to face him now. “I’ve remembered everything.” Tears stung her eyes and she dashed at them angrily. “You’re an arsehole!”
He flinched but Zayn was a master of emotions, and the more emotional she became, the more important he found it to conceal what he felt. “Calm down, Julia.”
“Calm down?” She sobbed harshly. “What the hell, Zayn? What are these pictures?”
His face was cold. “You tell me. You are, after all, the one who emailed them to me.”
She blanched beneath his words. “I didn’t.” She shook her head fiercely. “I’ve never seen these pictures before in my life.”
“Why lie now? When there is so much water under the bridge? After all, we are husband and wife. It was years ago.”
“I mean it, Zayn. I have no recollection of this. I certainly didn’t send the images to you.”