Only Ever One Woman

The fork clinked against the plate and I froze, because William Duca had just said the one thing I'd spent eight months praying he'd never say in front of witnesses.

"There's only ever been one woman," he said, and the dining room went so quiet I could hear the candle guttering. "I met her online. I never saw her face in person. And I'm still looking for her."

My fork clinked again. I set it down before anyone noticed my hands.

Isabella reached across the linen and patted my wrist. "Eat, Nicole. You've barely touched the lamb."

"I'm fine, Mrs. Duca. Honestly."

"You're pale," Sophia said, narrowing her eyes at me from across the table. "You've gone properly grey. Are you ill?"

"Just the wine." I took a sip I didn't want and tried to breathe like a person who hadn't just been gutted in public.

William's gaze brushed past me and moved on. He didn't elaborate. He never did — not a name, not a city, not one detail of the messages that had kept me awake for the better part of a year. Even now, with his mother watching and his sister needling, he folded the subject away like a napkin and said, "Pass the potatoes, Marco."

That was the thing about him. He could hold a room without giving it anything.

The doors banged open.

"Of course." Jessica Montford stood in the archway in a dress that cost more than my rent, her smile already sharpened. "I should have known. Nicole Hartley doesn't attend dinners. She arranges them."

Sophia's chair scraped back. "Who let you in?"

"Your mother's housekeeper is very fond of me." Jessica drifted toward the table, and the whole room tracked her like a dropped glass. "I only came to return a scarf. But look at this — candles, the good china, the prodigal son home from his travels. You've outdone yourself, Nikki. All this, just to be the centre of attention."

I gripped the edge of the table beneath the cloth. My ears were ringing. Somewhere behind my ribs, the old panic started its climb — *she knows, she knows, she's about to say it* — and my voice came out thin and childish, nothing like the sharp thing I usually kept loaded.

"I didn't arrange anything."

"No? Then it's a coincidence that the one man in this city worth catching sat down at your table the week you moved in."

"That's enough," Sophia said.

Isabella had gone very still. "Miss Montford, you were not invited. I'll ask you to—"

"Ask me what? I'm only telling the truth." Jessica's eyes slid to William and softened into something worse than cruelty — *want*. "Ask him. Ask him why he's wasting his evenings on a girl who lies about who she is."

The room tilted.

*She knows.*

I couldn't look at William. I stared at my plate and my hands shook so badly I had to sit on them, and all I could think was *say nothing, say nothing, if you say nothing it isn't true* — the same coward's arithmetic I'd been running since December.

It was Marco who moved.

He'd been standing by the sideboard the whole evening, quiet as furniture, and now he stepped forward and took hold of the woman standing just behind Jessica — a woman I hadn't properly looked at, blonde, glossy, dressed in silk, her hands twisting a clutch bag like she wanted to wring its neck. She'd come in with Jessica. I'd assumed she was a friend.

"Wait," the woman said. "Wait, I didn't—"

"Sit down, Lily," Marco said, and she sat.

William set his glass on the table. He didn't raise his voice. He never did. "Explain."

And Lily — Lily, who looked like a photograph that had been edited until it stopped being a person — burst into tears and told us everything.

"She came to me in February. She said there was a man looking for a girl called Luna, and that the girl had run off and hurt him, and that if I turned up and said I was her, he'd be grateful. She gave me lines. She gave me screenshots. She'd read the messages off a phone she'd taken — she said she'd taken it from a girl at a party and it had got broken in the scuffle, cracked screen, she couldn't unlock it after, so she'd copied what she could while it still worked. She said I looked like the pictures. She said he'd never know."

My stomach turned over.

*The masquerade. My phone. I thought I'd dropped it.*

"Who." William's voice was flat as a blade laid on a table. "Say the name."

Lily pointed at Jessica with a shaking hand.

Jessica laughed. It came out wrong, too high. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. She's clearly unwell."

"Since we were children," Lily said, and now she was looking at me, and there was something awful and honest in it. "She told me. She said, *I've been after that one since we were kids. Everything's always about Nicole.* Every party, every boy, every room she walks into. She said Tyler was supposed to be hers and Nicole ruined it by existing. She said she just wanted her gone."

The silence after that had a texture. Like fabric tearing slowly.

I should have felt triumphant. Instead I felt hollowed out — eight months of terror, and it hadn't been a rival in a photograph or a woman with my edited face. It had been a girl I'd known since I was nine, who'd hated me for the crime of being noticed.

William turned to Marco. "See Miss Lily out. Gently. She was used." Then his eyes found Jessica, and I watched a man decide something. "And telephone her father. Tonight. Tell him exactly what his daughter did, in what order, with what materials. If he wants the details in writing, give him the details in writing."

Jessica's face went the colour of the tablecloth. "You can't—"

"I can." He said it without heat. "Marco. Now."

They went. The doors closed. And I sat there with my heart going like a bird in a box, realising I'd just watched the man I'd lied to dismantle the woman who'd lied about me — and that he still had no idea the first liar was sitting at his table.

Sophia's hand found mine under the cloth and squeezed hard.

"Nikki," she whispered. "You're shaking."

"I'm fine," I said, and it was the biggest lie I'd told all evening.