Read Chapter 20: — FOLLOWING

A hotel charity event brought Victoria back to York.

Adrian told Eleanor he would meet her regarding a legal matter connected to the townhouse development.

Eleanor said she was fine.

Then spent the evening proving she was not.

Hannah, who had no moral resistance to bad ideas, suggested they “accidentally” pass the restaurant where Adrian and Victoria were meeting.

Eleanor refused.

An hour later she was in Hannah's car.

“This is humiliating,” Eleanor said.

“Correct.”

They saw Adrian and Victoria leave together and enter another car.

Hannah followed.

The car stopped at a private reception venue outside the city. Adrian and Victoria entered side by side.

Eleanor's stomach tightened.

It was not evidence of betrayal. It did not need to be. Fear supplied the rest.

She remembered Michael's hidden business trips. Nora's certainty. The DNA report. The way every memory of her marriage had become contaminated afterward.

Her breathing shortened.

“Take me home,” she said.

Before Hannah could answer, a severe pain folded Eleanor forward.

Her long history of gastritis, neglected through stress and irregular meals, had finally demanded attention.

Hannah panicked.

Leo, whom she called because he lived across the hall and could meet them at hospital, arrived in slippers and a coat thrown over pyjamas.

He handled registration, payment, water, medication, everything.

“Where's Adrian?” Hannah asked quietly.

Eleanor closed her eyes.

“Don't call him.”

She spent the night in hospital observation and the next morning asleep in Leo's spare room because he refused to let her stay alone.

On the wall was a painting of a woman holding a small boy's hand in a field of sunflowers.

“My sister,” Leo said when he saw Eleanor looking. “She raised me more than our parents did.”

There was love in his voice complicated by pain.

Eleanor recognized the combination.