Brazilian Escape: Playing the Dutiful Wife / Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child. Carol Marinelli

upset her, how she had been trying to psyche herself up to divorce him.

      And her mum kept interrupting her with questions that her father was shouting—questions that weren’t really relevant because they still didn’t know half of the story. So she told them she was here to visit him, that he had been arrested a while ago, but was innocent of all charges. Her mother was shouting and sobbing now, and her dad was demanding the phone, and they were simply getting nowhere, and then Niklas was back and she was so glad to hand the phone over to him.

      She found out for certain then just how brilliant he was, how clever he was with people, for somehow he calmed her father down.

      ‘My intention when I married your daughter was to take proper care of her. I was on my way to tell you the same when I found out that I was being investigated.’

      He said a few more things, and she could hear the shouts receding as he calmly spoke his truth.

      ‘I was deliberately nasty to her in the hope she would divorce me—of course she was confused, of course she was ashamed and did not feel that she could tell you. I wanted to keep her away from the trouble that was coming—in that I failed, and I apologise.’

      They didn’t need to know all the details, but he told them some pertinent ones, because as soon as they hung up they would be racing to find out the news for themselves. So he told them about the shooting, but he was brief and matter-of-fact and reiterated that Meg was safe. He told them that they could ring any time with more questions, no matter the time of day or night, and that he would do his best to answer them. Then he handed the phone back to Meg.

      ‘You’re safe,’ her mum said.

      ‘I am.’

      ‘We need to talk …’

      ‘We will.’

      When she hung up the phone she looked at him. ‘You could have told me the truth that day.’ She was angry that he hadn’t.

      ‘What? Walk back in and tell you that I am being investigated for fraud and embezzlement? That the man you met twenty-four hours ago is facing thirty-five years to life in jail …?’ He looked at her. ‘What would you have said?’

      ‘I might have suggested you didn’t go back till you found out the case against you …’ she flared. ‘I might not be the best one in the world, but I am a lawyer …’

      ‘My own lawyer was telling me to get straight back.’ He kicked himself then, because had he confided in her—had he been able to tell her—he might not have raced back, might have found out some more information before taking a first-class flight to hell.

      ‘I had to return to face it,’ Niklas said. ‘Would you have stood by me?’

      ‘You never gave me that chance.’

      ‘Because that was what I was most afraid of.’ He was kneeling beside her and she could hear him breathing. ‘You never asked if I did it.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Even when you visited … even when you rang …’

      ‘No, I didn’t.’

      ‘Did you believe I was innocent?’

      ‘I hoped that you were.’

      ‘There was too much love for common sense,’ Niklas said.

      She sat there for ages and was glad when he left her alone and headed to the bathroom. She heard his sigh of relief as he slipped into the bath water and thought about his words—because while she had hoped he was innocent, it hadn’t changed her feelings towards him and that scared her. After a little while she wandered in to him.

      ‘I am so sorry.’ He looked at her. ‘For everything I have put you and your family through.’

      ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘But still, I have scared you, and nearly cost you your life …’

      And then he looked at her and asked the question the police had asked her earlier.

      ‘Did he do anything to you?’

      ‘Apart from hold a gun at me …’ she knew what he meant ‘… no.’

      She watched him close his eyes in relief and knew then that he had cried.

      ‘He wanted to walk,’ Meg said. ‘That was when I started to worry.’ She gave him a pale smile. ‘Not quite the Niklas I know.’ And then there wasn’t a pale smile. ‘I’m still cross about what you said on the phone.’

      ‘I wanted you to leave,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to be so angry, so upset, that you got on the next plane you could …’

      ‘I nearly did.’

      ‘Do you want me tell you what happened?’

      She wanted to hear it now, and he held his hand out to her. Yes, he assumed she would join him—and for now he was right. Her clothes and her body were filthy, and she wanted to feel clean again, to hear what had happened, and she wanted to hear it as she lay beside him. So she took off her clothes and slid into the water, with her back to his chest, resting on him, and he held her close and washed all her bruises and slowly he told her.

      ‘There was bedlam in court,’ Niklas said as he washed her gently. ‘The place erupted when I asked for a new lawyer, and then Rosa presented the evidence implicating Miguel. He was arrested immediately, but of course I had to go back to prison … I knew they were never going to release me just like that. I told them that you were in danger, but they would not listen, and then, as they were taking me back, he made contact with Carla, asking for money. He said that he had my wife and texted a photo. The police only believed me then that I had a twin.’

      She frowned and looked up to him. ‘You knew you had a twin?’

      ‘I guessed that I did last night, after I spoke to you.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘It made sense. I knew I was innocent.’

      ‘But how did you work it out?’

      ‘I swear in several languages …’ She smiled, because that was what he did. ‘I was angry after speaking to you—worried that you would not leave—and I swore in Portuguese. The guard warned me to be careful, he called me Dos Santos and I heard the derision in his voice, in his tone. I thought he was referring to me having no one, and I swore again, and then he said something about you. I went to curse again, but in Spanish …’