“Even in his early career, he didn’t let the cases get to him,” Brian continued. “But then he got picked for that operation . . . We didn’t see him for three years, Steph. Couldn’t even phone him. We were told that if we ever happened to pass him on the street, we should ignore him, in case we blew his cover—”

“Hang on.” Steph stared at him. “His cover?”

Brian’s eyes met hers. He blinked twice. “Well . . . yes.”

Slowly, his words sank in. Steph felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach, felt heat flaming in her cheeks. The humiliation of not knowing this major thing about her own husband. Her picture of Paul shifting yet again.

“He was undercover?” she said.

Brian looked stricken now, clearly realizing the information had come as a shock.

“I’m sorry, love,” he said. “I assumed . . .”

“It’s not your fault. Of course you’d assume I knew. Paul should’ve told me!”

Brian rubbed at his temples. Steph pulled Freya’s scarf across her chest as though to help her feel less exposed. Why hadn’t Paul ever said anything? She couldn’t get her head around the implications, the questions. What had he been investigating? Where had he lived, and who with, who as? For three years. Not long before he’d met her.

“These kinds of operations tend to be highly confidential,” Brian said. “Perhaps he thought it was safer to say nothing at all.”

Steph didn’t respond. A chunk of her husband’s life had just been made unfathomable. Even more so than before. And what did this mean for Freya? Were unfathomably bad people involved too?

“I don’t know the details of the operation,” Brian stumbled on, as if he felt he had something to repair. “Only that when he came back he was changed. More serious, cautious, quiet. Then you came along, love, you and Freya . . . and brought him back. But, still, I think he’s spent the whole time feeling like he doesn’t deserve you. Worrying that something will take you away from him.”

Steph let her tears spill. “What if Freya has been taken away from us?”

Brian leaned forward. “Then we’ll fight every day and search every bloody place we can think of, and we’ll bring her back.”

Steph hid her face inside the scarf. Suddenly the search seemed bigger than she could handle, the fight far beyond her. Freya and Paul were receding from her at alarming speed, their fingertips slipping from her grasp.

17.

KATE

Twenty-five years earlier