One Plus One: A Novel by Jojo Moyes Page A

bits of car, plastic buckets, and let the engine run. Then she leaned forward and peeled back the faded tax disc. It was almost two years out of date. And she didn’t have insurance.
    She turned off the ignition and sat in the dark as the smell of oil gradually faded from the air, and she thought, for the hundredth time: Do the right thing.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Ed
    [email protected]: Don’t forget what I told you. Can remind you of deets if you lose the card.
    [email protected]: I won’t forget. Whole night engraved on my memory. ;-)
    [email protected]: Did you do what I told you?
    [email protected]: Just sorting now.
    [email protected]: Let me know if you get good results!
    [email protected]: Well, based on your past performance, I’d be amazed if it was anything but! ;-0
    [email protected]: Nobody’s ever done for me what you did for me.
    [email protected]: Really. It was nothing.
    [email protected]: You want to hook up again, next weekend?
    [email protected]: Bit busy at the mo. I’ll let you know.
    [email protected]: I think it worked out well for both of us. ;-)
     
    The detective let him finish reading the two sheets of paper, then slid them toward Paul Wilkes, Ed’s lawyer.
    “Have you got any comment on those, Mr. Nicholls?”
    There was something excruciating about seeing private e-mails laid out in an official document: the eagerness of his early replies, the barely veiled double entendres, the smiley faces (what was he, fourteen?).
    “You don’t have to say anything,” Paul said.
    “That whole exchange could be about anything.” Ed pushed the documents away from him. “‘Let me know if you get good results.’ I could have been telling her to do something sexual. It could be, like, e-mail sex.”
    “At eleven fourteen a.m.?”
    “So?”
    “In an open-plan office?”
    “I’m uninhibited.”
    The detective removed his glasses and gave him a hard look. “E-mail sex? Really? That’s what you were doing here?”
    “Well, no. Not in that case. But that’s not the point.”
    “I would suggest it is totally the point, Mr. Nicholls. There are reams of this stuff. You talk about keeping in touch”—he flicked through the papers—“‘to see if I can help you out some more.’”
    “But it’s not how it sounds. She was depressed. She was having a bad time getting rid of her ex. I just wanted to . . . make things a little easier for her. I keep telling you.”
    “Just a few more questions.”
    They had questions, all right. They wanted to know how often he had met Deanna. Where they had gone. What the exact nature of their relationship was. They didn’t believe him when Ed said he didn’t know much about her life, and nothing about her brother.
    “Oh, come on!” Ed protested. “You’ve never had a relationship based on sex?”
    “Ms. Lewis doesn’t say it was based on sex. She says the two of you were involved in a ‘close and intense’ relationship, that you had known each other since your college days, and that you were determined to make her go ahead with this deal, that you pressed it on her. She says she had no idea that in taking your advice she was doing anything illegal.”
    “But she’s . . . she’s making it sound like we had much more of a relationship than we did. And I didn’t force her to do anything.”
    “So you admit that you gave her the information.”
    “I’m not saying that! I’m just saying—”
    “I think what my client is saying is that he cannot be held responsible for any misconceptions Ms. Lewis might have held about their relationship,” Paul interjected. “Or what information she might have passed on to her brother.”
    “And we were not having a relationship. Not that kind of relationship.”
    The detective shrugged. “You know what? I don’t really care what the nature of your relationship was. I don’t care if you knobbed her halfway to next Wednesday. What is of interest to me, Mr. Nicholls, is that you gave this