The Lying Game by Tess Stimson

daughter like Nell, but at this moment she knew she was the luckiest woman in
the world.
    She’d completely forgotten about the white envelope on top of the pile of letters she’d shoved into the kitchen drawer.

9
Harriet
    ‘I wish you’d never told me!’ Oliver yelled.
    ‘How could I keep something like this to myself?’ Harriet shouted back.
    They’d been having the same argument for three weeks. Three weeks of going round and round the same subject, having the same fight, rehashing the same facts – and getting
nowhere.
    It had taken twenty-seven days for the DNA results to come through. For twenty-seven days Harriet hadn’t slept, had hardly eaten, had spent her days in a waking nightmare and her turbulent
nights drenched in sweat. When Oliver had asked her what was wrong, she’d blamed it on worry over the shock of suddenly learning her father had to have bladder surgery – to remove a
tumour the doctors had assured them was benign – and then felt intensely guilty both for using her father’s illness in such a selfish way and because Oliver made a point of asking after
him often and treating her with exceptionally understanding sweetness.
    When she’d finally seen the white envelope in the mailbox and recognized its embossed logo, she’d pleaded a headache and begged Oliver to do the school run, then fled upstairs and
locked herself in the bathroom, her body trembling with nerves, her mouth dry with fear. Downstairs, the usual morning chaos – ‘Where are my soccer boots? Mom! Dad! I can’t find
my boots!’ ‘Who finished the Cheerios? Sam, that’s
so
not cool, you know I don’t like Cornflakes!’ ‘I can’t find my homework! I left it
right
here
!’ – peaked in a crescendo of running feet and slammed doors, and was then replaced with terrifying, empty silence.
    She had waited five minutes, ten, needing to be certain nothing had been forgotten, no packed lunches left behind. When she was quite sure no one was coming back, she closed the lavatory seat,
sat down and stared at the envelope in her hands.
    Was Oliver Florence’s father? Or was it Ben?
    It had to be Oliver. She couldn’t imagine the consequences if . . .
    Was Oliver Florence’s father?
    It all came down to this. A few sentences on a piece of paper.
    She had ripped open the envelope, tearing the contents in her haste. She’d pulled out four pages of charts and closely typed writing stapled together, and a covering letter. Her hands were
shaking so much, she couldn’t even bring the words into focus. In the end, she’d had to flatten the letter on her lap so she could read it.
Paternal subject: Oliver Peter Lockwood .
. . Maternal subject: Harriet Jane Lockwood . . . Minor subject: Florence May Lockwood . . .
    Then the usual legal disclaimers about chain of custody,
not to be relied on in court –
yes, yes.
    And then the words that changed everything.
    It took her three attempts simply to comprehend what the letter was saying. She read it through a fourth time, to be absolutely sure she hadn’t made a mistake. Then she turned to the
accompanying pages of charts and scientific analysis, looking for a way out, a loophole. It could have been written in Mandarin for all the sense it made.
    She had turned back to the letter and read it a fifth and final time. Then she had flipped open the lid of the lavatory and vomited and vomited into it until her throat and mouth burned with
acid.
    She’d spent all afternoon obsessively reading about similar cases online. It didn’t happen very often, of course, especially these days when there was such tight
security at hospitals, identity bracelets were put on mother and child, prints of tiny hands and feet were carefully taken and filed with the baby’s medical notes. Most of the stories
she’d found of babies carelessly muddled up had taken place in small village hospitals and dated back to the Fifties. Some mistakes had been quickly rectified; others hadn’t been