Playing Dead
Authors: Jessie Keane
JESSIE KEANE
Playing Dead
Dedication
To Cliff, with all my love.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Montauk, Long Island, USA
August 1971
Annie Carter-Barolli knew that there are some things you remember forever. Like your child’s first cry. Or your wedding day – or
days
, in her case: she’d been married twice. Or like the moment you stare death in the face and it’s not scary like you expected it to be, not a face of bones, not a reaper. Instead it’s bright red ribbon on a big square parcel of sunny sky-blue, and your husband is picking it out from the front of the huge pile of presents. He is turning towards you holding it, smiling at you and saying,
Hey, wonder what’s in this one?
That moment stays with you. You want to rewind, replay, edit; take the hurt away. Splice the whole thing back together and make it come out another way. But you can’t. Once the jack-in-the-box is out, he’s out; there’s no going back.
Annie was standing out on the big terraced deck overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It was a hot August night but the breeze from the sea was cooling and sweet against her skin. Inside the house, Constantine’s oceanfront house out here in the millionaire’s playground of Montauk, there was the music of a mariachi band, and laughter.
Most times, this place was like a fortress, guarded day and night by his men. Sometimes police cruisers drifted by the gates at the front of the Montauk estate and the cops took pictures, exchanged hard-eyed stares with the men on guard, and moved on.
But today was a happy day; it was the day of her stepson Lucco’s wedding. The celebrations were likely to go on long into the night. Already she was tired. Layla, her little girl from her first marriage to Max Carter, was asleep upstairs at the back of the house, tucked in by her nanny Gerda. Annie clasped her hands over the bump of her pregnancy. Soon, there would be another child,
Constantine
’s child, a new brother or sister for Layla. She was five months gone now and the morning sickness had – thank God – subsided at last. But the new baby was hungry, draining her energy levels, robbing her of sleep.