Influenced

by Eva Robinson

  From a distance, she heard herself moaning. She had to get home, so Penny would know Arabella hadn’t abandoned her. Penny would be whining at the front window, desperate.

  They were moving her now through the halls. Where was her mobile phone? Maybe it was still in the exam room. She needed to prompt Adam again, needed to get him to hug Penny and then actually show up.

  The doctors would fix this, though, wouldn’t they? Boston had the best doctors in the world. Whatever was happening, they would make her better. She’d go to sleep for a little while, and she’d wake up fine. Then she’d go home to Kent, and never return to America.

  Her heart was fluttering so fast, like hummingbird wings in her chest. It felt fundamentally wrong, and dizziness whirled in her mind.

  She had something she needed to tell the doctors, and they could ask Mum to come. Mum always made her feel better. It was the tea she made, and the ointment that went on her chest.

  But she was going there now, wasn’t she? She was at home, curled up on the sofa, and Mum was covering her in a blanket.

  Eight

  Ciara had made the mistake of having four cups of coffee that morning, and now she found herself grinding her teeth as she walked down the hallway of the Cambridge Police Department. Not a great start to the first day at a new job.

  Not only was she about to meet the lieutenant, but she was also about to meet her new partner for the first time.

  Her low heels clacked over the dark tiled floor, and the sound echoed off the clean white walls. She checked her watch. Still five minutes to go. Enough time to head into the bathroom and get a hold of herself before she met them. She let out a breath when she saw the black and white sign for a bathroom, and she went inside.

  She found herself in a single-stall bathroom—gender-neutral, which of course meant it stank of piss because some men couldn’t aim. And to that effect, someone had scrawled a note on a piece of paper that read, Men! Please clean up after yourselves! Your mom is not here to help you.

  When she looked at herself in the mirror, she felt a little reassured. She at least looked the part of a competent detective, which she was. She straightened, smoothing her suit jacket. Today was important, so she’d brought out the Ann Taylor suit instead of the usual crap from Marshalls—the dusky indigo that complemented her ginger hair, with an ivory blouse underneath. Her green eyes and red lipstick made up for some of the milky paleness of her skin, but apart from that, she looked perfectly boring. Her tattoos and her sexy underwear with all the black ribbons were as deep undercover as a federal agent in the Mafia.

  She pulled the elastic band from her hair and tried to smooth her ginger ringlets into a neat ponytail. When she’d reined in her hair, she gripped the sides of the sink.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said out loud. “You’re Ciara Munroe.”

  It was what her twin sister Jess always told her. It made no sense, but the pep talk seemed to work.

  She flashed herself a smile in the mirror, trying to look lovely. That was what her detective sergeant in Boston had last told her: “Try to be lovelier, Munroe.”

  Composed, she pulled open the door, feeling more confident now as she crossed to the end of the hall. There, she found the last door open.

  The lieutenant sat at a large mahogany desk, with sober bookshelves lining the wall behind him. Lieutenant Bianchi had salt-and-pepper hair, and his olive skin crinkled around his eyes when he smiled at her. He seemed lovely.

  He beckoned her inside.

  As she entered the room, she shot a glance at the other man in the room—unnervingly handsome. That must be Michael.

  He rose and thrust out his hand as she approached.

  Ciara shook it. “Hi. I’m Ciara.” Be lovely. She forced a smile, but it felt wrong, crooked.

  “Michael. Nice to meet you.” She was surprised to hear a British accent, and immediately wanted to know how he’d ended up here.

  Lieutenant Bianchi leaned back in his chair. “You’re coming in at a good time for us, Detective Munroe. Detective Stewart’s partner has retired, and your clearance rate in Boston impressed us, of course.”

  She could feel her cheeks heating a little. She still had no idea how to take even the vaguest of compliments. “Well, I love this city, Lieutenant Bianchi.”

  “You grew up around here, right?” asked the lieutenant.

  “Yes.” She let it drop there. She didn’t add that she was from Lexington, because they’d assume she’d grown up rich, which she hadn’t.

  The conversation lulled to an awkward silence, and she felt like she’d already made a slight misstep.

  Bianchi nodded at Michael. “Right. Well, Detective Stewart will take you through some of the cases he’s already working on.” He leaned back in his chair, and she took this as their cue to leave. Seemed the lieutenant didn’t have much time, which was fine by her.

  Michael stood and nodded at the door. “I’ll show you to your desk.”

  In the hallway, Michael scrubbed his hand over his jaw, looking as though he were thinking hard about something.

  She wondered if he regretted being stuck with her. And he had to be wondering why she’d left Boston. Or maybe he’d already heard—the rumors about her being difficult.

  His silence unnerved her, and she found herself boiling over with the need to get it out in the open. “You probably want to know how I ended up here.”

  He turned to face her, a look of surprise on his face. “I didn’t want to ask.”

  Might as well get it out in the open, because he’d hear it through the grapevine. “They say I’m not a team player, that I have no loyalty. That’s because two dirtbags I worked with assaulted women they arrested. One of them broke a kid’s jaw because he didn’t like his attitude. And my notes detailed the truth, and that makes me disloyal. I got a verbal warning, and then frozen out by everyone I worked with. ‘Not a team player.’ Someone literally pissed in my coffee. They shredded my paperwork. Drew penises on my desk. Really mature. But I had a good clearance rate, and now I have you. And the truth is, I am loyal. As long as you’re not a dirtbag.”

  He flashed her a faint smile. “Noted.”

  “So what are you working on?” asked Ciara.

  “Maybe not what I’m supposed to be working on.”

  “Well, now I’m intrigued.”

  He led her around a corner in a pristine hallway. “I can’t stop thinking about it. A few days ago, a young woman showed up at the station, a PhD candidate at Harvard. She was panicking. Her laptop had been stolen from her office, and she said there was something very important on it. Some kind of secret information she thought people might want, but she was unwilling to tell me what it was. She said she didn’t know who to trust, and she was sure people were after her. She wanted police protection. She was crying. I hate when women cry. But it was so vague, and she was unwilling to tell me anything else, so there wasn’t really anything I could do. Laptops are stolen all the time. I didn’t realize she was actually in danger. Not without any real details.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Yesterday morning, she ended up in the hospital—stomach pain, vomiting excessively, unable to breathe.”

  “Any diagnosis?”

  Michael pushed through the door into a large room with dark blue carpet and sleek rows of ivory desks, dividers demarcating the work spaces and computers. Fluorescent lights flickered above them.

  Michael said in a low voice, “The ER doctor I spoke to said he was baffled at first. Her symptoms were progressing too fast for a viral illness. But when her hair started falling out, and her limbs went numb, he was certain she’d been poisoned. Apparently it matched an accidental poisoning case he’d seen while working in Russia. Thallium poisoning, specifically. He was certain of it.”

  “Any chance it was an accident?” asked Ciara.

  He led her over to an empty desk. “It’s found in rat poison in some countries, but it’s very strictly controlled in the United States. T
he lieutenant doesn’t necessarily think this should be a priority until we have the autopsy results and toxicology reports. But I can’t get my mind off it.”

  Ciara knew why—he was probably wondering if he should have done something more. He couldn’t have, really—not if all he’d had to go on was a stolen laptop. But if someone came to you for help, and ended up dead—well, it would be hard not to ruminate on it.

  “Arabella Green. Beautiful name, really,” he added. “Dead at twenty-six. And I want to find out exactly what happened.”

  Nine

  Rowan sat cross-legged on the bench on her balcony, which looked out over Memorial Drive to the Charles. From here, she had a view of everyone running along the river. She’d taken a million photos of this balcony, and the glass doors that opened into her apartment.

  Now she wondered if, somewhere out there, her terrifying clown friend was wandering the streets. Any one of her online stalkers would easily be able to find where she lived.

  A shiver of fear crawled up her nape, and she had a sudden and overwhelming desire to run back into her apartment and lock the balcony doors.

  But that was what they wanted, of course. Her commenters wanted her to lose her mind.

  She turned back to her open-plan apartment, cringing a little at the mess. One half looked picture-perfect—a stairwell that swept up to her loft bed, the wooden walls that had been painted a rustic and faded grey. Watercolors and pencil drawings festooned the brick walls, and the shiny wood floor had been cleared beneath her bed, with an antique olive-green chaise longue.

  But the other half—by the kitchen—was cluttered with empty wine bottles, dirty dishes, Amazon boxes, and wet towels.

  She pulled her laptop out of her bag. She had announced that she’d finished a draft, so now she actually had to do it. She’d hoped that the announcement would force her to focus.

  And yet even now, as soon as her laptop was open, she still found herself scrolling through Facebook and Instagram instead of writing.

  Her travel memoir, Fairytale Wanderings, had been a huge success, a book club favorite. She’d given people what they wanted—enchantment. And granted, along with the attention had come a tidal wave of negativity. But there were still tens of thousands of people out there who wanted to read her follow-up book.

  Assuming she could ever actually write it.

  A breeze rushed off the Charles, and she took a sip of wine.

  “Okay, Rowan, time to write. But for real this time.” She pulled her laptop into her lap and opened it. The book was supposed to be called Ceci n'est pas un dating book—A Guide to Living a Life of Glamour, and Getting any Guy you Wanted. Despite the title, it literally was a dating book.

  And Rowan was the expert, right? After all, people could see in her photos that she was always surrounded by hot guys with chiseled cheekbones and preppy clothes. Of course she was an expert.

  And she’d managed to date Marc Holmes, the brilliant Anglo-French novelist with the sweep of sandy-blond waves and two-day-old stubble. Marc, the ex whom she still thought of nearly every waking moment. Marc, who still had no idea he’d be appearing in her book.

  She had to charm him completely before they had that conversation—only it seemed she’d run out of ways to do that. No amount of pouting for the camera or sending him snippets of poetry was sparking a flame these days.

  Every one of her followers had a theory about why their relationship had ended, and they all blamed her. They said she’d cheated on him, or that she was a cokehead and had driven him mad with her rages. They said he’d realized how dumb and shallow she was.

  And they were right that it had been her fault. But none of them knew what she’d really done.

  She closed her eyes, savoring another sip of wine. She’d skipped dinner, which meant the buzz was coming on a bit faster.

  Exactly how much wine would it take to stop thinking about Marc?

  A lot, considering that she hadn’t been happy once since their relationship ended a year ago. When they were together, it had been the kind of happiness where you want the moment to stretch on and on forever, where the memory seems drenched in honey… Like that night in the Montmartre cemetery. They’d snuck in before dawn, and she’d laughed so hard that her belly had hurt. Snuggling together, they’d watched the sun come up.

  In comparison, she felt like a dried-out husk of a person now.

  A sharp tendril of guilt coiled through her chest when she thought of him. With a lump in her throat, she turned on her phone and searched for a picture of the two of them together. There they were—a beautiful couple on a trip to London. They stood in a sun-dappled garden near Temple Church, her head resting on his shoulder.

  That was before she’d ruined everything.

  Her hand shook as she poured herself another glass of rosé and stared out over the Charles. If sheer longing could make someone materialize, she’d see Marc striding down the riverside path, fresh off the airplane from the U.K.

  Her publishers wanted at least a chapter about him, but four would be best. Dating him was what had made her career—a simple, wide-eyed ingenue from New England wandering into a Parisian fairytale with a real European intellectual.

  And even if she had never been a simple, innocent girl, it had all felt like magic then. That had been real.

  She lifted her wine glass before the setting sun, and when the rays of light hit it, they lit it up like a gem. With or without Marc, she needed to discover a sense of magic again. For her, it was harder to find in America, but it was still there. And that was what she needed to convey in her books: how to lead an enchanted life, even if you live in some terrible town with nothing but strip malls and shuttered factories.

  “Okay, Rowan. Let’s make magic happen on the page.” She closed Facebook, Instagram, and the news sites, and her fingers hovered above the keys.

  Except the words weren’t flowing when they were supposed to. Whenever she tried to write anything, the voices of her commenters drowned out her other thoughts.

  What is this drivel?

  Do you actually think people care about your philosophy on sunlight? Idiot.

  How about calling this diary of a desperate narcissist?

  I hope you die slowly.

  At this point, she’d read so many negative messages that their voices had started growing in her mind like an invasive species, one that took over the terrain completely. She was no longer sure what she actually thought about her own work—she only knew what she imagined other people would think of it.

  So far, she’d written one entire paragraph. It was about an amazing breakfast. Since her brand was “vaguely French-inspired,” there would be no quinoa and avocado. Instead, it was pain au chocolate, or berries and cream. This wasn’t some austere Gwyneth Paltrow crap; this was about pleasure. That was what Americans wanted out of France, and out of Rowan. Pleasure, luxury, and magic.

  She frowned at the blank page. Maybe she should skip the food chapter. It was incoherent and lacked focus. Maybe she should start with writing about Marc. He was, after all, her primary obsession and the obsession of her readers.

  With her heart racing, she called his number. He picked up after a few rings, his voice husky. “Hello?”

  The excitement of hearing his voice lit up her entire body. “Marc.”

  “Rowan? I was sleeping.”

  “Oh, of course. Sorry, I guess it’s after midnight there.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, it’s fine. Sorry. I was just thinking of you. And I’m wondering if I shouldn’t write the book I’m supposed to write. You know how I am with writing.” She shouldn’t have brought up that topic. “Well, I’m wondering if I should maybe go to graduate school. And do something important. Like my friend Arabella.”

  “I don’t know, Ro. I need to go back to sleep.”

  She felt her cheeks burning now. What a first-class idiot she was. “Of course. Sorry.”

  “Talk to you later, Ro.”
>
  Cringing, she started flicking through her phone again, looking for him. He’d moved back to England from France, and his Instagram showed images of countryside walks in the lake district, sunlight dappling a mossy ground. Wherever he was, he created a true enchantment.

  She was relieved to see no signs of a new girlfriend yet, but he’d stopped liking her photos weeks ago. And what did that mean? It meant he was no longer thinking about her.

  It meant he’d moved on. And if he’d moved on, nothing else mattered.

  That thought sent hot blades of anger through her chest. The sense of abandonment seared her, and she wanted to burn the world down with her.

  Ten

  Rowan finished the last of the wine in her glass, then poured herself another round of magic. Sometimes, she had the sense that someone was out there by the river across the street, walking past just to look at her. Turning around, walking past the other way. But with enough wine, some of the fear started to leave her mind. She was no longer thinking about who wanted to cut her into little pieces.

  Give people the magic they want, Ro.

  She opened Spotify and selected a track from a French melodic techno musician. Writing music.

  Marc had introduced her to this artist, and they’d seen him perform with a live orchestra in France. She remembered leaning back into Marc’s fit body and nestling her head into the crook of his neck. She took a few deep breaths, opening his Instagram.

  Every day, nearly a million people watched her, obsessed over every single thing she did. Yet the one person she wanted to pay attention to her wouldn’t. He was out in the countryside, photographing sheep. For crying out loud, were the sheep more interesting to him than she was?

  He had always been the only one who made her feel calm, like he could see right into her soul. When she was spinning out about her haters, he was the one who’d helped her see that it didn’t matter. She knew he cared about her, the real her, and she trusted him completely. The fact that he’d dumped her after what she’d done only proved his good sense.