She gave a small laugh. “You’re too easily startled, Alice.”
I blinked. It wasn’t a trick of the light, a trick of my mind. She was there, still. I shook my head—it wasn’t possible. I had asked her—no, told her—to leave, just the other night. I remembered standing there, staring in at her, asleep in the bed, knowing that I could no longer allow my fear to persuade me to remain silent. And so I had spoken the words, had finally released them, at last.
It had happened.
“Lucy,” I sputtered. “What are you doing here?” They were similar to the words that I had spoken to her the first day she had arrived in Tangier. My head felt fuzzy, weighted down—my mind filled with nothing but the certainty of her presence and the terrible implication of what that might mean. I placed my hands on the floorboards beneath me, used the force of my arms to push myself upward, grit pressing into my skin. “I told you to leave.”
Lucy gave a quick, short laugh. “Don’t be silly, Alice. We were tired, we had a bit too much to drink.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
I could feel it, that all-too-familiar sensation of fear, in the very center, in my very core, pushing and pulling. My limbs trembled, and I was convinced that just one more moment in her presence would undo me completely. I pushed past her, walking—practically running—back to my bedroom, back to safety. I bolted the door, my fingers fumbling over the lock.
I SAT IN THE CORNER of the bedroom, waiting.
Earlier, I had heard her footsteps as she had approached the door, heard the slight creak of the wood as she had leaned on it, presumably listening for me, just as I listened for her now. The symmetry of it made me shiver. My eyes roamed the space of the room, searching, though for what I could not explain—a way out, a trapdoor, something that would let me escape from what was happening around me, a nightmare I could not wake from. My eyes fell on the telephone next to John’s side of the bed.
It had been an extravagance, something we had not needed—two telephones in one small household, it was absurd, I had told him—but John had insisted, telling me he wouldn’t be dragging himself out of bed and down the hall each and every time my aunt decided to check in on us. An excuse, I soon realized. What he really meant was that he wanted to be able to conduct meetings while still in bed, so that I would have to turn away, a pillow pressed against my ears in an effort to block out the sound. As I crawled toward it now—pausing every so often as a board shifted under the weight of my frame, listening, waiting, frightened at what might happen if she were to realize what I was about to do, as if Lucy could already sense my plan, as if my thoughts were able to slip from my mind, porous and unreliable as it was—I silently thanked him for the decision.
Once next to the bed, I clasped the cold Bakelite between my hands, the one and only number that I had ever managed to commit to memory, ready on my lips.
At the sound of her voice, I grasped the telephone tightly between my fingers.
“Alice?” Aunt Maude asked, sounding for one moment as if she were there in the room with me and not thousands of miles away. “Alice, what is it? What’s happened?”
I wondered briefly how she had known—that it was me, that something was wrong. If she could somehow feel it, despite the distance between us. But then I remembered the operator and I shook my head, embarrassed. “It’s John,” I began, realizing that she was waiting for me to speak. “He’s—” I hesitated.
“He’s what?” she demanded, her voice, so typically calm and measured, now sharp with panic. I thought I could feel it, vibrating through the phone.
“He’s missing,” I finally managed, the words coming out cracked, broken. “Someone from his work showed up at the flat this morning, looking for him. I told them he was supposed to be in Fez, with his friend Charlie—but now I don’t know if that’s true.” I took a deep breath. “They told me not to go to the police, but I think something has happened. And I think—I think I know who might have been involved.”
There was no response.
“Auntie?” I whispered, worried that I might have only imagined her voice a few moments before.
“Yes, Alice, I’m here.” There was another pause. “I want you to listen carefully to me, now. I am going to have my secretary book a flight to Spain, and I’ll board a ferry from there. I’m not sure how long it will take to organize, but I am going to do my best to be there by the end of the week. Do you understand?”
“Thank you.” I breathed. “Thank you so much, Auntie.” I thought, then, of Aunt Maude, sturdy and solid, of her uncanny ability to take a complicated mess and sort it into something orderly and structured. I felt relief wrap itself around me, tight and comforting in its insistence.
“Alice,” she said, her voice cutting into my thoughts. “I want you to promise me something.”
I nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“I want you to promise me that you won’t speak to the police. You said they don’t know about John’s disappearance yet, and I want you to promise me that you won’t go and tell them.”
I nodded again, though she could not see me. “Of course,” I promised. I knew that it would not be hard to keep, for the thought of going into the station on my own, against the advice of that man with the scar from earlier, of reporting John’s disappearance and trying to explain everything that had happened, caused me to pale. “I promise, Auntie.”
“Good,” she said. “And if they come to question you, I want you to tell them that you won’t speak without your guardian.”
Again, I nodded. I still had several months left of my guardianship, and though I had felt the chains of it rankle at times—eager to be in charge of my own finances, my own life, to feel as though I was no longer a child—now, I was grateful to still be tied to Maude in a way that was legal and binding. For while I knew that she was my aunt, that she was my family, I had always sensed a distance between us, a confusion on Maude’s part toward the girl she had been forced to raise upon her brother’s death. She had never wanted children, and though she had never complained about her duties as my guardian, a part of me often wondered whether she had resented having to take me in. I brushed aside my concerns. We made a plan to speak soon, and I was just about to place the telephone onto the receiver when I heard her voice again: “I said, did your friend ever get in touch with you?”
I frowned. “My friend?”
“Yes, what was her name? I noted it here somewhere.” Aunt Maude paused, and I thought I heard the rustling of papers. “There. Sophie Turner. I ran into her on the streets of New York, oh, it’s been months now, but she said she was trying to get ahold of you. Did she ever manage?”
My fingers grasped the telephone. I had never spoken a word to Sophie Turner during my years at Bennington. And there was only one person who would have recognized Aunt Maude. Lucy. She had admitted, just the other night, that she had worked at a publishing company in the city. It had to have been her. I had wondered how she had found me, but then, Lucy had always managed things that others couldn’t.
“Alice?”
“Yes, yes, she did,” I replied. My voice dropped to a whisper as I looked around the room, convinced that she was listening. It was as if I could feel her presence, breathing, just there, on the other side of the door, so that I shot a quick, harried glance over my shoulder. I turned back to the telephone, still clasped between my fingers.
At first I had thought to warn Aunt Maude about Lucy, to tell her that she was in Tangier and that it was happening all over again—that the fog had lifted and I had remembered everything I had wanted to forget. But the words felt too dangerous to speak aloud, the walls too thin, too tenuous. I worried that even the telephone connection might not be safe, that it too held the possibility of being altered and changed. After all, there were telephone operators stationed in Tangier. Perhaps Lucy had befriended one and convinced them to keep her apprised of any conversations that might pass between me and others. I
shook my head. It was mad—and yet. I paused, an idea growing. Perhaps if I told Aunt Maude about Sophie Turner, a sort of code for the real Lucy, the explanation would come easier once she was in Tangier. She would be able to see, then, just how devious, how manipulative Lucy Mason really was, for there would be nowhere to hide.
I took a deep breath and said, “In fact, she’s here now.”
“What, in Tangier?” my aunt questioned. I could hear the surprise, the confusion, evident in her voice. “I hadn’t known she was planning a visit. She didn’t mention anything of the sort.”
“Yes,” I replied. “It was all very sudden. I was quite surprised as well.”
There was a pause. “Well, I suppose at least that means you’re not entirely alone there. Sophie must be a great source of comfort to you at the moment.”
I squeezed my eyes together. “Yes, Auntie, of course.” I hated to lie, to make her believe something that wasn’t true. But it was necessary, I told myself.
“Don’t worry, Alice,” my aunt said, her voice once more slow and measured. “I’ll be there soon enough and I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”
I thought of the words she had once spoken to me at Bennington, how eerily similar they were to the ones she had said just now.
When I placed the telephone back onto the receiver, my hand hovered for a few moments in the empty space above, shaking.
Twelve
Lucy
SHE WAS AN IMPOSTOR. THE THOUGHT CAME AS I LAY ON THE bed, a cigarette held between my fingers, the hot ash threatening to spill onto the sheet below me. It was a strange idea, a ridiculous one, I knew, and yet my mind lingered over the possibility, thinking once more of the look she had given me only moments before—as if I were a stranger, someone she didn’t know, someone she was frightened of. Before, I had attributed her words, her behavior, to John’s presence, to his influence, but now that he was gone, there were no more excuses.
I sat up, ash scattering onto my blouse. I brushed it away, impatient.
Perhaps that was it—the reason for her curious behavior. She did not yet know that he was gone, not for sure. Perhaps I had only to tell her—what I had done, for her—and everything would go back to how it had been before. But then something pulled, something tugged, and I wondered what that word before actually meant and just how far back we would have to go—before John, before Tom, before all of the madness that had encircled us.
The sound of voices interrupted my thoughts.
Creeping to the door, I placed my ear against the wooden frame, curious. It was Alice, her voice unmistakable, but she was not singing, like she had that first night, was not simply muttering aloud to herself in the empty space of her room. No, it sounded as though her words, a steady stream of them, were directed toward someone else, as if there were another person in the apartment with us.
The telephone, I realized.
Opening the door—hesitantly, at first, so that the turn of the brass knob was all that I could hear, my ears ringing with the violence of it—I made my way carefully out into the hallway. My feet bare, I stepped over the damaged floorboard just outside my bedroom door, its texture stained and weathered. Her voice was clearer now, though still muffled. I frowned and moved toward her bedroom door. She was quiet again and I waited, my breath held, before—yes. I could hear her, though the shape of her words were still hidden. A second passed and then another, my frustration mounting before I remembered the telephone that I had seen in the sitting room, tucked away just behind the sofa. I did not hesitate, fearful that even a fraction of a second lost would be enough to lose the conversation.
Lifting the telephone from the receiver, I placed one hand firmly across my mouth, determined they would not hear my intrusion. There was a pause and for a second I worried that I had been caught out. But, no—there was Maude, I realized—speaking to her niece in a plaintive tone, demanding to know what was wrong, what had happened.
I listened, eager to hear how Alice would respond.
John was missing. Those were the words she spoke next, so that I was lost, momentarily unable to follow their narrative thread, puzzling over the fact that Alice knew, that somehow already she had known. She mentioned, then, a man at the door, someone looking for John. I cast a hurried glance toward the hallway, as if he might still be there. What man? I wondered silently. For while it was true that I had spent most of the morning in bed, I had always slept lightly, had always woken at the slightest of sounds, and there had been nothing, nothing at all that had alerted me, that had warned me of another’s presence in the flat. I thought of Alice when I had found her earlier that morning—eyes wide, hair matted and tangled—digging through John’s desk drawers, obviously looking for something, though I hadn’t dared ask what.
And then I heard her whisper the words: I know who did it. I heard her mention Sophie Turner, and I knew all at once what it was that she had realized, knew what it was that she was intending to do—for I knew her, Alice, better than she knew herself, could anticipate every action and reaction before they had ever occurred to her.
I sunk to the floor, my fingers grasping the Berber carpet beneath me, my nails turning white against the pressure as I clutched at its frayed edges. I remained there, unable to move, though I became aware, at some point, of the closing of the front door, of Alice’s absence from the flat, of the telephone operator, still in my ear.
“Miss? Are you still there on the line? Miss?”
I remained kneeling, feeling, savoring the burn of the carpet against my knees.
“Yes. Yes, I’m still here,” I replied, my mouth dry.
“This is Information again. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
I hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second.
“Yes, can you please reconnect me with the last number requested?”
“The same number, miss?”
“Yes, please.”
I waited, listening to the clicks, imagining the wires being plugged and unplugged as the operator worked to connect the telephone in Alice’s sitting room to one miles and miles away. I focused on this image, working hard to keep it in my mind, to not think of anything else, if only for one moment longer.
It rang once, twice, and then—“Alice?”
I knew already that it would be Maude who answered, had heard her voice only seconds before, and yet there was something different, a finality in the act that made me shiver, my body chilled despite the blazing heat of the afternoon.
I moved to replace the telephone onto the receiver but stopped, and bringing it back to my ear began, tentatively, “Miss Shipley?”
There was a pause. “Yes?”
“It’s Sophie Turner here.”
“Sophie?” I could hear the surprise register in her voice.
“Yes. I’m awfully sorry about reaching you this way, but I needed to speak with you, urgently.” I stopped, held my breath, counted in my head. “It’s about Alice.”
She did not hesitate to respond this time. “Is everything all right, Sophie?”
I willed my voice to shake, to sound unsteady as I whispered into the telephone: “No. No, I’m afraid, it isn’t.”
I HAD TO BE QUICK. There was still one more thing to be done, one more telephone call to be completed before Alice returned—and one that couldn’t be made from inside the flat, just in case they ever tried to trace it. I wasn’t sure how it all worked, but I knew that there were records, little cards that the telephone operators were responsible for and that logged who had placed what call and where and for how long. There could be no evidence of this next one, not if my plan was to work.
As I walked, my steps steady and sure, I hoped that it would.
That the plan I had conjured up out of despair and desperation only moments earlier would be enough. I had not anticipated this, after all, had not foreseen this turn—and it stung, this change in the narrative that I had not consented to. I had already worked it out so perfectly, and she had gone and
erased it all.
The public telephone box sat at the end of the street, just as I remembered. Once inside, I waited to hear the click, waited for the greeting of the operator before I began to speak, my accent molded in some proximity after Alice’s own. “I’d like to be connected to the local police, please.” I paused. “Yes, yes, I’ll wait. My name? Alice Shipley.”
IT WAS DONE. There was no turning back.
I hung up the telephone, my thoughts distorted. Everything had shifted in the course of an hour. It seemed impossible, ridiculous even, that an entire life could be altered by a few brief words. My mind tried and failed to keep up with it, to understand the consequences of what I had just set in motion. But then, no, I reminded myself, it had not been me—it had been Alice. She had been the one.
I turned to exit the telephone booth, but a figure stood there, blocking me. Youssef.
“Oh, please, just leave me alone,” I murmured, suddenly aware of the sweltering temperature of the little glass booth. My blouse clung to my back. “We have nothing to say to each other.”
He smiled. “But I only wish to speak, to try and make things right between us once more.”
I looked at him, knowing that he did not mean what he said, knowing that there was something else, another reason for his visit today, for his visit the other night. Our encounters were not merely coincidences, I knew. There was something that he wanted from me—no, it was more than that. Something he thought he could get—perhaps deserved, was owed. I wondered what it could be, how it could ever matter, in light of what had happened already. The police would arrive soon. I had little time left, which meant I needed to return to the flat. But I paused, wanting a few more minutes, a few more hours, in which I could pretend that everything was just as it had been the day before. And so even though I knew that it was not the smartest decision, that I should shoo away the mosquito before me and continue with what I needed to get done, I leaned heavily against the frame of the booth and consented.
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