The Liberation of Alice Love

by Abby McDonald

  The kitten project was clearly still stalled. Torn-up sketches littered the floor, and as Alice carefully smoothed out the pages, she found Princess Fluffy toying with a ball of string or nudging her milk bowl—over and over, on sheets of discarded work. Watercolors, charcoals, even pen-and-ink drawings; Flora had been locked in that room, working for days, but even though to Alice they looked perfect, full of movement and joy, Flora didn’t seem to agree.

  Alice wondered for the first time whether Flora’s moods were something more than artistic temperament. Or was this just a natural part of her creative process—one that Alice had simply never been around to witness before?

  She backed away, already guilty for intruding, but just as she turned to leave, something caught Alice’s eye. A leather portfolio was tucked between the table and a bookshelf, but it had fallen open, showing a flash of dark brushstrokes and deep, violent red. Alice reached for it. They were portraits, crammed carelessly into the slim file: some sketched hurriedly, others labored over in full oil paints—a blur of faces, united in grief, anger, and misery. For a moment, Alice didn’t understand where they had come from. Then Flora’s tiny looping signature became clear on the corners, half buried by a layer of paint.

  Alice stared at them. The colors, if she could even call them that, were murky and dull, and the brushstrokes were sharp, etched deep into the canvas and paper in places, as if the artist had hurled them there in fury or pain. But the artist was Flora.

  There were dozens of paintings stuffed into the portfolio. Who knew how long she’d been working on them?

  “Alice? Is that you?” Flora’s voice echoed faintly from the back garden. Alice closed the folder and shoved it back in its hiding place, just as Flora arrived at the open French windows. She was wearing a candy-pink bikini top and a trailing, gypsy-style skirt, with oversized sunglasses pushed up on the top of her head.

  “There you are.” She beamed at Alice. “I heard something, but I wasn’t sure if you were back yet…”

  “I was just looking at…this!” Alice grabbed the nearest piece of paper. “The Nelson-Rhodes Fellowship,” she read from the printout, moving away from the portfolio. “That sounds fun. Are you going to apply?”

  Flora shook her head, quickly taking the page from Alice’s hand. “No. It’s all the way in Florence, for three whole months.” She folded it several times and tossed it aside, before turning to Alice with a bright smile. “Anyway, they only take real artists!”

  Her eyes drifted past Alice. “Oh, you’ve seen the mess then.” She gave an embarrassed grin. “I was looking for my favorite pencils. Searched everywhere!”

  “Any sign of them?” Alice kept studying her, but there was no hint that anything was wrong.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure they’ll turn up.” Flora shrugged. She linked her arm through Alice’s and steered her out into the garden again. “Do you want some lemonade? I just made a jug. And Stefan brought back these amazing truffles from Brussels. Truffles from Brussels,” she said in a singsong voice. “Ha!”

  “Sounds good to me.” Alice followed, still thrown by her discovery.

  “Yay! Oh, and I found the cutest little music box at this antiques shop. It plays ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ just like one I had when I was younger. You have to see!”

  Perhaps she was reading too much into it, Alice told herself, shaking off her unease. The paintings were probably old work from a brief era of teen angst, or just experimentation. Flora was an artist, after all, and who said she couldn’t try something other than wild roses and weeping willows from time to time? Watching her stepsister carefully as she poured their drinks, Alice told herself not to be so dramatic.

  This was Flora, after all. It was nothing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sunday found Alice browsing in the gift shop at the National Gallery, surreptitiously assessing the staff for helpfulness—or, more often, the lack thereof. She’d learned by now that not all assistants had been created equal: some were counting down until the end of their shift, others sighed with impatience when asked to do anything more than blindly ring up an item, and some greeted her requests for information about “her” billing activities with suspicion and deferral to the manager.

  As she watched from a strategic vantage point behind a table of Monet mugs, Alice quickly eliminated several candidates. The young woman with thick eyeliner was glaring at the pair of toddlers stationed nearby, and the older, balding man was constantly darting off to rearrange a perilous display of glass snow globes, depicting Rodin’s The Thinker in a flutter of glittering confetti, but the young man on the far desk with a tousled fringe and suntan marks?

  He looked over, catching Alice’s gaze, and gave her a quick, friendly smile before turning back to the register. Perfect.

  She waited until the stream of customers had thinned and then made her way over.

  “Hi,” Alice began brightly. “I was wondering if you could help me.” She smiled up at him, tucking her hair behind her ears. She’d let it dry wavy for a change, and she still wasn’t quite used to it falling in her face, unconquered by hair grips or the blast of her blow-dryer.

  The man—boy, really, since he must have still been a teenager—smiled back. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  Alice laughed. “Of course. Right, see I’m trying to buy my friend a birthday present,” she began, pulling her notebook out of her bag. “I want to get her some big prints of her favorite paintings, but when I asked, she just jotted down the numbers—not the names themselves!”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” The boy seemed happy that her request was so simple, unlike the Dutch tourists in front of Alice, whom she’d overheard asking if the Van Gogh prints were available “in less aggressive colors.” “Have you got the numbers there? I can just search in the system.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you so much…Charles.” Alice glanced at his name tag, passing him the list of codes she’d taken from Ella’s debit statement. She purchased a large coffee-table art book here in March, along with five unidentified postcards. They’d cost only fifty pence each, and the location was clearly marked, so the transaction hadn’t ranked highly on her priority list for investigating. Now, however, Alice felt an urge to see which paintings it was that Ella had wanted to take with her.

  After tapping away at his computer for a few seconds, Charles made a note next to the final code and passed it back to Alice. “There you go.”

  “You’re a lifesaver.” Alice gave him a grateful beam.

  “Did you need me to find the prints for you?” Charles asked, still eager to help.

  “Oh, no. I think I’ll just take a browse first. Besides, I’ve taken up enough of your time.” Alice made a show of looking behind her at the queue. “Thanks again!”

  ***

  Alice wandered the tall, echoing corridors of the gallery as if for the first time. She’d visited before, but today was different. She was viewing the world through Ella’s eyes, and as Alice picked a new path through the labyrinth of cavernous halls and small anterooms, she wondered, Had Ella taken this same route? What had caught her eye? Had she paused, on that very same leather seat one afternoon—to rest or eavesdrop on a passing conversation or take a moment longer to study one of the paintings?

  Checking her map, Alice came to a stop in front of the first of Ella’s paintings, as she thought of them. A Velázquez, it showed a naked woman, reclining on a bed with her back to the viewer. A small cupid kneeled nearby, holding up a mirror, and it was in that small square that the woman’s face was visible; shadowed, but staring straight out of the frame.

  Alice stepped back, studying it. She remembered seeing it before, but now she looked closely, trying to absorb every detail of the scene. The nude was lounging, her skin pale and luminous, yet the longer Alice looked, the more discomforting she found it. There was something strange about the composition and posing that made it almost provocative; the woman’s gaze so direct, yet separate from her lazing form,
as if she were another person entirely.

  Was this what Ella had been drawn to? She’d separated herself too. The woman Alice had seen as Ella was really only what Ella had permitted her to see. She had constructed herself as artfully as this woman had draped her body, arranging limbs in what seemed to be an unstudied pose, but could have been carefully planned all along.

  Lost in thought, Alice moved on. She soon found that the other cards Ella had purchased were all variations on the theme: from Titian to Renoir, it seemed she had a taste for provocative scenes that spilled over with fleshy nudes and anxious tension. The Death of Actaeon, devoured by dogs as Diana looked on, bold; A Nymph by a Stream, with the nymph’s fixed, challenging stare. Alice took in the paintings, fascinated by the life and color that spilled from every canvas. They were riotous, violent, sexual—glimpses of a world Alice never ventured near. And then… She paused by the last painting, confused. The final code on her list was for a Turner, one of his vast ocean scenes. The sky hung misty and pale over a dark shoreline, the water cloudy and deep. The painting was flanked by two others, again showing the ocean and a far horizon. Alice backed away from the canvas and sank to the low, leather seat facing the art.

  This was something different.

  She could feel it at once, a shiver running lightly down the back of her neck. This meant something different, something more. Not just the style, a world away from the classical nudes, but the ominous shadows lingering in the sky and the way the light glimmered in the distance, a horizon that could never be reached.

  Slipping on her headphones, Alice gazed at the vast, empty landscapes as the gallery bustled around her. Her soundtrack for the day was a strange, restrained mix of electronica and slow, languid guitar. The xx, they were called, and of all the music from Ella’s purchase history, Alice had taken to this little-known London band the most. There was something seductive in the chords: a slow, wistful melody that wrapped around her, letting the busy activity of her regular life just fall away. Today, as Alice lost herself in the dark hue of the water and the glinting reflection of sunset on the waves, it seemed to cocoon her in a strange world where nothing existed but the music and the paintings and her own, curious thoughts. Alice felt almost as if Ella were sitting there beside her, listening to the same, melancholy song, watching the paintings in companionable silence before they would adjourn to the tea room for cake, to chat about Yasmin’s strange jealousy and Ella’s charity work, and how they could stop Nathan from discovering the truth about the money.

  But Ella didn’t know about that. She didn’t know that Alice knew anything at all.

  Would she be surprised to know the truth?

  ***

  Alice wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring at the paintings when a hand came down on her shoulder, startling her out of the reverie. She whirled around.

  “It’s only me!”

  “Rupert.” Alice caught her breath, pulling off her headphones. “Sorry, I was miles away.”

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” Rupert kissed her on both cheeks. He was wearing a loose pair of corduroy trousers and a faded blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up. “How have you been? You look well.”

  “Do I? Thanks.” She shook her head, trying to bring herself back to the echoing hall and regular life. “And you? How’s Keisha?”

  “Eating everything that’s not nailed down.” He beamed, clearly proud of his ballooning wife.

  “Have you got a due date yet?”

  “End of January,” Rupert announced. “Which means they’ll be complaining about lack of proper presents and crap birthday weather.”

  Alice laughed. “I’m sure they’ll complain about everything, once they reach their teens.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Rupert made a face. “A teenager! I can’t even get my head around a toddler yet, let alone the big, scary ones.”

  “You’ll be fine, I’m sure.” Alice patted his arm. “I can see you now, one of those swaddling hammocks slung over your back, and a bottle in each hand.”

  Rupert grinned. “I’m already building a crib. Or, at least, trying to. It’s still in pieces on the bedroom floor; I thought I better start early.” He looked around. “Say, have you got time for tea?”

  “Sure,” Alice agreed. “Downstairs?”

  “Lead on.”

  ***

  They ordered thick porcelain mugs of tea, and wedges of cake, settling in the wood-paneled café among tourists and a battalion of blue-rinsed pensioners.

  “How is everyone at the office?” Rupert asked, spooning sugar into his cup. A few granules fell, and he pressed his finger to the tabletop to scoop them up. “I haven’t heard from Vivienne in a while, but I suppose everything’s winding down for summer.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Alice swallowed her mouthful of cake. “Fairly quiet. Which is a relief, for me anyway.”

  “Of course. Toiling away up their in your garret.”

  “Garret?” Alice laughed. “You make it sound like I’m dying of consumption.”

  Rupert chuckled. “Still, I wish the summer wasn’t like this—so slow. With the baby coming…” He sighed. “But that’s the actor’s lot, I suppose. Predictable, our careers will never be.”

  Alice sipped her tea, wondering if she should say anything about Vivienne’s newly redirected affections. “Have you got names picked out?” she asked instead.

  Rupert’s face brightened. “Some. We like old-fashioned, solid names.”

  “None of this Ariel and Bronx nonsense,” Alice agreed quickly.

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “I like Lucy for a girl, and Miles, a boy, but Keisha has other ideas.”

  “Like what?” she took a sip. It couldn’t be that bad, Keisha was a sweetly sensible human resources manager he’d met at the Learn Your Own Book-Keeping seminar—hardly the type to go esoteric on him.

  But Rupert made a face. “Napoleon.”

  Alice spluttered, “Oh, no, that’s terrible!”

  “I’ve tried to make her see sense.” Rupert shook his head, resigned. “At least there’s time.”

  “Wage a good campaign,” Alice advised. “Or, as a last resort, change the birth certificate. I wish my father had managed to get to it in time.”

  “What do you mean?” Rupert looked up.

  Alice paused, realizing her slip. “Oh, nothing.” She reached quickly for a nearby brochure. “Did you take a look at the summer schedule yet? There are lots of good exhibitions coming up.”

  “Come on, you can’t say something like that and then not spill the details.” He wagged his finger at her, undeterred.

  She bit her lip. “Alice…isn’t exactly my name. At least, not my full name.” Rupert leaned forward, but Alice still hesitated. “You can’t tell, I’m warning you.”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “And I’m only divulging this in the service of baby naming, as a cautionary tale.” Alice continued. She wasn’t even exaggerating: nobody but her parents—and now, Alice supposed, Ella—had ever known the full horror of her birth name. By the time it came to her christening, even her father had seen sense and ensured that the elderly vicar welcomed plain Alice Love into the world.

  Rupert waited. “Now I’m really intrigued.”

  Taking a deep breath, Alice admitted, “My real name is actually Alicia. Well, Persephone Angelique Alicia Love.” She recited the name like the prison sentence it was.

  Rupert blinked. “Wow. Um.” He coughed. “Wow.”

  Alice nodded slowly. There was a method to the madness, she’d been assured. Her mother had wanted an exceptional name for what would surely be an exceptional child, and matching the goddess of the underworld with a more heavenly name made perfect sense. By modern London standards, it wasn’t particularly shocking, but twenty-nine years ago, in their small Sussex village? It was only the memory of his recently departed mother that made her father Richard tack on the last, simpler name, thus saving little Persephone from a childhood of woe surrounded by Kates, Angelas
, and Stephanies in the local school.

  “So, you see, it may be tempting to bow to every one of Keisha’s wishes now, when she’s highly-strung and emotional, but trust me,” Alice warned Rupert, thinking of her own blushes every time a new teacher pulled out her records, until finally she insisted Persephone Angelique be banished altogether. “Little Napoleon will be cursing you every day of his life if you let her have her way.”

  “Right. Yes, well…Wow.” Rupert was still recovering. Alice didn’t blame him. The name had never fit her, any more than the ribbon-trimmed bonnets that plagued her early years. Her mother had given her what she wanted for herself, a mark of someone extraordinary, and Alice—even the small, wide-eyed child—had never really been that.

  “Anyway, enough about me. What about you? Any new projects lined up?” Alice was so eager to change the subject, she realized too late she’d plunged them straight into even more contentious waters.

  Rupert shrugged, pushing back his flop of fringe with an absent gesture. “Nothing to speak of…There was a callback a few weeks ago. I told you about it, I think?”

  “Mmm…” Alice made a noncommittal noise, busying herself with her cake.

  “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t get it in the end.” Rupert sighed. “I was so sure too…But that’s how it goes, I guess. You never know what they’re looking for.”

  Alice stopped chewing. Vivienne had assured her Rupert knew full well about the switch, but looking at Rupert, so downcast, Alice’s conscience returned, with annoying clarity.

  “You don’t know what happened with the part?” she asked, just to be certain.

  Rupert frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Alice paused. Vivienne would kill her if she knew. No, Vivienne would have her checking foreign residual payments for all eternity. But Rupert had signed a contract with Grayson Wells, a small voice reminded her, for them to act in his best interests. And if Vivienne wasn’t going to hold up her end of the agreement…

  Alice felt a surprising flash of determination. Fuck Vivienne.