by A. E. Radley
“But you stayed?” Caroline asked.
Annie sighed, looking ashamed with herself. “Yes. At first, I just didn’t want to go home. Later, he kept me close, a part of his entourage, I suppose. I realised that I knew quite a bit about Diego’s business dealings and the people in the organisation, and he was keeping me close because of that. But I didn’t care because it was an easy life.”
“Partying?” Caroline guessed.
“At first, but that bored me pretty quickly. I was never very good at a party. Soon, I started to do my own thing. I helped out charities; I’ve got a degree in marketing, so I helped with social media and email marketing. That kind of thing. In the evenings… no, you’ll laugh…”
“Try me.”
Annie took a deep breath. “I joined a book club.”
Caroline smiled. “A book club?”
“Yep.” Annie leaned on her hand. “A book club. I kind of missed English and I have a terrible ear for language, so I was getting nowhere learning Spanish. Diego’s other girls were Spanish, so I thought I’d join an English-speaking book club. Mainly expats, all old, except for me.”
“You don’t speak Spanish?” Caroline queried.
Annie snorted a laugh. “No.”
“You lived there for five years,” Caroline stated, shocked that someone wouldn’t pick up the local language in all that time.
“I would have loved to speak Spanish; I went to so many different teachers, but I just couldn’t pick it up. I don’t know, I just couldn’t hear it properly, and so I couldn’t repeat it.”
Annie took a bite of food. Caroline did the same. The air between them was clearing, but Caroline wasn’t ready to forgive and forget yet. She was still angry, even if that anger was being shoved into a tiny box at the back of her mind thanks to Annie’s endearing company.
“So, book club?” Caroline asked.
“Yes. It was great, I spent a lot of time there.”
“So, you enjoy reading?”
Annie’s eyes sparkled. “Love it. My mum used to recommend books to me all the time; she’d read about two to three books a week. When she died, I suddenly lost that. There was no one to talk about books with, no one to recommend the next book to pick up. So I stopped. Took me a long time to get back into it. And it was lonely, reading a book and then just closing it and putting it back on the shelf.”
“Sounds like a book club was a good thing for you,” Caroline said.
“It was. I even got most of them online so we could talk when the book club wasn’t meeting. Aggie, she’s eighty-three, was blown away when she discovered Twitter. Now you can’t stop her, she’s always tweeting and hashtagging things.”
Caroline could tell that Annie was stalling. She didn’t mind; she knew it wasn’t easy to condense your life story into a few short statements. Especially when you’d made mistakes, or something life-destroying had happened.
“You’ll have to teach me. I’ve almost mastered Facebook,” Caroline said.
“Twitter’s good, different crowd.” Annie took a bite of a sandwich.
“Have you always been interested in men?” Caroline fished.
“I’ve always known I’m bisexual,” Annie answered. “I’ve been in relationships with both men and women. I’ve always connected more with women, though. Maybe I’m seventy percent into women, thirty percent into men. I saw Diego kill someone.”
Caroline’s breath caught. She’d thought as much, but hearing the confirmation out of the blue, after a discussion of Annie’s sexual preferences, was still a shock.
“So, I ran. Because I knew he’d never believe me if I told him I wouldn’t say anything. And, to be honest, I didn’t believe me either. What I saw… I couldn’t unsee that. And I couldn’t not do anything about it.” She rubbed at her eyes, exhaustion obvious in her. “I ran. No plan, no idea of where to go or what to do.”
“And then you bumped into Serena Rubio,” Caroline said.
Annie chuckled. “Yeah.”
Caroline smiled. “And you thought, ‘I know, I can fake being an opera singer’?”
She said it good-naturedly, and Annie grinned wider. “Yeah, of course! Who wouldn’t have thought that was an amazing idea?”
“Everyone.” Caroline picked up a mini cupcake and put it on her plate.
“True,” Annie allowed, the grin growing into a smile. “Well, as I said, I was in a panic and had no plan.”
“I understand,” Caroline said.
“Do you?” Annie asked.
Caroline met her eyes. “I think I do, yes.”
As far-fetched and ridiculous as it was, the evidence was pointing towards it all being true. And now, sitting across from Annie, Caroline couldn’t detect any deception in her. In fact, she could sense relief, palpable relief at finally being able to say what she had been trying to tell Caroline for the last couple of days.
“I meant everything that happened between us,” Annie said. “I never wanted to lie to you. In fact, I tried to tell you.”
“I know you did,” Caroline confessed. After reflecting on their time together, she’d realised that Annie had been trying to tell her something.
Annie let out a relieved sigh. “That night when I didn’t go to dinner and you met me on the pool deck, I was so close to telling you. But there were people everywhere. And…” She put her head in her hands.
“What?” Caroline asked.
Annie looked up. “I wanted to tell you that I had real feelings for you, and then explain everything. Tell you who I really was. But I only managed to get the first part out. And then you said you felt the same, and I felt so guilty.”
Caroline looked down at her plate. Embarrassment shot through her. She wasn’t someone to put her feelings out there, doing so when the other person was… what? Lying to her? Trying to say something else? It was mortifying, something she’d rather forget all about.
“I meant everything I said,” Annie said. “Everything I felt was real. I couldn’t stay away. It would have been far easier for me to ignore you and stay away, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking about you. I still do. If I could roll back time and meet you as me, I would.”
“I—” Caroline started.
“Actually,” Annie interrupted, “no, that’s a lie. I wouldn’t.”
Caroline felt her eyebrows raise in surprise. “You wouldn’t?”
“I wouldn’t go back and meet you as me. The only reason I met you was because Graham thought I was famous. If I’d boarded Fortuna as Annie Peck, I’d never have met you. If I had the choice between being Serena and having the chance to meet you but having to lie to you, or being myself and never meeting you, I’d choose the lie.”
“This is a very strange apology,” Caroline pointed out.
“You wanted honesty; this is honesty. Meeting you, being able to spend time with you, has been one of the best experiences of my life. And it’s selfish, but I wouldn’t want to give that up.”
Caroline felt the heat rising on her cheeks. She wasn’t used to this kind of attention.
“But I damaged your trust,” Annie continued, “and I’m not going to repair that trust quickly. I think it’s going to take a lot of time and work, but I’d like to try. If you’ll let me.”
Caroline didn’t know what she wanted. Everything had happened so quickly. She’d fallen in love at a breakneck speed and then had it snatched from her just as quickly. Now she didn’t know how she felt or what she wanted to happen. She felt fragile and raw.
“What are you suggesting?” she asked.
“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” Annie said. “I’ll give you my number, my email address. If you want to contact me, on your terms, in your own time, I’d like that. Maybe we can talk some more, get to know each other again.”
“I…” Caroline sat up a little straighter. “I don’t know. You hurt me a great deal.”
“I know,” Annie said. “And I don’t think I deserve another chance, but if you were to grant me one then I’d
be the luckiest person. But I don’t think for one moment that now is the right time to discuss it. I know I hurt you, and I know you’ll need time to heal from that and to get over everything that happened. If you can even get over it.”
Caroline looked down at her plate. Annie was reading her mind, sensing her uncertainty and her internal struggles. “I wish I could give you an answer,” she said.
“I don’t want one now,” Annie reassured her. “You’re not ready to. All I ask is that I can leave you my contact details, and if one day you are ready, you’ll get in touch. Even if it’s just to have another friend.”
Caroline nodded, her gaze still set on the Fortuna dishware. Annie was right. She wasn’t ready. And she didn’t know when she would be. Feelings and relationships had always been hard for her, harder since her last breakup.
She licked her lips and looked up. She needed to steer the conversation back to work matters. Answers regarding their relationship may have eluded her, but she had other answers that might help Annie.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “In the meantime, we need to talk about something else.”
Putting Things Right
Annie knew not to push Caroline any further. She couldn’t imagine the turmoil of emotions that must have been swirling around inside of her. It was time to lay her cards on the table and walk away, letting Caroline decide the next moves.
“Go ahead,” Annie said. She took a forkful of Key lime pie.
“I spoke to some ex-colleagues. I presume it won’t come to any surprise to you that Diego Ortega is heavily involved in the drugs trade,” Caroline said.
Annie’s heart fell. Of course she knew. Her inaction over the years was a constant source of discomfort for her. She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t personally committing the crimes and therefore she needn’t get involved, but of course, that was ridiculous.
“I was never involved,” she said.
“I didn’t say you were—”
“I’m so ashamed that I never did anything. I honestly think I was living in a haze for the first couple of years,” Annie explained. She didn’t want Caroline to be disappointed in her, but she couldn’t see any other way to go forward. “It’s no excuse, I just ignored things. It doesn’t explain things, it doesn’t excuse them, but I honestly just put it to the back of my mind. By the time I realised what I was involved in, I knew it was too late to get out.”
She pushed the pie to one side, having lost her appetite.
“Once I decided to stay, I paid my own way. I lived in an apartment building that Diego owned, but I paid my own rent. I paid for everything myself, kind of telling myself that made it all okay. I wasn’t personally gaining from his… business, but I look back and I want to shake some sense into myself. I really just seemed to get stuck there, knowing I had to leave, but not seeing a way to be able to.”
“I can understand that,” Caroline admitted.
“Really?” Annie blinked.
“Really,” Caroline confirmed. “I’ve worked with many of these situations, people in the wider circle not having a clue that people they knew were involved in these crimes. Or knowing but not knowing what to do. It’s a very difficult situation to extract yourself from.”
“Exactly,” Annie said. “I mean, it’s no excuse. I could have gotten out if I really wanted, I could have spoken up. But I didn’t. I moved myself to the very edge of Diego’s life, still one toe in even if the majority of my life was out. Luckily, he knew not to try to involve me in anything. He asked once, but never again after that.”
“He’s in custody,” Caroline explained. “There’s an international task force looking to break up the entire organisation. Arrests have been made, bank accounts frozen, they have a number of people willing to speak out on the record.”
Caroline refilled Annie’s water glass for her.
“In fact, I suspect that his blatant display on Fortuna was a result of him knowing that things were soon about to come to a head. To do what he did to you, he must have known the net was closing in and that it was all going to be over soon.”
Annie felt her throat go dry. She’d always thought Diego and the Ortegas were above the law, that there was no one that they didn’t have in their pocket.
“This has actually happened?” she asked. “The arrests, I mean?”
“Yes, over eighty arrests took place this morning,” Caroline said. “An ex-colleague of mine is one of the leads on the task force. They have plenty of people willing to give statements. But the more there are, the harsher the sentence that will be handed down.”
Annie felt her eyes widen. Caroline was asking her to be an informant.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Caroline said, “but if you do, it would help.”
Annie stood up and ran a hand through her hair. She’d resigned herself to a life of constantly looking over her shoulder, expecting Diego or one of his men to eventually find her. If it was true, if the whole organisation was in tatters, then there was a chance she’d be safe. She knew Diego had much bigger problems than her; she could think of at least fifteen people in the inner circle who would sing like canaries if it meant saving themselves. Diego was charming, but he wasn’t smart when it came to picking his associates.
Having the chance to make amends for her years of inaction was a gift. If her words added just one week to anyone’s sentence, it would be worth the risk.
“I’ll do it,” Annie said.
Caroline looked surprised. “Oh.”
“I can’t use grief as an excuse for five years of inaction. I lived in that circle, I knew what was happening. If my testimony can help, then I’ll do it.”
“I’ll put you in touch with my colleague,” Caroline said.
“Thank you.”
Caroline stood up, placing her linen napkin on the table. “I should go, let you rest.”
Annie knew not to push. Caroline needed time. She lowered her head and stood to one side, allowing Caroline room to leave.
Caroline walked around the table and paused in front of Annie. Annie slowly raised her eyes.
“You said you’d give me your email address,” Caroline said.
“Oh, yes, of course.” Annie crossed over to the desk and quickly jotted down her email address, phone number, and Twitter handle. She tore the piece of paper off the pad and handed it to Caroline.
Caroline took it. “I will be in touch,” she said. “When I’m ready.”
Annie smiled. “That’s all I ask.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Annie,” Caroline said.
“Likewise, Captain West.” Annie held out her hand.
Caroline chuckled and shook her hand. “Take care of yourself.”
“You, too.” Annie watched as Caroline left the room, wondering if she’d ever see her again. She didn’t think she deserved to, but if for some miraculous reason she got a second chance, she’d treasure it.
Time Heals All Wounds
Annie kicked off her sandals and closed the front door to her new apartment. She carried the shopping bag into the kitchen and put it down on the countertop. She looked up at the air-conditioning unit and sighed.
“Really? Today?”
It had heated up throughout June and now Spain was in the grip of a heatwave. Her new apartment in Alicante was okay, but in the two weeks she had been there, things had slowly begun to break.
In the first week, one of the wardrobe handles in the bedroom fell off, soon after the satellite signal went hazy, then the hot water decided to only work in the evening. Now the air-conditioning unit in the kitchen seemed to have given up.
“I suppose this is what happens when you decide to rent a place in ten seconds,” Annie mumbled to herself as she put the groceries in the fridge. She wondered when that would also fail her.
It wasn’t like she didn’t have the money to go and rent a new place, she just didn’t want to go through the upheaval of moving again. When she’d disembarked Fortuna, she’d
quickly made arrangements to travel south. By the afternoon she was in a city she had occasionally visited; by the evening she had found an apartment to rent.
A few days later, she sent some muscular removal men to her old place in Barcelona and asked them to bring back her things.
Despite all of that, it still didn’t feel like a home.
Her phone beeped, and she pulled it out from her back pocket and looked at the screen. Her breath caught in her throat. It was an email, from Caroline.
She hadn’t expected to ever hear from her again. It had been more than three weeks since she’d last seen her. At first, she had waited by the phone and constantly refreshed her email app. Gradually she realised that Caroline wasn’t going to contact her.
She sat at the breakfast bar, sucked in a big breath, and opened the email.
Annie,
I hope you are doing well? I’m sorry it has been so long.
I was in Marseille today and passed our ice cream stand and thought of you.
Best,
Caroline
Annie smiled. A typical apology from Caroline and a vague mention of their first almost-date. Caroline was reaching out, testing the waters to see if she was still wanted. Annie’s heart soared at the thought. She quickly typed back a response, wanting to show that she was keen to reconnect with the speed of her reply.
Caroline,
I’m good, missing Elvin. Do you know, I’ve had to make my own bed every day since I got off Fortuna? Scandalous.
I found an apartment in Alicante. I hate it, but it isn’t Barcelona, so it has that going for it.
Annie
She read and reread her reply. It was light, playful, and hopefully nothing that would pressure Caroline. In an ideal world, Annie would get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness. Annie would throw herself on Caroline’s mercy and ask for her to consider allowing her back into her life.