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Looking back, it might not be that my sisters overrode a more complex me; it might be that a more complex me simply had not existed. I buried her when I was fifteen and Mum was carried out of our house in the middle of the night, the life pinched out of her like a candle between two fingers. It was only when I met James that I set her free, the girl who had been caught and put in a jar, the lid screwed tight.
But I kept that girl to myself. She was my secret. And to my family I remained the trustworthy person they had always known.
They’ll find out soon enough.
I leave the booth, sling my bag over my shoulder and take the steps two at a time. Out on the street, the warm evening hits me like a fan. Suddenly, I’m dizzy. I cling to the wall, tiny pinpricks of light shimmering behind my eyes.
There is a café next door. I stumble in, ask for water, and sit in the cool of the air-conditioning, beneath an age-stained photograph of Michelangelo’s David.
I’m beginning to calm when I notice something. There is a man at the table opposite mine, a little older than me, watching me intently. It’s him.
The same man I saw outside the library last time.
Get up. Get out. Move.
The man stands. He approaches slowly, tucking his phone into his jeans, casually finishing his drink, and for an optimistic moment I expect him to walk right out of there, proving me wrong, but then his eyes are on me again and like a bad dream he closes the distance, stopping at my table, his hands in his pockets.
I pretend he isn’t there. When he pulls out a chair and sits down, I am forced to acknowledge him. He leans forward, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘My name is Max,’ he says. ‘We need to talk.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vivien swallows the pills with relish. The green ones are her favourite; they can knock her out for hours. All she wants right now is to be knocked out.
Every time she closes her eyes, she can see the girl’s face. Up close, the resemblance is uncanny, and what she hoped was a mistaken similitude, a trick of distance or light, is exposed as fact. They could be sisters. The girl is the spitting image. I thought you were gone from my life, she thinks. I thought we were through.
Adalina closes the curtains. ‘You will sleep now, signora?’
Vivien can sense the pills start to take effect, a drowsy, rocking motion like being on the swell of the sea. In the early days she would fight it, begrudging how it robbed her of control. Now, she surrenders, lets it claim her, oblivion.
‘Find him, Adalina…’ she whispers, as she tumbles towards sleep.
‘Shh…’ The maid sponges her forehead.
‘I have to see him again,’ murmurs Vivien. ‘Let him know I’m…’
‘Quiet now, signora, go to sleep.’
‘Find him for me, Adalina. Before it’s too late.’
‘Calm now, signora, that’s it, there now, calm…’
‘You must find him… Promise me you’ll find him…’
Against her delirium, Adalina’s face morphs and swells and at points ceases to be there at all. Vivien is aware of a sponge crossing her brow, or is it her own hand, her own skin, hot and damp and cloying? She hears the maid exhale, or perhaps it is herself, on the cusp of sleep, falling, dreaming… Quietly, Adalina leaves the room.
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