“What is it?” Nick asks, reading my expression from the screen.
“Right, don’t judge me but I went back to her car yesterday and found her contact information in the glove box. I rang her.”
“Great idea. And she collected her stuff?”
“Well, kind of.” I pause, unsure whether to fully lie in order to drop the whole subject or tell the truth and risk prolonging its airtime. I know I promised Souki I would drop it but surely Nick, an LA resident, would be a great litmus test in terms of whether I’ve blown this whole thing out of proportion. I tread carefully. “Right, this might sound mad, but it wasn’t Emily who collected the stuff.”
His forehead creases. “Oh, she sent someone else to collect the stuff for her?”
“No, no.” I’m not explaining this well at all. “A woman turned up saying she was Emily but it wasn’t her.” Nick looks even more confused. I try again. “Someone who looked very similar to Emily showed up pretending to be Emily. She said she was Emily but she wasn’t.”
Nick raises both eyebrows. “Whoa. What! Okay. I wasn’t expecting that. Someone was pretending to be the girl you think disappeared!” he says, incredulous. “So what did you do? You didn’t give this woman Emily’s stuff, did you?” I go quiet. “Oh shit. You did.” He gives me an appraising look. “You didn’t even say anything to her, did you?” He bursts out laughing. “You just pretended it wasn’t happening, didn’t you? God you’re so British! Okay, so you just gave this complete stranger Emily’s things rather than cause any embarrassment?” He’s joking but that is pretty much exactly what happened.
I go to speak but stall. It’s funny how everyone is always an expert on what you should have done after the fact. I fumble for an answer. “Yeah, I did. Well, actually, I was flustered so I accidentally gave her the wrong car keys first and that’s when I knew it definitely wasn’t her because she had no idea the keys I gave her weren’t hers. It was such a weird situation that up until then I wasn’t sure, I thought I might’ve just misremembered her face. But if you’re using your car for everything, every day, rental or not, you recognize your car keys. But yeah, as I say, I got flustered and gave her Emily’s stuff.”
He shakes his head in amused disbelief. “You gave her someone else’s wallet! Even though you knew it wasn’t her—？”
“Hey!” I protest. “Give me a break. I only met Emily for ten minutes, days ago. I’m not bloody Rain Man, I don’t remember every single face I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t certain it wasn’t her until I was certain. And even then, she was probably just a weird friend of Emily’s or, I don’t know. She had the same accent as Emily, she looked pretty much the same. It’s not as if I handed over Emily’s stuff to three kids stacked in a trench coat! She looked really similar. And then I guess I just thought she must know her.”
“Fair enough.” He grins. “But why would she pretend to be Emily? Wouldn’t Emily have just mentioned that her friend was coming around to get her stuff?”
The conversation is not going the way I had hoped. Any chance of us dropping the Emily mystery seems to be fast disappearing. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s just flaky?”
Nick snorts a laugh. “That’s certainly one way of putting it!” he quips then takes in my stony expression. “Aren’t you even a little concerned?”
I feel my resolve wobbling because of course I am. Or at least I had been, because why would Emily’s friend pretend to remember me and then tell me that bizarre ex-boyfriend story? I try to stack up a reasonable explanation in my mind. But as far as I can see there is no reasonable explanation for any of this. Unless, of course, Souki is right and Emily’s friend was just a run-of-the-mill LA weirdo. Then a thought begins to form. “There was something else,” I add. “I kind of caught her out.” The corners of Nick’s mouth edge toward a smile as I continue. “She was pretending to be Emily so I tested her. I pretended we’d made a plan to meet up for coffee. We hadn’t actually made a plan but she said she remembered and she still wanted to meet up. She had no idea I was bluffing, she remembered us making that plan.”