She nodded.
“Or maybe you want me to stop investigating the accident.”
“No, not at all. I mean, is there really anything else to investigate? It all seems pretty clear to me.” This was patently false. Nothing about that night made any sense to her.
“Does it, Madame Weel-cock? Because it’s not clear to me why you and your friend left the restaurant separately; it’s not clear why I can’t find the taxi that took her back to the villa; it’s not clear why she disappeared the day after the accident; and it’s not clear why you can’t simply put me in touch with her, to clear up all these questions.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you,” Florence said quietly as she turned away.
She hurried back to where Nick stood smiling encouragingly.
“All good?” he asked.
She forced herself to smile. “All good.”
35.
A few hours later, Florence lay in the bath, her cast resting on the lip of the tub. She slipped under the water briefly and let her hair float weightless around her before coming back up for air. She’d half-hoped that being submerged in water would trigger more memories from the crash. The few flashes she’d recovered—the hand grabbing her arm, the rush of cold water—were becoming less crisp, not more.
Meanwhile, her problems continued to mount.
The most immediate challenge would come to a head in just a few hours, when Whitney arrived at Nick’s apartment. Whitney hadn’t given her number to Nick or mentioned the name of her hotel, so Florence had no way of getting in touch with her to cancel. She’d thought about asking Nick to tell Whitney that she wasn’t feeling well, but that would still require them to have a conversation about her, each using a different name. Nick would find out her real name was Florence Darrow, and Whitney would discover that she was calling herself Helen Wilcox.
Florence had spent the afternoon considering the consequences of this. Would it really be the end of the world? She could come up with some plausible-enough explanation. Maybe she traveled under a made-up name to “leave everything behind.” It sounded pretty lame, but neither Nick nor Whitney had any reason to suspect anything more nefarious.
The problem was that there were other people who did. Or who were at least starting to.
Idrissi was slowly chipping away at her lies, and Greta was getting more and more impatient to speak with Helen. As long as she was facing threats on those two fronts, she couldn’t risk anyone—even someone as insignificant as Nick or Whitney—knowing that Florence Darrow and Helen Wilcox were now the same person.
She wished she could fast-forward through the next few weeks, or months—however long it took—to when everything was all worked out. When she was settled in Helen’s house, writing and gardening and cooking, and Florence Darrow was part of the past. But she had to figure out how to get from here to there.
She dried off and wrapped herself in Helen’s robe. It never would have occurred to Florence to own—much less travel with—a silk robe. She stood in front of the closet and ran her fingers over the clothes hanging neatly in a row. She pulled out a cream-colored dress with red embroidery and held it up to her body. The red matched the color of Helen’s lipstick perfectly.
She dressed and applied her makeup in the bathroom mirror with precision. While she was lacing up her sandals, the phone rang. A few moments later, Amina knocked on her bedroom door.
“Yes?” Florence said warily.
Amina poked her head around the door. “It is a Madame Greta Frost. On the telephone.”
“Can you tell her I’m not home, please?” One problem at a time.
“Yes, of course, Madame.” She closed the door gently and Florence listened to her shuffle down the stairs.
Nick arrived to pick her up shortly afterward.
Stepping into the villa’s foyer, his face registered for the first time the realization that he and Florence were traveling on very different budgets.
“You’re staying here all by yourself? It’s massive.”
Florence shrugged. “It wasn’t that much more than a hotel room. Look, there’s mold everywhere.”
“Still. This is way nicer than our place.”
Florence couldn’t argue with that. He asked for a tour, and she obliged, skipping only the bedroom she’d occupied before the accident. She’d gone back in there just once, to retrieve her toothbrush.
“This place is sick,” Nick pronounced at the end of it.
A thought occurred to Florence. “Do you want to just hang out here instead?”
“Seriously? Yeah, totally. Should I text the others?”
Florence shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you want.”
“Oh and we should tell Whitney. She texted by the way. She and her friend are going to stop by around ten.”
Florence smiled stiffly. “Great. Let’s just stick to the plan then. We can hang out here tomorrow night if you want.”
Nick nodded. “Okay, cool. Yeah, Liam’s already ordered pizza anyway.”
*
The pizza was dry and inedible. Florence poked at her slice distractedly. Every time the intercom buzzed she whipped her head around to hear who it was. So far, no Whitney. She took a sip of her beer—it was warm and flat and at this point tasted more like the can than what it contained. She’d been nursing it for over an hour. Tonight, she needed to be sharp.
Not just tonight. She’d need to be sharp for the rest of her life. As sharp as Helen. She couldn’t permit weakness or indecision anymore. Her slip-ups with Greta and Idrissi over the past few days had been a wakeup call. She could never let her guard down. Getting a new identity was like getting a new organ; she would have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life.
At ten thirty, the intercom buzzed for what felt like the dozenth time, and Florence heard Whitney’s cheerful voice announce itself through the speaker. She jumped up and beelined for the kitchen. She poured vodka into two empty cups and topped them both off with Sprite. Then she took a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it carefully. Inside was a pile of white powder—three hydrocodones that she’d ground up earlier that evening at the villa, using the top of Helen’s face cream as a pestle.
She hoped that drugging Whitney would cut the evening short and, in the meantime, make her entirely unreliable, so that any references to “Florence Darrow” would be disregarded as the confused babbling of a drunk. She knew she was being overly cautious, but she wanted to keep her new identity entirely uncontaminated. She was Helen Wilcox; there could be no confusion about that.
She tapped the powder gently into one of the cups, then stirred it violently with a knife. She threw out the paper, tossed the knife in the sink, and carried the drinks out to the door. Nick was ushering Whitney and her friend into the apartment.
“Chin-chin,” Florence called out loudly by way of greeting. She handed the cups to the two women. They both looked slightly startled, but took them anyway.
“Alright,” Whitney said with a laugh. “I guess we’re not screwing around tonight.”
“We’re on vacation!” Florence yelled, again too loudly.
“Amen to that! This is my friend Amy, by the way.” Whitney gestured at the athletic-looking brunette next to her. Then she turned to Amy and said, holding out her arm toward Florence, “And this—”