The Liberation of Alice Love (7 page)

“Thanks, pumpkin.” He watched her from the table. “It’s good to have you home. We haven’t seen you in a while.”

Alice concentrated on buttering. “It’s been pretty busy, with work, and the move.” She caught herself and sighed. “Well, it was.”

“Don’t you worry.” He smiled at her absently. “I’m sure it’ll all turn out fine in the end.”

It was the same comforting reassurance Julian and Ella had been giving her all week, but her father’s tone was so laid back that Alice felt a flutter of irritation. He never did understand what it took to live in the real world. “It’s not going to ‘turn out’ fine.” She tried to keep her reply measured. “I’m going to have to spend weeks straightening it out, and even then, I might still find it hard to get any kind of credit card, or new mortgage.”

Her father nodded, but it didn’t seem like her words had any impact. “Ebb and flow, Alice.”

Alice tried not to slam the plates down and give Jasmine any more material for her mosaic. He always did this. Any problem, every success—it was all just ebb and flow. Ebb and fucking flow.

“Have you seen Flora?” he asked, oblivious to her annoyance. “Jas was saying she’d love to spend more time with you.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Alice murmured noncommittally, flipping bacon onto the plates and adding a squelch of ketchup from the almost-empty bottle. Another thing to add to the shopping list. “I went to her party, just the other week—remember?”

“Ah, that’s it.” He nodded as she set his food down in front of him. “I saw the photos. Lovely.”

“You couldn’t make it?” Alice asked, a little arch. He didn’t wait or make room for her before starting to eat, so she pulled up a chair herself, clearing a stack of old newspapers she still needed to take to the recycling station.

Her father looked puzzled for a moment. “No…What was it? Oh yes,” he brightened. “I was waiting for a delivery. Those old models—did you see them? Mint condition, perfect working order. Such a find.” He beamed, a smudge of ketchup on his chin, and Alice couldn’t help but feel a tug of affection.

“You’ll have to show me,” she told him, getting up to find him a napkin. He hadn’t always been this scattered. While her mother had seemed to find parenting an unwelcome distraction, her father had filled the gaps: propping Alice on his knee as he jotted notes in those journals, watching over her as she laboriously practiced her handwriting, and reading to her every night (even if it was from
A History of Slavic Warfare
rather than her favorite ballet stories). It was only after Natasha left that he began inching away from reality, year by year, until by the time she was eighteen, she was the only one in that house with any grasp of what it took to function—stack the bills on his desk by due date, and make sure they weren’t out of laundry detergent, and forge signatures on her class-trip forms.

Yes, he had earned his absence, Alice reminded herself, watching as he hummed under his breath and scanned the nearest (three-day-old) newspaper, oblivious to the dirty plate he’d discarded and the stack of unread post. And she couldn’t say the same about her other parent, wherever she was.

***

Alice’s cleaning frenzy had extended through the living room, front hall, and up the back stairs by the time she got the call from Rodney at the bank asking her to come in and look at CCTV footage. She barely paused to strip off her rubber gloves before dashing to catch the next train, her nerves growing as the countryside sped by, until by the time she pushed through the familiar smudged glass doors, she was breathless with anticipation. Finally, she would put a face to the crime.

“Hi, Rodney.” Alice managed a smile for him, but instead of the camaraderie they’d struck up, he seemed stiff.

“Ms. Love, how are you?” Rodney was in the same off-white shirt he’d been wearing last time. She could tell it was the same because of the scribble of ink still creeping across the front pocket.

“Fine, thanks.” Did this formality mean it was bad news?

He ushered her into the small room and tried to turn his computer screen so she could see it across the desk. “Now, this is footage from our Islington branch. We have a transaction on your current account that day that you’ve disputed, at around two-thirty p.m.”

“I would have been at work,” Alice said quickly. Rodney nodded in his noncommittal way, cuing up the footage.

The clip began to play, in a jerky, stop-motion stream: a typical afternoon in the bank. The camera was angled on the wall over the door, showing people’s backs as they walked to the row of tellers, waited by the ATM, and hovered, hoping to catch an adviser’s eye. At two-twenty-nine, a woman walked in. Rodney paused.

“Hmm,” he murmured. Alice could see why. Shoulder-length brown hair worn in a French braid, pale blouse, gray trousers. It looked like her. But it wasn’t.

“Keep playing,” she told him, and with a sharp look in her direction, he did.

The woman went straight to the far teller and passed some papers through the division.

“Our records show that you—I mean, the woman—withdrew four hundred pounds, using a passport and the bank card as identification.” Rodney’s tone was decidedly icy at this point. Alice realized with a sinking heart that he really believed it was her.

“Keep playing,” she said again, impatient. Just one look, that was all she wanted—one look at the person who was causing her this grief.

Money withdrawn, the woman turned to leave, facing toward camera for the first time. Alice leaned closer to the screen. The woman’s head was bent as she rummaged in her bag, but as she neared the door, she looked up.

Alice froze.

“Well?” Rodney paused it again, squinting at the blurred image while Alice stared in disbelief. “Hmm,” he said again, but this time, his tone was softer. “That’s her.” He turned to Alice expectantly. “Anything familiar?”

But Alice couldn’t say a word. She blinked at the face, trying to take it in. It didn’t make any sense, but there it was in front of her: the truth. The reason for her nightmare.

“Ms. Love?” Rodney pressed. “Do you know her?”

Dumbly, Alice nodded. But that wasn’t right either, not really, not if that video was anything to go by. Because despite everything, she couldn’t have known her at all.

It was Ella.

Chapter Seven

The woman Alice knew as Ella Nicholls didn’t exist.

There were no bank accounts or identification registered in her name; her flat was empty, paid month-to-month in cash, and when Alice turned up at her PR firm, she found nothing but blank stares and a confused middle-aged woman in accounts named Ellen Nicholas. Ella was gone, and Alice was left with nothing but chaos and confusion in her place.

“Personally, I never liked her,” Cassie offered, looking up from where she was sprawled on the sofa, engrossed in her laptop. It was late, and she was draped in a black silk kimono over designer lingerie, her lips painted with a perfect scarlet pout. “There was just something not quite right. I could tell when we met. Oh, can you be careful with my Diptyque in there?”

Alice obeyed, respectfully leaving the row of half-burned candles in place as she went to lay out her neat row of Simple skin-care products in the bathroom. There—she was almost unpacked—if by unpacked, she meant arranging the basic suitcase of possessions she’d brought back up with her. The rest of her life remained in boxes down in Sussex awaiting her return. Alice looked across the hall at the tiny study that was her new abode and sighed. It was a good thing she’d always been a believer in capsule wardrobes.

“More vino?” Cassie waved the bottle at her as Alice drifted listlessly into the living area. “Go on,” she urged. “Practically the only reason I’m letting you stay is so I don’t feel pathetic and useless drinking alone.”

“When you put it like that…” Alice took a refilled glass and collapsed on one of the retro Eames-style chairs. The flat was a warehouse conversion in the fashionable East End of London, but the architects had some interesting ideas about interiors: as well as the unfinished walls and steel pillars strewn about the space, the bedroom and bathroom boasted frosted, glass-brick walls. She’d only been there a day, but already Alice was resigning herself to the blurry sight of Cassie’s naked—and undoubtedly perfect—body drifting around behind closed doors.

“But what about you, sweetie?” Cassie fixed Alice with a concerned look. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m…still trying to process it, to be honest.”

“Of course you are.” Cassie yawned. Even that small movement was a spectacle, Alice noticed: the arch of her back, the pale wrist lifted to cover her mouth. Cassie had never believed in being off-duty. “It must be such a shock, to have trusted a con artist.”

Alice tugged her cardigan sleeves down over her hands. “I don’t know if you could call her that…”

“Really?” Cassie seemed dubious. “She preyed on your vulnerabilities, wheedled her way into your life, and then took everything. Sounds like a con artist to me.”

“But I couldn’t have known,” Alice said quietly, almost to herself. “Julian agrees. She had everyone fooled.”

Fooled
was the right word. She couldn’t even begin to understand what had happened, but the one thing she did know too well was the slow flush of shame that descended whenever she was reminded of her naïveté. It was one thing to be defrauded by professional criminals—some nameless band of mastermind thieves—but her own friend?

“So have the police been able to make any progress?” Cassie asked. “Now that they know who it was.”

“No, nothing.” When she looked up, Cassie was staring at her expectantly. “She’s gone,” Alice explained dully. “I mean, really vanished. Her flat was packed up, and the references she gave her landlord are disconnected numbers now.” The speed and thoroughness with which Ella had erased herself was chilling. A whole life disappeared, within days.

Alice curled deeper in her chair. “I told them the names of some people we’d seen out,” she continued, her voice resigned, “‘work friends,’ Ella called them, but they all said the same thing: they’d met her at a party, or launch, and believed what she told them.”

“See?” Cassie gave a comforting smile. “You weren’t the only one.”

“I was the only one she ripped off, to the tune of about a hundred thousand pounds.” Alice exhaled. It still hurt to say it, to even think it, but she couldn’t escape from the truth: Ella—whoever she really was—had been lying all along. Everything she’d ever said, and all those anecdotes she’d dropped so casually into conversation
—
“
My family was Italian, way back
,” and “
My first boyfriend had an awful little goatee
,” and “
I want to go and open a little bakery one day
”—had all been untruths, spun out in the bigger fiction of their friendship.

And Alice had believed them all.

“She took my passport,” Alice added, forlorn. “My birth certificate, too. I checked my important papers file once I found out…Once I found it was her. I suppose that’s how she got all my bank details.”

“You labeled the box ‘important papers’?” Cassie raised one perfect eyebrow.

Alice flushed. “No, of course not.”

But it had been a special file, an elegant gray folder she’d bought especially to store all those vital pieces of information; not just passport and bank codes, but her National Insurance card, rental agreement. She hadn’t wanted to risk losing anything, but in the end, she’d offered up her entire identity, gift-wrapped with a smart cream ribbon.

“You know, I read last week about a woman who had her identity stolen.” Cassie’s forehead creased in a frown. “The thief didn’t just run up huge debts, she got a criminal record too—just gave the other person’s details every time she got caught. The poor victim couldn’t get a job and kept getting arrested. She lost her house and ended up on the streets. I think she’s still trying to clear her name!”

“Not that it will happen to you,” she added hurriedly, finally noticing Alice’s distress. “And see? There’s a silver lining. It could have been so much worse!”

***

That was little consolation. Despite her friends’ glass-is-half-full encouragement, Alice couldn’t see past the wreckage of what Ella had taken: her flat, her savings, her trust. Once she’d made the obligatory explanations to friends, family, and the police, Alice called into work sick and retreated to her tiny, makeshift bedroom at Cassie’s to despair. Slipping deeper into a melancholy haze, she couldn’t stop herself from poring over those few, awful questions.

Why had Ella done this to her? How could she have been so blind?

“Snap out of it, sweetie. You’re acting like you’ve been dumped,” Cassie remarked on the fifth day, when Alice emerged, bleary eyed, that morning to make some tea. She rummaged in the cabinets. Fuck herbal, soothing blends. She wanted the hard stuff. Earl Grey. “You’ve been moping around like this Ella girl broke your heart!”

“Maybe she did,” Alice answered quietly. Cassie’s mouth dropped. “Not like that,” Alice stopped her. “I just meant…She lied, she cheated—behind my back, for months. I trusted her, and then…” She swallowed, feeling the betrayal rise again, hot tears in the corner of her eyes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t see any of it.”

Maybe it would be better if she had. If she’d felt even an inkling of suspicion when it came to the other woman, then perhaps Alice wouldn’t be gripped with such despair. Even if she’d pushed it aside, she could tell herself now “Oh, I knew it all along.” She’d be kicking herself, of course, but at least then it would be frustration and anger clenching at her heart, and not such helpless misery.

“Want to come to Shoreditch House tonight?” Cassie asked, outlining her eyes in smoky gray liner to match the strange draped silk jumpsuit that clung to every bone. She peered in her professional makeup mirror. “I’m meeting some girls for drinks later, and then maybe a party?” She didn’t wait for a response before adding, “This guy is launching a new club night; he worked with Dakota on the last movie, so I’m thinking there’s a chance he could show up. He would, right? I mean, it’s a friend thing, so it wouldn’t look too weird if I was there, just casual, like I didn’t even know he was in town.” She paused to ruffle her fringe.

“No, thanks.” Alice shook her head slowly. “I’m not going anywhere right now.”

“Huh.” Cassie looked at her, surveying Alice’s unwashed hair, pasty face, and utter misery. “Well, can I borrow those black pumps of yours? I’m going to try out this deconstructed dress tonight, and I don’t have any shoes dull enough to work with it.”

“Sure, Cassie.” Alice exhaled, already exhausted. “You can borrow my boring shoes.”

When Cassie had waltzed off to a meeting, Alice shuffled to her room and slipped back beneath her covers, into the cocoon of warmth she’d imprinted there after days of solid wallowing. Her flatmate couldn’t understand why Alice was taking this so hard, she knew. To Cassie, betrayal was cause for anger, Internet stalking, and vicious calls to every mutual friend they had, not this empty sense of purposelessness that had seeped through Alice’s system. But no matter how much Alice knew, on an abstract, intellectual level, that she should be rising above this—shaking it off, and striding with her day planner in hand to set her life right again—she just couldn’t find the magical switch that would turn such sharp hurt into some purpose or direction.

She had taken it all for granted. Everything Ella had ever said: their coffee mornings and idle emails, the after-work drinks and in-jokes—Alice had believed it all, unquestioningly. And now, picking apart every casual conversation, she felt ill. Had Ella planned it from the very start? Would any of the weary professionals in that yoga class have done, or did she target Alice as an easy mark, trusting enough to fall for the act? Alice had been running through the questions ever since she saw that familiar face on the CCTV film, but she was no closer to answers. Ella’s performance had been flawless, and Alice had played her own part perfectly: the dupe.

***

She’d been staring at the same patch of exposed brick for over two hours when the buzzer rang, loud and insistent. Reluctantly, Alice hauled herself up and slouched over to the intercom.

“Alice? Sweetie, are you there?”

“Flora,” she groaned. Of course. Any minute, her father and Jasmine would appear to tell her to buck up and pull herself together (and not to worry, anyone would have made the same mistake). She buzzed her up.

“I’ve been calling for days!” Flora greeted her at the door in another of her floaty gauze dresses, a scarf drifting from her hair and bangles jangling on both tiny wrists. She turned, calling down the stairs. “We’re up here!”

A moment later, two deliverymen emerged from the stairwell, weighed down under huge boxes of produce. As they heaved their goods past her into the flat, Alice caught a glimpse of piles of fresh fruit and vegetables—enough to feed an entire family. Flora beamed at her. “I was just out at the farmer’s market, so I picked up some things for you too!”

“Really, you shouldn’t…” Alice protested, eyeing the organic artisan loaves and crisp folds of butcher’s paper. “I don’t need—”

“I wanted to.” Flora pulled a few notes from her embroidered purse to tip the men on their way out. “Thanks so much!” she trilled after them, closing the door with a firm click. Looking back at Alice, her perky grin wavered: “You remembered our lunch date, right?”

Alice blinked. “Um…” She was barefoot, in takeout-stained tracksuit bottoms. Did it look like she was ever venturing outside again?

“Alice!” Flora looked hurt. “I left you a message.”

“Thanks, but I don’t feel up to it.” Alice’s voice was slow and thick, and even standing up felt like a huge effort. She pulled her ratty old dressing gown more tightly around her and yawned. “Maybe next week?”

“You need to get out and about—it’ll make you feel better, I promise.” Flora looked her up and down. “Why don’t you just jump in the shower?”

Alice shook her head. “I said no. It’s sweet of you to want to help, but…” She sighed. There was nothing to be done. Ella was gone.

Flora’s eyes widened. Alice knew from experience that it would be only seconds before her lip began to tremble and a lone, tragic tear would roll down her cheek. “Look,” Alice added quickly, trying to preempt the guilt trip. “I’ll call you when I’m feeling better. Maybe we could do that spa thing you wanted.”

“No.”

Alice blinked.

“You’ve been hiding out here for days.” Flora folded her arms, looking at Alice with surprising determination. “I bet you’ve got a million messages on that phone of yours, and Stefan says that solicitor has been trying to get in touch.”

“I’ll get to it.” Alice shifted uneasily on the spot, defensive now.

“Oh, really?” Moving quickly to where Alice’s phone lay, discarded, on the couch, Flora dialed her voice mail and switched to speakerphone.

“Alice, sweetie, it’s me, Flora—”

“Ms. Love, this is Peter at Capital One—”

“Hi, I’m calling about your outstanding balance—”

“Aly! It’s Flora, call me!”

“Alice, this is Rodney, down at the bank. You haven’t been returning my calls—”

There were a dozen more. One by one, Flora clicked through the messages.

“I said I’d get to it!” Alice protested. “I’ve had a lot to deal with.”

“Right! And the first step to dealing is actually leaving the flat.” Flora tucked an arm through hers and steered her toward the bathroom. It occurred to Alice that if Flora was steering her anywhere at all, she must be in one sorry state.