The Woman in Cabin 10(75)

Out of all the guests, Tina seemed like my best bet, and I was crossing my fingers that she would contact Rowan when I failed to return. But it seemed very slim odds to hang my life on.

No. I had to take matters into my own hands.

By the time morning came I hadn’t slept, but I knew what I had to do, and when the knock came, I was ready.

“Come in,” I said. The door cracked open, and the girl put her head cautiously around the doorframe. She saw me sitting quietly on the bed, washed and clean, holding the book in my lap. “Hey,” I said.

She put down the tray of food on the floor. She was dressed as Anne this time, wearing a headscarf, her eyebrows not penciled in, but she didn’t move like Anne, she moved like the girl I’d seen before, dumping the tray down impatiently and straightening up with none of the meditative grace she’d shown when impersonating Richard’s wife.

“Hey yourself,” she said, and her voice was different, too—the crystalline consonants elided and blurred. “You finished with that?” She nodded at the book.

“Yes, can you swap it for another one?”

“Yeah, I guess. What do you want?”

“I don’t mind. Anything. You choose.”

“Okay.” She held out her hand for The Bell Jar and I handed it over, and then steeled myself for what I had to do next.

“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly. “About the tray.”

She gave a smile at that, a flash of straight white teeth, a glint of mischief in her dark eyes.

“That’s all right. I don’t blame you; I’d have done the same. You’ve got a rubber one this time, though. Fool me once, and all that.”

I looked down at the breakfast lying on the floor. It was true. The brittle melamine tray was gone, replaced by one made of thicker, grippy plastic, like the kind you serve drinks on in bars.

“I can’t complain, I guess.” I forced a smile. “I earned it.”

“Your pill’s on the saucer. Remember—good behavior, yeah?”

I nodded, and she turned to leave. I gulped. I had to stop her, say something. Anything that might prevent me from being condemned to another day and night here alone.

“What’s your name?” I said desperately.

She turned back, her face suspicious.

“What?”

“I know you’re not Anne. I remembered, about the eyes. On the first night Anne had gray eyes. You don’t. Other than that it’s very convincing. You’re a really good actress, you know.”

Her face went completely blank and for a minute I thought that she was going to slam out of the room and leave me here for another twelve hours. I felt like a fisherman, reeling in a huge fish on a delicate line, my muscles tense with the effort but trying not to jerk or show the strain.

“If I’ve got it wrong—” I began cautiously.

“Shut up,” she said, fierce as a lioness. Her face was completely transformed, savage with anger, her dark eyes full of rancor and distrust.

“I’m sorry,” I said humbly. “I didn’t . . . Look, does it matter? I’m not going anywhere. Who would I tell?”

“Fuck,” she said bitterly. “You’re digging your grave, do you get that?”

I nodded. But I had known that for a few days now—whatever the girl tried to tell herself—whatever I tried to tell myself—there was only one way I was leaving this room.

“I don’t think Richard will let me leave,” I said. “You know that, right? So name or no name, it doesn’t really matter.”

Her face, beneath the expensive headscarf, was white. When she spoke her voice was bitter.

“You f*cked it all up. Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”

“I was trying to help!” I said. I didn’t mean it to sound the way it came out, but in the little room it sounded frighteningly loud. I swallowed, and spoke more quietly. “I was trying to help you, don’t you get that?”

“Why?” she said. It was half a question, half a cry of frustration. “Why? You barely knew me—why did you have to keep digging?”

“Because I knew what it was like to be you! I know—I know what it’s like to wake up in the night, afraid for your life.”

“But that’s not me,” she snarled. She stalked across the little cabin. Close up I could see that her eyebrows had just the faintest brush of regrowth. “It was never me.”

“It will be, though,” I said, holding her gaze so she couldn’t look away. I couldn’t afford to release her from the knowledge of what she was doing. “When Richard’s got Anne’s money—what do you think his next move will be? Making himself safe.”

“Shut up! You have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s a good man. He’s in love with me.”

I stood up, level with her. Our eyes were locked, our faces just inches apart in the tiny space.

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I said. My hands were shaking. If this went wrong she might lock the door and never come back, but I had to make her face up to the reality of the situation—both for my sake and hers. If she walked away now, we were very likely both dead. “If he was in love with you he wouldn’t be beating you up and forcing you to dress up as his dead wife. What do you think this charade is all about? Being with you? It’s not about you. If it was, he’d have got a divorce and walked off into the sunset with you—but she’d have taken her money with her. She was heir to a billion-pound dynasty. Those kinds of people don’t risk marriage without a prenup.”