Tangerine(52)

“You mean John wants me to leave,” I finally managed, my words short, clipped. “That’s what you mean to say.”

“No, Lucy.”

She stood tall and erect, as if her confidence, her resolve was bound up in her posture, so that I wanted nothing so much as to push her to the floor, to dispel whatever it was that was forcing her to say these awful things.

She crossed her arms. “I want you to leave.”

I sat up in bed, tossing the covers aside. “You don’t mean that,” I said, my voice, I knew, wavering between placation and harshness. Her words had unnerved me, unmoored me, so that I could no longer figure out what I was supposed to be to her in that moment, could no longer read what she needed me to be. I shook my head. “You can’t mean that, Alice.”

“I do, Lucy,” she said, nodding, the movement sharp and succinct.

“I don’t know what else he said to you,” I began, “but you can’t let him do this to us.”

For a moment, she looked confused; then she shook her head again, this time a small smile accompanying the gesture. “No,” she said softly, her eyes meeting my own. “No, this isn’t John.” A laugh, sharp and bitter, escaped her lips. “This is me, Lucy. Entirely me. I’m the one asking you to leave. I’m the one who wants you to go.” She stopped. “To go and to never come back. I want you to leave me alone.”

My insides crumpled. It wasn’t John, she had promised, but I wanted to reach out and shake her and scream, Of course it is! Of course it’s him! She was too lost, too far under his spell to be able to see it clearly. “Alice—” I began.

She held up her hand, as if to physically impede my words.

“We were going to leave,” I argued, moving out of the bed and toward her. “You had said that we were going to leave—him, Tangier. All of it.”

“No, Lucy. You said. You decided.” She shook her head.

“Alice.” I reached out for her.

“No.” She stepped back into the hallway. “I should never have opened that door. I should never have allowed you in.” She started toward her bedroom door, then stopped. “I know what you did. At Bennington. I know it was you.”

“Alice—” I started.

“Why did you ask me to stay?”

I frowned, startled by the question. “I don’t understand.”

“That day. That awful day in Vermont,” she said, her voice cold and hard. “You told me not to get into the car. Why?”

“Because,” I said, looking away, only for a second—but she had noticed. “I didn’t want you to leave. I didn’t want us to be angry with each other any longer.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t say anything more, Lucy. I won’t listen. I won’t believe you.”

“Alice, you’re confused.” I stopped, looking at her, imploring. “Do you really think that I would ever do anything to hurt you?”

I saw her hesitate, but then she shook her head, swiftly, as if determined to convince herself. “You need to leave, by tomorrow.” She turned, as if to go, but stopped, her words glinting, sparking in the darkness: “And if you don’t, I’ll telephone the police and tell them exactly what you’ve done.”

She crossed the hallway and closed the door to her bedroom.

The lock turned, loud and resounding.

I DID NOT SLEEP THAT NIGHT.

Instead I sat, watching as the light broke into the room, casting long shadows across the walls before me, my eyelids feeling heavy, my thoughts scattered and confused. When morning arrived, full and bright, I left the flat.

Once outside I began to walk. I went down narrow paths and tight corners, to familiar places and new territories. I walked until my feet hurt, until they cracked and bled. I discovered the tomb of Ibn Battuta, the explorer. I laid my hand across the rough wall, brushed my fingers across the plaque that had been placed in his honor. And just like him, I refused to stop. I was not tired—thirst and hunger did not exist. I pushed ahead, the knowledge that I had to keep walking, that I must keep walking, buried somewhere deep within me. It was the most important thing. I must not stop, I must not think too hard. At the end of it, I knew, all would be right. Alice would come to her senses, she would tell John what we had decided, and the two of us would leave, head back to England together, maybe stop in Spain for a few months first. I imagined it—the pair of us, in Madrid, then Barcelona. We would drink sherry in one and gin in the other. We would sit outside until the sun faded and night crept in, eating tapas and drinking Rioja. Alice would like that better than gin.

And then I stumbled. A rock I had not seen. A piece of debris sticking out of the ground that had hidden itself. It was a short fall but enough to wrench my ankle so that it smarted when I tried to place my full weight on it. No one had seen. I was alone in an empty alleyway. And yet, despite this knowledge, I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment, with anger. I had loved this country from the moment I first stepped foot on its shores, and yet this was the way it treated me. Placing unforeseen obstacles under my feet, causing me injury in its filthy streets, the ground covered in a litany of bodily fluids that I shuddered to think of, my hands and knees now red with scratches, my ankle useless. I thought of Alice. It was the same, wasn’t it? I had done everything for her, loved her, watched out for her, and she had treated me just the same. Hiding things, obscuring my vision. Making me think I was safe. The buzzing in my ear increased. I batted at it, desperate. The effort it required to remain calm seemed impossible, insurmountable. I could feel the anger, the rage, boiling just beneath my skin. Tiny pinpricks emerged along my arms, followed by larger, more sinister red hives. And yet, despite the heat, my skin refused to sweat. It was trapped, somehow, inside my body, refusing to come out. The results were angry red welts that rose across my arms and ran up and down my stomach. I could feel them spreading from my neck and onto my face.