Who is Maud Dixon?(46)

“The first. Do you remember the events of last night?”

Florence shook her head.

Idrissi flipped back a few pages in the notebook and said, “Your car went off Rue Badr into the ocean at around twenty-two and a half hours. Luckily, there was a fisherman out late who saw this happen. He pulled you from the car and brought you to safety. You arrived at the hospital at twenty-three hours. Unconscious.”

An inappropriate smile came out of nowhere and spread across Florence’s face. She felt like the butt of a joke.

“My car went into the ocean?” she asked skeptically. “And someone pulled me out of it while it was sinking?”

“That is what happened, yes.”

Florence kept looking at him, waiting for the punch line. He stared back at her. He had a wary, tired look in his eyes. Her smile faded. She struggled to process this new information. It seemed absurd that something like that could have happened without her having any memory of it. The single most dramatic moment of her life, and she’d missed it. Typical.

That road, Rue Badr, was the one they’d taken to get to the restaurant. She remembered the way the shoulder of the road had simply dropped off the face of the earth. It seemed incredible that just a few hours later, their jaunty Ford Fiesta had hurled itself into the night sky and crashed into the blue-black water.

She tried to imagine herself and Helen suspended in midair, between land and sea. Had they known what was happening?

And more importantly: Where was Helen now?

She started to ask, but the policeman spoke at the same time: “Madame, what is your last memory of the night?”

Florence tried to think back. The camel meat. The tinny music. “Dinner,” she said. “The restaurant.”

“What restaurant?”

“It was up in the hills. Dar Amal? Something like that?”

He wrote this down in his notebook.

“And were you drinking alcohol?”

Florence willed herself to stay very still. “Pardon?”

“Did you drink alcohol at dinner?”

Florence said nothing. Was he suggesting that the accident was her fault? His expression gave away nothing.

“Madame Weel-cock?”

“I don’t remember,” she finally said. “I can’t remember, I’m sorry.” She shook her head.

“Are you aware that it is illegal in Morocco to drive after drinking alcohol? Even just one alcohol?”

She remembered the two greasy glasses of whiskey. How good that first sip had felt going down after the nerve-wracking drive. And then what? What had happened after that first glass? She couldn’t remember. There was just darkness.

Her unanswered question returned: Where was Helen?

And others: Why hadn’t Helen been to visit her? Why did she still have Helen’s passport and wallet? How could Helen not have been in the car? Of course they would have driven back from the restaurant together.

So, where was Helen?

She circled around this question slowly. Even after an answer had arrived, she continued to seek alternatives, as if a few more moments of uncertainty could change the outcome.

The policeman continued to look at her significantly.

Was it possible? Had Helen been killed in the accident?

“Madame Weel-cock, I’ll ask again: Are you aware that it is illegal to drive after drinking alcohol?”

Florence forced herself to answer. “I am aware of that. I wouldn’t have had anything to drink if I knew I was driving home.”

He nodded slowly, watching her.

“So—.” She wanted to ask this man something, but she didn’t know what. Why hadn’t he mentioned the other person in the car?

“Wait, but who? Who rescued me?”

“Fisherman.”

“But who?”

“You want his name?”

“His name? I guess I do. I should thank him, right?”

The policeman rubbed his temples. He copied a name and phone number from his notebook onto a clean page, ripped it out, and handed the paper to Florence. “I doubt he speaks English,” he warned.

She placed it on the bed without looking at it and shut her eyes tightly. When she did, she saw, as if projected on her eyelids, an image of Helen banging furiously on the car window, watching helplessly as Florence was spirited to safety. Is that what happened? Did the fisherman leave Helen there? Did he just not see her? Or did he only have enough strength or time to save one of them, and he’d chosen her? My god, what a fool. He’d picked the wrong one.

She shook her head to dislodge the image of Helen drowning. Certainly, she would know if she’d killed Helen.

Wouldn’t she?

She felt her conviction wobbling. She remembered that she hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner the day before. Maybe she really had gotten drunk and driven the car off the road. It was the only explanation that made sense. Helen would be here with her if anything else had happened, either as a patient herself or as a visitor who’d somehow emerged from the accident unscathed.

Florence felt tears stinging her eyes and blinked them back.

The policeman uncrossed and recrossed his legs and asked her where she was from.

“What?” she asked, surprised to suddenly get such an easy question.

“Where are you from?”

“The US.”