Who is Maud Dixon?(71)

*



Florence’s eyes shot open. Someone was pounding on the door. She sat up and looked around. It was dark. She’d fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, the nearly empty whiskey bottle on the table next to her. She looked at her watch. Almost ten o’clock.

“Amina?” she called out. “Amira?”

There was no answer. She must have gone home.

Florence walked on shaky legs to the door and called out, “Who is it?”

“Me!”

Florence frowned. “Who?”

“Meg!”

It came back to her now. That morning, before breakfast, Florence had invited everyone over after dinner. That seemed like ages ago. She opened the door a few inches. Meg’s moon-like face filled the crack, first one eye, then the other.

“Did you forget?” Meg asked cheerfully.

Florence nodded, rubbing her eyes.

“Do you want us to go?”

“No, that’s okay. Come in.” She opened the door all the way. Nick was standing behind Meg, smiling. He came in and draped an arm around her shoulders. The others trundled in after.

Florence led them out to the back terrace. Now that the storm had passed, the stars gleamed as if freshly washed. Meg was carrying a six-pack and held out a beer in Florence’s direction. She nodded and took it.

They settled around the table on the terrace. Someday soon, Florence realized, this group might hear about a murder suspect named Helen Wilcox who’d fled to Morocco. What would they think? Would Nick be horrified by the thought that he’d slept with a murderer? Or would he know by then that the woman he’d been sleeping with had lied about who she was?

Nick caught her staring at him and smiled. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Just tired.”

Meg wanted to play a game called “Never Have I Ever.” Everyone took turns saying something they had never done before; if anyone else in the group had done it, they had to take a drink. Florence hadn’t done any of the things that elicited jeers and feigned embarrassment among the others. She’d never had a threesome. She’d never done mushrooms. She’d never joined the mile-high club.

For the first time, she felt keenly the age difference between herself and this ragtag group. She was only two years older than Nick, but somewhere along the way she had started to feel closer to Helen’s age than her own. Who cared about threesomes and plane sex? Those were their thrills? That was glory?

Even if she had to go back to being Florence Darrow, she would never allow herself to sink to such triviality. She would refuse an average life. She would send it back like undercooked chicken. She would— “Babe, your turn.” Nick nudged her elbow gently.

“Oh, sorry. Um. Never have I ever…” The group looked at her expectantly. “Never have I ever…” Thrown bananas on a corpse? Drugged a friend? Stolen my boss’s identity?

She abruptly stood up. “Just skip me. I’m going to get another drink.”

The group fell silent. She had ruined their fun.





39.



Florence was hungover. She rolled over in bed. Nick had left hours before to go kiteboarding. She looked around the empty room. All her belongings—and Helen’s—were still in suitcases in the front hallway. She stood up and trudged downstairs to drag up Helen’s so she could get dressed.

She peeked into the living room. It was immaculate. Amira had already cleaned up the mess they’d left last night.

As she passed through the front hall, she suddenly froze, certain she’d just seen Helen. She turned her head. It had been her own reflection in a mirror on the wall. She peered closely at it. Her hair had gotten blonder in the sun, and the storm had broken the humidity so that her curls now hung in loose waves. If she squinted, she might really have been looking at Helen.

She could have easily used Helen’s passport at the airport, she realized. If her new life hadn’t been snatched away from her.

“Florence,” she said into the mirror in a loud, dull voice.

Just then she noticed another presence in the room. It was Amira, watching her from the kitchen doorway. She forced herself to smile.

“Good morning,” she said as brightly as she could.

“Good morning, Madame. Coffee?”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

Once she was dressed, she tried to regain some of the momentum she’d felt yesterday. Helen’s body could still wash up, she reminded herself. But that thought no longer inspired the same sense of urgency. Once she’d decided to stop being Helen, she’d felt absolved of all her sins—as if without the reward there could be no misdeed. Besides, if Helen’s body washed up, at least they’d know Florence hadn’t murdered Jenny.

No, she reminded herself. No. If Helen’s body washed up they’d ask how she ended up in the ocean and why Florence had never reported her missing. If they could prove that Florence had been drinking—maybe even if they couldn’t—she’d go to prison for manslaughter.

She was fucked. That was the long and short of it. Florence Darrow was fucked and Helen Wilcox was fucked. At least Helen was lucky enough to be dead.

She toppled over on the couch, planted her face into a pile of pillows, and screamed as loudly as she could. She wished she’d never come to Morocco. No, farther back. She wished she’d never met Helen Wilcox.