The Liberation of Alice Love(18)
Author: Abby McDonald

“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Money withdrawn, the woman turned to leave, facing toward camera for the first time.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.