The Liberation of Alice Love(47)
Author: Abby McDonald

Alice stopped, her heart suddenly racing. Ella was contacting her now, after everything? She reread the few short lines with disbelief. What could Ella possibly be thinking, giving police a trail to follow like this? Or was it a game, to gloat over her victory?

Quickly, Alice checked the date. Over two months ago.

Her excitement dropped as quickly as it had risen. That was when Ella was supposedly at that conference in Rome, the exhibition of beauty firms and PR agencies that she had sighed over, as if she really had been facing three days in an airless exhibition centre, plying the latest skin-care technology. It was nothing new, after all. She must have just sent it to maintain the façade, to fool Alice a little longer while she made her escape.

Alice turned the card over in her hands, feeling a strange sense of disappointment. It would have been nice to know Ella was doing well, somewhere, and that she had thought of Alice—enough to risk detection. She often wondered where the other woman was now, and if she considered Alice with scorn or affection.

“Alice?” Saskia’s voice suddenly sounded through the intercom, bored. “I can’t read any of these cover sheets, the ink’s all smudged. You need to come redo them.”

Alice gazed another moment at the idyllic foreign scene before placing the card aside. The rain drummed against her window, and her feet made an unpleasant squelch as she slipped them back into her damp shoes. Yes, she sighed with resignation. This was going to be one of those days—she could just feel it.

***

By lunchtime, she hadn’t revised her judgment. Or, at least, by what should have been her lunchtime: it was half past two, and Alice was so buried under paperwork and “urgent” letters that she had yet to leave her desk. She’d found half an uneaten cereal bar in the dark crevices of her bag, but that small sustenance aside, she was growing hungrier by the minute and decidedly irritable.

Her phone rang again, and she snatched it up. The credit companies had evidently outsourced to another, even more aggressive collection agency, which had been calling every twenty minutes since the start of the day. “I’ve told you already,” she began, angry. “The police are dealing with it, and my solicitor has been in touch!”

“Whoa, calm down, Aly.” Julian’s voice was taken aback.

“Oh, sorry.” She exhaled. “They’ve been badgering me all morning. I’ve had it up to here.”

“Can’t you take the phone off the hook?”

“No, I get real calls on this line too.” Alice gazed longingly at a banner advertisement for McDonald’s that had appeared on her screen. And she didn’t even like McDonald’s. She dragged her eyes away. “So, how are you?”

“I’m great.” Julian sounded relaxed enough, but then he’d probably eaten more than a handful of grapes in the past eighteen hours. “And I’ve got some good news. Yasmin’s managed to wrangle up those festival tickets, some sponsorship thing with her company.”

“Which tickets?” Alice was confused.

“For the literary festival, next weekend?” Julian reminded her. “Remember, we were saying how much fun it would be?”

Alice had no such memory, but the idea of spending a full weekend with Julian and Yasmin gave her plenty of pause. “She got tickets for me, too?” Alice managed to keep the surprise out of her voice. Well, most of it.

“Well,” Julian hesitated. “Actually, she could only swing the pair, but there were still some available online, so I got the extra.”

“Julian…”

“I know what you’re thinking, but we won’t be roughing it,” he reassured her quickly, as if tents and sleeping bags were her only concern. “She booked a hotel nearby and worked out the train schedule. You won’t have to lift a finger to organize anything. Won’t that be a change?”

Alice sighed. Somehow, the usually intuitive Julian was managing to remain utterly oblivious. “Have you told Yasmin about inviting me?” she tried.

“Of course.”

“And is it all right with her?”

There was the smallest pause. “Sure,” Julian insisted. “‘The more the merrier,’ she said.”

“Right.” Alice couldn’t imagine Yasmin ever saying those words, let alone meaning them. She sighed again, but this time with more impatience than bemusement. “Well, I’m sorry. You should have checked before booking everything. I don’t think I should come.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ll pass on it this time.” Alice checked her cardigan, hung up to dry along the radiator. Still damp. “But you two should have a great time.”

“I don’t understand, I already booked the ticket.” To her surprise, Julian sounded annoyed. “Come on, Aly, it’ll be fun.”

“Thanks, but no.” She said it firmly, wondering where he got it in his head to think of the cozy trip at all. She, him, and Yasmin, playing cards together on the train down? It wasn’t the most attractive of invitations, surely he could see.

“What’s the problem?” Julian’s voice rose a notch. “I thought you’d like it, I planned everything as a surprise.”

“I thought you said Yasmin planned it all,” Alice pointed out.

“But it was my idea, as a special treat for you. Something fun, after all this stress you’ve been under.”

“That’s sweet.” Alice tried to understand why he was being so belligerent about this. “But I’m fine—really I am.”

“No, you’re not,” Julian informed her.

Alice’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, really?”

“I’ve been worried about you,” Julian continued, in an authoritative tone she’d never heard before. “I can never get hold of you on the phone anymore; you’re always rushing off to these mysterious classes of yours. It’s all right,” he reassured her, voice softer now. “I understand—this has been a tough couple of months. But I really think you need some time out, to recover.”

“And how, exactly, would tagging along on a couple’s weekend help with that?” she retorted.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, come on, Jules!” Alice finally exclaimed. “You’re in an adult relationship—I mean, you’re living together, for God’s sake. Surely you don’t need a chaperone anymore, in case you get bored of spending all that time alone with her.” It had been understandable, when they were younger, to go on group trips to dilute the effect of all that togetherness, but by now, it was safe to assume that being locked in a hotel room for three days with his partner wasn’t the worst fate a man could face.