The Liberation of Alice Love(33)
Author: Abby McDonald

“Hi, I was wondering if you could help me.” Alice smiled brightly at the woman on duty. Her hair was scraped back in a bouncy blond ponytail, and she was wearing a pink Lycra tank top and shorts over an impossibly sculpted body. “I was recently a victim of identity fraud, and I need to confirm a payment made here.”

The woman looked blank.

“Do you have records of your debit payments?” Alice tried. “So I can see what she bought?” For all Alice knew, Ella might have popped in to buy a towel or some branded shower flip-flops. It was a small detail, but all she had were small details—painstakingly built into the bigger picture.

“I’m sorry,” the woman told her, looking anything but. “Mandy” her name tag read. “Our client information is confidential.”

“Yes, but she stole my details,” Alice explained. “So technically, I’m her.”

Mandy blinked. “But you’re not.”

“Not exactly.” Alice tried another smile. “Look, can’t you just check for me? It was one payment, on the third of—”

“It’s against policy.” Pursing her lips, Mandy looked around. “Now, is there anything else I can help you with? A membership application or class schedule?”

“No.” Alice shook her head. “Are you sure you couldn’t help, just this once? It’s a payment for ten pounds—”

“I’m sorry.” Mandy gave another bland, unapologetic smile. “Company rules.”

Alice sighed. “Thank you for your time.” She walked away, disappointed. Policy, regulations—somehow, they didn’t seem to matter so much when it was Ella wreaking her havoc, but when it came to a legitimate request…

She reached the doors but turned back to look at the desk one more time. Mandy was gathering up her things, lecturing a young, friendly-looking man. His white T-shirt was slashed almost to his navel, and his blond hair was sculpted into a magnificent quiff. Alice waited, loitering by a notice board. She could try again, with this new boy, but would his answer be any different?

Mandy disappeared into one of the exercise studios, and Alice felt a sudden rush of adrenaline. Before she could change her mind, she walked swiftly back to the desk.

“Hi!” Alice greeted the man brightly. “I was wondering if you could help me out?”

“Sure.” He smiled back. “What do you need?”

“Well, I have this payment on my card here,” she began, her pulse beginning to race despite the fact that, technically, it was all true. “I’m trying to remember what it was for, but I’m just getting a blank.” Alice smiled again, casual. “My accountant is such a stickler for details. Can you track it down at all?”

“Absolutely!” The man took her card and began tapping at his keyboard. “Alice Love…”

“That’s me!” Alice agreed quickly. She took a breath, trying to calm down. She wasn’t lying—much—but pretending to be Ella (pretending to be Alice) filled her with a strange sort of nerves, as if she could be discovered at any moment. And if Mandy returned, she would be.

“Here you go…” The man peered at the screen. “It was for the Ballet Workout class.”

“Of course it was!” Alice exclaimed. She made suitably silly-me expressions. “Can you print that out? For my accountant, I mean.”

He nodded, and Alice waited nervously as the printer clicked on and the paper began to feed. To her, it felt agonizingly slow, and she forced herself not to look around. “Did you want the rest of them, too?”

“What?” Alice jolted at his voice.

“The rest of your membership details.” He looked at her curiously. “It’s on another card, but they’re all in the same record…”

“Yes!” Alice said quickly. “All of it. That would be great.”

The paper fed through with infinite slowness, until Alice was certain she would be discovered. It wasn’t much of a crime, of course, but if they cared enough about client confidentiality to stonewall her polite request, then who knew what trouble she’d get into for lying and impersonation—even if the person she was impersonating was technically herself?

At last, the final page printed, and Alice practically snatched them from his outstretched hand. “Sorry,” she added quickly. “I’m running late.”

“So you won’t be making it this evening—for Street Jazz? Damon has a great routine planned.”

“Tonight?” Alice paused. “No, but I’ll…catch up later.” She flashed another smile, already backing away. “Thanks so much for your help!”

Tripping down the front steps, Alice clutched the membership listing triumphantly. Cooking classes, modern jazz—it felt like the more she discovered, the more of a mystery Ella revealed herself to be.

Chapter Twelve

Although Alice didn’t venture into a class that evening, she returned two days later, packing her exercise outfit in her bag along with contracts and detouring to the gym after work. The membership record showed that Ella had paid up front for six months, so the perky, ponytailed girl on the front desk was more than happy to replace Alice’s “lost” membership card and provide their latest schedule.

“It’s down the hall, Studio B.”

“Great, I’ll just…” Alice gestured awkwardly to the changing rooms, still half expecting the fearsome Mandy to come storming out of aerobics class and catch her in the lie. But the gym was busy with after-work crowds, and despite her fluttering nerves, nobody gave Alice a second glance. She swiped in with her shiny new card, laced up her slim trainers, and took her place, unnoticed, at the back of the dance class that Ella had been attending for months.

“And one, and two, and kick, hands, lunge!”

She was terrible, of course. The rest of the class seemed to have arrived straight from their day jobs as professional West End dancers and picked up the routine in an instant, effortlessly moving from step-swivel-bounce to glide-glide-leap while Alice stumbled over simple steps and flailed her arms around in confusion, sweating at the pace. But for some reason, she persevered, and by the end of the hour, she could perform those last eight beats of the routine in perfect time with the others—an achievement that filled her with an unexpected elation that more than made up for the ache in her thighs.

Alice hadn’t danced since she was a child, leaping and twirling around the village hall, under the expert tutelage of Miss Dee, the ample-bosomed ballet instructor. As Alice leaned over the mirror in the changing room after class, unpinning her damp hair, she was struck with a sudden memory of her mother, brushing out the stiff residue of hairspray after one of Alice’s end-of-term shows. Natasha had loved dressing Alice up in those outfits. Not that regulation leotard and pale pink wrap-around cardigan—no, these were elaborate costumes the mothers of the group would slave for weeks over. Or, in Natasha’s case, commission from Betty O’Neill, the seamstress up the road: King Midas’s urchin helper in glittering gold sequins, the Sugar Plum Fairy’s assistant, with lilac tulle. She would pin Alice’s hair up in elaborate plaits, carefully painting her pale face with a slash of liquid liner and a cherub’s-bow smile while Alice sat patiently, running over her steps in her head for fear she would trip and disappoint everyone.