“I know you’re not Anne. I remembered, about the eyes. On the first night Anne had gray eyes. You don’t. Other than that it’s very convincing. You’re a really good actress, you know.”
Her face went completely blank and for a minute I thought that she was going to slam out of the room and leave me here for another twelve hours. I felt like a fisherman, reeling in a huge fish on a delicate line, my muscles tense with the effort but trying not to jerk or show the strain.
“If I’ve got it wrong—” I began cautiously.
“Shut up,” she said, fierce as a lioness. Her face was completely transformed, savage with anger, her dark eyes full of rancor and distrust.
“I’m sorry,” I said humbly. “I didn’t . . . Look, does it matter? I’m not going anywhere. Who would I tell?”
“Fuck,” she said bitterly. “You’re digging your grave, do you get that?”
I nodded. But I had known that for a few days now—whatever the girl tried to tell herself—whatever I tried to tell myself—there was only one way I was leaving this room.
“I don’t think Richard will let me leave,” I said. “You know that, right? So name or no name, it doesn’t really matter.”
Her face, beneath the expensive headscarf, was white. When she spoke her voice was bitter.
“You fucked it all up. Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”
“I was trying to help!” I said. I didn’t mean it to sound the way it came out, but in the little room it sounded frighteningly loud. I swallowed, and spoke more quietly. “I was trying to help you, don’t you get that?”
“Why?” she said. It was half a question, half a cry of frustration. “Why? You barely knew me—why did you have to keep digging?”
“Because I knew what it was like to be you! I know—I know what it’s like to wake up in the night, afraid for your life.”
“But that’s not me,” she snarled. She stalked across the little cabin. Close up I could see that her eyebrows had just the faintest brush of regrowth. “It was never me.”
“It will be, though,” I said, holding her gaze so she couldn’t look away. I couldn’t afford to release her from the knowledge of what she was doing. “When Richard’s got Anne’s money—what do you think his next move will be? Making himself safe.”
“Shut up! You have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s a good man. He’s in love with me.”
I stood up, level with her. Our eyes were locked, our faces just inches apart in the tiny space.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I said. My hands were shaking. If this went wrong she might lock the door and never come back, but I had to make her face up to the reality of the situation—both for my sake and hers. If she walked away now, we were very likely both dead. “If he was in love with you he wouldn’t be beating you up and forcing you to dress up as his dead wife. What do you think this charade is all about? Being with you? It’s not about you. If it was, he’d have got a divorce and walked off into the sunset with you—but she’d have taken her money with her. She was heir to a billion-pound dynasty. Those kinds of people don’t risk marriage without a prenup.”
“Shut up!” She put her hands over her ears, shaking her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Neither of us wanted to be in this situation!”
“Really? You think it’s coincidence he fell in love with someone who bears a startling resemblance to Anne? He planned this from the beginning. You’re just a means to an end.”
“You know nothing about it,” the girl snarled. She turned away from me, walked to where the window would have been if I had one, and back. There was nothing of Anne’s weary serenity in her expression now—it was naked fear and fury.
“All the money, without the controlling wife—I think he had that carrot waved in front of his nose by Anne’s illness, and suddenly found he liked the idea: a future without Anne, but with the money. And when the doctors gave her the all clear, he didn’t want to let go of it—is that right? And then he saw you—and a plan started to form. Where did he pick you up—a bar? No, wait.” I remembered the photo on Cole’s camera. “It was at his club, right?”
“You know nothing about it!” the girl shouted. “NOTHING!”
And before I could say anything else, she turned on her heel, unlocked the door with a trembling hand, and slammed out of the room, The Bell Jar still clutched beneath her arm. The door banged shut behind her, and I heard her key scraping shakily in the lock. Then farther away another bang, and then it was still.
I sat back on the bunk. Had I made her doubt Richard enough to put her trust in me? Or was she going upstairs right now to tell him this whole conversation? There was only one way to find out, and that was by waiting.
But as the hours slipped away and she didn’t come back, I started to wonder how long that wait would be.
And when she didn’t reappear with supper, and hunger began to claw at my stomach, I began to suspect I’d made a horrible mistake.