Alice went to the counter and checked in her larger suitcase, holding on to the smaller one. The ticketing agent said she should go through customs immediately. She was the last passenger to arrive and they were waiting for her.
Rafael walked with her to the door. “While I was at sea,” he said, “I thought a lot about your story of the fortune-teller. I don’t know if she was Yaya’s sister or not, but if you have time, you should try to go back and see her, because she was wrong about one important thing.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Alice.
“When you first saw her, she told you that the most important man in your life had just been walking behind you, didn’t she?”
“Yes, that’s what she said.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you that she couldn’t have been talking about me. I’ve never left Turkey, and I certainly wasn’t in Brighton at Christmastime last year.”
Alice thought about what her brother was telling her.
“Can you think of somebody else who could have been there behind you that evening?” asked Rafael.
“Perhaps,” said Alice, clutching the tiny suitcase to her chest.
“You know you have to go through customs, right? What are you hiding in there?”
“A trumpet.”
“A trumpet?”
“Yes, a trumpet. It might just be the answer to the question you just asked,” she said with a smile. She kissed her brother goodbye and whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry if it takes me longer to come back than I thought it would. I’ll come back, I promise I will.”
16
Wednesday, October 31, 1951
The taxi pulled up in front of the old house on Primrose Hill. Alice took her bags and climbed the stairs. The landing on the top floor was silent. She looked at Daldry’s door and then went into her flat.
It smelled like the floor had been waxed. Everything was just as she had left it, except cleaner.
There was a vase of white tulips on the stool next to the bed.
She took off her coat and went to sit at the worktable. She ran her hand over the wood and peered up through the skylight at the clouds hanging over London.
She went back over to the bed and opened the case that held the trumpet and a carefully wrapped bottle of perfume, which she took out and set aside.
She hadn’t eaten since earlier that morning, and there was still time to go to the grocer’s at the end of the street.
It was raining now, and she didn’t have an umbrella, but she noticed Daldry’s raincoat hanging on the coat hook. She threw it over her shoulders and headed out of the door.
The grocer was delighted to see her again. It had been months since she’d last been in the shop, and he had started to wonder what had become of her. As she filled her shopping basket, Alice told him about her trip to Turkey and that she would soon be returning there.
When the grocer handed her the bill, she began to go through the pockets of the raincoat, forgetting it wasn’t hers. She found a set of keys in one pocket and a scrap of paper in the other. She smiled when she recognized the ticket from the evening she and Daldry had gone to the carnival in Brighton. She paid and left with her basket full.
Back at home, Alice was putting away her shopping. She looked at the alarm clock and realized it was time to start getting ready. She was going to see Anton later in the evening. She closed the trumpet case and pondered what dress to wear.
As she was putting on her make-up in front of the little mirror that hung next to her door, Alice was overcome by a nagging doubt. A detail just didn’t make sense . . .
“The ticket counter was already closed that evening,” she said to herself out loud. She snapped shut the compact and checked the pockets of Daldry’s raincoat, but only found the keys. She ran down the stairs and back to the grocer’s.
“When I was here earlier,” she said, bursting into the shop, gasping for breath, “I think I dropped a scrap of paper on the floor. Have you seen it?”
The grocer replied that he kept a very tidy shop. If something had fallen on the floor, it had probably been swept up and thrown in the wastebasket.
“The wastebasket?” she asked, desperate.
“I just emptied it in the bin out the back—”
Before he had the time to finish his sentence, Alice had already run through the back door and started rummaging around in the bin. In a panic, he headed after her, wringing his hands in despair at the sight of his pretty customer kneeling in a pile of rubbish.
“What exactly are you looking for?” he asked, wondering if he should try to stop her.
“A ticket.”
“A lottery ticket, I hope.”
“No, just the stub for the carnival on Brighton Pier.”
“I suppose it must have a great sentimental value then.”
“It might,” said Alice, picking through the cabbage leaves and floor sweepings.
“You’re not even certain?” said the grocer, beside himself. “Couldn’t you make up your mind before emptying out all of my bins?”
Alice ignored him and kept rooting around. Suddenly, she saw it.
She picked up the ticket and unfolded it. At the sight of the date stamped on its end, she turned to the grocer and said, “I’m certain now. Immense sentimental value.”
17
Daldry crept up the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. On his doormat he found a little glass vial and an envelope. The bottle was labeled ISTANBUL and the card in the envelope read “At least I kept my promise . . .”
Daldry removed the cork, closed his eyes, and breathed in the perfume. The top note was perfect—he felt transported beneath the redbud trees planted along the Bosporus. He walked up the steep streets of Cihangir and could hear Alice’s voice calling over her shoulder because he wasn’t fast enough. Then came a smooth, earthy accord combining the fragrances of flowers, dust, and cool water trickling out of old stone fountains. He could hear children shouting as they played in shady courtyards, the foghorns of the ferries, and the screech of the trams rolling up and down Istiklal Avenue.
“You did it, my dear,” Daldry sighed as he unlocked his door and went into his flat.
He turned on the light and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Alice sitting in the armchair in the middle of his sitting room.
“What on earth are you doing here?” he asked, putting down his umbrella.
“What about you?”
“Well”—Daldry’s voice became strangely evasive—“as strange as it seems, I’m just coming home. To my flat.”
“You’re not on holiday?”
“I don’t really have a job, so you know for me, holidays . . .”
“Don’t take it as idle flattery, but that is much better than anything I see from my window,” said Alice, gesturing to the large painting on the easel across the room.
“Well, I’ll take it as a compliment then, coming, as it does, from a native of Istanbul. I don’t mean to change the subject, but how on earth did you get in here?”
“With the spare keys I found in your raincoat.”
“You found it? Oh good . . . I love that raincoat. I’ve been looking—”
“It was hanging in my flat.”
“I see. That makes sense.”
Alice got up from the armchair and walked over to Daldry.
“I have a question for you. But before I ask, you have to promise not to lie, for once in your life.”
“What are you implying?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be off cavorting around with some lady friend?”
“Things got canceled,” he grumbled.
“Did your traveling partner happen to be named Carol?”
“No, no. I only ran into Carol twice. The time that I came and interrupted your party, and again when you were sick in bed with a fever . . . And a third time at the pub on the corner, but she didn’t recognize me, so that doesn’t count.”
“I thought the two of you went to the movies together,” said Alice, taking a step closer.
“So, I do lie from time to time. But only when it’s strictly necessary.”
“It was necessary for you to pretend you’d started seeing my best friend?”
“I had my reasons.”
“And that piano against the wall over there. I thought you said that it was the woman downstairs.”
“That old thing? I wouldn’t call that a piano. What was the question you wanted to ask? I promise to tell the truth.”
“Were you on Brighton Pier the evening of December 23?”