“Alice,” Maude cried, “what are you doing?”
I ignored her, rummaging through the bag, searching for what had to be there, knowing that not even she could have foreseen this. “Her passport,” I said, my hand grasping onto the small booklet at last. I tossed the handbag aside, watching Lucy flinch as it clattered onto the ground, a silver compact landing facedown, its powder crumbling, covering the tiled floor. “Here,” I said, thrusting the booklet toward my aunt. My hand faltered, though only for a moment, remembering as I did so the incidents at Bennington with the bracelet, with the photographs. I brushed away a stray piece of hair that clung, stubbornly, to the sweat on my forehead. It did not matter, I reminded myself. That was a different time, a different circumstance. Back then Lucy had planned it, plotted each and every step, so that there was nothing I could do but fall into the trap she had set for me. Now, she was acting only on instinct. She was reacting to my refusal to yield, the denial of which had caught her off guard, unaware. I could see it, written plainly across her face.
“Open it,” I commanded my aunt. “Open it and you’ll see she’s lying. You’ll see that she’s not Sophie Turner. That she’s someone else entirely.”
“And who is that?” Maude demanded.
“I’ve already told you,” I said, my voice pleading. “Lucy Mason.”
She let out a noise of frustration. “Oh, Alice.” She shook her head. “How are we back here again?”
“No,” I said, refusing to listen. “You’ll see, this time you’ll see that I’m right. Just open it.”
Aunt Maude sighed, holding the bundle between her fingers, as though she dreaded to open them, dreaded even to touch them. But why, I wanted to shout, why when they would prove her niece right, when they would cast suspicion and doubt onto the woman, the stranger sitting beside her, instead of on her flesh and blood?
“Auntie, please,” I whispered, hating her in that moment for forcing me to ask her to choose her own niece.
“Very well.” She sighed, opening the pages.
I waited—for the frown of confusion, the inevitable anger once Maude realized she too had been taken in by the seemingly innocuous girl sitting on the sofa before us.
And yes, there it was. I smiled in relief—watching as a frown stole over her features, the lines between her eyes folding, deepening. I watched as she handed Lucy the papers—wanting, I knew, an explanation. My body arched toward them, eager to hear the excuses that Lucy would produce, knowing that there was nothing she could say, nothing that would save her this time.
But then Lucy was placing the papers into the pocket of her dress, and Maude was settling back onto the sofa.
“What’s happened?” I demanded. “What has she done?”
Maude shook her head, as though disappointed. “Sophie hasn’t done anything, Alice.”
I struggled to breathe. “Why are you still calling her that?” I shook my head, trying to understand. “You saw her passport, you just looked at it.”
Maude nodded. “Yes, Alice, I did.”
I looked from Maude to Lucy and back again. The two of them, the pair of them, sat gazing up at me, their faces steely and hard. It struck me then just how similar they were—strong and sometimes distant, hard and oftentimes unyielding. I wondered how I had never seen it before. And then, the thought flickered across my mind, even though I knew it was nonsense, that it was a thought of desperation, of madness, and yet still, looking at them, together, I wondered whether it was possible—whether they were in on it together. If this, all of this, wasn’t for the sole purpose of driving me mad, of putting me away forever. It would make Lucy glad to know that I would never belong to another, that locked away, no one would ever touch me. And Maude? I thought of the trust that would be mine within a short time, of her role as my guardian. It was insane, it was madness, and yet I could not help but think that it all made sense.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, my voice cold and still.
“Doing what?” Aunt Maude asked.
“This,” I said, willing my voice to remain steady, calm. “What was on that passport?” I demanded, realizing that I had not seen it myself, had not seen the words written beside the photograph.
Maude watched me, coolly. “What do you think was on it, Alice?”
I wasn’t sure if it was the way she looked at me—detached, as though we were no longer bound together by blood—or her voice, low and challenging, and which in that moment I could only read as a threat. Or perhaps it was the simple realization that the one woman I had always trusted, the only real family I had left, had abandoned me, betrayed me. The knowledge of that threatened to smother me, such that I let out a strange, demented cry as I lunged toward Lucy once more—this time, toward the pages in her pocket.
I had to know, I told myself, pushing away her hands that she held up in self-defense, my nails sinking into her flesh. I had to know what was on the passport, whether my aunt simply did not believe me, or whether she was working with her, with Lucy—whether it was my best interest or my fortune that she had on her mind. And so I pushed and pulled. I scratched until I felt the blood, her blood, beneath my fingernails. I did everything I could until I tasted copper, until I felt two powerful arms pull me away.
“Alice.” Maude was crying, her face drained of color.
I stopped. I looked up into my aunt’s face, into the fear that flooded her features. Her hair had started to come undone, strands of it falling down her face. I turned toward Lucy and saw that she looked equally affected, her pinned hair now falling around her shoulders, her dress askew, her stockings torn, the evidence of my violence written there, across her body. An apology rose on my lips but I stopped, feeling the weight of her papers between my hands. I had to know. And so I cast a hurried glance at the words written on the passport now grasped between my fingers. SOPHIE TURNER. I struggled to breathe.
She was, I realized with a sinking feeling, still one step ahead.
Sixteen
Lucy
IT WAS EASY ENOUGH TO CONVINCE MAUDE SHIPLEY THAT her niece was going mad.
After that initial telephone call, we had spoken a handful of times before her arrival in Tangier, and I had reported on her niece’s movements, her state of mind, remembering all the while the words that Alice had once spoken to me—about the fear, after her parents’ death, that her aunt had wanted to commit her. The fear that her aunt thought she was mad, the fear that she might just be right.
Alice’s episode that afternoon had only helped. I had almost pitied her, watching how confident she had been, convinced that she was about to best me. As she stood before us, her eyes wide, dazed, her fingers turning the same pages of the passport back and forth, over and over, as if it would somehow change what was printed there, I had been half-tempted to rush to her, to take her in my arms and forgive her for everything that she had done. Instead I had looked away, brushed the instinct aside.
She couldn’t have known that I had already switched passports. That the idea had come to me while sitting in Youssef’s studio, that day he had tried to blackmail me. I had sat still in the moments afterward, afraid to move, to betray any indication of weakness. Only when I had worked it all out in my mind at last did I allow myself to smile, to shift. And then, steeling myself for his response, I had said, “Before I give you the money, I need you to do something for me first.”
Youssef’s eyes had narrowed, surprised no doubt by the audacity of my request.
I held his gaze. “I need a new passport.”