I leaned up against the wall and felt the bracelet in my pocket, solid and heavy.
At the reminder of it now I felt the rage well up inside me. It erupted in that moment, so that its release felt almost violent, such that I could actually feel it leaking from my pores.
I tore the plates from the wall first, the force of the movement wrenching my shoulder. I ignored the pain, ignored the trembling of my hands, desperate to have them gone—wanting, no, needing, to destroy this place that had once promised safety, a new chance, a new start. It had been lies. And in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to destroy it.
When my own strength failed me, I ran to the kitchen, my hands encircling the sharpest knife that I could find. This I plunged through the cushions on the sofa, through the leather poufs on the ground, pulling down on the knife’s handle with such force that the fabric had no choice but to yield at last, pulling apart at my insistence. My hands were shaking, my breath short and fast. I could feel my heart thudding loudly against my chest as I wiped away the sweat that had collected on my forehead.
I had an image then of what I must look like—face wild, teeth and claws bared.
Dropping the knife, I collapsed onto the ground amid the tattered room, now torn into jagged strips, the remains scattered around me like some macabre version of snowfall. And I waited, for the feeling of comfort, the feeling of triumph to wash over me. I looked down at the mess that I had made—but there was nothing. Only the feeling of emptiness at the thought that she was gone. That I might never know for certain—what she had done then, what she had done now. That all I would ever have were my own suspicions, my own convictions, which suddenly did not seem like enough at all.
And there was something else too.
It was absurd, grotesque even, but there was something like a physical ache, just there, behind my rib cage. I remembered the moment at the police station, earlier, when I had turned to look for her. Almost as if there were some missing part of me that only Lucy’s presence would ever truly complete. For even though I blanched at the idea, without her, I knew from experience, my resolve diminished, my voice disappeared. Whatever symbiosis existed between us was real, tangible, and now, without her presence I could feel the absence of it, as if she were an extension of my own person. She was, I realized, that awful, wretched part of me that should be locked away and boarded up forever—like Jane’s madwoman in the attic. She was the unfiltered version, the rawness that no one should ever see. She was every wicked thought, every forbidden desire turned real and visceral. I held up my hand and saw that the dye from the leather had stained my skin. I laughed, whispering the words to myself, See, you will never be rid of her. I looked down once again, willing myself to feel something, anything.
But there was nothing. Nothing at all.
I HEARD MY NAME BEING CALLED, muffled, from the other side.
It was the police, I knew. They had returned at last.
I looked at the walls of my apartment, desperate to be swallowed up by them, to be consumed, once and for all, by the shadows lurking in the corners.
I should have known that I would never be able to outrun them.
That I would never be able to outrun her.
I moved from my place on the floor. Strips of leather, of fabric, now stuck to my arms. There was a small piece affixed to my cheek. Pulling them away, gazing down at the strips of canvas, I was gripped with the conviction that none of it, what happened with Tom, with John, with anything in between, mattered. Not really. This had always been about her, about me, about the two of us. And it was always destined to end this way.
There was an ache in my head, and I pushed my fingers into my temple.
The knocking grew more insistent.
I thought about the last time I had heard someone knock on the door like that, the morning that John had disappeared. No, not the morning of his disappearance, but the first time I had learned of it, from that strange man with the scar. I wondered then, and not for the first time, who he had been and why he had been so reluctant to contact the police. If he truly had been the person following me that day in the streets. If what the police had said, about John leaving with Sabine, had been true. It made me realize that I had never really known John, only the hazy mirage he had presented to me that summer we first met, a shimmering beacon of hope that I had clung to in my darkest moment. I turned toward the door, toward the sound of someone fumbling with the knob. It was locked. They would not get in so easily.
I moved quickly, toward the bedroom.
They had come for me at last, my invisible shadows, which Lucy had made real. But this time, I knew, they would not go away. After all, the police believed that I was responsible for John’s death—if not the actual physical act, then at least in the collusion of it. A Lady Macbeth whispering that could not go unpunished.
I thought about John’s body, wondering whether they would bury it here or whether they would return it to England. I thought of his eyes, empty—or at least I imagined they were empty, for they had been closed when I had seen them last. It seemed strange, the idea of returning him to his birthplace. He had loved Tangier, and she had loved him, for a time. It didn’t seem right for them to be parted. No, it made sense for him to remain with her, forever. I hoped they would realize that.
I grasped the knife that I had picked up from the floor.
In many ways, this too seemed to make a certain sort of sense. As if all the years in between now and my parents’ death I had only been waiting, for this. For the end that I was meant for that night, that I perhaps would have succumbed to, if not for some strange miracle. Or perhaps it had not been a miracle after all. Perhaps it had only been a mistake. Perhaps I had not been meant to survive, and the shadows were simply warnings, or time, watching over me, waiting, for my impending death.
Perhaps I had always been moving toward this day, all on my own.
There was a comfort in the thought, I realized as I moved onto the bed. I crawled, pulling the duvet back and slipping under the sheets.
It sounded now as though a large body was pummeling the wooden frame, over and over, so that I worried the sound of it would never stop, that it would go on and on forever.
But then, I remembered, looking down into my hand, it would stop.
All of it. Soon.
And nothing that had come before would matter ever again.
Twenty
Lucy
IN FRONT OF HER, THE QUEUE WAS FINALLY MOVING. “TICKET, please,” the man commanded, opening his hand in expectation. For a moment, she considered turning back. Pushing through the line she had waited in for nearly an hour, making her way through the port and into the heart of the city, just as she had done the first day. She could almost feel it, the heat of the medina pushing up against her, the frenzied excitement that ran through it, as though a vein that kept the city alive—pumping and rushing, working relentlessly so that the rest of Tangier could survive. She longed to be in the midst of it again, suspecting—no, perhaps already knowing—that she never would be. That Tangier would be a stranger to her, now and forever. Well, not really a stranger, but a piece of her past. One that she might take out and examine from time to time, holding it up to the light—but one that she would never revisit. That was impossible.
If only Alice had not called Maude.
If only Youssef had not blackmailed her.