It is an hour’s ride away, but a pleasant one. She sits alone, looking out the window, watching the dips and curves of the mountains as they rush past—a sprinkling of flowers, purple and yellow, coating the green fields. There are moments when she wishes that the drive would go on forever as she rests her head against the window, her eyelids fluttering. She feels nearly content in these moments, almost at peace.
In Málaga, the noises seem to assault her—she has grown used to the quiet of her little mountain town. Here, there are too many people, moving frantically from one place to another. It is too hot somehow, though it is most likely the same temperature. Still, it is uncomfortable here, so that after she walks a block or two, her shirt sticks to her back and her breath comes hard and fast. She pushes her sunglasses farther up the bridge of her nose, trying to shield herself from the sun.
Once there, she finds her sitting in the corner of her room, alone.
Maude would, she knows, prefer to have Alice somewhere in England. So far, however, the doctors have advised against such a move, and so she has had to be content with sending over a personal nurse, a young redheaded girl who looks frightened at the prospect of spending her time in Spain indefinitely. At least it is not Tangier, Maude had said, months ago now, shaking her head. She had told her then about the state that Alice was discovered in, and the arrangements, the arguments, that Maude had endured before finally convincing the police that the best place for her niece was an institution in Málaga, not a jail cell in Tangier. That everything had already been arranged, at her behest, by a friend of Alice’s, a capable young woman named Sophie Turner. Eventually they had relented. It had all become too difficult, too messy for their taste. Independence had arrived and they were eager to start again, to focus on their own, to leave the problems of expatriates to their own countries. They were only too happy to expel the British girl from their shores, in the end.
She stands next to the bed, looking down at what remains of the girl she had once known, had once loved. It is a curious thing, she has thought often, over these last few months as Alice’s caretaker, how the feelings she once had have slipped away, dried up, so that she knows it is time to leave at last.
There is a slip of paper on the bed, and reaching down, she sees her own name written there. The nurses had warned her of this some weeks earlier, that this obsession with the name has only increased, along with the torn pieces of paper, hidden throughout Alice’s room.
She slips it into her pocket.
Leaning down, she places a kiss on the girl’s forehead and leaves. She does not look back. This will be the last time they see each other.
HER STEPS ARE HEAVY as she heads to Banco de Málaga.
Behind the counter, the tellers are startled by her appearance—usually the courier is sent to deliver the allowance to Alice Shipley, in care of Sophie Turner. She shakes her head and smiles, explaining that she is better now, that her caretaker has returned to England and that she has come to withdraw funds from the trust she now has full access to, her birthday only the day before. At their frowns, their confusion, she places a hand to her cheeks and asks, “Oh dear, didn’t my aunt leave a note with instructions?”
“No, se?orita, nothing,” they say, blushing.
They do not speak much English—but this is to her advantage.
They hover around her, smiling at the sweet foreign English girl who watches them with wide and trusting eyes, so that they are aware of how alone, how vulnerable she is, here in a country that is not her own, where she does not even speak the language. They think, with worry, of their own daughters, and in the end, they relent. After all, the girl has her passport—Alice Shipley—the same surname as the imposing older woman who had first opened the account. The connection can be no coincidence. The woman set up the payments to care for her niece while in the hospital, and though they did not ask for what ailment, they can see now that she is cured.
And the trust is in her name, so there is no reason to deny her.
ON THE STREET, SHE SMILES, feeling comfort, feeling the future, alive and throbbing, in the heft of her suitcase. She is not a thief, she reasons, for she has not taken everything, only what she is owed. For all the promises Alice made and broke. For the life she had whispered into being one cool, autumn night and that she had set alight in the bitter cold of winter.
Afterward, she makes her way onto Alameda Principal and to Antigua Casa de Guardia, where she has developed a taste for lágrima transa?ejo. She will have one last taste, in celebration, she has decided. And so she strolls slowly down the road, watching as families, couples, walk along the middle of the street that runs through the city, a pulsing vein of activity. They stop at a flower stall just there, and then another one a few feet down, inspecting, haggling, before any purchases are made.
Inside the bar, her mind relaxes.
She watches as the chalk marks that the bartender leaves in front of her grow from one to two to three. In the past, on bad days, she has ordered a small cask to take home with her. On the worst days, she paid for a hotel room in the city. Today she feels the weight of her luggage and knows there will be no more such days.
She signals to the bartender. Her bus leaves in little over half an hour and she cannot miss it, the city name printed on her bus ticket a hope, a dream she can no longer postpone. She hands over the coins, which the bartender counts quickly, before reaching into his pockets and handing her the correct amount of change. She shakes her head, indicating that the man should keep it as a tip, knowing that she can afford such things now. He dips his head in thanks.
Lucy watches as the bartender takes out a cloth from his pockets, wiping it across the wooden countertop, the number of her drinks disappearing, until at last the counter is clean and it is as though she were never there at all.