I hadn’t been swimming for months. My legs, corkscrewing with the breast-stroke or flailing with the crawl, felt heavy. My chest hurt. Water found its way under my goggles and stung my eyes. A man on his back, arms like rotating saws, hit me in my belly and shouted at me. I counted as I swam, staring through my goggles at the turquoise water. This was so boring; up and down, up and down. I remembered now why I had given up before. But after about twenty lengths, I started to find a rhythm that became almost calming, and, instead of puffing and counting, I started thinking. Not frantically any more, but slowly and calmly. I knew that I was in grave danger and I knew that no one was going to help me. Greg had been my last chance of that. I was on my own now. The muscles in my arms ached as I swam.
It seemed absurd, and yet I was almost relieved. I was on my own and I felt that, for the first time in months, I was myself again. After all that passion, rage and terror, all that vertiginous loss of control, I was clear-headed, as if I’d emerged from a feverish dream. I was Alice Loudon. I had been lost and now I was found. Forty-two, forty-three, forty-four. I made a plan as I forged up and down the pool, avoiding all the men doing the crawl. The knots in my shoulders eased.
In the changing room I towelled myself briskly, put on my clothes without getting them wet on the puddly floor, and then put on makeup in front of the mirror. There was a woman next to me, also applying eyeliner and mascara. We grinned at each other, two women arming themselves for the outside world. I blow-dried my hair, then tied it back so that no locks were escaping on to my face. Soon I was going to cut it off, a new-look Alice. Adam loved my hair: sometimes he would bury his face in it as if he were drowning. It seemed such a long time ago, that rapturous, obliterating darkness. I would get myself cropped at the hairdresser’s so that I wouldn’t have to carry all that voluptuous weight around.
I didn’t go back to work at once. I went to an Italian restaurant down the road from the pool and ordered a glass of red wine, a bottle of fizzy water and a seafood salad with garlic bread. I pulled out the writing paper I had bought that morning, and a pen. At the head of the paper I wrote, in thick capital letters, TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, and underlined it twice. My wine was put in front of me and I sipped it cautiously. I had to keep a clear head now. ‘If I am found dead,’ I wrote, ‘or if I disappear and cannot be traced, then I will have been murdered by my husband, Adam Tallis.’
The seafood salad and garlic bread arrived, and the waiter ground black pepper liberally over it with an oversized pepper-mill. I speared a rubbery ring of squid and popped it into my mouth, chewed vigorously, washed it down with water.
I wrote down everything I knew, in neat script and in as cogent a style as I could muster. I explained the death of Adele, and that her last letter to Adam, written just before she disappeared, was in my knicker drawer, under all of my underwear. I told them about Adele’s sister Tara, who had been harassing Adam, and had been fished out of a canal in East London. I even described the murder of Sherpa. Strangely, it was the cat rather than the women who made me realize my own peril most clearly. I remembered him, slashed open in the bath. For a minute I felt my gut clench. I crunched on crusty bread and drank a bit more wine to steady my nerves. Then I went through my analysis of exactly what had happened on the mountain with Françoise. I described Françoise’s rejection of Adam, Greg’s apparently foolproof system of ropes, the German man’s dying words. I drew a diagram as neatly as I could, reproducing it from the magazine article with satisfying arrows and dotted lines. I gave them Greg’s address and said they should confirm the accuracy of what I had written with him.
On a separate piece of paper I wrote out a very basic will. I left all my money to my parents. I left my jewellery to Pauline’s baby if it was a girl, and to Pauline if it was a boy. I left Jake my two pictures and my brother my few books. That would do. I didn’thave much to leave anyway.
I thought about my beneficiaries, but in a detached sort of way. When I remembered my life with Jake, I felt no stirrings of regret. It just seemed so very long ago, a different world and a different me. I didn’t want the old world back, not even now. I didn’t know what I wanted. I couldn’t look ahead like that, into the future, perhaps because I didn’t dare. I was locked into the disastrous present, and it was one step in front of the other now, edging my way through danger. I didn’t want to die.
I folded the documents, sealed them in an envelope and put it into my bag. I finished my lunch, eating methodically, swilling back the last of the red wine. I ordered a slice of lemon tart for pudding, which was satisfyingly creamy and astringent, and a double espresso. After I had paid the bill I fished out my new mobile and called Claudia. I told her that I had been held up and wouldn’t be in the office for another hour. If Adam called, she should tell him I was at a lunch meeting. I left the restaurant and hailed a cab.
Sylvie was in a meeting with a client, and her assistant told me that she was terribly busy for the rest of the afternoon.
‘If you could tell her it’s Alice to see her on a matter of urgency, and that I’ll only need a few minutes of her time.’
I waited in the lobby, reading last year’s copies of women’s magazines, learning how to lose weight and have multiple orgasms and cook carrot cake. After about twenty minutes a woman with red eyes came out of Sylvie’s office and I went in.
‘Alice.’ She hugged me and held me away from her. ‘You look fabulously skinny. Sorry you had to wait. I’ve been holed up since lunch with a hysterical divorcée.’
‘I’ll not keep you long,’ I said. ‘I know you’re very busy. I wanted to ask you a favour. It’s quite a simple one.’
‘Sure, ask away. How’s that gorgeous husband of yours?’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said, and sat down opposite her, her large and chaotic desk between us.
‘Is something wrong with him?’
‘In a way.’
‘You don’t want a divorce, do you?’
She looked curious in a rapacious sort of way.
‘It’s just a favour. I want you to keep something safe for me.’ I fished the sealed envelope out of the bag and pushed it across the desk. ‘Now, I know that this will sound ridiculously melodramatic, but if I am found dead or if I disappear I want you to give this to the police.’
I felt embarrassed. There was an absolute silence. Sylvie’s mouth was open; she had a vacuous expression on her face. ‘Darling Alice, is this a joke?’
‘No. Is there a problem?’
The phone on her desk rang, but she didn’t pick it up and we both waited until it stopped.
‘No,’ she said absently. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Good.’ I stood up and picked up my bag. ‘Give my love to the Crew. Say that I miss them. That I’ve always missed them, although I didn’t know it at first.’
Sylvie stayed sitting in her chair, staring at me. When I reached the door, she leaped up and rushed after me. She put her hand on my shoulder.
‘Alice, what’s wrong?’
‘Sorry, Sylvie.’ I kissed her on the cheek. ‘Some other time, perhaps. Take care of yourself. And thanks for being my friend. It helps.’
‘Alice,’ she said again, helplessly. But I was gone.
I was back at work by four. I spent an hour briefing the marketing department, and half an hour with accounts, arguing over my future budget. In the end, they backed down because I obviously wasn’t going to. I swept through the paperwork on my desk, and left earlier than usual. Adam was waiting for me, as I had known he would be. He wasn’t reading a paper, or gazing around him or looking at his watch; he was standing quite still, as if to attention, with his patient gaze fixed on the revolving doors. He’d probably been like that for an hour.