by Karen Swan
Or had he played her too? Had he worked out that her weakness wasn’t in her head, it was in her heart?
She thought back to the beginning, the very beginning – his seat on the plane just ahead of hers, the lingering smile, the late-night knock on her door . . . He’d not only known she was flying out to see the Yongs, he must have been the one to dangle them in front of her in the first place. He’d known her CV, read up on her trades. Why hadn’t she seen it was just all too neat, the way he’d pitched up in her life, his friendship with the son a coincidence too far?
Even this afternoon . . . She remembered Sam’s unusual calm as Yong had prowled and paraded looking for big words for his big announcement. Sam had known none of it concerned him. And when she’d told him she was here to pitch, he’d just smiled, almost laughed, almost told her he loved her.
That was the worst part of it. That was what made him most dangerous. Not just what he’d done, but what he’d almost made her believe.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Day Nineteen: Blank Scroll
The night seemed without end, but when daybreak did come, the sun split open the inky sky like a cracked egg, pouring sunlight over the valley, and Allegra felt a tangible relief to have survived it. Blinking into the dark had made her feel like the only person alive, and as the streets began to fill with noise – deliverymen shouting, metal screens rolling back in the jewellers’ windows, jingle bells tinkling on the horses’ reins on their runs to the station – she watched from the balcony with ashen eyes.
Her body was cold. Even with her snow boots on, a towelling robe wasn’t enough against the mid-December temperatures and she was forced back into the hotel room to order a breakfast she knew she wouldn’t eat.
Isobel was still asleep in the huge bed that Allegra hadn’t even climbed into, her leg elevated on a cushion. The suite had been all that was available at such short notice – the town was fully booked now for Christmas – and there were still rooms Allegra hadn’t been in yet. Isobel, by contrast, had hopped from one to the other, her excitement on mute as she kept looking across at Allegra with concerned eyes. She had understood enough from the conversation in the pool and Allegra’s silent tears as she’d hurriedly packed not to question their abrupt and rude departure. She had understood enough to agree with Allegra that they couldn’t go back to the little apartment for the last night; it would be the first place Sam, Massi and Zhou would look when their escape was discovered, and Allegra had made Isobel swear on Ferdy’s life that she wouldn’t call Massi and tell him where they were.
Arranging the scatter cushions against the headboard, Allegra climbed onto the bed and tucked her cold feet into the sheets and blankets, trying to feel some warmth, trying to feel anything at all.
The movement was enough to make Isobel stir with a small, sudden snore, lifting her head with a groan a few moments later. She blinked groggily into the light, seeing her sister beside her staring vacantly at the wall. That woke her up.
‘Hey,’ she said brightly, propping herself up on the pillows. ‘How’d you sleep?’
There was a ten-second delay before Allegra seemed to hear.
‘Sorry, what?’ Allegra blinked, turning to her.
Isobel took in her sallow complexion and the dark moons cradled beneath her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Hauling herself further up the bed and rearranging her pillows like Allegra’s, she sat upright too.
Allegra didn’t seem to notice and they sat in silence for a few minutes.
‘Hungry?’
Allegra blinked at her blankly again. ‘What?’
‘Are you hungry? You look pale and you didn’t eat last night. Shall I order some breakfast?’
‘Oh, uh . . . I’ve already done it,’ she murmured.
‘Oh. Right. Cool.’
Isobel laced her fingers together, wondering what to say. Her sister’s distance frightened her. She’d seen it only once before, many years ago, and that had been the prelude to before . . . well, the Allegra she was now. Allegra mark II. Allegra redux.
‘Have you opened the drawer yet?’ This time she anticipated her sister’s questioning look and was pointing to the Advent calendar on Allegra’s bedside table.
‘Oh . . . No.’ Allegra lifted it and handed it to Isobel.
That hadn’t been the response Isobel had been hoping for. ‘Don’t you want to open it?’ she asked, holding it back out to her. But Allegra just shook her head and resumed staring at the wall.
With a sigh, Isobel slid open the drawer. Inside was a small square of paper that had been folded down and secured with a red satin ribbon. The knot was tight and difficult to unpick, but she eventually managed it, unfolding the paper slowly.
‘Eh?’ she scowled.
Her tone caught Allegra’s attention this time. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘There’s nothing on it. Look, it’s blank. What’s the point of that?’
She held the piece of paper out for Allegra to take, passing it through a sunbeam that was falling across the bed. Isobel took it back again. ‘Wait a sec . . .’ She sat fully upright, holding the paper directly into the light. A small bubble of laughter escaped her. ‘I don’t believe it! Look!’
Allegra didn’t even bother to arch an eyebrow in curiosity. The paper was blank.
‘It’s got an invisible message on it.’
Allegra tutted.
‘Seriously! Hold it up to the light.’
‘There is no such thing as an invis—’ But as Isobel held the paper directly in front of her eyes, Allegra saw what she meant. A line of handwriting could be seen on the page as faint as a watermark. ‘But . . . how? Who had invisible ink when this was put together? It’s over sixty years old if Mum had it as a baby.’
‘Legs, the “how” is the easy part: don’t you remember we’d write invisible messages on our midnight feasts and read them with our torches?’
Allegra blinked. She didn’t remember much about their childhood. She didn’t allow herself to.
‘Lemon juice! I can’t believe you can’t remember that,’ Isobel said disappointedly. ‘The question we should be asking ourselves is, why did someone write a message in invisible ink?’ An idea came to her. ‘I bet Mum wrote it. Maybe it was a special message to Santa for something,’ she said brightly.
‘They don’t have Santa over here.’
Isobel sighed at her sister’s depressing insistence on factual correctness. ‘Let’s see . . .’ she murmured, grabbing the hotel notepad and pen beside the bed and slowly writing down what she could make out. ‘In einem Meer von Menschen, meine Augen sehen immer für Sie,’ she said eventually, her nose wrinkled with confusion. ‘That mean anything to you?’
‘You know I never did German. You’re the one who took it to A level.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well, you took it to GCSE.’
Isobel gave her sister a peculiar look. ‘I flunked the mocks and had to take general studies instead.’
Allegra frowned. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘No. Because you were too busy with your nose stuck in books to notice.’
They fell quiet, both realizing that their lives had already begun to diverge by then – Allegra finding solace in perfectionism and achievement; Isobel in parties and inappropriate boyfriends.
‘Do Google Translate on the iPad,’ Allegra said instead. The last thing she needed was to go back there. It was going to be hard enough getting through today.
Isobel obeyed without argument. ‘Huh,’ she said a moment later. ‘“In a sea of people, my eyes will always look for you.” Crikey, that’s romantic.’
‘Well, it’s not a message for Santa,’ Allegra murmured, certain it had to be for Valentina. She thought of Lars – Opa, she tried the word out again for size – and the portrait of his beloved, lost wife. No one could enter or leave without seeing her. She still dominated his house, his entire life.
Because that was the big problem with love. She understood now w
hy her mother had dissolved so completely in her father’s wake. She understood why the sight of her – as Valentina’s double – still brought tears to an old man’s eyes. Real love was unrecoverable, terminal; it followed you through your life and to the grave. There was never any going back.
She didn’t realize the tears had started to roll. It was only when Isobel wrapped her arms around her shoulders and began rubbing her back that she was aware anything was wrong at all.
‘Right, I won’t be long. Are you sure there’s nothing you need me to get for you while I’m out?’
‘Nope, I’m good,’ Isobel said, comfortably positioned on the balcony with cushions and blankets, a hot breakfast arranged in front of her.
‘Well, just be dressed when I get back. We need to be in church in an hour.’
‘Sure. No problemo,’ Isobel grinned, holding up her Buck’s Fizz with a wink.
Allegra walked briskly down the corridor to the lifts, where a young couple, younger than her, held the doors for her and she stared at the ceiling as they whispered and giggled in the corner.
She stepped out into the lobby, which was rendered in a warm palette of greens, pinks and light woods, and where fur-trimmed women in grey capes fluttered through like moths. ‘Can you arrange a late checkout for me, please?’ she said in a quiet, flat voice to the receptionist. ‘I’ll need the suite until after lunch.’
‘Of course, Miss Fisher,’ the receptionist replied, tapping quickly on a keyboard and printing out confirmation of her request. She tipped her chin low, looking back at Allegra discreetly. ‘Also, you had some visitors last night, Miss Fisher.’
Allegra made herself stay still.
‘As requested, we told them no one of your name was staying in the hotel.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Is there anything further I can do for you today?’
‘No. Thank you for your help.’
‘A pleasure, Miss Fisher.’
Allegra slid on a pair of shades and stepped out into the blinding whiteness, her heart beating like a trapped bird in her chest. The cold was ascetic and raw, and she felt as though her skin had been flayed and her nerves exposed, but at least now the world was restored to its rightful order. White was white; black was black. There were no rainbows or pink tints in this filter, and she was seeing clearly again as she walked back down the Bahnhofstrasse, her arms swinging, eyes dead ahead. People moved out of her way, the way they usually did in corridors, but she didn’t thank them. There were no smiles within her, no warmth, just the cold, hard satisfaction of victory at last. She had won. Out of all the lies, one good thing had emerged. There may be no deal to bring home, but she didn’t need that, not with Pierre waiting for her back at the office tonight now that she was the only one he could trust. They would fight Sam together. They would weather the storm that was coming their way – together. She had got what she’d wanted all along.
Hadn’t she?
Somewhere in the distance, she heard the drone of a helicopter lifting up from the heliport and she wondered if it was Zhou’s or just another billionaire out for the morning. The bell above the door jangled as she stepped into the gift shop and the dark-haired girl looked up with a bright smile. The sound of the ticking clocks filled the room as she shut the door behind her, locking out the chatter from the street.
‘Oh! I did not expect you so soon,’ the girl said in surprise, glancing at the carrier bag in Allegra’s hand. According to the sign on the door, they had been open barely ten minutes.
‘I’m leaving tonight and I can’t get here later,’ Allegra said briskly, vaguely aware that her manner was in sharp contrast to her shy excitement yesterday, but she wasn’t the same person she’d been even twenty-four hours ago and there was nothing she could do to help that. ‘Is your father here?’
The girl hesitated. ‘He’s in the workshop. I can get him for you.’
‘Or I can come through, whichever is quickest. I’m pressed for time.’ Allegra shrugged impatiently.
‘Oh . . . OK,’ the girl said. She lifted a small hatch and Allegra passed swiftly through the counter to the back. She followed the girl into a tiny corridor with a staircase running off the back, a stepladder propped up against one wall, and a WC sign on a door.
The girl paused so that Allegra almost trod on her heels and had to jump back. ‘Opa!’ she called up the stairs.
They ducked through another open doorway – the ceilings were very low – before descending some steps into a small room out the back. A long but narrow window ran along the rear wall, with benches covered with blocks of linden wood, curled shavings carpeted the floor, tools hung on the walls by hooks, and a man with his back to them stood planing something in a clamp. Behind him, old black-and-white framed photographs clustered one section of the wall. She could see the distinct silhouette of the Matterhorn in the background of some of them, even from across the room.
‘Papa.’ The man turned as the girl spoke to him in Swiss German, his eyes steady on Allegra. He was wearing a full-length leather apron and seemed to be a few years older than her – in his mid-fifties – with very thick, dark hair that had begun to grey at the temples. His eyes too were dark, and Allegra saw his daughter had inherited his underbite.
He wiped sawdust off his hands as he walked towards her. ‘Nikolai,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘My daughter tells me you think you may have an early Advent calendar of ours?’
‘I think there’s a good chance, yes,’ she nodded. ‘May I?’ She indicated to the bench and he nodded, wiping more shavings onto the floor. The girl disappeared and came back a second later with a brush and began sweeping the floor.
Allegra put the bag on the bench and drew out the small green cabinet. She watched Nikolai closely as he lifted it, scrutinizing not the decorative paint effects but the joints in the corners, on the drawers. He held it away on outstretched arms and peered at the backplate.
He looked up at her. ‘Everything about it suggests it is one of ours – the dovetail joints, the scalloping across the front here, the size of the drawer knobs – and yet I do not recall our ever having made one so small. All the ones we make are at least twice the size.’
‘Yes, I did notice that myself when I saw the one in your window, but some of the gifts inside my calendar you still seem to be making, and I have a cuckoo clock that I also think came from here.’ She saw his eyes glance over at the deflated bag. ‘It’s being repaired by a specialist in England.’
‘That is a shame.’ He blanched at her words. ‘What makes you think the clock came from here too? It is true we are the only carpenters in Zermatt who still make them, but thirty, forty years or more ago . . . if it is the same vintage as this.’ He ran a hand over the calendar. ‘There were several families who made them.’
‘My grandfather here has a replica of the one that is now ours. He thought it was lost and said he had a copy made locally.’
‘What is his name?’
‘Lars Fischer.’
The man’s expression changed. ‘Then I can tell you for certain the clock did not come from here – and so it is unlikely this was made by us either.’ He put the Advent calendar back down on the open bag on the bench.
‘But . . .’ Allegra looked at him in bewilderment, confused by the sudden about-turn. She drew open the fifth drawer and held out the new Angel Barry. ‘I have exactly this angel back home.’
Nikolai frowned, staring at the figure with a confusion that she sensed matched hers. ‘Then it is a coincidence. Just an angel.’
‘Well, I don’t believe in coincidences,’ she said after a pause, putting the angel away in the drawer and carefully replacing the Advent calendar back in the bag. She didn’t know what was going on; she didn’t understand why Lars’s name had provoked such hostility, but a slur against her grandfather was now a slur against her. Not that it mattered anyway whether or not the Advent calendar or the clock came from here. It was just a detail, an irrelevance, a bit of colour to a story sh
e may or may not get to tell her mother one day.
‘Papi,’ Nikolai said, looking at someone behind her with an anxious expression.
Allegra turned to find an elderly, white-haired man staring back at her, his hand shaking on a walking cane. But he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were on the Advent calendar on the bench.
Slowly, he advanced until he was level with Allegra, his free arm outstretched as he touched the small cabinet with something approaching reverence.
Allegra looked questioningly over at Nikolai.
Nikolai was watching his father closely too, as though worried he might fall. His eyes briefly met Allegra’s. ‘This is my father, Timo.’
‘Timo?’ She had heard that name before.
Her voice broke the elderly man’s spell and he looked at her for the first time. And as she saw the shock come into his face – just like it had in Lars’s – she remembered.
‘You knew my grandmother,’ she said quietly, more to herself than anyone.
But he could only nod – telling her, at least, he understood English – and she knew he was seeing not her but Valentina, the woman he had been engaged to before Lars had come to town.
She rested her hand on the top of the Advent calendar too. ‘Did you make this?’
His eyes fell to her hand. ‘I did.’
She swallowed. There was something in the way he said those two words that caught her attention – the gravity in them, like he was in the dock, making an admission . . .
She followed his gaze to her hand and, on it, the tin ring, still on her finger – the one Valentina had died wearing, the one that conspicuously didn’t and couldn’t match up to the showy three-diamond studded engagement band. Without thinking, she twisted the ring and exposed the perfect heart indented in her skin. Discovered in the twilight, she had forgotten it again in the glare of the day. Until now.
Somewhere in her mind, the spindle began spinning again, spooling out loops of golden thread that, if she followed them, would take her down paths she hadn’t considered before now, although the clues had been there all along – such as the love note Isobel had discovered only an hour or so ago, also hidden in plain sight.
