The Invitation

by Lucy Foley

  There was one other mad idea. A hope, secretly cherished – but so impossible, so preposterous that I cannot even bring myself to name it here.

  I had avoided Tangier. I did not want to be surrounded by expatriates and the clamour and complications they brought with them. It had sounded a frenetic place, and I had desired solitude. But it was not so different in aspect from Essaouira: the white buildings, the rough navy of the sea.

  The hotel, el Minzah, is the best in the city, possibly in the whole of Morocco. I was shown up to the grandest of the suites, the door swept open for me by a member of staff who disappeared like smoke along the corridor.

  I did not recognize the figure sitting before me at first. The linen suit was still immaculate. But the body inside was terribly changed and diminished. His face was the worst. I could hardly look at him, this simulacrum of the man he had once been.

  Whenever I had imagined seeing him again it had not been like this. In my fantasies he had been strong, healthy, and I had gone at him with all the fury of an avenging spirit. It was why I had not allowed myself to try and meet with him: I had known that I might not be able to stop, that I might actually kill him. But I could see, even without having it confirmed, that he did not need my assistance in that regard.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, and his voice too was a broken thing.

  Even now, I felt that he had the upper hand. My shock on seeing him like this had unnerved me, thrown me onto the back foot. I tried to remember what it was I had decided I would say to him at this point.

  ‘Have you decided to confess?’ I asked him.

  He smiled at me, and his face was a grinning skull. The charm of that smile was all gone. ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘because I’m dying?’

  Before I could decide how to answer him he said, ‘I am, of course. Well on the way.’ I saw the brief tremor of it then, the fear that his manner had attempted to conceal. ‘I was ill then, too – though it was the early stages. The business trips I made to Milan, if you remember …’

  I nodded.

  ‘I was travelling over the border, to Switzerland, to a clinic there. At that time there was still a possibility – they were trying transfusions, to get rid of the bad cells in the blood. In some cases it works. I did not want her to know. I did not want my shareholders to know, either. It was convenient if it was believed that I had business in Italy.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t made a special journey for you – you need not worry about that. I have come here for treatment. Conventional medicine has had no effect – but there is a man, a Sufi. He cannot cure me, but he is able to do something for the pain.’

  I wouldn’t pity him. ‘Do you know how far I have travelled, to get here?’

  ‘It is why I could not come to Essaouira. They tell me I am too ill to be moved. And I thought that we still had some matters to discuss, you and I.’

  ‘There is nothing you can say to me that I am interested in hearing,’ I told him, ‘unless it is your confession.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘then I am afraid that you have travelled all that way in vain.’

  He got up from his seat unsteadily, and made a few shuffling steps towards the corner of the room. His movements were those of an elderly man, cramped and painful. I watched him, trying to decide where he was headed, wondering what could merit the difficulty of it. And then I saw the drinks cabinet set up in the corner.

  ‘I had it sent over,’ he said, seeing me look at it. ‘From New York.’

  Only a man like Truss, I thought, would have had his cocktail cabinet shipped overseas to a Muslim city to accompany him in his dying days.

  He got to work with the lemons, the spirit and sugar. I saw that his hands as he made up the drinks were surprisingly steady, betraying only the faintest tremor. I imagine that he achieved this by some great effort of will. He brought them over to the low table between the seats. I took the chair opposite him. He sat, lifted the drink to his lips, savoured it. It was difficult not to stare at his face, at the thin grey skin, the architecture of bone sharp beneath it. I still could not believe it was the same man.

  ‘In fact, I would like to make a confession, of sorts. But not the one that you are asking for, that you feel you deserve. I know that you will never believe me, but I am innocent of that.’ His voice had changed, I realized. The authority had gone from it. ‘I loved her.’

  ‘No,’ I said, remembering all that she had told me, ‘you loved the idea of her. In the same way that you loved that chess piece.’

  He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me, then, what it was like. Because I think that you took a sixteen-year-old girl, who had lost everyone she loved, and tried to force her into your idea of the ideal woman. And when she realized this, and tried to escape, you killed her.’

  ‘No.’ He was shaking his head now, his eyes closed. ‘No, that isn’t right. I married her because she was brave, and good. I thought that she could make me good.’ He opened his eyes, and I was unnerved to see that he was weeping. ‘I know that I failed her. But I did not kill her. I wanted to kill you, when I realized it.’

  I have to ask it. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I suspected it, before I left Genoa. I knew it, when I returned, and saw the two of you, how you were with one another.

  ‘I had just learned that the treatment had failed – and there you were, looking like the future come to mock me. But I could never have hurt her.’

  He paused, took another long draught of his drink. ‘So, there it is. My confession. I was a weak man, a liar. But I was not a murderer.’

  He died three weeks later. Strange to think that he was already on that journey the first time I met him, though death had only marked him so visibly for its own in that final phase.

  He had been a bully and something approaching a criminal, but perhaps not a monster. In my mind, I had made him into one. It had been easier to imagine him thus.

  And the worst part of it was that, in spite of myself, I believed him. I believed that he had not done it. Which meant that I was forced to confront the idea that she had not wanted the future we had discussed together. That she had taken her own life. If she had done so, I refused to think it might be because of him, because of his bullying. Was there some part of her that had been broken all those years ago in Spain, that had not healed?

  It was not the ending that I would have written for her, had I that power.

  PART SIX

  43

  Her

  Forgive me. I know it will be difficult to understand, but I have to do this on my own. For so long I have been a weak, frightened person, incapable of independent action. You have helped me rediscover whom I was before. It is important that you know it. It is how I have found the courage to do this.

  We can’t do it together. Firstly, because it would be more dangerous for both of us if we did. And secondly, because from this moment on, I know I can’t let myself be reliant on another person again. It wouldn’t work. I know that, in the end, you would come to resent me. If we meet again, it must be as equals.

  I drag myself up the wet sand. I am nearly out of the reach of the water, though it feels as though the last of my strength may finally desert me before I am able to quite crawl to safety. A curiously hard thing, this saving of oneself. And it feels as though it would be easy simply to stop, to let the waves reclaim me. That last part of the swim: I could not have foreseen the difficulty of it. Unimaginably hard. All of my preparation, the hours of swimming I have put in over the last few months, had not readied me for it. In the end only the desperate animal need to survive had forced me on. My mind, in that last stretch, had begun telling me to give in.

  It is the darkest time of the night, though the city is permanently lit, and many of the boats in the harbour have kept lamps alight. Impossible to tell which is the yacht from this distance. It had been quite easy to slip away, in the end.

  As the party had continu
ed at the bow of the boat I crept to the dark stern, made my way, quickly, to the ladder.

  I am certain that no one saw me. Everything was exactly as I had hoped it would be, save for one exception. As I crept to the edge I trod upon a piece of broken glass. The sound had come before the pain, and to me it had sounded catastrophically loud. I remembered the champagne-bottle skittles, the man sweeping frantically for the shards. Clearly, one had made it beyond the reach of his broom.

  I used the hem of my dress to mop at where I thought my blood might have stained the wood, but it was too dark to see properly. It would have to do – there wasn’t time to be too diligent about it. And no doubt I was not the first on board to have sustained such an injury from the glass – it could be anyone’s blood, an inevitable remainder of the evening’s chaos.

  The pain from my foot came only when I entered the water, and the salt bit at it. But the cold was more painful. I had not been prepared for it, and had to fight not to cry out with shock.

  *

  The sun umbrellas are silent sentinels.

  I am very, very cold. My teeth chatter together so violently that I think they might crack. It feels as though the chill has permeated right through to the centre of me, that I may never get warm. Perhaps the cold will kill me. There would be some terrible irony in pulling oneself free of a death by drowning only to perish on the beach.

  The beach is deserted, but I hallucinate movement in the shadows. If someone saw me, they would raise the alarm and everything would be ruined. I must leave this place absolutely unseen. I half-crawl along the sand, dropping low whenever I imagine the presence of some silent watcher. I am almost delirious with cold.

  I am wearing only my underwear, but I swam with my dress tied about my waist like a belt. Now, crouched behind a stack of beach loungers, I pull the sodden fabric over my head. To walk through the streets like this will at least attract less attention than if I were half-naked. In the meagre glow of the street lamps, hopefully, the black fabric will not be obviously wet. As I stumble further up the beach I find, by a stroke of luck, a pair of sandals – discarded on the sand by some careless sunbather and, a little further on, a scarf. A dampish towel – I rub myself dry with this; a man’s jersey – I put this on for warmth. The scarf I tie about my hair, to conceal the colour of it. Thank goodness for the film festival, which has drawn the carefree crowds, forgetful of their belongings.

  I walk through the deserted streets. The sandals are a little large and my feet slip in them, which I am sure gives me an odd, shuffling gait. My wounded foot throbs dully against the sole – but it does not bleed much now. The salt water has sealed the injury into a pale, puckered fissure.

  At one point I catch sight of myself in the glass of a shop window and am surprised. I do not look the eccentric figure I had guessed I would make. I look, simply, poor. In a place like this it is the best possible disguise. The poor are invisible.

  I have not seen myself like this for a long time. And for the first time, I see not a suit of armour, but myself. Or, at least, someone that I recognize.

  The important thing is to move quickly, and not draw attention to myself. Luckily, there is no one about at this hour, and dawn is not yet beginning to show on the horizon. I am making for what I guess to be the outskirts of town, for the poorer neighbourhoods, where I can blend in and disappear.

  I take my jewellery into the least salubrious pawnshop I can find, deciding that the proprietor of a place like this will no doubt have things to hide. I know as soon as I push at the door and find the place open that I am right. No normal business would be open at this hour.

  There is a small, handmade sign advertising ‘passeports – tous les pays.’

  ‘How much?’ I ask, pointing to the sign. My French feels thick, clumsy.

  ‘What nationality?’

  This gives me pause.

  ‘Spanish,’ I say, eventually.

  He gives me a sum – it is surprisingly little. I wonder if an American or English passport would be more.

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘If you use one of the photographs in here,’ he says, ‘one hour, at maximum.’ I look into the drawer that he has opened. In it are perhaps two hundred photographs: subjects of every conceivable nationality and age. There is something uncanny about them. Where do they come from, these blank, unsmiling faces? Where are these people now?

  I think. Will he talk, this man? If he hears of the disappearance of a blonde woman, and remembers the one that came into his shop, and asked to have a passport made? If so, it is already too late – the damage has been done. But I think not. I suspect he is a man who would have as little contact as possible with the authorities.

  ‘All right,’ I say. I peer into the drawer. Together we find someone with a not dissimilar likeness. She isn’t my twin, but she could at a squint be my sister. Dark hair, but that is soon to be rectified. It will do.

  This is what Hal had meant to do for both of us.

  When I hand him the jewellery, the man looks at me as though he is trying to decide if I have stolen it. I can only imagine what his reaction would have been if I had handed over some of the finer jewels. But I was careful to wear only the simplest and most anonymous pieces. Nothing newsworthy, nothing recognizable, unless one knew exactly what one was searching for. After I’ve purchased the passport, I haven’t got as much left over from the sale as I’d hoped. I am fairly sure that he has short-changed me, but I am not in a position to bargain with him. Besides, the necklace, which would have fetched the most, detached itself as I swam and sunk. I had tried to grasp for it but it had been lost to the black water before I could catch it. Perhaps it is for the best. Of all the pieces it would have been the most recognizable.

  In a public bathroom I dye my hair black. A transformation. I look a little ghoulish – the dark colour makes my skin pale by comparison – but I also look absolutely unlike myself, which is perfect. They will be looking for a blonde.

  At the train station, I will myself invisible. As I hand over my new passport my heart beats so hard in my chest that I am sure it must be audible to the man behind the glass. But – thank God – he barely glances at it, or at me. I am so confused by this that I almost volunteer my false reasons for travelling, anyway – visiting my cousins in Geneva – and manage to stop myself in time.

  In the reflection of the train’s window I am reminded of how different I appear, with the headscarf, and my face leached of make-up, wan with exertion and cold. But it is more than that: I look changeable, unfixed, like someone in a state of metamorphosis. And for the first time, I feel a certain confidence in my plan. I am already someone other than the woman my husband will be looking for.

  In the quiet of the carriage there is too much space for thought. I think of Hal, of how I have deceived him.

  When I thought about that night in Rome, I had convinced myself that I had been overtaken by a brief fantasy, a sudden rebellion. I had known him for an outsider as soon as I looked at him, with his beautiful face and his worn suit, and I knew that it had to be him. But it had started then – something over which I had no control. And then something that came very close to happiness.

  Could it have become love? I think so, if it had been given its proper chance. I believe it could have been there, waiting for us. Handing over that jewellery in the pawnshop – understanding as I did that it represented the renouncement of my old life with all its wealth and comfort – was surprisingly easy. Relinquishing the possibility of that new life with him … that was the wrench, the thing that sits inside me now like grief.

  But I need to be someone who can survive on her own. I don’t know exactly when I decided it had to be just me. Certainly it helped my decision, when he struck Earl Morgan, and I realized how reckless he might be. But I think it was even before that, when he first suggested it. I knew how I would do it, too. I’d use the pills I was meant to take, to help me sleep. They would knock him out for the right period of time, prevent him
from coming under suspicion.

  I tried to explain it in the note I wrote him, in the back of his notepad. But once it was done I knew I couldn’t leave it. I couldn’t risk my husband finding it, and understanding what I had done. I ripped it out and took it with me, to dispose of in the water.

  My destination is a beautiful place – the sort of village in which one might decide to live, even if one was not running away. The foothills of the Alps, with the highest of the peaks still holding that faint tracery of white, a permanent reminder of the winter. But the air is warm, and the light peculiarly bright. It is difficult to imagine the green swards in the valley concealed by snow.

  The first shop I come across is a patisserie, and all at once I am ravenously hungry. Until now it has been all about the escape: but now my stomach protests. I have not eaten for twenty-four hours. I buy a loaf of bread, which I take around the corner to a bench and eat like an animal, ripping into it with my teeth. When I think of what those New York acquaintances would think, if they could see the refined Stella Truss now, it makes me smile. When I have taken my fill, I go back into the patisserie, and give his name – counting on it being a small enough place that the woman will know him. She looks at me curiously as she gives her directions. This is apparently not a place used to visitors. I hope she does not remember too much of this. I keep my head bowed.

  I am confused, at first, by the appearance of an elderly man at the door. My first thought is that he bears a passing resemblance, but can’t be the same man. Then I realize that it is him. I can’t believe how he has changed. I should have been prepared for this, I know – and yet I am not. My memory has kept him preserved in time, in the same way that it has my father. Would my father be similarly aged had he stayed alive? Impossible to imagine it.

  But despite the changes in my own appearance, and the more profound changes in me, he recognizes me straight away.