The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald [45]
“Sorry!” she called, backing away and taking Flora with her. Cassie flashed her an absent smile and then turned back to Vitolio.
“Oh yeah!” she cried, voice rising. “That’s it! Aughhhh!”
The moans echoed after them down the staircase.
“So…” Alice cleared her throat as they emerged into daylight again. Flora was still wide eyed with her thousand-yard stare.
“Was that, was that a…pomegranate?” she whispered, looking over at Alice.
“Yes,” Alice answered faintly.
“Oh!”
Chapter Eleven
During the next week, Alice did her best to work around Cassie and Vitolio’s passionate encounters. She was a guest, she reminded herself frequently, and a little inconvenience was the price she paid for no rent. But because of the open-plan living space, poor soundproofing and Cassie’s apparent penchant for sex on nontraditional surfaces—floors, walls, the granite-topped breakfast bar—avoiding the amorous couple became a substantial challenge. She tried instigating a dormlike hair-scrunchy-on-the-door-handle policy, a text early-warning system, and even a creeping quick-glance-before-entering-any-room strategy, but when Alice arrived home from work one evening to find Cassie spread eagle and blindfolded on the couch, with Vitolio wielding a large green dildo above her, it was clear that the situation had become untenable.
Given that her savings were still being held hostage by the bank, her credit rating would cause even a daytime-TV-ad loan company to pause, and Julian was otherwise engaged picking out new linens with Yasmin, Alice had no alternative but to accept Flora’s offer of a place to stay. She moved her things out that same day, as soon as Cassie’s S&M lite session came to its natural—and loud—conclusion.
***
“It’s not that bad,” Alice said into her phone, the day after her move. By her calculations, this made three in under a month, although her stock of possessions seemed to be dwindling while every accommodation improved. At this rate, she’d be living out of a single suitcase in a castle somewhere by the end of summer.
Julian laughed, familiar and comforting even through the mobile speaker. “I thought you said you would throttle her if you spent more than two days in her company?”
“I did?” Alice reached into the huge stainless steel fridge and paused over the selection of three different types of bottled water. “When?”
“Years ago.”
“Well, I was wrong. Stefan’s away on business again, but I’ve hardly seen her so far, she’s spent most of the day out in her studio, working.”
Evian it was. Alice unscrewed the top and took a cool gulp, wandering to where the French doors were thrown open, filling the kitchen with a gentle breeze and the faint scent of roses. She stopped, gazing at the expanse of neat lawn and mature trees: an idyllic summer scene enclosed behind the tall, crumbling walls. “What am I even saying? I’m ridiculously lucky to be staying here. With everything Ella put me through, I could be out on the streets by now.”
“Have they made any progress?” Julian asked. “I mean, do we even know her real name yet?”
“No,” Alice answered slowly. “She’s still a Jane Doe as far as the police are concerned.” She paused, wondering whether to divulge her own work but said instead, “I have another meeting with the investigator later, so perhaps he’s found something new.”
“Probably best to leave it to them, now that you’re moving on.” Julian sounded relieved. “I was getting worried, all that time you spent wallowing over it.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Alice murmured. This was why she hadn’t told anyone about her private investigations—not even revealing to Flora the true extent of her project. She was supposed to be forgetting about everything and just letting the professionals get on with their work, but instead, Alice was becoming even more determined to discover everything she could about Ella’s duplicitous double life. The things she knew now may be simple, minor details—nothing more than Ella’s love of American TV drama box sets, her strange adventures in Italian cooking, her real bra size—but they were true. And the