What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [84]
Elisabeth and Ben hadn’t circulated much. They talked a lot to Dominick—whom they didn’t appear to have met before. It was strange, seeing Elisabeth cradling one drink and sticking to Ben’s side. She used to march her way from person to person at parties, as if it were her duty to talk to every single person.
Actually, the funny thing was that she thought she could have managed that party even without Elisabeth or Dominick or even Nick there to help her. Even though it had been surreal and dreamlike, meeting all those strange people who knew her name and intimate details about her health (one woman had tried to drag her into a corner to continue a conversation from a few weeks ago that appeared to be about Alice’s pelvic floor), she hadn’t ever felt that normal feeling of party panic. She seemed to know instinctively how to stand and what to do with her arms and her face. She could feel herself being gracious and vibrant, actually telling people the story of how she’d fallen over at the gym and thought she was ten years younger and pregnant with her first child. The words rolled smoothly. She made eye contact with everyone in the circle. She was delivering an anecdote. It appeared she had become very normal and accomplished, now that she was nearly forty.
Maybe it was because she looked so good that she’d felt so confident. She’d chosen a blue dress from her wardrobe with detailed embroidery around the neckline and hem. “Oh, you always have the most gorgeous clothes, Alice darling,” Kate Harper, the woman from the lift, had said. Kate’s rounded vowels had become even rounder the more she drank, so by midnight she sounded like the queen. Alice couldn’t stand her.
The party had finished up around one a.m. Dominick had been one of the last to go, kissing her chastely on the cheek and saying he’d call tomorrow. There didn’t seem to have been any question about him staying the night, so maybe their relationship hadn’t progressed to that point. He was a very nice man, someone she would happily recommend as a single man to a friend, but the thought of taking her clothes off in front of him was laughable.
Then again, maybe he had just been discreet because he knew she had begged Elisabeth and Ben to stay the night. (She hadn’t liked the idea of waking up in this strange new world without company.) Maybe they had quite an active sex life.
She shuddered.
Less than twenty-four hours till she saw Nick and the children and everything would finally fall into place.
The bathroom floor was becoming cold. She stood up and surveyed her tired, thin face in the mirror. Who have you become, Alice Love?
She walked back into the bedroom and considered trying to go back to sleep but she knew it would be impossible. Hot milk was the answer. Of course it wasn’t the answer at all. It never cured her insomnia, but the ritual of it and the feeling that you were doing something that the magazines always recommended for insomnia was soothing and helped pass the time.
The door to the spare bedroom was closed as she crept down the hallway. She had been pleasantly surprised to discover a spare room (previously one of their many junk rooms) all set up with a double bed, chests of drawers and spare towels. “Was I expecting someone to stay?” she’d asked Elisabeth.
“You always keep it like this,” Elisabeth had said. “You’re very organized, Alice.”
That hardness had come back in her voice. Alice didn’t know what it meant. She was starting to feel irritated by Elisabeth.
She crept down the carpeted hallway and nearly missed her footing at the top of the stairs, grabbing for the banister. Maybe it would be convenient if she fell and banged her head again. It might bring back all her memories.
She walked down the stairs, clinging to the banister. As she got to the bottom, she saw that there was a light on in the kitchen.
“Hi,” she said.
“Oh, hi.”
Elisabeth was standing at the microwave.
“Hot milk,” she said. “Want some?”
“Yes, please.”
“Not that it ever really cures my insomnia.”
“No—me neither.”
Alice leaned back