The Girl in the Shadows. Katherine Debona
up. Alice’s image reflected back from a dozen pairs of sunglasses as she passed the tables outside.
The barman raised his head as she walked towards him.
‘Oui?’ he asked, setting down the glass he was pretending to polish.
‘Avez-vous une bouteille de champagne?’
‘Champagne?’
‘Oui, champagne. Je suis censé célébrer.’
‘You’re supposed to be celebrating?’
Alice pulled her hair away from her neck with one hand and fanned her face with the other. ‘I don’t suppose you have any Bollinger?’
‘That’s an expensive bottle for someone celebrating alone.’
Alice shrugged, searching the wall of bottles behind the bar. ‘My father’s buying.’
‘Your father?’ The barman looked beyond Alice to the street outside.
‘Oh don’t worry, he’s not here, but I feel that I should include him in this in some way. After all, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.’
‘And why are you here, in Paris? A beautiful young woman shouldn’t be alone in Paris.’
Alice met his eye, half a smile on her lips. ‘Just the champagne, please.’
The barman watched her for a moment then stood. ‘Okay, but we only have Laurent-Perrier. Is that good?’
‘Absolutely,’ she replied. ‘Any chance I can borrow a glass as well?’
***
Alice opened the window, pushing aside the wooden shutters and allowing the warmth of the air to seep into the dusty room. She dangled her legs over the lip of the windowsill, sneaking bare toes in between iron railings that saved her from a four-storey fall to the pavement below. Reaching back into the room she picked up her glass of champagne, raising it in mock toast before taking a long sip. The text she had received earlier from her friend Emily still circled her mind.
You got a first!!! I always knew you could do it. Your dad would be so proud. Hope the search is going well. Call me x
Would her father be proud of her if he knew she had spent the day searching for clues to uncover the lies he’d told? Would he congratulate her as she looked into the face of every middle-aged woman she passed, hoping to miraculously bump into her mother? Or would he sigh and stroke his beard, leaving the room without uttering a word?
She scrolled through her other messages, most of which were from Stefan, each of them near identical. They were all about how he was missing her, how she was hurting him, how he was beside himself all alone. Nothing about her, asking why she was in Paris and not on her way to Africa as planned. Did it ever occur to him that once, just once, life might be about something other than him?
Her fingertips found the chain around her neck, slipping down to the angel figurine that rested against her breastbone. It was one of the few gifts she had ever received from Stefan. He bought it for her after seeing a postcard of two cherubs and exclaiming that was what their daughter would look like. This had followed a particularly heated argument about his wife.
Not for the first time Alice had announced she wouldn’t see him any more, that she’d had enough of skulking in libraries and sneaking from his room in the early hours so as not to be caught by prying eyes. The fact his wife still lived in Stockholm, that their marriage was now merely one of convenience, did nothing to quell Stefan’s resolution that he could not be seen with another woman, let alone one he was supposed to be mentoring.
Alice’s father wasn’t the only one who had secrets. Stefan wasn’t technically a professor, rather a graduate teacher who was assisting Professor Mitchell, but still. It was against the rules and Alice didn’t do against the rules. At least, that’s what people were supposed to think.
To the outside world she was the girl who never put a foot wrong. She came home straight from school, got good grades, even joined the debate team and never questioned why. She didn’t have a boyfriend because her father considered it a distraction, but also none of the boys at school managed to catch her interest. Then she went to university and a whole new world opened up.
On a cold Tuesday morning at the end of her first term, Stefan stopped Alice as she was leaving a lecture and asked if she wanted to go for coffee in order to discuss that week’s essay.
Sitting opposite one another in the cramped café – his smooth, tanned hands curled around a cappuccino – he asked innocuous questions about the course and whether Alice had a preference for English or French literature. She told him that in fact Nabokov’s Lolita was her all-time favourite, whilst she imagined those fingers trailing down her spine.
‘I saw you the other day,’ he said, head bent forward and dark blonde hair falling over his brow. ‘In the faculty library.’
‘Oh?’ Alice replied, blowing into her tea.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Do what?’ Placing the cup on the table she met his gaze. Technically she had done nothing wrong, but the university frowned upon students swapping their work, said it only encouraged plagiarism. Alice knew that even if the other student chose to copy her essay, she could feign ignorance, claim she had no idea that’s what they wanted it for; but putting yourself under scrutiny wouldn’t be the smartest move.
He smiled. Alice smiled back.
‘You know, I could report you. Get you into all sorts of trouble.’
‘But you won’t.’ Resting her chin on her hand she noticed his eyes lingered on her mouth.
‘No, I won’t.’
Alice reached out her hand to steal a lump of sugar from the bowl between them, dipping it into his coffee and watching the slow spread of brown over white. Bringing it to her lips she sucked at the bitter juices followed by a kick of sweetness.
‘Where’s your room?’ she asked.
The angel necklace he gave her was from the shop opposite the library. It was his way of reeling Alice back in, reminding her that he was fully aware of her own dirty little secret. And she was powerless to resist. For all her common sense, despite everything her father had taught her, she couldn’t walk away from the one person who broke her heart every time they kissed. Every time he smiled, his face creasing against the pillow. Every time he whispered against her ear whilst they made love, hidden away from the world in his attic room.
Alice tried to convince herself it was nothing, just an affair. A clandestine affair that could be stopped at any time. She flicked through the hundreds of photographs on her phone, pausing at a closeup of his face in profile, a stolen moment during a lecture one morning. Her finger hovered over the delete button.
It had been over a fortnight now since they had spoken, nearly a month since they had lain encircling one another. Alice knew it would end when she left the city. She had promised her father it would end. His disapproval when he found out was almost as painful as learning of his diagnosis. Things changed in that moment and he began to distance himself, as if he were ashamed of her in some way.
***
‘You have to end it.’ Her father sat forward, allowed Alice to place another pillow behind him.
Roles reversed, she now the carer instead of the child. She knew how much he loathed being indebted to anyone, hated how the medication made him physically weak, especially when his mind was still raging.
‘Why?’
‘Because people are beginning to talk.’ He winced as he lay back, the pain that was never vocalised now etched all over his clean-shaven face. ‘It’s been going on for too long, Alice, and you deserve better.’
‘Define better.’ She couldn’t help it, toying