She needs food. She will need more water. If she stays here in this room for another round of sensory deprivation, she might be too weak even to continue eventually. Better to keep her body healthy and try to delay whatever comes next than to waste time here and hope she isn’t tested again.
Bathsheba repeats the request. “Please proceed to the vestibule immediately.”
Nina knows they’re watching her. She felt it in the darkness, in the silence of the sensory deprivation, eyes on her, night-vision cameras—in her mind’s eye she pictured the scene like some kind of behavioral experiment. Perhaps it is that, perhaps it isn’t. What this place is she still doesn’t know. But she knows it isn’t good. And she knows that she can, and fears she most likely will, die down here.
She presumes her father created it, all evidence seems to point that way, but his reasons are still unclear.
And yet, in spite of everything, she still believes those reasons will unveil themselves before too long and she will suddenly make sense of it all, either by the nature of what she finds down here or with the arrival of help.
But she knows she can’t spend another four hours in darkness.
The vestibule is her only option.
And with that she steps out of the room and into the green-tinged corridor. Another door closes behind her, sealing Nina even deeper into the house.
CHAPTER 32
MARIA
M aria has played out the scenario obsessively in her mind for the last two nights. She’s watched people in Lucinda’s neighborhood and knows how to blend in. She’s purchased a toddler’s scooter on Amazon, muddied it up in a park, and when she pulls it from the car and jogs lightly across the Notting Hill street with it slung in hand she looks every inch just another harassed West London yummy-mummy pre- or post-pickup.
She knows the flash point could be eye contact, but most people rarely make eye contact for more than a second in big cities. But she’s alive to the possibility that Lucinda might recognize her, though she feels certain, given the heightened nature of the situation she’s engineering, that it theoretically will not be a problem.
As a student doctor she helped save people’s lives in triage, and those same people had completely forgotten her face less than an hour later. She held their lives in her hands and they wouldn’t have been able to spot her in a lineup. She knows that the human brain has only so much attention available at any moment; people don’t notice a lot of things when their attention is split.
Even if Lucinda gets a really good look at Maria, so much about her appearance has changed in the last two weeks that it seems very unlikely recognition will kick in quickly enough to be an issue. Maria’s hair beneath her cap is cropped tight now, her long soft curls gone. Her eyebrows are gone too, bleached, completely changing the appearance of her face, making it appear broader and less easy to pinpoint without the framing effect dark brows gave her. On top of that Maria took pains to ensure that the clothes she chose—a trench coat, sweatpants, and technical sneakers— were as far from her own feminine softness as conceivable.
After all, the woman with the too-tight chignon only actually met Maria in person once, and that meeting was only perhaps half an hour long.
Besides, Maria has been confirmed dead already. The man this woman sent to kill her in a tub of bathwater in her New York apartment achieved his goal as far as Lucinda knows. Maria is a problem solved in this woman’s mind, and until she becomes a direct problem to her again it seems unlikely that Lucinda will make a connection, especially during this brief interaction.
As Maria approaches her Lucinda gives her only a cursory glance and the vaguest of smiles. Maria returns them, and as Lucinda slows to approach her own gate Maria feigns recognition.
“Oh hey. I was just knocking on your door there. Hi, I’m Anna, our house backs onto your garden—on the Fairholt Gardens side?”
Lucinda turns, eyebrows raised in surprise at being engaged in conversation.
Maria has noted that neighbors in this affluent area of London don’t appear to speak, know, or even acknowledge one another. They have priced themselves right out of the necessity for conversation.
Maria watches Lucinda squint at her in the fading light, searching for reassuring markers that she is who she professes to be. Already she knows her American accent is working on Lucinda; most of the locals around here were relocated overseas by American finance companies. Maria fits the bill.
She hoicks her cumbersome children’s scooter and continues with warmth.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you but my eldest has lobbed my husband’s signed Chelsea football into your back garden.” Maria raises her hands, scooter too. “I know…the joys of parenthood. But we do what we can, right.”
Maria is including her in that—as a dog mother. Lucinda gives an indulgent smile, Penny hopping around her feet with excitement at her mother’s rare human interaction.
“Can I be a total pain and grab it from you? The ball?” Maria continues, with a quick look to her own watch, as if she too has a million other things she would rather be doing this evening.
Lucinda looks to Penny, the only other witness, as if the dog might have the answer. Penny nudges her, happy and eager to be involved in the situation. Lucinda gives the woman a final cursory look up and down: she is just one of the many mothers Lucinda often sees hurrying about at the ends and beginnings of days. A woman she will never be, nor has ever really desired to be.
“Sure,” Lucinda answers. “I could go, take a look, and bring it up or—” She leaves the idea hanging.
Maria does not jump on it. She leaves Lucinda to finish her own sentence. It will be better if it’s Lucinda’s idea, easier.
“Or you could come through and grab it? Probably quicker. You know what you’re looking for.”
Now it’s Maria’s turn to give the impression of weighing up Lucinda. She looks back over her shoulder as if judging the appropriateness of entering another person’s house—then gives a light shrug.
