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Until now it had all seemed like a mistake, a misunderstanding that Maggie had been oddly confident would soon be cleared up.
It had buoyed her. In fact, the absurdity of her situation had placated her.
Now she was starting to see that she had been set up by Suzanne.
Used.
And she knew now why she had been chosen.
She heard the sound of bells and guessed that Ilyas had followed her. ‘Maggie?’
He spoke her name before he parted the curtain and Ilyas saw her sitting on the bed as if she had just been told bad news.
‘What did you just remember?’ he asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘You seem upset.’
She didn’t look at him. In fact, she gave a small derisive laugh. ‘What do you expect?’
‘You’ve remembered something.’
She had.
‘Tell me.’
Ilyas wasn’t asking merely to solve the situation. He wasn’t even asking to work out the mystery with his brother or to get his family out of trouble.
He was asking because it was clear that she was hurt.
And, in his eternal quest for information, usually he didn’t care about such matters.
Now, though, he did. And so he spoke more kindly than usual and came and sat on the bed beside her.
Maggie didn’t jump like a scalded cat, but only because his presence didn’t feel like a threat now. And though, as she sat there, she told herself to maintain her anger with him, that he did not deserve any lowering in her rage, she was starting to see that he was right to be angry about what had happened to his brother and the demands that had been made.
It wasn’t a simple mix-up.
‘I think I’ve been set up,’ Maggie admitted. ‘I can’t check, my phone’s not working...’ She gestured to it and Ilyas picked it up and tried to turn it on. ‘Suzanne kept borrowing it.’
‘I’ll have it cleaned,’ Ilyas said, and pocketed it. ‘What else have you remembered?’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said, and then gave in. ‘But I don’t think so.’ Maggie was piecing it all together, even as he sat by her side. ‘I told you that Suzanne and I worked together?’
He nodded.
‘We went out for drinks a few times. I guess we became friends. Or at least I thought we had. One time, I can’t even remember exactly what we were talking about, but I said that I wanted to be home by the end of summer.’
‘Which is now.’
Maggie nodded. ‘My boss, Paul, wants me to go back to the café, but apart from that I had no real reason to rush back.’
‘What about your home?’
‘I don’t have one,’ Maggie said. ‘I just rented a room in a flat. I told Suzanne the same and that no one was really expecting me back.’
‘No one?’ he checked.
