Holly stood back and stared at the whiteboard. She’d spent the last couple of hours moving a lot of the data around and adding in everything that Jazz had managed to find. The suspect list looked a lot different now, but there was still a long list of names.
Suddenly the roller door to the storage unit opened. Holly spun around and took a few steps back, shocked that someone was unexpectedly entering the space. Thankfully, she recognised the intruder and let out a breath.
“Victoria!” she admonished.
Victoria stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
“I told you I’d email you when I had something worth showing you,” Holly continued.
She couldn’t help but smile even if she was frustrated at her girlfriend’s complete inability to follow rules. Victoria quickly moved in front of her, took Holly’s face in her hands, and placed a soft kiss to her lips.
“You’re always worth seeing,” Victoria whispered.
Holly felt her cheeks blush.
“Sweet talker.” She softly hit Victoria’s shoulder. “You still shouldn’t be here, and you gave me a heart attack.”
Victoria didn’t look apologetic as she scanned the whiteboard. “Cracked the case yet? I see my mother is no longer a suspect.”
Holly looked at the whiteboard and bit her lip. She hadn’t expected to see Victoria that evening, and so she hadn’t prepared a suitable way to explain to her that she was working side by side with the scammer.
It certainly wasn’t something she relished explaining.
“Come and sit down,” she suggested. She took the clean sheet and draped it over Victoria’s chair.
“My sister isn’t on the list either. What did they do to earn a pass?” Victoria asked as Holly took her arm and eased her closer to the chair. “You didn’t call them, did you? I don’t have the energy to speak with either of them this weekend. Besides, I’ve decided I’m going in to the office tomorrow.”
“I had some new information; it put them in the clear.” Holly pushed Victoria softly into the seat and then pulled her chair to sit in front of her. She gestured to Victoria’s feet and then tapped her lap.
Victoria slid off a heel and placed her foot in Holly’s lap, her eagle eye still on the whiteboard behind her. Holly started to massage the proffered foot.
“The emails,” she started. “They came from Arrival.”
Victoria slowly turned to look at her. “From Arrival?”
“Yes, I had someone check into it, and the emails came from somewhere in the Arrival office. I’ve cross-referenced them with a list of people who were in the office at the times when all the emails were sent, and don’t ask how I got that,” she requested.
Victoria’s eyebrows rose, but she didn’t say anything.
“That’s the final list.” Holly jutted her head back towards the board. “Somewhere on there is the person who’s doing this.”
“Why on earth would a person from Arrival want to do this?” Victoria asked.
Holly dug her thumbs into Victoria’s soft arches and tried to massage away the knots that were permanently in residence from a career in heels.
“I don’t know, but we have a place to start.” Holly continued the massage, now happy that Victoria had defied her orders and turned up out of the blue.
She was missing her but hadn’t felt as though she had enough news to warrant taking her time. She had spent the whole evening hoping that, with just a little more time, she’d have found the culprit and could then tell Victoria. Explaining that the forger was an Arrival member of staff was a bitter pill, but one surely better swallowed with the actual identity attached to the news.
But hours had passed, and Holly was no closer to identifying the person at fault, even with Jazz working on the case.
It was nice that Victoria was there. Holly felt that if she closed her eyes it would almost feel as if they were at home on any normal evening.
“This room smells,” Victoria said, breaking the mood.
Holly chuckled. “It does. You get used to it.”
“I don’t think I would,” she disagreed.
“Victoria?” Holly said softly, questioningly.
“Yes?”
“I still wonder if this has something to do with my accident.”
Victoria looked at her thoughtfully. “What makes you think that?”
Holly was relieved that Victoria hadn’t just shot down the idea. She knew it was unlikely, but it was something she just couldn’t get out of her head.
“The fact they know about the power of attorney. Who at Arrival knows about that? It’s not exactly common knowledge. I wonder if they are connected in some way.”
Victoria opened and closed her mouth before she took another glance at the whiteboard. “I suppose it could,” she admitted. “Or, maybe not. You were a member of staff. You are connected to Arrival yourself.”
“Paris was an Arrival event,” Holly pointed out.
She gestured for Victoria to pass up her other foot, which she did. “It’s just highlighted for me that my journals stop before I left for Paris, and I don’t have anything from that time. I don’t know who was there, who travelled with us, what happened. Was there any gossip? I haven’t really investigated that time at all.”
“It might not be connected,” Victoria suggested.
“No, but it’s still woken me up to the fact that I have these gaps in my memory. I know you’re busy, but could you try to find some schedules, travel details? Just so I can put together the pieces in my mind.” Holly dug her fingers into Victoria’s feet and massaged.
She furrowed her brow as she thought about the one true point in her memory that was a complete mystery to her. Even though she couldn’t remember a time before Paris, she had her journals to tell her everything that happened, and after the accident, she had her memories.
That period in the middle was a painful nothingness.
“Of course,” Victoria said softly. “I’ll get together everything I can.”
Holly nodded but refused to look up. She knew there were tears in her eyes and didn’t want Victoria to see them. Her girlfriend was already stressed enough; she didn’t need Holly losing her mind on top of everything else.
“Your room was four doors down from mine, on the top floor of the Shangri-La,” Victoria explained in a soft tone. Holly realised she’d noticed her tears and was trying her best to recall details from a difficult time over two years ago.
“It was a packed schedule, Paris always is,” Victoria continued. “We arrived early the first day, after an overnight flight. I got straight to work with meetings. You accompanied me, of course. Who and where, I can’t recall. They all blur together in the end. That first night, we all attended a gathering for Dior. Somewhere in Vendome, perhaps?”
Victoria sighed. Holly looked up and saw her face contorting in annoyance.
“I’m sorry, I’m struggling to remember anything of consequence. It was a very trying visit. The table layout for the gala was wrong. Someone sent me a bunch of roses, roses of all things. Gideon was talking about taking a role at Vogue, foolish man. Louise was in a terrible mood because I’d taken you to Paris instead of her. My dress…” She threw her head back and laughed bitterly. “It was a terrible week, and at the end of it… you vanished.”
Holly squeezed her feet. “I’m here now.”
“Yes, you are.” Victoria smiled sadly at her. “Sort of.”
“You don’t enjoy our clandestine meetings in a storage unit?” Holly joked.
“I do, but sadly I don’t have a lot of time. I have to get back to the children so Alexia can continue to subtly question me.”
“She’s been texting me,” Holly admitted. She decided to leave out the fact that Alexia’s texts had mainly been about trying to fathom what Victoria might have done wrong and what she could do to fix it. No matter how Holly tried to convince her that her birth mother wasn't to blame, Alexia wasn’t buying it.
“I had a meeting with Phoebe Wheeler today,” Victoria said. “I told her that we were no longer together, and she seemed very pleased about it. Practically wanted to plan a parade.”
Holly quickly tried to recall who Phoebe was. There were so many people who went into making Arrival. Some of them she’d met; some of them she hadn’t. “Oh, the photographer?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll do some research on her.”
“She was very suspicious.”
“Because she was happy that we were apart? Or for other reasons?”
Victoria paused and seemed to consider the matter. “I don’t know. She just seemed odd. I wrote everything down as you asked. I’ll leave you with the notes.”
Holly nodded. She was glad that she had suggested Victoria write everything down. Victoria had a tremendous eye for detail, but for some reason the audible word seemed to evaporate in no time. She didn’t listen, or if she did, she didn’t retain. When repeating a conversation at a later date, most of the details changed. A written account was the only way to guarantee success.
“I should go. The children will be home soon.”
Holly gave Victoria’s feet a final squeeze and then let them go. Victoria lowered her legs, slipped her heels back on, and stood up.
“What happened to the dress?” Holly asked.
“Hmm?” Victoria frowned. She picked up her bag and opened it as she looked for something.
“You said something about your dress in Paris?” Holly asked.
“Oh, yes, there was a problem with the hem. Two minutes before I had to leave the hotel room and go down to the car, I noticed the hem had dropped at the front. You were scrambling around on the floor in front of me, trying to pin it up. You were useless, of course.”
“Thanks, darling,” Holly quipped.
“It was a beautiful gown, red, floor-length. Valentino, naturally.” Victoria pulled her car keys out of her handbag, and at the same time a piece of paper fluttered to the ground.
Holly got off her chair, crouched down in front of her, and picked it up. She held it up for Victoria to take. As she did, her vision started to blur. The thought of the red dress, looking up at Victoria, and trying to help her saturated her vision. It grew and grew into an intense burst of light, red light.
Through the mess of colour, she could see Victoria looking down at her. And then she could see Victoria in a red gown, shouting instructions into her phone. The images swapped places over and over again, causing Holly to feel dizzy.
“Holly?” she heard Victoria ask, but her voice sounded so distant. “Holly?!”