I fished through the bin of scarves. I wasn’t the kind of person who was known for wearing accessories, but the colors had caught my eye—really, everything in Covent Garden was designed to attract attention. Our group had split up, with everyone weaving between the aisles, checking out everything from clothing to handmade chocolates. Each stall was different from the one before, populated by people calling for your attention. Tasha had tried to get everyone interested in the history of the place, but we were more intrigued by the jewelry stalls than her stories about Henry the VIII stealing the land from the church, or how the area used to be a seedy red-light district. She gave up and told us to meet back at the entrance in an hour.
“Three fer price of two,” the woman running the scarf stall said to me. “I get ’em from India, mostly. Here, let me.” She rummaged around and pulled out one with swirling turquoise, blue, and green paisley. “This would go with your skin tone.”
I took it from her fingers and held it up next to my face, considering it in the tiny mirror she’d suspended from wires on the side of the stall. The scarf did look nice.
“Lean in.” She reached over and with a few quick movements had it tied around my neck. “There you go, right as roses. Make you a deal for one, just a fiver.”
I glanced at my reflection. I looked different. Older, maybe. Vaguely French. The trip was changing me. I’d come for the wrong reasons, but despite everything it seemed as though the trip was turning into exactly what I needed.
“I’ll take it.” I handed over some cash, patting the scarf around my neck.
“I have to talk to you.” Alex appeared beside me. He grabbed my elbow and began leading me away. He waved off the offer of a receipt from the clerk.
“I wanted her to show me how to tie this,” I said, but he’d already guided me toward a hallway that led to the bathrooms.
A group of senior tourists, all wearing HI, MY NAME IS . . . nametags, passed us, and Alex paused until they were gone.
“I heard back from my mom.”
I waited for him to say more, but he was silent, arms crossed over his chest. His bony elbows made sharp triangles in his sweatshirt. My stomach shifted uneasily. “Was she mad that you asked for Nicki’s last name?”
“No. I mean, sorta, but that’s not the problem. I don’t know how to tell you this.”
My gut went into free fall. “Just tell me.”
“There was no one named Nicki on the flight,” Alex said softly.
I blinked, trying to make sense of what he’d said. Of course Nicki had been on the flight. “Maybe Nicki is short for something,” I suggested.
“There was no Nicole, or Nicola, or Colette, Nikol, Nykia, Niko, Niks.” Alex listed off the names in a flat monotone. “There was no single female traveler on the plane with any N name.”
“But that’s not possible,” I protested. I hadn’t imagined her.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“That’s the name she gave me,” I insisted, feeling prickles of panic. She had been there.
It felt as if my brain were spinning on a hamster wheel, going faster and faster. I hadn’t told him the details about my conversation with Nicki about Connor. I had no idea how to bring up the subject. What would he think of me if he knew I had said that stuff, even as a joke? I seized on the only evidence I had. “What about the newspaper clipping? Why would she send me that?”
“I was thinking about it,” Alex said. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Maybe this has nothing to do with the girl on the plane. Is there a chance it was just random? I mean, nothing was written on the envelope or anything. So maybe someone at Metford saw the article and meant to put it in Tasha’s box, but it ended up in yours instead. You’ve been assuming the two things are connected, but maybe they’re not.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “I didn’t make this up,” I said. I wished I hadn’t destroyed the copy she’d written on, that would show definitively that meeting her and the article were connected, but then he’d want an explanation of what the message meant. But the article with her note had been real. I remembered tearing it into a million pieces.
“I wasn’t saying that you did,” Alex rushed to explain. “She totally could have sent the note, but maybe it’s just a coincidence. If she did send it, that’s some pretty whacked-out shit.”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t sure what was worse, that he thought I was cracking apart and delusional or that I was being trailed by a psycho.
“I think we should talk to Tasha about your worries. She’ll know what to do.”
I leaned forward. “No. Absolutely not.”
“C’mon, Tasha seems pretty cool! If nothing else, she can get the clerks at Metford to keep an eye out for this Nicki girl. If she did drop off a clipping and she’s crazy, you don’t want her wandering around Metford. That place is easy as hell to break into. The only security they have is that one guard who is possibly older than this place. You can pop the locks for the rooms with a credit card, for crying out loud.”
“Or Tasha might tell the police about me dating Connor. No way. I don’t want to be dragged into that investigation.”
“You’re not going to be dragged into anything. Anyone who meets you for ten minutes is going to know you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
I forced a smile on my face, but it felt plastic and fake. He didn’t know the full story. “I know, but maybe you’re right. It might just be a coincidence that the article showed up. Before we make a move, let’s see if anything else happens first.”
Alex shifted uneasily. “Are you sure?”
“Totally,” I said with confidence I didn’t feel. “Hey, I’m going to grab a souvenir to bring back to my grandma. Will you run ahead and tell Tasha I’ll meet up with you guys later? I want to stay and look around longer.”
Alex hesitated. “Are you sure?” he asked again.
I nodded enthusiastically and gave him a joking push. “Go on, I’ll catch up with you in a little bit.” I waited until he melted into the crowd before I slumped against the cinder-block wall. The cold seeped through my T-shirt. I needed to think. I placed my palms against the wall as if I were holding on to reality and without it I might float away.
I closed my eyes tightly. I hadn’t made up Nicki, or screwed up her name. That’s what she’d called herself. I had sat next to her. We drank that vodka together—she wasn’t some elaborate manifestation of my imagination. She was real. She’d killed Connor and she’d sent me that note to make sure I knew it.
I was nearly panting. I focused on slowing my breathing down so I didn’t end up having a panic attack. The knot of the scarf had grown tighter. Now it was less of an accessory and more of a noose. My fingers yanked at the fabric for relief, and once the knot was looser I inhaled a greedy breath.
I tried to look at the positive side of the situation. If I’d gone to the police first and they were the ones to discover there had been no Nicki on the flight, it would have been worse. The cops would have thought I was lying and that would make them wonder what I was up to, especially when they heard about my past. Alex might imagine no one would suspect me of anything, but that’s because he was a nice person.
Maybe I should go home. Call my parents and tell them I’d changed my mind. If I left London, Nicki couldn’t do anything to me. I turned the idea over in my head, debating my options. My phone rang. I went to click it off, but the display showed Miriam’s name.
“We have to talk,” she said, not bothering with a hello.
I cut her off before she could say more. “Not on the phone. Tell me where to meet you.”
She was silent for a beat. “I’ll text you the address. Meet me in the lobby.”
The Ampersand Hotel was in Kensington, not far from Metford House but about one million times nicer. There was a doorman who swept the door open in front of me as if it were magic. The lobby was done in cool gray and white tones. The furniture, wallpaper, and crisply dressed front desk staff all oozed money and opulence.
Miriam stood as soon as I came in and walked past me. “Follow me downstairs—they’ve got a place we can talk.”
I trailed after her down the winding staircase. There was a hall leading to a restaurant, but she turned so we were in an empty office center where guests could print out documents and get a bit of work done.
Miriam put her hands on her hips, as if she were irritated with me, but I could see something different in her eyes. She looked scared. “We need to talk.”
“What did you mean the other day when you said he didn’t deserve me?”
She sighed. “It’s nothing top-secret. I meant that Connor is a dick . . . was a dick.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t want you to feel bad about what happened to him.”
“If he was such a dick, why did you date him?” I asked.
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t want to get into all of this.”
I lightly touched her elbow. “I need to know.” Now my voice cracked.
Miriam’s hands twisted in front of her. “I was only pretending to be his girlfriend.”
“What?”
She sighed. “Look, Connor went out with a friend of mine at another school, and then after they broke up, he sent naked pictures of her to everyone. Then I heard about what he did to you from a guy I know who is in his crowd. I checked around. He does this stuff all the time, treats girls like they’re a joke. You’re lucky he didn’t have pics of you on his phone, because if he did, they’d be spread all over the Internet.”
Goose bumps prickled over my skin, and they had nothing to do with the blasting air conditioner. In fact, Connor had begged me to let him take pictures. It was only my own insecurity that had kept me from saying yes.
“I decided to get him back,” Miriam said, her voice soft and low.
I sucked in a breath. “You killed him?”
Her eyes went wide. “What? No! I let him think I liked him. I kept stringing him along, telling him I didn’t feel ‘safe’ for us to be intimate but that he could show me he was someone I could trust. If he let me get pictures of him first.”
“And he fell for that?”
Miriam shrugged. “I’m an actress.” Then her tough-guy stance broke and she started to cry. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I just wanted to teach him a lesson. I told him that morning that this time he was the one who got played. I might have made it sound like I would post his naked pictures.” She paused, biting her lip. “I wouldn’t really have done it. It was just a threat, something that could keep him from doing this to anyone else, to make him scared for a change.”
“He really treated all the girls he dated that badly?” Her whole scheme—pretending to like him, getting pictures, then blackmailing him—I don’t know, it seemed so over-the-top. But then, Miriam was over-the-top. This was so perfectly something she would do.
“He broke my friend’s heart. Humiliated her. I did it for her. I thought she’d find this funny when I told her, you know? Something we could laugh about. I had no idea he’d jump in front of a train.” Her lip shook.
“There’s a chance Connor was pushed,” I said slowly. I didn’t like to see Miriam blaming herself when I knew deep down his death had nothing to do with her.
She stared at me, astonished. “Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything, but there was mention of it in the paper. Camera footage or something that makes it seem like a possibility.”
“I wonder if he did something shitty to someone over here?” Miriam asked herself. She peered out into the hallway as if she thought we might have been followed. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have been sneaking around on me with some British girl. Maybe she took things into her own hands.” Miriam’s eyes were wide.
Ideas tumbled around in my head. Connor was a player, but we hadn’t been in England that long when he died. Would he have had time to meet and seduce some British girl? But on the other hand, Nicki had been visiting Vancouver. Miriam thought there was a chance Connor had met a British girl here, but maybe he’d met her back home before he ever left the country. It was possible Nicki had picked me out at the airport because she already knew who I was and my connection to Connor. She’d acted as if she was mad at Connor because of what he’d done to me, but it might be that it was about how he’d treated her. She might have had her own motive to murder.
If he had treated Nicki badly, then perhaps she sent me the note as a confession. I’d taken it as some kind of threat, but maybe she was reaching out for help. She thought I would understand after what he’d done to me. If she was desperate, then I couldn’t just leave her. Maybe I could convince her to go to the police. If he’d threatened to show pictures of her, then there would be extenuating circumstances. She needed to know that we weren’t the only two he’d treated like dirt.
“I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls right away. I was trying to figure out what to do,” Miriam said, breaking into my thoughts. “The police want to meet with me one more time tomorrow and then my parents and I are flying home. I’m going to tell them the truth about what I did. Faking it to Connor, I mean. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to come with me and say what happened to you. If you don’t, that’s okay too.” She’d wrapped her arms around herself, and she looked so small, like a lost elementary school student.
“No. I think it’s a bad idea. Listen, just keep to the story that you told the police, that you decided to break up because you wanted to be friends or whatever. There’s nothing to be gained by telling them the truth—it just confuses things. You didn’t do anything,” I reminded her. “You were way back on the platform. Sophie will back you up. Stick with your story and let me handle it.”
“But what if there is some British girl that pushed him? It doesn’t seem fair to leave this all on you.”
“I don’t think Connor had time to meet some British girl. You were always together.”
Miriam chewed on her lower lip. “I guess.”
I had no idea how long Nicki had been in Vancouver before I met her at the airport. They could have met, could have had plenty of time to have a relationship. “You know if you talk to the police it’s just going to complicate things, and you don’t need that.”
“Still. I feel like I should.”
The desire to tell her what was going on was like an explosive pressure inside of me. Miriam was smart—maybe she could help me figure it out, but I always did that, let other people take charge. “I’ll be fine. I’m almost sure it was an accident. What you did had nothing to do with what happened.”
“Are you sure?”
I channeled what my mom would say. “You did something where you have regrets, but that means it’s a learning opportunity.”
Miriam nodded, her eyes watery with tears. “God, I’ve learned so much.”
I hugged her. We hadn’t been friends before, but now I felt connected to her after all of this. “Me too.” I glanced down at my phone. I knew I should go. I needed to meet up with Alex and the rest of the group. Miriam hugged me again and then practically skipped out of the room. I could see she was already feeling lighter. She’d wanted someone to tell her that she didn’t have to confess to the cops and I had given her that. She was free.
Then the answer of what to do next came to me in a whoosh and I almost fell back into my chair. I’d been so worried about how to find Nicki, but I’d been focusing on the wrong thing. It was like writing software. You can think the problem is one thing and spend hours trying to fix it, before you realize the real problem is several lines of code up. Fix that and everything else falls into place. I didn’t need to find Nicki—she would find me. And I already had an idea on how to encourage her to do it sooner rather than later.
But I needed to figure out what I would do when she showed up.