Chapter Four

The villa sat above the city on the eastern hill. At ten at night every window was lit.

Isabella had been there since eleven that morning. Clara drove her through the Lattice first, past the tower blocks and the market stalls, past narrow streets where laundry hung between the buildings.

Then the road climbed through gardens and gates until the city lay below them like a map of small lights.

The house was white, low, long, palms along the front. A courtyard held a fountain had not been turned on. Clara pulled into the drive and said teasingly as she always does, "This is mine, not my father's. I bought it with my own money."

The day went slowly. Isabella slept two hours in a room with green curtains. Clara brought toast, fruit, a glass of water, and did not ask a single question.

They walked through the garden in the afternoon. They talked about the garden, the weather, the cost of the eastern road, anything that was not the Perry estate.

Now they sat in the front room with the windows open. Night air came in off the sea, cool and salt-touched. Clara poured two glasses of wine. She set one at Isabella's elbow and did not ask her to drink it.

Isabella picked up the glass. She turned it once. Then she set it down without drinking.

"Clara."

"Yes."

"I signed the divorce papers last night."

Clara's hand stopped on the bottle. She did not look up. She set the bottle down slowly. Then she looked up.

"Say that again."

"I signed the papers last night. I left this morning with one bag. I am not going back."

Clara sat back in her chair. Her face moved through several things in a short time. Surprise first. Then something harder. Then something that looked almost like anger, and then, there was no anger at all.

"You seriously left for good this morning?" Clara said.

"Hold on. You got in my car at nine. You sat next to me for an hour. You ate toast in my kitchen, and you walked my garden. You did not say one word."

"I did not know how to say it."

"You could have said it in four words." Clara's voice rose and then dropped. "You could have said, Clara, I left him."

"I know."

"You let me talk about the roses."

"I know."

Clara picked up her wine and drank half of it. She set it down harder than she needed to. She wasn’t angry.

"How long have you known? Before last night, how long were you planning this?"

"I did not plan it. He came into the room at eleven and dropped the papers on the bed." Isabella folded her hands. "I signed them in a minute. He asked me why I was not crying.”

"That man," Clara said. "Even his questions are cold."

“I said I wanted nothing from him and I walked out of the room."

Clara stared at her.

"You walked out of the room," Clara said slowly, surprised. "You? You walked out of the room."

"Yes."

"You did not throw the folder at his head."

"No."

"You did not call his mother a cold-blooded reptile."

"I did not."

Clara set her glass down and put both hands flat on the table. Her eyes were bright. Her jaw was tight. Her voice came out quiet.

"Two years," she said. "Two years I have watched you beg a man for a scrap of attention. For two years I have watched you humiliate yourself at galas, scream at his secretaries, follow his cars down the coast road.

There was a time in those two years when I stood in hotel corridors and told you to stop. You called me a bad friend and slammed the door in my face. Do you remember that?"

The golden script came at the edge of her sight, thin, gold. A memory came with it. Not her own. The book's. Chapter nineteen. Clara Blacks stood in a hotel corridor with her arms folded and said those exact words to the old Isabella.

The old Isabella cried. She called Clara a bad friend. She slammed the door so hard the frame shook.

Isabella had read that scene in a book in another world. She had thought Clara was the only sensible person in the entire novel.

"I remember," Isabella said.

Clara's eyebrows drew together. "What do you mean, you remember? I am the one who was there."

"You told me the day I stopped chasing him would be the first day of my life." Isabella looked at her. "You said it in a corridor outside a hotel ballroom. I did not listen then. I am listening now."

Clara was quiet for a moment. Her hands stayed flat on the table.

"You did not listen," Clara said. "You slammed the door."

"I know."

"How do you know what I said in that corridor?" Clara's voice was careful now. Her eyes had narrowed. "You were crying. You were shouting. You would not have remembered the words."

Isabella did not answer that. She picked up her wine at last and drank, and Clara watched her do it, and the question stayed on the table between them unanswered.

"All right," Clara said at last. She let out a breath. "All right. You are not going to explain that tonight. I can see it on your face. So I will let it go, and I will not ask again."

"Thank you for everything."

"Stop thanking me." Clara leaned forward. "You can stay here. Not for a week, but for as long as you want. There are six bedrooms in this house. I use two. We can share the same bedroom like old times if you want.

“I would like that,” Isabella said.

It would be good to have someone around who does not work for me, especially my best friend." She paused. "You will have to put up with my father. He now comes here on Sundays. He eats everything in the kitchen and tells the same three stories you have heard a hundred times."

Isabella laughed. The sound surprised her. It came out of her and sat in the room. Clara looked at her as though she had just watched a lamp come back on.

"Thank you," Isabella said.

"What did I just say about that word?"

"Sorry."

"Stop that too." Clara picked up her glass. Then her face changed, and the small smile went out of it. "There is something I should tell you. I would rather you heard it from me than from a newspaper."

Isabella set her glass down.

"Victoria Alexander came back to Aurelia three weeks ago," Clara said. "I did not tell you then. I did not want to be the one who put that look on your face. Everyone in the Circle knows. Her father has been telling anyone who cares to listen that she is home to stay."

The script flared.

This time it was not thin. It came in full, gold and bright, and Isabella sat very still and let it play.

Victoria Alexander. Twenty-four. Old money, green eyes, a smile that had been taught to her by her mother. In the novel, Zachery had loved her before the marriage. The board wanted a marriage with a legacy written into it, a two-year condition he had to meet before he could take full control.

Victoria had been afraid. She had not been ready to sign her life over to a Perry board. She left the country instead, for a programme that required her to be physically present for the full two years. She told Zachery she would come back. He believed her. She did not write once in all that time.

The novel said Zachery married the old Isabella because she was the easiest choice. The truth was worse. He married her because Victoria was gone, the board was waiting, and she had been available.

The script dimmed. It went out earlier than it should have. Victoria was back three weeks ago, in person, not in a paragraph. The script did not know that yet.

"Are you all right?" Clara asked.

"I am fine." Isabella picked up her wine. "Better than fine."

Clara watched her. "You have a strange way of saying things tonight."

"I know." Isabella drank. "Tell me about Victoria. The real version. Not the one the newspapers print."

Clara set her glass down. She leaned back in her chair, and she did not smile.

"That will take a while," she said.

"We have all night."