Younger (25 page)

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

She hadn’t cried much during this whole lunatic, ludicrous experience. But tears fell when she read that prescient line; they started and threatened not to stop until they’d swept her off the train and into the Lombardian countryside, a woman drowning in a sea of grief for her irretrievable past and fear for her increasingly threatened future. She had pretended to be so many things over the course of her lifetime, had let so few others know her well. How would she fare at being herself? And would she
like
the real
Anna Wallingham? Finally, she climbed out of the narrow bunk and washed her face. Then she got back in, turned off the light, set her phone to wake her ninety minutes from Paris, and at last she slept.

When the alarm went off, she washed, then dressed in the most stylish clothes she currently possessed: her black jodhpurs and fake cashmere twinset and her wig. She doubted anyone was watching trains to Paris, but it made her feel safer. When she got off the train at the Gare de Lyon, she removed her wig in the ladies’ room, putting it into her backpack, and softened her makeup. Then she checked her big rolling case and headed for the Metro.

She hoped she was doing the right thing. She thought back to that day in June and the doll-like little creature with her ravaged face saying, “I lunch almost every single day at Chez Jimmy. It is my tradition.”

Please, please,
she thought fervently,
let it still be!

She had scribbled down the address of Chez Jimmy and found it easily. From there she just had to walk around a little until she found the apartment house. It was a snap, as Monsieur Couret was outside holding the door open for a couple who were leaving when she approached on the opposite side of the street. She kept walking, turning around a block later to double back, then crossing the street to a small café anyone walking to the restaurant from the apartment would pass.

Now she had to hope the shock of her son kicking the bucket hadn’t done in the indomitable Marie Héloise and that she hadn’t switched loyalties from her favorite eatery.

It was noon when Anna sat down at a table by the front window and ordered a pot of tea. It was half past twelve and she was nursing the dregs when the woman she sought walked slowly by, elegant as she had been when they’d met, in a navy-and-white suit Anna just knew was a genuine Chanel from Coco’s time.

Sometimes you get lucky,
she thought when she entered Chez Jimmy about fifteen minutes later, Madame Barton’s table in her line of vision. She walked straight over. “Madame Barton,
bonjour
. You might not remember me—”

“
Mais oui
, I recall. I’m one of the old who pride themselves on their memory. But what brings you to Chez Jimmy, Madame Wallingham?”

“Oh, please, it’s Anna. I was in Paris for a meeting and I remembered your saying how delicious the food here was.”

“Did I?” The old woman gave Anna a cool look that said “balderdash!” but then smiled gently to indicate she didn’t care. “Then you must join me.” She motioned to the chair across from the banquette where she sat.
“S’il vous plaît.”

Anna didn’t bother with the menu, just asked Madame Barton what was good and ordered the halibut Provençal she suggested and a glass of wine. Then she cut to the chase.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the loss of your son,” she said. “I thought he was a very kind man.”

“Kind, yes.” Madame Barton shook her head. “But foolish. Pierre was always foolish.”

“Did you go to London for the memorial service? I wanted to, but—”

“I wouldn’t cross a
cobblestone
, much less an ocean, to go to anything arranged by that woman. I rue the day Pierre met her.”

“I didn’t realize you weren’t close,” Anna lied.

“Get close to Marina?” She snorted. “That would be like cuddling a python, my dear. She’s strong. Perhaps even deadly. She didn’t need to physically kill Pierre; she drove him to his death from overwork and worry. But you worked for him, Anna,
non
?” she asked.

“Not for very long,” she said, which was, of course, the truth. “It was just one project. I found Mrs. Barton—”

“Très froide?”

“Comme glace,”
she managed to pull from her rusty French.

“More so. So cold and hard that ice could take lessons from her.”

They were silent as the waiter delivered their food. Then, before reaching for her knife and fork, Anna asked, “But the boys? She’ll let you see them?”

To her shock, Madame Barton snorted again, more loudly this time. “The boys! They’re nothing to me and should have been nothing to Pierre. Don’t look so stunned, my dear. They weren’t his. Pierre’s precious twins are the sons of some drug dealer who died of a heroin overdose. Luckily for them, Marina’s mother is a doting
grand-mère
because Marina’s maternal instincts are those of a cockroach. Pierre was so besotted, he couldn’t see how common she is. You see, for all her airs, Marina’s no more than the ruthless offspring of a corrupt Communist apparatchik who plotted his way into owning a chemical factory that Marina, with Pierre’s help, stole out from under him.”

Of course. Anna figuratively slapped her forehead: the boys weren’t his. That’s why the wedding date was so long after the birth of the children.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” Madame Barton blinked away tears. “But I did love him, and I haven’t been able to speak to anyone about it.”

“And he loved you, I know. The whole
YOU
NGER venture was for you.”

“Did he tell you that? He wanted to get rich selling the fountain of youth because of his mother?”

“Well, he did say that after your husband, um, left, you were determined to be more youthful and, um—”

“And turned myself into a monster? Don’t be silly, child. Pierre’s father was the one obsessed with youth.” She gestured toward her face. “
He
did this. Oh, not himself; he was no surgeon. But the surgeon he hired wasn’t much of one, either. Jasper told me I was too old looking for a successful man such as he’d become. I had to look younger or he’d divorce me. He hired an incompetent doctor, then he left me to live with the results.”

“That’s dreadful!” She was as stunned by Pierre’s lies as by his father’s cruelty. “How can you be so calm?”

“It was a long time ago.” Madame Barton shrugged. “The past is past. I put the cream on my hands because it meant so much to Pierre. He was sure he was going to be a billionaire, and he wanted so desperately to live up to what he considered his father’s genius. Then, too, Marina made him feel like a failure, spending all his money, living beyond their means, even pushing him to overpay for the company that had invented
YOU
NGER so no one else would get it first. Money is all she loves, that one.” She looked enormously sad and, in Anna’s eyes, no longer grotesque. “And she turned him into a liar, a man who would lie about his mother just to convince a woman to work for him.”

They spoke little during the remainder of their lunch, for which Madame Barton insisted upon paying. “I’m an old woman with no one,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll stay alive as long as possible to keep that shrew from owning the whole business and in the hopes of seeing her punished.” She smiled gently. “Anna, I don’t know what brought you here. Perhaps one day you’ll tell me. But I doubt you came here by chance, and I wish you well in finding what you’re seeking.” She took an old-fashioned calling card from her Chanel handbag. “Keep this. And I hope I will hear from you or see you again.”

“I promise you will, Madame.” She stood to go, then leaned down and gave Marie Héloise Barton an embrace with a kiss for each cheek. “I hope doing that wasn’t ‘common.
’”

“Not at all,
chérie
. Not at all.”

Anna hurried back to the station and rejoiced at getting the last single sleeping couchette on the train leaving at 7:45 p.m. Then she headed for Galeries Lafayette. She’d be seeing David in a few days. She could use some chic clothes, and where better to shop than the most fashionable city in the world, where only one elderly woman knew where Anna Wallingham was today.

Before going back to the station, she found an ATM and withdrew the daily maximum from both her Anna Wallingham account in the States and Tanya Avery’s in London. She’d been avoiding ATMs to leave no digital trail, but if her hunter or hunters found out she’d been in Paris through being able to track her withdrawals, it would get them no closer to where she would be by morning. So what if someone found out she’d met with Pierre’s mother? She wasn’t wanted by the police—at least not yet—and she was about to make her last dash toward freedom.

She felt temporarily safe enough to eat dinner in the train’s dining car, the old-fashioned, romantic kind, with starched tablecloths, uniformed waiters, haute cuisine, and prices to match. But she refused to nibble another stale sandwich, and with the withdrawals from the ATMs in France, she would more than get by.

She started
Mother Night
again, with her coffee, and kept reading afterward. It didn’t upset her tonight. Lunch with Marie Héloise had lifted her spirits, not only because the other woman was an inspiration, but because what she’d learned strengthened her conviction that Marina Barton was the key. If she could figure out the connection between Marina and Martin Kelm, she might yet discover why people had died and who had killed them.

She jumped up when the alarm peeped at half past four and prepared herself to face once again the bleakness of Milan’s Central Station, even less salubrious surroundings before dawn, since so many of its wee-hour denizens were the drunk and the disturbed. But she could eat a pastry and drink a cappuccino as soon as the coffee bars opened and get on the first express train to Rome, arriving while it was still morning.

She was impatient now. She had a lot of thoughts about what was going on at BarPharm and needed a sounding board, a part she was counting on David to play. After a month on the run, she wanted to make Rome her last stop. Life had turned into a bad movie; she was ready for the wrap party.

Anna had expected the Eternal City to have changed since she’d last been there, but, looking up hotels in her guidebook, she discovered there were still sensibly priced small hostelries in the middle of what had always been the stratospherically high-rent district around the Spanish Steps. Because she was afraid to use her own passport and had no credit cards for the imaginary Maria Kelm, she hadn’t been able to prebook, but when she called the one closest to Piazza di Spagna from a station pay phone, she was told they had rooms.

She took a taxi there, and after looking at several rooms, decided on a twin, rather than a double for single use, because it would be the most spacious and least “bedroomy” place for her and David to meet without leaving the hotel. The desk clerk—a gallant, mustachioed older man who introduced himself as Mario—was happy to recommend a place in the midst of this rich-tourist oasis where locals dined, and she went out again after unpacking and showering. This was what she thought of as the fool’s paradise part of life on the run: she always felt safest when she first hit town, sure no one was nipping at her heels yet.

She strolled through the high-rent district. When she first caught sight of her reflection in Prada’s window on Via Condotti, she didn’t recognize the woman in black jodhpurs and a dark coat, black curls falling around her face, with the blood-red lips and slashes of dark rouge of a 1950s B-movie siren.

Mario’s suggestion couldn’t have been better. Refreshingly rustic and reasonably priced for being in the midst of Rome’s designer outposts, Trattoria da Giggi was undeniably charming, but what made it most appealing to Anna were its long rows of tables filled with families, shoppers, businessmen—all manner of Italians along with the odd tourist or two—sitting cheek by jowl with strangers while eating huge plates of pasta and Roman specialties like salted codfish and sausage with beans. The people next to Anna at the table spoke English and were planning to go to the States for their next vacation. She took refuge in chatting; if anyone searching for Tanya Avery or Anna Wallingham had wandered in, they might not even have noted the hard-faced brunette dining with friends.

When she got back to the hotel, the softer pillow she’d requested from Mario was on her bed. She propped herself up and worked on adding her conversation with Madame Barton to her notes. For dinner, she ate the fresh
insalata Caprese
she’d picked up on the way back from lunch, washed down with a glass of overpriced
vino bianco
from the minibar. She fell into a deep slumber, dreaming she was on a train hurtling nonstop through the farmlands and cities of country after country, with no preordained terminus. Even asleep, she was aware that she didn’t care. She just slept on, lulled by the gently rocking motion of the car on the tracks.

She awaited David’s arrival with anxiety and eagerness. With each passing day, she longed for human contact. Mario was off the next few days, and the woman filling in at the desk had no interest in, or pleasantries for, Anna, who scurried out briefly for lunch, her backpack loaded up for security, so the maid could tidy the room. She went out sometimes with the wig, sometimes with her hat pulled down, walking watchfully yet quickly through the streets as if she had somewhere to go.