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Lilah

Lilah sat on the edge of the guest room bed, waiting for the first rays of sunshine to peek through the window. This room was a small one in the back of Marina’s house, probably a former servant’s bedroom, nestled under the eaves. In the end, they’d drunk most of the bottle of tequila and Marina had insisted that they both stay over. Lilah had lain awake, listening to the sounds of the old house around her, the sound of pigeons shuffling on the roof, the distant rattle of Godzilla in the kitchen below.

She felt clear-headed—much more clear-headed than she should feel.

They believed her. These two women who she’d just met. They believed her. They had even offered to track Darren down. No questions, no doubts, no gaslighting—it had been instant, one hundred percent support.

She could stop being scared.

She could do what she needed to do.

It was light enough now that Lilah could get up, retrieve her bum bag and Marina’s silk scarf from where they lay beside the bed, put them on, and slip barefoot and quiet out of the room. The other bedroom doors were open; she peeked inside. Marina lay in the center of a king-sized bed in the primary bedroom, wearing only bra, underwear, and socks. She was snoring softly. The next three rooms clearly belonged to the children: one neat, one chaotic, one with a cot and a rocking chair. In the guest room at the front of the house, Opal was also fast asleep, still in her workout gear, with the pillow beside her slightly reddened with lipstick marks.

They’d said they had stories like hers, that had happened to them or to other people that they knew. Somehow, she’d always thought that other women, those who were attractive or popular or confident, moved through life more easily than she did.

But maybe they didn’t. Maybe every woman had a hidden shadow self that was full of shame and fear. Not because they deserved it, but because it had been imposed upon them.

Was that why Bev and Gabby and Elena hadn’t believed her? They saw their shame embodied in her shame, and it was easier for them to deny it?

She went down the grand staircase, trailing her fingers along the glossy banister, watching them move through the shards of colored light cast through the stained-glass window over the front door. In the kitchen, the detritus of their night still littered the table: plates, glasses, wilted salad, an emptied box of chocolate truffles. There was a strong scent of tequila. The hamster was running around its wheel, as usual. She found a small carrot in the fridge and poked it through the bars of its cage. Godzilla stopped, sniffed, scampered to it, stood on his back legs, and started gnawing away, stowing chunks of carrot in his cheeks.

With the sound of the hamster wheel stopped, Lilah could hear a distinct thumping and muttering through the baby monitor. Zachary was awake.

She unbolted the door to the cellar and carefully made her way down. She was not one for breaking rules, but did the rules even count anymore, now that Opal had broken several?

The thumping got louder the closer she got to the secret door behind it. She’d never operated the catch before, so it took a little fumbling before she got it (this was disappointing; she would have thought that fiction would have prepared her better for discovering hidden passageways and alternate universes). As soon as the shelf slid to one side, Zachary started yelling as well as pounding.

“Opal!” he yelled. “Marina! Hey! What fucking time is it! This toilet stinks!”

This was the first time she’d heard him speaking since his phone call two evenings ago, when he’d rung to tell her he was working late. Of course she now knew this had been an excuse to come here and see Marina instead.

The fury in his voice made her cringe. It drove home that the literatureloving, attentive, considerate man she’d believed she was engaged to was actually a fragile shell disguising the real Zachary, an illusion that could be shattered at any moment. It was only luck and timing, and probably his design, that had stopped him from revealing his true self to her.

“Zachary?” she said softly. She didn’t have to fake the tremble in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“Lilah! Oh, thank God! I need to talk to you, sweetheart! Please open the door!”

She opened her bum bag and closed her hand around what was inside. “I have to stay quiet,” she said. “I don’t want the others to hear me.”

“Are you going to let me out, darling? I knew you wouldn’t listen to the poisonous things that those other women told you about me. You’re so faithful and true. I can explain everything. Just give me a chance, please.”

“I want to talk first. Can you come right up to the door? I’ll open the hatch.”

“Anything, my love.”

“Are you there? Come right up close.”

“I’m here. Oh, I can’t wait to see your sweet face.”

“I can’t wait to see yours.” Her words were truer than he knew. She put her hand on the hatch, ready to open it. With the other, she held up one of the two phones she had found in his jacket on the night Marina had pushed him down the stairs and slipped into her bum bag when no one was watching.

She’d taken them initially because she didn’t trust Marina or Opal. Normally she would never look at someone else’s phone. It was like snooping through their underwear drawer. But it was the only thing she could think of to do at the time that might give her evidence that Zachary was guilty or innocent of what the other two accused him of.

Now, she didn’t need that evidence. She believed Marina and Opal. But she was still curious.

She slid the hatch open. Zachary’s face filled it, close enough for her to see the stubble that had grown on his usually clean-shaven cheeks and chin.

“Darling,” he said.

His phone recognized his face and unlocked.

“I think someone’s moving around upstairs,” said Lilah. “I’ll be back soon.”

She shut and bolted the hatch again, slid the secret door shut, and ran back upstairs to the kitchen, where she perched on a chair and began scrolling through Zachary’s phone, keeping one ear open for any signs of anyone stirring other than Godzilla.

She’d been surprised to find not one but two phones in his jacket pocket, both switched off. One was his normal phone, a black Galaxy. She recognized it but in truth, she’d only rarely seen it. Zachary used to say he hated nothing more than people who were on their phones all the time. He would always turn off his phone when they were together, though he texted her often when they were apart. Now, she could see both of those actions as part of his pattern of control and deception.

The second phone was an iPhone. Both were the latest models—Zachary wouldn’t have anything less, even for a burner phone, which is what she suspected this second one was. Both worked on facial recognition, but she knew she’d only have enough time to open one of them before he saw what she was doing, so she’d chosen the burner. She braced herself to find soppy messages to Marina, or maybe yet another woman. Online dating apps with multiple profiles. Or God forbid: sexting.

What she found instead was forty-six missed calls from someone called S.

There were no voicemails or messages from this person. There were only two text messages on the phone, both of them from the network provider confirming a pay-as-you-go contract. When she looked back at the call log, the only completed calls registered were to and from this same number, identified only with S. They went back about six months. At first they were infrequent, about one a week, only lasting a few minutes each. Then there were a few longer conversations in May, and a spate of frequent short phone calls in June.

With a chill, she saw that the days with the most recently answered calls were June 12 and 13. The day her dad was murdered, and the day after.

“These are the worst days of my life and you’re spending them talking with another woman?” muttered Lilah, stabbing at the phone with her finger. She remembered that Zachary had excused himself several times the day after her father’s death, to fetch her drinks and food that she didn’t ask for or want. Each time he’d come back with his sympathetic face and his supportive arms and assured her that he loved her, that they would get through this together.

She felt sick.

The forty-six missed calls were all since this Thursday night. Little did S know that her perfect boyfriend was in the company of three other women.

She should tell the others. Whoever this S was, she deserved to know that she was being conned and that her boyfriend was potentially violent. But it was a tricky thing to do via phone. Maybe they should set up another meeting. Maybe the three of them should do more digging, look for more victims. After they set Zachary free, they could set up a support group or something. They couldn’t go to the police, obviously, but there were other ways of stopping someone from victimizing others. Look at the MeToo movement. When women started speaking openly about the men who abused them, the men weren’t able to get away with it anymore.

She thought about what S might be like. She was most likely on her own. Zachary seemed to pick vulnerable women. Whoever she was, she was probably frantic with worry. Zachary had disappeared without a trace for days. S must have arranged to meet up with him on one of those days, and then he didn’t turn up, without so much as a phone call to explain why. If it were Lilah, she’d be going nuts. She’d picture him dead in a ditch, unconscious in a hospital. (She would, before this, never have pictured him trapped in an underground bunker.) This S might have called all the hospitals to check. She might have called the police to report him missing. The sleepless nights, the overwhelming anxiety. Forty-six calls!

It was wrong to impersonate someone else but not when it was for a good cause, right? Lilah quickly keyed in a text message:

I’m okay. Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch soon.

She considered signing with a Z but maybe he was using a different name with S, one that started with P or something (P for Penis Head). So she added a small lower case x , like Zachary sometimes did in his messages to her, and sent it.

Almost immediately, the phone rang in her hand with a call from S.

She shouldn’t answer it. She shouldn’t answer it. She should not answer it.

She answered it and held it up to her ear without saying anything.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but cute text messages with kisses are not what I’m looking for.”

To her surprise, the voice on the other end was not female. Instead, it was a deep male voice, rough in the throat, with a strong south London accent.

“You said I’d have my money last week,” he continued. “I remember it well. I’ll definitely get it to you, I swear on my life, mate .”

The man did a remarkably good impression of Zachary’s voice: smooth, charming, confident. Then he went back to his rasp.

“I know you have obligations, but don’t we all. I, for example, have a bloody school bill to pay. You agreed, twenty-five grand before the job was done, fifty grand after. I’ve done my part, I took all the risks while you sat pretty. Now I want my money.”

Lilah couldn’t breathe. What? Why did Zachary owe—

“Lost for words? That’s not like you. Listen, you understand, business is business. If I don’t get my fifty grand by five o’clock tonight, it’s going up to seventy-five. I’ve got a reputation, you know? I can’t be seen to do business with people who mock me. Where would that get me, eh? My entire reputation is built on respect. I can’t exactly advertise, with what I do.”

Lilah’s heart felt as if it had stopped beating. A loan shark? A drug dealer? What was Zachary mixed up in?

“And mate, it’s hard for me to say this, it goes against my nature, but a reminder. I do not do this job for fun. You think I like it? I do not. I don’t know what that guy did to you, but to me, he looked like an old man playing with a train set.”

A million years passed.

Lilah was a stone.

“And I’m guessing you don’t want to end up the same place he did,” rumbled S. “It’s rude to threaten, and I wouldn’t take any pleasure in it, so I’m just saying. A word to the wise. Fifty grand, five o’clock, the place we agreed.”

He hung up.