enough Italian and French to give you an edge over all the other girls who’d plunge a dagger into your back and step into your shoes in a heartbeat given half the chance.’
‘I am not spacing out,’ I reply, a touch of anger creeping into Irina’s husky voice. ‘I’m thinking. There’s a difference.’
Gia snorts. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s always fire. I can’t believe you’d jeopardise your comeback like this! We’ve only been working towards this day for months. Honestly, you are your own worst enemy.’
I feel a surge of irrational fury that makes the fingers of my left hand involuntarily curl into talons. I have to stop myself lifting the judgmental little twerp off the ground by the lapels of her cherry-blossom-patterned kimono and giving her a hard shake. She doesn’t understand how far I’ve come just to get here; how I’ve started to do something that I’ve never been able to do before.
I’m beginning to learn. I’m beginning to accumulate knowledge; to make connections again, however random they may seem to you. Like how I seem to have an immediate geographical fix on where I am right now. And how I’m able to recognise Gia’s accent, even Irina’s. And how I’m walking and talking without feeling an ounce of physical distress. I could have been born in this body. It could be my body. From distal phalanges to metatarsals, from calcaneus to crown, it might almost have been mine, ab initio, from the very beginning. That gap that’s always been present, between thought and deed? It’s dissolving.
But most important of all is the fact that I can remember every second I spent as Lela Neill. She may be alive no longer, save in my memory, but I recall everything that happened when I was her. It’s proof that I’m growing stronger, that I’ve started to circumvent the strange blockages in my mind, those obstacles that the Eight have somehow placed there. In some unholy way, I’ve begun to regenerate. Or mutate. Or evolve. And the process is getting … faster.
I think that, like a machine, I used to be set to delete. That’s why I’ve never been able to remember anything more than impressions really, sixteen, thirty-two, even forty-eight lives out of context. But something’s changed. Some things are beginning to stick.
Or maybe, like acid, like flame, some kind of dangerous contaminant, I’m beginning to burn back through. And what’s more, no one has any idea of the extent to which I’m back. Only me.
No matter how high the Eight might try to build up that wall of thorns around me, from now on, Sleeping Beauty is awake. And she’s angry.
There’s no reason I can’t keep to the plan that I started when I was Lela Neill. The face, the body, even the specifics, may have changed, but there’s nothing to stop me just picking up where I left off. Around me, time always gets misplaced, you know? It runs too fast, runs too slow. I’ve always had a problem with chronology, with the order of things. But starting today, I’m taking control before the sucker gets away from me. I ran out of time when I was Lela, and it’s not going to happen again. As soon as I can get my bearings, figure out what Irina’s story is, work out where the exits are, I’m going to reconnect with Ryan Daley and bust my way out of here.
Gia looks startled when I growl in Irina’s heavy Russian accent, ‘You want to quit? Go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.’
I stalk past her, calling her bluff, and fling open the first door I see. It leads into a spacious walk-in wardrobe containing an ironing board, half a dozen heavy white terry towelling robes, blankets, towels, slippers and umbrellas, all embossed with a fancy, crested hotel logo. You could comfortably house a small African village inside the space, but there’s not a single scrap of clothing I could actually wear. I shut the door disgustedly.
‘What are you, uh, doing?’ Gia says uncertainly, as I try another door to the left of the first one. Again, I don’t bother with the light switch. I don’t need to.
I find myself staring into a luxury all-marble bathroom with its own flat screen TV and built-in sound system. It’s covered in enough personal effects to bury a person alive, but there’s nothing in here remotely resembling anything to wear, and even I draw the line at walking the streets in my pyjamas. Only crazies do that.
I might hear voices in my head, but that doesn’t make me crazy.
I slam shut the bathroom door and turn to face the girl on the bed. ‘Where are my clothes?’ I demand.
Gia starts to laugh so wildly, she sounds like she’s crying.
‘Where are my clothes?’ I say again, fiercely. ‘I need to go out. There are things I have to do.’
Top of the list? Locate one of those all-night internet joints I used to frequent when I was Lela. I need to use that seething, wholly man-made ‘web’ I still can’t get my old-school head around to draw Ryan to me, the way I did before. Across oceans, across time zones.
In all this time, I’ve never been able to find Luc and he’s never been able to find me. But Ryan, at least, has a physical location on this earth. He comes from a small town called Paradise that’s as far from it as it’s possible to get. But it’s a real place, perched on an ugly stretch of beach in a country I don’t even have a name for yet. I’d been forced to leave Lela’s body before I’d managed to find that out.
Even if Ryan hasn’t reached home yet, he’s going to be checking his emails. I can get a lock on him again, I know it.
Gia’s still laughing. ‘Where are my clothes!’ she whoops. ‘Listen to yourself! You sure you’re “clean”?’
I frown, still unable to see the joke.
Gia leads me out of my bedroom and into a massive sitting room that’s decorated in more of the same riotous rococo excess. There are too many occasional tables, mirrors, knick-knacks, table lamps, armchairs, divans, vases of scented, white blooms, hand-knotted silk rugs and footstools for one lone skinny female like me to use.
We pass a coffee table surrounded by deep, winged armchairs, and an elegant dining table with eight chairs around it that’s been placed beneath a set of windows facing out onto the street to catch the light and the incredible view. I’m in part of an old Milanese palazzo, I realise, looking around. The proportions of the rooms are baronial. Beneath all the unrelenting froufrou, the place has old bones.
‘Is all this all … mine?’ I murmur.
‘We’re sharing it,’ Gia says over her shoulder, ‘like we always do. Although you always make sure you give me the smallest room in the suite.’
We come to a stop outside two doors on the other side of the vast sitting area that are painted a discreet olive-grey colour, with inset door panels outlined in gold leaf. Both doors are closed.
Gia points at the one on the right. ‘That one’s mine and it’s off-limits,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘The last time you asked to borrow one of my vintage Jean Desses cocktail dresses, I found myself at Paris Fashion Week staring at a photo of it on the back of one of your supermodel “friends” at a hotel nightclub opening in Miami. You know, the one who always forgets to put on her underwear before she goes out. You swore you had no idea how it got there and when I finally got it back after threatening legal action, the dress had part of its skirt missing.’
I look at her blankly. She’d lost me at the word vintage and she knows it.
Gia sighs, opening the door on the left and flicking on the light. ‘Does this answer your earlier question?’ she says with heavy sarcasm.
I can see why she’s incredulous. The vast room has had all of its furniture removed and is filled with matching bespoke luggage in an expensive-looking black, tan and white chevron pattern. There would have to be sixteen pieces of the stuff at least, and the initials I.D.Z. are emblazoned across the front of each one in large, bright green script, with a matching navy blue and green racing stripe running down the centre of each piece.
‘Flashy,’ I drawl in Irina’s husky voice.
Gia gives me an odd look. ‘These are just your “essentials”,’ she replies. ‘We had a screaming match over the six other suitcases I forced you to leave at home because we’re only supposed to be here for, like, five days.’
Spilling out of every open case is a wealth of coats, dresses, jackets, tops, skirts, trousers, shorts, sweaters, wraps, jeans, leggings, boots and shoes in every colour and texture imaginable, along with handfuls of filmy lingerie. It’s a sea of leather, denim, fur, feathers, couture, vintage and velvet. Irina is clearly not averse to a sequin. The room is like an Aladdin’s cave of high-end apparel. There’s enough clothing here to dress an army of women for a week without anyone having to lift a finger to do laundry.
When I think about Carmen Zappacosta’s one dingy sports bag, her little boy’s clothes and her much-loved flat, grey toy bunny with its fur all worn-down in places, its reattached glass eyes, I feel almost misty. Ditto Lela Neill’s haphazardly stored collection of threadbare second-hand clothing, most of it past its use-by date the first time around and dyed an unbecoming black, green or purple.
How could one person have so many … things?
