This happens sometimes. People think the downstairs door that leads to my flat has something to do with the bookshop below. It doesn’t. More often than not it will be a tourist who has arrived after the shop has closed but is desperate to buy a rare book before they head to the airport. I’m dressed in short Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas and fluffy socks, my tattooed arm and long bare legs on show, not suitable attire for talking to strangers. I’m comfortable on the sofa. The dog is comfortable. I can’t really be bothered to go all the waydownstairs to deal with someone who has nothing to do with me. So I wait, hoping whoever it is will take a hint and fuck off.
They knock again.
I get up and stomp along the hallway and down the stairs, flinging open the door, ready to take my bad day out on whoever has dared to interrupt it.
“The bookshop is closed,” I say, my words filled with irritation.
A man in a cheap suit smiles at me. “I can see that. I’m looking for Olivia Bird.”
I take a small step back, suddenly aware that I have clearly misjudged this situation, and feeling vulnerable without my normal clothes. He’s middle-aged—on first glance middle-everything—and is carrying a leather briefcase in one hand and a large black umbrella in the other, as though he might have just blown in over the rooftops à la Mary Poppins. He does notlookdangerous, but that does not mean that he isn’t. The world is full of monsters masquerading as normal people who look like you and me.
Nobody knows that I live here. So I don’t understand who this man is or how he knew where to find me. He doesn’t seem threatening, but I don’t plan on taking any chances. I whistle a high note followed by a low note and within seconds Sunday is by my side.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your evening,” the man says, looking a little wary of the large white wolflike creature now staring at him. “Butareyou Olivia Bird?”
“Who wants to know?”
“If you are the Olivia Bird I’ve been looking for then I’m sorry to inform you that a family member has died.”
I don’t have any family.
“Your grandmother passed away a few weeks ago and I am the solicitor she appointed to look after her affairs.”
“I don’t have a grandmother.”
“Everyone has a grandmother,” he says politely. “It’s biologically impossible not to. Just like everyone has a mother. Sorry,” he addsthen, as though he knows what happened to mine, which seems unlikely. Unless what he is saying is true. “I understand parts of the family were estranged, but according to our—very thorough—research, you are your grandmother’s only surviving relative and, well, she left you a little something in a place called Hope Falls. To be honest, she’s left you rather a lot. May I come inside?” he asks, looking more hopeful than he did before.
“No,” I say and close the door in his face.
Because I know he’s lying.
7EDEN
October 30
“I’m telling you the truth,” I say to the young police officer who marched me out of the art gallery and down to the old fisherman’s cottage that serves as the station in Hope Falls. Sergeant Carter, as he introduced himself, looks like he could have been a mediocre film star had he chosen a different path in life. His floppy hair has a habit of falling over his big brown eyes, and his good looks are just as distracting.
He sighs, suddenly looking older than his years and sounding weary for his age.
“You’re telling me thatyouare Eden Fox?”
“Yes.”
“That you live in the house on the hill?”
“Spyglass. Yes.”
“That the exhibition at the gallery tonight is displayingyourwork, and that the artist inside is pretending to be you?”
“Exactly.”
“And that your husband is going along with this elaborate identity theft for reasons you can’t explain?”
“That’s right.”
He looks a little befuddled and I’m guessing this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often in a rural fishing village like Hope Falls.
After an excruciating silence he asks, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
