"You are delusional." After a short silence, she said, “Aside from everything, everything else, apart from your wife, your family, how could you do something so unprofessional? Everything your work means to you. You had to think of that. What you believed was right. And what you did is recorded, forever. Tor will talk about it, brag about it, probably. Have you seen the footage?” She knew he didn’t usually watch dailies.

  He nodded. “I saw the rough cut. Just Vaughn and Tor and me.”

  Her heart wrenched and she felt expressions slide off her face in turn, veils pulled away, one after another, until she was left naked and exposed.

  “It was all there.” He looked hopeless. She didn't recognize him.

  Jane watched the starlings outside flutter up from the ground in a wave and resettle, gently as a wedding dress in negative, billowing down church steps.

  "All of you having sex with another woman?"

  "The characters…” He trailed off.

  “Can you tell me one thing?”

  “I’ll try.”

  She turned from the window, resting her eyes on him. “You had this grand epiphany. Why did you feel it with her and not with me?”

  His head jerked back, an involuntary revulsion. “Oh.”

  “You locked it all up. And what do I get. I get to hear the replay afterward. I could smack you.” The humiliation crept up and leapt upon her, wrestling her in its grasp. She fought it, struggling for control of her emotions, her dignity; failing. With a deep inhale, she let in as much cool air as she could and hissed out the fury, a snakelike, atavistic, “Ssssssss.” Her eyes teared in anger as she blinked and stared at him, her object of rage, cause of mortification. Her husband.

  “Get out.” She turned and grabbed his keys from the hooks on the wall; threw them at him, hard as she could. He caught them, reflexes sharp as always. “Don’t take a damn thing. Just leave.” She turned and ran up the stairs. It was over and she was glad. She burst into tears.

  Marta knocked, loud and firm. She wasn’t expected, but then, was she ever? The house was dark. She could tiptoe around the back and see if Jane’s truck were there. If no one were around, that opened up whole new possibilities for the afternoon. Marta’s hand sidled into her bag, reaching in to fondle her Nikon. Before she could get too far with her intimacies, the door opened. Someone stood there, a tall, pale someone, dark-eyed and dramatic; wild-haired, wrapped in a crinkly ivory silk dress.

  “Marta.” She turned and swept away from the door, leaving it open. Startled, Marta followed into the gloom of the house. The woman walked half-way up the stairs and turned.

  “Jane? Is that you?”

  “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a heroine in exile?”

  “I don’t recognize you. You…you’ve done something to yourself.”

  Jane didn’t reply. She turned and disappeared up the stairs. Marta stood in shocked glee for the briefest of moments before she followed posthaste. She’d never been upstairs before, exactly the place she most wanted to see. At the top of the stairs she turned at the landing and looked down a long hallway. Jane vanished into a room at the end of the hall. Marta crept down the Persian-carpeted floor, camera at the ready. Passing by the temptation of opened doors along the way, she took one step up at the end, pushed open the final door, and walked into light. Blinking, she stood still, peering around. The room, which must be the master bedroom, spread the width of the house. Gauzy-curtained windows lined most of the three sides of the room, letting in soft, shifting light. The room was made up in white, with touches of blue, pale blond wood beneath. Jane wasn’t there.

  Marta took quick pictures of the bed. A sound from behind a door drew her attention and she pushed on, past that door to the bath, where she found her quarry. Jane sat on the floor, holding her arms, looking unlike herself, tragedy written on her face. She was transformed by dramatic makeup and elaborate hair. Marta sat on the edge of an oval tub opposite her. Her washed out, white-powdered face: dark, shadowed eyes, the even slashes of her brows, pale dry mouth, the full rich hugeness of her hair leaping up and back in a wild confusion. Marta did what she knew best. She brought her camera to her eye and pushed the automatic shutter. Jane’s eyes flew to her, burning with a hatred Marta had never seen in them before. Marta took five more shots in quick succession: slam-slam-slam-slam-slam. Jane looked away, uninterested.

  What’s wrong with you?” Marta was pleased she’d gotten the shot.

  “I don’t care, anymore.”

  “You don’t, eh?”

  “I care about Tam. That’s it.”

  Marta leaned toward her. “Are you on something?” She studied her eyes. Her pupils looked huge. She’d never suspected Jane of anything that way.

  “Yeah. It’s called reality. Straight up.”

  “Why are you dressed like this? Your hair, your face.”

  “You forget.”

  “I forget?”

  “What I used to be. What I am. I’m something other than that, you know.” She indicated a family picture on the wall.

  Marta was lost in thought, looking at her. “You’re so lovely, all done up. You should do this more often. I’d like to take real pictures of you. The light’s not bad in here.” She looked up. “Ah, the skylights.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “Oh? Guess not.” Jane had hardly looked at her while they were talking. Now she looked pointedly at the camera. Marta shifted and tucked it back in her bag.

  Jane turned her head away. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

  “Really. And why is that? Why’d you let me in in the first place if it was just to be rude? You’re a strange bird, Mrs. Reilly. Did anyone ever tell you that? One moment all conciliatory, the next all prickly. What goes on in that head of yours? What is it you want from me? Why do you let me in at all.”

  Again Jane turned to her, her eyes whipped up in anger at first, then growing wide and soft, full of some unmentionable sorrow.

  “Look at us. What are we? I hardly feel like a woman anymore. I had to see myself as someone else. I had to get away from me. Do you understand?”

  Marta ran her tongue around the outside of her teeth and nodded. She looked at Jane for a few moments longer, longed to take more pictures of her as she looked at that moment—not as an absolute of beauty by some standards—but as someone she had come to care about, to see as someone good and always trying. Today she was magnificent and Marta wanted it captured. It was a moment in time she didn’t want to forget: Jane as a wild Amazon, a sibyl, as her own alter-ego. The hidden self she couldn’t show to the world. When Jane’s head was turned away Marta had her hand on the camera, having set the correct settings in the bag, and snatched it out for a few more bullet-like hails of photos. Jane got furious then and raised her voice, grabbed Marta’s arm, dragged her out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the door. Without a word she shut the door in Marta’s face.

  She hadn’t asked for the card, though. So the pictures were safe. Marta wondered how they’d turn out. Practically combat conditions in that bathroom. What had gotten into the girl?

  Later the same day, after seeing the shots and fortifying herself with some espresso, Marta showed up again. She had some concern for Jane’s well-being. Jane didn’t even seem surprised to see her. This time she found the Jane she knew, or thought she knew. Her face was bare. Only this Jane seemed a shade of her former self. Selves. Her backcombed mane had been pushed back into a ponytail. She had none of the warrior queen’s strength to battle Marta’s will.

  “I have to get away.”

  They sat at the kitchen table. Marta made some coffee and put it in front of her. Telling Ian to leave, then Marta, had taken every bit of energy Jane had left. She couldn’t stand to think about him. Marta being back in town seemed both ominous but also a source of strength. Jane knew Marta sensed trouble like a bloodhound on old footprints, but she’d never guess. Who would believe the truth? An affair--anyone might guess that. What would they call something like this?

  Marta wasn’t asking a lot of questions. She didn’t even know Ian had been home and left.

  Her hawklike gaze fixed on Jane. “I have it. You need a break. You can use the flat. My place in London.”

  “London.”

  “You’d be private. Give you time to think. It’s near Kensington Gardens—you and Tam could walk there as often as you liked.”

  Jane chewed on her lips. “Kensington Gardens.” She remembered what was in London. Or rather who.

  “I’d like to do something in return for the trouble I’ve caused you. This would be little enough.” Marta sat back in her chair and appeared to have already settled it in her mind.

  “Ian will hop over in a second if I don’t ask him not to.” She was resigned to Marta knowing there was strife between them.

  “So don’t tell him the address.”

  Jane ran her finger down the lines of the grain in the oak table. She picked up her ceramic coffee cup and took it to the sink to wash and dry. After hanging the cup with others like it on a hook under the cabinet, she turned and leaned against the counter, her expression set.

  “I’ll go. Can you get me the keys?”

  “I can give it to you right now.” Marta dug into her bag and rooted out a star keychain with a half dozen keys on it. She sorted through and slid off one, which she snapped on the table. “It’s yours for as long as you need it. I don’t have to be there. Use it as you see fit.”

  “What are you so happy about?”

  “I’m not. No, I take that back. I am. Aside from the fact that you look miserable, I think it will be good for you. Good medicine.”

  “I don’t know how I got to this point.” Jane studied the greening field behind the house, the swaying trees edging the lake. Not a bird in sight. A magic bird, that was what she needed, to swoop down from above and lift her back into the sky. “Somehow I’m trusting you.”

  Marta was silent, looking down at the key shining on the table. She shifted and spoke with apparent reluctance. “You don’t have to worry. Listen, I’ve got a job to do, it’s true. You and I have a conflict of interest. Somebody’s going to find out you’re there. But I won’t tell them, all right? I can do that much for you.”

  Jane turned away from the window.

  “Don’t wear sunglasses or anything at the airport in case there are any photogs trolling about. That just tips them off. I think you’ll get in under the radar. No one will recognize you. You’re not a celebrity. And you never go anywhere. They’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to recognize the likes of you.” She snickered. “If they manage you at Heathrow I say they deserve the shot.”

  Jane stared into space.

  “They won’t make you, don’t worry. Such bloody remoras, the lot of them. Don’t panic and you’ll blend. But, Jane.” Marta hesitated. She seemed to be forcing herself to speak further. “Once they…”

  Jane roused herself. “What?”

  “Ah…nothing. Just be yourself. Low profile.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  Marta sucked her lip. “Right.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ONCE MARTA HAD given her directions to the flat and left with reluctance, Jane packed. Mechanically she folded sweaters, trousers, jeans, and underwear all into the suitcase she hadn’t used in a long time. Finally it lay full on her bed. Last she tucked her travel alarm clock into a sock and put it in a side pocket. The clock had been a gift from Ian, from a time when they thought she’d keep traveling with him, as she had in the beginning. She would pack her toiletries in the morning. Tam’s things took no time at all to pack. She had a rolling suitcase, too, of a smaller size. Since she wasn’t there to ask what toys or books she wanted Jane just put in the recent favorites and counted on buying new things if they needed them. She didn’t want to be weighed down with a lot of luggage.

  “Where are we going again?” Tam asked for the third time, after she got home and was swooped into the seldom used Land Rover, before she could formulate a question. The barn was filled with vehicles Ian tinkered with in his off time. The Land Rover was the one Jane liked best and was, relatively speaking, the least conspicuous. She wasn’t making her getaway in the huge pickup or the touchy Shelby, the two other most likely possibilities. The cars got only more outlandish from there. Ian could pick up the Rover later if he wanted it.

  “London, honey.”

  “Where is Da? Why isn’t he coming?”

  “He gets to stay home this time. We get to go on a trip and he’ll stay and take care of the house. Won’t that be fun? We’re switching places. We’ll get to tell him all our adventures.” She felt her voice waver and tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

  “We’re going to Dublin.”

  “No, honey, that’s where Da is from. This is LON-don.”

  “Have I been there before?”

  “No, sweetheart.”

  “I went there when I was a baby. I remember.”

  Jane glanced in the rearview mirror at Tam in the backseat, who was leaning as far forward as the shoulder strap of her carseat would let her. Jane relaxed her rigid grip and focused back on the road. “What do you remember?”

  “There were lions. And they went around and ate some people who weren’t looking. And some babies in their baby carriages, too. And nobody could stop them. Not even the police.”

  “My goodness.” The prickles she had begun to feel at the back of her neck as they finally got on the empty entrance ramp to the highway, closer to the airport, subsided as she wondered what to say to Tam.

  “Yep. They ate those people right up.” She rocked in her seat with grim satisfaction.

  “Where we’re going it’s perfectly safe. There aren’t any wild lions in the London we’re going to. It’s mostly people. And maybe dogs and cats. The occasional fish in a bowl. All right? Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Tam bounced her head against the seat repeatedly. “I’m hungry. Hungry as a LION.”

  “We’ll have something at the airport.”

  Tam kicked the back of the front seat.

  “Stop that, please.”

  “I’m hungry n-o-w.”

  “We don’t have time to stop so you’ll have to wait.”

  Tam started, uncharacteristically, to cry.

  “Tam, we’ll be there in 45 minutes.” Jane heard her voice getting high, strained and angry. “I’m sorry but we can’t stop. Please pull yourself together so I can concentrate on the road.”

  Tam kept on with a few half-hearted whimpers, then silence. Jane checked in the mirror. She had fallen asleep.

  The miles rolled by. Jane deepened her breath to keep herself calm. By the time she pulled into longterm parking and pushed the button for a ticket, stamped with their entry time, her collar and the hair at the back of her neck were damp. Getting out of the car, pulling out the suitcases, checking that she had everything, Jane piled the cases next to the car in a hurry. She woke Tam and got her unbelted, out of the car, and positioned next to her case. They would have to wait for the shuttle to pick them up. Tam stood next to her, one hand gripping her suitcase handle.

  Each stage brought them closer to the plane. They were going to have to get on a plane at the end of this rigamarole. The shuttle, check-in, the wait to get through security. As she took off her loafers and placed them in a gray plastic bin to go through the security X-ray machine, she felt like she was going past a point of no return. Staring at everyone’s feet in line next to her, she saw how vulnerable they looked without their shoes. A few anticipatory sparks crinkled up her spine, but she talked herself through them and forged ahead when it was her turn to go through the scan. She felt the cylindrical pill bottle in the pocket of her trousers. Would she have to take it out and put it in that little gray bowl for keys, or could she go through the little security arbor with it hidden? It wasn’t metal.

  Tam had perked up a bit but was still sleepy and hungry. Jane practically dragged her down to their gate, half-carrying her, feeling like she was encumbered with a large octopus, and bought Tam a pretzel, apple, and water. When she checked the time she saw they still an hour and a half until their flight. She checked in at their gate, making sure of its location and the boarding time. The bottle had stayed safely in her pocket the whole time.

  Then, while Tam was chewing on her pretzel and they were walking back away from the gate considering what to do, Jane remembered the Key Club. It was a private club for frequent flyers and special visitors to the airport who needed facilities. She knew Ian went there at times and she had been inside once. Perhaps if she went in and mentioned his name? It would be peace and quiet for the next hour, which she needed. Nothing bad could happen in a Key Club. She headed in the direction she thought it was. Tam now trotted beside.

  She passed by it twice, but then there it was; a blue door with a circle of stars decorating it. After pressing the round button to the right of the door she was admitted. Inside, the floor was cool marble and the furnishings elegant and plush. A stark contrast to the noisy, utilitarian airport. She walked up to the chest-high desk in front of her. The woman behind it, with smooth wavy auburn hair, dressed in a navy suit, smiled at her. “Can I help you?”

  “I believe my husband is a member.”

  “Do you have your husband’s card?”

  “No. He’s the one who does all the traveling. Can you look it up?”

  “That’s no problem. If you just give me the phone number I can look it up for you.”

  “Oh…okay.” Jane rolled through Ian’s numbers in her head. There was his personal cell, his work cell which he gave to people he didn’t want to have the other one, the home landline, and the accountant’s number he sometimes gave out as a business number. Which one would he have given in this case?

  “Excuse me, but is there any way you could check on it by name? I’m just not sure which number he would have given.”

  “It’s a national database. We keep records by number, not by name. It’s okay, I can check all the numbers. It’s really no problem.” The receptionist had shiny burnt sienna lips. Her eyebrows were perfect arches. The Key Club must keep up a pretty high standard, Jane thought, despite herself. She judged those who judged by appearances, but she caught herself doing it with uncomfortable frequency.