Chapter Seven: From deceit bred by necessity

Davida fought against the urge to gasp, even as part of her mind was watching with detachment as it turned reality into fiction. The deliberate trembling of Isabelle's fan masked the entirely involuntary trembling of her hand. She couldn't catch her breath. The world seemed to be closing in about her and her thoughts were brittle confusion. Sir Charles was close enough that she might reach her gloved hand out to touch him, and yet with strangers all about them she could not speak. Who knew which of those strangers was an enemy, and what her words might betray to them?

Oh just for once, shut up! I need to think!

Davida turned quickly through the doorway at the end of the hall, into the lobby; but rather than head for the public computer terminals she stopped at the reception. The young receptionist looked up from sorting a small pile of large envelopes, and smiled. Davida gave the girl full marks for making it a genuine expression rather than a politeness.

Davida resisted the urge to look behind her in order to find out who might be within earshot. "I'm planning some longer trips to other parts of the island- can I pay for my full stay now, and then I don't need to worry about when exactly I come and go? I'd like to take some of my money from the safe as well, please."

The receptionist busied herself with the arrangements, and Davida did take a look around her during the pause when there was nothing for her to do but wait, deciding that it would seem natural enough. There was nothing unusual that she could see, however. No figures lurking suspiciously, no faces she recognised. When her safe deposit box arrived, she started to leaf through the fat white envelopes within, debating how best to proceed, when she became aware that the receptionist was giving her a slightly puzzled, slightly questioning look. "Is there a problem?" Davida asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.

"Excuse me for asking, Miss Dunnock, but do you ever use another name?" the girl asked.

Davida hesitated a moment, wondering if this was a moment of recognition by a reader, or something else. She leaned in a little over the counter. "I write under the name Dunn," she admitted quietly, "but I'm here anonymously." Anonymous or not, her photograph was on the last page of every one of her novels for anyone to see, if anybody was that anxious to identify her.

The girl smiled and held out a large and somewhat heavy white envelope. "Then this is for you."

Davida took it cautiously, but the stamps were British and the date from immediately before her trip. She'd given people the name of her hotel before she left. It wasn't that suspicious that someone had sent her something here. To be on the safer side, however, she opened the envelope then and there in the hotel lobby, peeling up the flap and peering within. A handful of glossy magazines, all alike, peered back at her, along with a folded sheet of headed paper. Davida knew what it was now. Trevor Buckley, bless him, was always very good about which name he used when he sent her things, but the publications that her short stories appeared in were rather more erratic.

Davida stared down at the largely plain white envelope, and an idea came to her of exactly what she was going to do with five complimentary copies of the magazine. It took little legerdemain to switch the packet of magazines for the packet holding her passport and other essential documents. From another of the envelopes she openly took traveller's cheques and cash, and then slid the remainder in with the passport while seemingly putting them back in the deposit box. It was quite easy then to pick up the packet she wanted, tucking one face against herself so that the lack of address wouldn't show.

"Thank you very much," Davida said with a smile as she finished up. It was a smile of shaky relief on her part. If the receptionist, seated so close, did not seem to have noticed anything amiss then in all likelihood nobody else would have done so either. Hypersensitive to every glance turned her way by other hotel guests and the silent-footed staff, and trying desperately not to seem as jumpy as she felt, Davida returned to her room, resolutely steering clear of the computer terminals and their potential shoulder-squatters. Time enough to try the public terminal route when she could be sure she was unobserved. With hands made a little clumsy by nerves and haste, she packed a few essentials and a change of clothes into a small backpack. Then she tested her earlier assessment of whether she really could make it out of the balcony without breaking an ankle.