End of December, 2016

London

Six weeks earlier, Gemma arrived in London for the first time. It was the day after Christmas. She took a cab to the hotel she'd booked. The English money was too large to fit neatly into her wallet. The cab was mad expensive, but she didn't care. She was funded.

The hotel was an old and formal building, remodeled inside. A gentleman wearing a checked jacket sat at a desk. He had a record of the reservation and showed Gemma to her room personally. He chatted while a porter carried her things. She loved the way he talked, as if he'd stepped out of an Eliot novel.

The walls of the suite were papered in black-and-white toile. Heavy brocade curtains covered the windows. The bathroom had heated floors. The towels were cream-colored and textured with small squares. Lavender soap was wrapped in brown paper.

Gemma ordered a steak from room service. When it came, she ate the whole thing and drank two large glasses of water. After that, she slept for eighteen hours.

When she woke, she was elated.

This was a new city and a foreign country, the city of Vanity Fair and Great Expectations. It was Will's city, but it would become Gemma's own, just as the books Will loved had become part of Gemma, too.

She pushed open the curtains. London stretched out below her. Red buses and beetle-black taxis crawled through traffic on narrow streets. The buildings looked hundreds of years old. She thought of all the lives being led down there, people driving on the left, eating crumpets, drinking tea, watching telly.

Gemma was stripped of guilt and sorrow, as if she'd shed a skin. She saw herself as a lone vigilante, a superhero in repose, a spy. She was braver than anyone in the hotel, braver than all of London, braver than ordinary by far.