She was sitting at a café when the guide from the day before introduced himself. The next day, Lucy began exploring Tangier, haggling at market stalls and enjoying the heat. When she had first met Lucy, she had been entranced by the scholarship student’s glamor and seeming worldliness, and after she had learned that she was a fellow orphan, the two had been inseparable for their four years at Bennington College in Vermont. Meanwhile, Alice was still attempting to reconcile her friend’s unexpected appearance with the last drama of their separation a year ago, when she had screamed that she never wanted to see Lucy again. Lucy spotted John flirting familiarly with an attractive woman, and suspected an affair. That night they went to Dean’s jazz bar, a popular expat and local hangout. Lucy thought he was the reason for her friend’s unhappiness. Over drinks, John took passive aggressive jabs at Alice. Alice was seemingly shocked by Lucy’s reappearance in her life. But when she arrived at her friend’s door, Alice was nervous and thin. Yet Alice remained shut up in the apartment, a prisoner of the anxiety that had plagued her since her parents’ deaths in a fire, while John gallivanted about the city spending the allowance from her inheritance.Īs Lucy stepped off the ferry and ignored the persistent local guide who followed her offering his help, she felt a thrill that she would soon be back with her old college roommate Alice.
She and her husband John McAllister, an English bureaucrat and family friend, had moved to Morocco a year ago with dreams of exotic climes that would finally allow Alice to put the past behind her. Alice Shipley was once again unable to bring herself to face the market crowds.
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