By the time we left Calais, I thought perhaps I hated Dottie Forsyth. To the observer, I had no reason for it, since by employing me as her companion Dottie had saved me from both poverty and a life robbed of color in my rented flat, the life I was trying to live without Alex. However, the observer would not have had to spend the past three months crisscrossing Europe in her company, watching her scavenge for art as cheaply as possible while smoking her cigarettes in their long black holder.
"Manders," she said to me—though my name was Jo, one of her charms was the habit of calling me by my last name, as if I were the upstairs maid—"Mrs. Carter-Hayes wishes to see my photographs. Fetch my photograph book from my luggage, won't you? And do ask the porter if they serve sherry."
This as if we were on a luxurious transatlantic ocean liner, and not on a simple steamer over the Channel for the next three hours. Still, I rose to find the luggage, the photograph book, and the porter, my stomach turning in uneasy loops as I traveled the deck.
The Channel wasn't entirely calm today, and the misty gray in the distance gave a hint of oncoming rain. The other passengers on the deck gave me only brief glances as I passed them. A girl in a wool skirt and a knitted cardigan is an unremarkable English sight, even if she's passably pretty.
I found the luggage compartment with the help of the porter, whose look of surprise turned to one of pity when I asked about the sherry, and from there I rummaged through Dottie's many bags and boxes, looking for the slender little photograph book with its yellowed pages. I didn't think Mrs. Carter-Hayes, who had been acquainted with Dottie for all of twenty minutes, had any real desire to see the photographs, but perhaps because of the pointlessness of the mission, I found myself lingering over it, taking longer than I needed to in the quiet and privacy of the luggage compartment. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and let out a breath, sitting on the floor with my back to one of Dottie's trunks. We were going back to England.
Without Alex, I had nothing there. I had nothing anywhere. I had given up my flat when I'd left with Dottie, taken the last of my belongings with me. There wasn't much. A few clothes, a few packets of beloved books I couldn't live without. I'd sold off all our furniture by then, and I'd even sold most of Alex's clothes, a wrench that still made me sick to my stomach. I wasn't afraid of poverty; before Alex had swept me into the grand adventure of our marriage, poverty had been all I knew, and it was as familiar to me now as the old cardigan I wore. There was no room for sentiment when you were poor.
The only fanciful thing I'd kept was Alex's camera, which I could have gotten a few pounds for but hadn't been able to part with. The camera had come with me on all of my travels, on every boat and train, though I hadn't even opened the case. If Dottie had noticed, she had made no comment.
And so my life in England now sat before me as a perfect blank. We were to go to Dottie's home in Sussex, a place I had never seen. I was to stay on in Dottie's pay, even though she was no longer traveling and my duties had not been explained.