Milton had assumed that would be the extent of their contact until—to his surprise—he had seen her in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that he’d attended in Kensington one Saturday morning. Carmichael was fresh in the Fellowship, and Milton saw all of the doubt and struggle that he remembered when he had started to attend. Milton had stayed at the back and listened to her share her story, and saw—with absolute certainty—that she had no chance of staying the course without assistance. Although he hated the idea of being her sponsor, he was compelled to make the offer. Once Carmichael had got over the shock of seeing a Group Fifteen agent in her meeting, she had accepted Milton’s proposal and, over the course of the next six months, they had attended meetings together. They had grown close and, perhaps unsurprisingly, had embarked on a short-lived and, in the end, unsatisfactory affair. While their desultory fling had not been the best idea, Carmichael had managed to stay off the drink and, just before Milton had gone AWOL, she had told him that she credited his kindness for her continued sobriety.

Milton had asked Ziggy Penn to track her down, and he had reported that she had married and taken her French husband’s name—Deschamps—and was now living in Bali. It appeared that both she and her husband were working at the Hilton Hotel in Nusa Dua. Ziggy had provided access to Deschamps’s Facebook profile, and Milton had seen photographs of what was evidently a very enjoyable life. It looked as if she had finally found the peace that she had been searching for, a contentment that had always eluded Milton.

Milton would have preferred not to bother her, but he knew that his John Smith legend was burned. The Group was looking for him and he was going to need a new persona—perhaps more than one—if he was going to continue to stay off their radar. Victoria Deschamps was his best option, and Milton knew that she would consider that her sobriety formed a debt between them that had never been repaid. Milton had wondered about the good sense of contacting her in advance—David Tanner had demonstrated what fear of the Group could lead to when he had betrayed him in Kansas City—but he had concluded that their shared history meant that she would not betray him. He had called her and, after the initial shock at hearing from him after so long, she had invited him to come and visit.

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