“Something strange happened. I’ll tell you about it another time.” Then she said, “I won’t be staying at the Center much longer. Patricia will be after me, when she finds you’ve gone. I’m disappointed you’re fleeing like this.”

“I’m sorry if I have made things difficult for you, but she’ll never leave me alone.”

“It’s the price the beautiful have to pay. Aren’t you used to it yet?”

Watching the boat being loaded up, I was getting nervous; I asked if she minded getting me a ticket from the harbor office. I could see several likely candidates for Matte’s men.

On the ship, I hid in the women’s toilet. After, when people started to bang on the door, I had to come out. I thought I was done for. I made my way to the car deck and hid under a blanket on the backseat of an old Mercedes. The boat docked and the driver got in without noticing me. Outside, as the traffic queued to leave, I hopped out of the car and ran for it. I sprinted out of there and into the crowd, and got a taxi.

7

I’M NOT SURE why, but I returned to the part of London I knew. I felt safer, and more at ease in my mind, in a familiar place. In your own city, you don’t have to think about where you are. Being pursued had frightened me; I was scared all the time now. I had no idea whether Matte would still be following me. I must have convinced myself that he’d lost interest in me. Perhaps his brother had died; maybe he’d found another body. I am, however, old enough to know how few of our thoughts bear any relation to the way things are.

I checked into the same dismal hotel as before. When I needed money I worked in a factory packing Christmas toys. Perhaps Matte was right, and it had been a mistake to “hire” a body for six months. I didn’t have time to begin a new life as a new person, and, expecting to go back, I missed my old life. I was in limbo, a waiting room in which there was no reality but plenty of anxiety.

One morning at eight, there was a knock on my door.

In this hotel, there were always knocks on the door—refugees, thieves, prostitutes, drug dealers; people who would never be able to afford new bodies or even to feed adequately the one they already had; people looking for other people and no one wanting to do you a favor, if it wasn’t in exchange for another one. Usually, though, they would declare themselves. This time there was no reply.