Maria called into another couple of clothes stores on her way to the hotel and arrived back in her room laden with shopping bags. She drew the curtains and stripped naked, standing with all the lights on in front of the mirror. She had been dreading this moment, knowing that after eating two meals in one day for the first time in months she would see how hideously bloated and fat she would have become. But she didn’t. For so long Maria had been used to regarding her naked form with loathing, seeing the flesh swollen and fat. But not this time. It was as if her decision to become someone else had shifted her perspective and she was looking at someone else’s body. So much damage. Maria had always been shapely, but slim. Now, after months of binging, purging and weeks of semi-starvation, Maria’s body looked emaciated. Her ribs showed through the skin and her thighs seemed thinner than her knees. Her upper arms were stick-thin and the knife scar beneath her shrunken breasts contrasted pink against her pale, lifeless skin. Her face, beneath its new crown of near-black, short-cropped hair, looked gaunt and drawn. What had she done to herself?

She dismissed the thought: she would separate herself from the flesh of which she was composed. Her body would now simply be a canvas that she could use to create a dozen different Marias. The idea had been there when she had woken up: she had wished she could have brought in Anna to help her with the surveillance. Well, she could: by making herself into Anna and anyone else she chose to be. As the thought had evolved from an idea to a strategy to a plan, Maria had rediscovered a sense of resolve and direction. Instead of trying to dissolve into the background with her grungy clothes, she would become other people.

10.

Oliver drank his coffee and gazed at the blank white-tiled wall opposite him. But he wasn’t seeing anything. Instead his mind dwelt on what had happened in the hotel room. It had been five days now and he had heard nothing. But he knew it would take the police some time to trace him, if ever. He had been extremely careful in his planning; in ensuring that his tracks were covered. She had made so much fuss, so much noise. She had known what he had wanted, that he had special needs: so why had she started to scream? Why did the stupid sluts always scream when they knew all along what he had to do to them? Oliver had had no choice other than to shut her up before someone in the hotel heard her.