It had to be Kate Rosewood. He said he had known it before the beginning. He had just started working on Fleming&Florey, and he had left New York as soon as she had proved him right at the conference. She had probably threatened him, worse than she threatened me with her Pigalle Louboutins and her fake smile when I was lying on the hotel lobby.

I tried to recall everything he had told me about her, searching for hidden clues, for secret messages. But the heat and longing I had felt around Luke at that time made everything else blurry.

"Do you think it really is Kate Rosewood?" Lindsay asked me overly loudly, drawing everyone's attention at the breakfast table.

The table was full of hot croissants, fresh fruit, scrambled eggs with bacon and coffee, all set up around a red rose centerpiece. So, when a waiter approached us, I wondered what he could possibly add to that already ideal combination.

"Shh." I said to Lindsay.

The waiter offered each of us a damp towel, and I stared at it, confused. David started to moist his face with it, and I noticed Lucy and Hugh were doing the same. The rest of us looked astonished.

"It's for refreshment." David explained.

Africa burst out, and all eyes turned to her.

"Sorry." she said, still amused.

When the waiter left, loud conversations arouse about how overdone and ridiculous luxury could be, and I took advantage of the fuss to talk to Lindsay.

"You shouldn't talk as loudly, and even less if you mention someone from Fleming&Florey. The staff here receives letters from them." I explained, and, sarcastically, I added: "I guess it's not classy for a luxury hotel to have mortal workers anymore."

"How do you know they receive letters from them?"

"Because I saw the women at the reception reading a letter written on blue stationary. Who else uses blue...?"

Out of the blue.

Exactly.

It came to me like Newton's apple, or Virgin Mary's revelation. I hadn't seen it before, but it was shockingly clear now. It had been blurred out, like... David's features at the steam. It had been blurred out because of things like David's features at the steam. Because of all-consuming distractions.

I dropped my fork, and Lindsay asked me if something was wrong. But her voice was very far away. After having replayed New York so many times, it was easy to find where I had seen that blue paper before.

He had written tips for me to conquer my nerves. He looked so sweet, but he had only been deceiving me. How had I not thought of him before? He had always been oversweet, sticky, unnatural.

David was frowning from the other side of the table. He was aware something big was going on inside my head. When I didn't respond to Lindsay's questions several times, worry grew bigger in his hazel eyes. Africa stood up and shook my shoulders. Mum and dad exclaimed my name.

I tried to think of a clue that Luke might have given me about Professor Abbey. He had said something about him once, on the phone. His words reverberated in my head: I still don't get why he teaches a group like this, because he's done nothing... Did that mean something? It couldn't, because that had been before I even made my discovery. Besides, not having a brilliant academic history surely didn't immediately turn people into robbers of other's merits. He hadn't even published it as his. He hadn't been looking for recognition. He had given it away.

I automatically corrected myself. Nobody gave anything away. He had probably sold it. He had probably been looking for money. Perhaps he had predicted what the treatment would cost, and had wanted to ensure his. That possibility almost justified what he had presumably done. I sympathized with him and his fervor for eternity. Why wouldn't I? It had become my obsession and driven me crazy too. My mind drifted back to when Hugh had told me at Covent Garden that we had to do our best to understand each other. Forgetting was definitely much easier after being aware of the motive.

But I still didn't know it had been Abbey. There had to be something more. Luke's clue had to be related to that. Maybe he had noticed Professor Abbey used Fleming&Florey's stationary before I did, because he might have seen the blue paper while he was working. But he had never told me anything about that. We hadn't been in touch since New York, until that night at the Premier Inn.

Or perhaps we had.

"Oh my God. Blueness guided him. It wasn't about my eyes!"

I run upstairs, and heard many of them follow me. I had the postcard in my bag. I had carried it with me since that night in London, because it felt like the only thing that took me back to the beginning, to the way we were before everything was messed up. It was a silent promise of the truthfulness of our love.

I laughed as I opened the door to the suite, out of breath. I laughed because that had to be it. I had finally found Luke's clue. He had actually tried to help me. He had been startlingly, unexpectedly... brave.

From a safe, protected distance.

I searched through my unpacked bag frantically, impatient. There it was. Crumpled, but clear. I walked to the living room and let myself fall on the brown suede sofa, making a couple of silky cushions fall to the floor. I explained everything I knew to David, Lindsay, Africa and Alex, who had been eagerly awaiting for me to open my mouth.

"Blueness turned out to be quite... Something." Lindsay read, after she took the postcard from my hands. "What does Something mean? Why is it underlined?"

"I don't know, I have called Luke like a hundred times, but it says his phone is off. I guess he just wanted to say that blueness was a big clue."

Alex giggled. She was sitting next to David, but he had his eyes fixed on the card, and didn't look like he had anything to do with her incomprehensible chuckles.

"What is it, Alex?" I asked.

"Oh, it's nothing. I have just found it funny that the first thing that has come into my mind when I have heard "Something" has been the so called song by The Beatles we listened to yesterday. It's amazing how a song can stick-"

"Oh my God." I said, not letting her finish the sentence. "Look it up!"

Luke and I had listened to that song on the way to the Seven Sisters. That was why it had been familiar to me.

"Okay, but I don't think it will have anything to do... It's a love song, Tess."

"It has to be related. Luke and I shared an important moment with this song in the background."

David looked at me, as if trying to read which kind of moment it had been; or maybe already aware of that, and trying to read how I remembered it.

"Just look it up and read it out loud."

"Alright." Alex agreed, and shrugged. "Let's see: Something is a song by The Beatles, written by George Harrison and released on the band's 1969 album... Oh my God. How didn't I think of this?"

She turned pale.

"What? Go on!"

"...the band's 1969 album... Abbey Road."

There it was. I had had the freaking card with me for weeks, and I hadn't even bothered to give it another thought. Why hadn't it hit me how strange it was for Luke to leave a simple postcard for me?

"What's wrong with me?"

"Tess, it's not your fault, this was too encrypted."

"But I should have known... He deemed me intelligent enough to solve this. I was always telling him I solved mysteries, and I didn't even see this one coming..."

I stood up, took a rose vase, and threw it against the wall. It shattered, and Lindsay screamed. David ran to me and held me tight, stopping me from reaching for the next vase.

"Hey, Tessa, what's wrong with you? The problem is his, he should have told you! Does he think this is a game?"

I looked down at the shattered glass on the floor, and then at the ripped wallpaper, and my hands started to shake. There really was something wrong with me. I had never, ever before, been that aggressive. I blamed it on the huge responsibility on my shoulders, but I started to doubt whether achieving dreamlike things had abolished my ability to differ reality from my thoughts. Having the idea of crashing a flower vase would normally be enough to lower my anxiety level, but my body didn't seem capable of guarding some thoughts for itself anymore.

But I wasn't thinking about any of that as I looked at David's perfect, worried face. I was simply processing that I had failed Luke. I hadn't been as quick as he had expected. I hadn't been as good as he had expected. It had been the same for me with him, but that was much more bearable. He hadn't been the person that I expected, and I had been hugely disappointed. I had lost him. But I loved the witty, passionate version of me he had fallen in love with. I thought that was the real me. I couldn't cope with having lost myself.

"What really matters is that we know it now." Africa said.

David walked me back to the sofa, and Lindsay stood up to clean the mess I had caused. David stopped him.

"Sit down, Lindsay. We'll call someone to clean this. They don't ask questions in this kind of hotel."

She nodded, and did as he said. We were all back on the sofas, silent. The suite looked too beautiful to be a witness of such a dark moment. I kept remembering things Abbey had told me, hints of the person he really was.

"He told me once that he was good at recognizing the outstanding and picking it up."

Africa cracked up.

"That's a interesting way to put it." she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "What a cowardly bastard."

"Cowardly, sappy, sugary bastard." I added, and we all laughed. "I just remembered that I thought of him and his gooey personality during my treatment. It's like, all this time, I already knew there was something wrong with him, but it didn't struck me until... until Luke said I already had what I needed last night."

"Last night?" David asked, and his jealousy flattered me.

"I went with him for a walk."

His face dropped. I knew he was thinking: "After we had sex?" I was aware of how the idea of me being with Luke right after what we had shared would mess with his rocklike pride. But, completely surprising me, he said:

"Well, he was right. You have everything you need. You have us. And we are going to handle this brilliantly."

Of course he would do it brilliantly.

"First of all, where the hell is Abbey now?" he continued.

"I don't know." I said, shaking my head. "He told me he was in Oxford the night before we left, but he never made it to our date at the Turf Tavern, so I don't know if he was lying."

"Why don't you text him?"

"And what would she say?" Lindsay asked.

"Does he know we came to Paris?" Alex asked.

"No, I don't think so." I answered.

"Great. You could tell him you want to meet him in Oxford today, to find out if he's still there, or make sure he will be there at some point. And someone could go to London meanwhile and sneak into his office."

"That's good. Luke can do that. He flew back to London last night. He didn't say much, but I know his intention is to find proof once and for all." I explained, and I nodded. "This is a good plan."

The girls nodded too. David didn't look convinced. I knew that the part of the plan he didn't like was that Luke had an important role in it. He had been the one to find out about Abbey, and he was going to be the one to find proof as well. He was going to be the hero, and David didn't cope well with not being it himself.

I texted Abbey anyhow, and he responded in less than a minute. The beep of my phone made everyone jump.

" "Dear Tessa, six o' clock sounds perfect. I promise I'll be there this time." "

"Yes!" Africa yelled, and she clapped her hands. "Gotcha, cloying geezer!"

"And what do we do now?" Alex asked, lying back on the sofa, finally relaxed.

"I think we should go outside, get some fresh air; drench in normality until the next complication hits us." Lindsay suggested.

What did you think of this chapter? Did you expect Abbey to be the one that betrayed Tessa? What do you think will happen next? Let me know in the comments! The following chapter will be up tomorrow, at 21h30 UK-time.

There's only 4 chapters left till the end of the novel! Remember that the first chapter of the sequel - If I live forever, can I live now? - will be up on September 15th :)

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