Em Gessen

Priscilla was 42 at the time of this conversation.

She comes from a prominent family in Zimbabwe.

Her father was a neighbor of the country's longtime dictator, Robert Mugabe.

Priscilla had worked as a fashion model.

She didn't expect to be a single mother with two kids living in semi-hiding in a house with brown carpeting and a refrigerator with a death rattle.

Talking to me now, she was still trying to absorb that this was how her fairytale international romance ended.

Me?

I was trying to puzzle out how it had begun.

So here I was, at Priscilla's safe house, while the kids were at school, asking her to start at the beginning.

From Serial Productions and The New York Times, I am Em Gessen, and this is The Idiot.

I began with the story's first mystery.

This was 2011, at a party in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.

Alan was there in business, scoping out investment opportunities for the Ukrainian oligarch.

He was hustling.

As my son described me once, he was an egg who knows how to talk to people.

And did that seem appealing?

It wasn't just exciting.

It was convenient in a way.

Alan wasn't readable to Priscilla the way someone from Zimbabwe might be.

She could project her desires onto him, including her desire for success.