Nowhere Girl (26 page)

“I have to hand it to you, you were amazing in there,” Cate said, quietly, but Bridget shook her head.

“No, I’m not…”

“To speak like you did, to have that strength…” Cate tailed off, suddenly uncertain. “Should you text Achim, to say where we are?”

“In a minute. He’s still inside the Embassy, speaking with the Ambassador. I need a moment away from him.” Bridget lifted Ellie’s pink rabbit to her face, and appeared to be breathing it in. Her voice came out muffled, “So Detective Massard is your husband?”

“Fiancé,” Cate corrected. How strange that the first person she should tell was Bridget. “He proposed to me last night. I didn’t expect it.” She didn’t know why she felt the need to add this last sentence.

Bridget placed the rabbit on her lap, but her hands went back to her face, as though to warm them, though even in the shade of the tree the sun could be felt. “He’s told you that I’m guilty?”

Cate shifted in her seat. She watched a young boy hurtle down the slide, landing in his mother’s arms at the base. “He told me that he thinks that, yes.”

“It’s true.” Her hands still half covered her face and Cate realised it was shame.

The mother righted her son and off he ran, back to the steps to go again. Cate was silent, because she didn’t want to hear. But she didn’t walk away either.

“It’s all my fault, Cate. I never meant it to be like this, Ellie should have been home the next morning. I don’t know what went wrong. And I don’t know where she is now.”

Cate believed her. She had seen that desperation when Bridget opened the door, the longed-for need for any news of Ellie. The way she held the hope just for a moment, before it was dashed, and she felt the loss of her daughter once again. Bridget was a husk of herself now, curled over, even her cheeks looked drawn. And now, in her colourful dress and with clean hair and makeup, the signs were still there.

“The police. Detective Massard. They aren’t looking for Ellie.” Bridget looked across the park to where the mother was now preparing her child for home, dusting the dirt from his knees and buttoning up a cardigan. “When I was in that police cell with him he was distracted. Tired. All of his energy is being put into interrogating me.”

The two women sat in silence, registering what this meant. Cate thought of the lost girl, wherever she was. Had she given up hope, or was she thinking that at any moment the door would burst open and she would be saved? Was she even alive?

“I mean, what are the police doing right now?” Bridget asked, the desperation making her voice shrill. “I’m a victim of crime! What the hell are they doing? I have a meeting with my solicitor tomorrow, and all because we have to be ready for when they come and arrest me again. I should be looking for my daughter, and so should they. Instead they are building enough evidence so they can arrest me. Aren’t they?”

Cate realised that Bridget was directing the question directly at her. “How would I know?” Cate answered, hearing the snappiness in her voice. After what Bridget had admitted, she deserved it. “I’m not a police officer.”

“You mean that your fiancé doesn’t talk to you?”

Cate felt irritated, but also ashamed that Bridget could see the shabby state of her relationship.

“Olivier refuses to talk about work when he’s home.”

Bridget was furious. “Make him. You’re a mother, can you even imagine how I feel? Please, Cate.”

“Look, Bridget, here’s what I’ll do, I’ll pick up Gaynor, and look after her tomorrow so you can see your solicitor. And I’ll do the school run next week.”

“I need more from you, Cate. I can tell you where to start looking.”

“Then tell the police!”

“I did!” Bridget hissed viciously, then seemed to get a hold of herself. “I did, Cate. And he locked me up. I can’t help my daughter from a prison cell.”

“So instead you lie. You say publicly that Olivier made a false statement. Do you know what that could do to his career?”

Bridget shook her head, as if Cate was missing the point, and her fury became hotter.

“You need to work with the police, Bridget. Because they are the ones who should be searching for Ellie. And I simply can’t help you. You’re a liar and I don’t trust you.”

And with that Cate stood and walked away.

Auntie hadn’t left her room all morning, she’d just lain on the bed with Fahran, who was listlessly watching cartoons. He had been sick in the night, and had a seizure, so now he was sleepy and lethargic.

Amina had been up to the bedroom twice, once to ask if she should take Fahran for his breakfast, which was flatly refused, and the second time to take up a tray with juice and bread and jam. They had to eat, she reasoned, placing a white tablet on the tray for Auntie, knowing it will help calm her.

But Fahran was too sick to manage the food, the end of the baguette remained uneaten in his fist, the curtains in the room remained closed, the cartoon continued to play softly.

Amina stood on the threshold, not knowing what to do. Just then, Fahran began to cry, a pathetically weak whimpering that was more upsetting because he didn’t even have the energy to make it heartfelt. Amina went to him, kneeling down on the floor so her face was level with his.

“Is it your head?” She touched the bandage, to check if it was securely in place, and he winced. “What can I get him, Auntie?”

Auntie was on her side, and her tears were making up for Fahran’s. Her hand was clutching his bare foot.

“Nothing. There is nothing we can get him now.” Her voice was heavy, like soil under vines, stiff and crumbling.

On the TV screen a cartoon cat was bashing a mouse with a large hammer. Fahran was watching through his fingers, his eyes wet with tears, and he flinched at each blow.

“At least turn this off.”

Amina picked up the remote and clicked through the channels hoping for something comforting, a programme to make Fahran smile, but what she turned to was the BBC news channel. She stopped, arrested by the sight of the white woman wearing a traditional Kabyle dress, bright yellow with and blue and red beading. It was something she had never seen outside of Tizi Ouzou, and the thought that someone on television should dress like her friends and family made her mouth drop open.

The woman in the Kabyle dress was speaking, her voice was strong and all around her people were writing and taking photos. This woman must be important, an actress maybe. Amina turned up the volume, and listened.

“I just want Ellie home. Please, if you have her. Let my daughter come home.”

Amina dropped the remote control as though it was a hot piece of coal and stared at Auntie, who was struggling to sit up, propping herself so she could see the screen better. Her hand moved from Fahran’s foot to his neck, she tugged him so his face was against her breast, as if hiding him from the woman on the screen. “Amina! Turn it off!”

“Wait, Auntie. Look!”

The camera had panned the room and Amina spotted her, the British woman with red hair, sitting at the back, the customer who gave her a twenty euro tip.

“That woman, in the back row. She’s been here twice in the last week.”

“What! Oh, no.” Auntie’s face turned ashen. “We’ll go to prison for this, I know it. I told Jak, but he would not listen.”

“But she wants to help, Auntie. I know she does.”

“You don’t understand, Amina.” Auntie was still stroking Fahran’s head, lightly pressing his ear with her palm so he could not hear. “Jak says he’s can’t return Ellie. The police are outside her house night and day. We are in big trouble, with a guest who cannot go home.”

She released her son, and he snuggled against her, too lost in his own misery to be concerned about what his mother was saying.

“But we have to return her home, Auntie. Her mother is on television, asking for us to do it. And the girl looks so sad.”

Auntie’s face, usually so stern, was softened into lines of worry. She bit the inside of her cheek as though to stop any words that might be struggling to escape. Her eyes she kept fixed on her son.

“I don’t know what we must do, Amina. Jak is the head of this family. We follow him.”

Amina smarted.
The head of the family
. It was a phrase she knew too well, and had never minded when it meant her own father. But his death had promoted Samir to this role, and that meant danger for Amina, and being forced to follow a way of life that was so severe it meant forgetting who she was entirely.

“We are in Europe now, Auntie, and we are important too. We can decide things on our own.”

Auntie made a sound like a chuckle and Fahran lifted his head at her amused tone. “Just a few weeks in Luxembourg, and you are now a feminist, eh?”

“I just think this is something we must do and Jak doesn’t need to know. We can get Ellie home, and save Fahran. Why should this be wrong?”

Auntie reached for Amina and grasped her face. She reached forward and kissed her forehead.

“Your words scare me, Amina, but also lift my spirits. What is it you think can be done?”

Amina was scared too. But she still knew what she had to do, for Ellie and for Fahran. She had a solution that would solve both problems.

Downstairs, in the beauty salon, she carefully uncurled the twenty euro note, to reveal the number. She said it in her head a few times before pressing the numbers into the phone, and then she felt afraid to press the dial button.

“Do it, Amina! Quickly.”

Auntie watched, with Fahran at her side, nestled into her body. Amina would do it for him.

The phone rang. And rang. Eventually, the woman picked up. “Hello?”

Amina tried to find the right words, but failed. Into the silence the British woman said again, “Hello? Can I help you?”

Help
. For Amina, a magic word. “Hello, Madame,” she said carefully. “I saw you on the television.”

“Who is this?” she said, and Amina could hear she was not happy because her voice was higher, quick too.

“We have Ellie,” Amina said, slowly, so as to be fully understood. “And we want to bring her home, but it is difficult. They will see our van. Can we meet somewhere, not Luxembourg? Do you know Saarburg?”

Auntie reached forward, she grabbed the phone from Amina, holding it in the air, her fingers wrapped around the buttons protectively. “Not there!” she hissed, “We cannot risk seeing Jak!”

Amina stared at Auntie, and realised her mistake. She took the phone from Auntie and drew a breath to speak, but it was making a single flat tone. In the fumble the connection had been lost, a button accidently pressed, and the line was dead.

Amina’s courage had deserted her and she dared not try a second time.

It was as though her spine was broken, the way she could no longer lift her head. She had lost track of the days. Why should they let her live? But why are the keeping her here?

Nothing was left to her, only the thin rags of childhood wishes: Father Christmas, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny. She would sell her soul for something to believe in.

Ellie closed her eyes and prayed.

“
Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name
…”

She lost herself in the words.

“Ellie?”

Ellie stopped the muttered words from long ago and opened her eyes. It was the girl, Amina.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to disturb your worship, but the food is hot.”

It was the food that did it, a steaming bowl of soup. Soup, for comfort and sickness. Her mother would make it, when she was a child.
Oh, God, let me be a child again. Oh Mum, please find me
. And the tears came again, fierce and bitter now. Ellie could see no way of stopping them, as her body heaved and she felt the loss more keenly than she had in what felt like a long time.

Amina placed the tray on the chair that they used as a table and knelt down beside Ellie. She did not touch her, but Ellie could feel her closeness. “I can get you something, if you like? To make you calm.”

Ellie looked through tear-soaked eyes at Amina. “Drugs?”

Amina flinched. “The tablets Auntie crumbled in your milk helped you relax. It is good medicine. I take it too, sometimes, and so does Jodie. Would you like some?”

“No. No more drugs.” Though Ellie realised that was why she was feeling so much worse than she had before, her feelings and emotions were no longer masked.

The two teenagers sat together silently. They could hear the road outside, a lorry thundering past.

“Where is the other girl?” Ellie asked, thinking back to when she first saw Jodie, at Schueberfouer. How, later, she had smiled at Ellie and how that had made her wander over, as much as Malik it was the girl who interested her.

“Jodie does not work in the house. She is more useful to Jak.”

Ellie remembered seeing the girl walk away with the middle-aged businessman, the way she had led him into a dim alleyway. An unbearable sadness came over her, for Jodie and for Amina. Most of all for herself. Ellie couldn’t imagine ever leaving, her only future was working the streets like Jodie or in domestic slavery like Amina. Or worse.

“Would you like me to go, Ellie, so you can pray to your god?”

Ellie sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and shook her head. “I don’t believe in that shit anyway. My dad used to take me to church in Heidelberg all the time, and when we first came here he took me to all of the cathedrals: Luxembourg, Nancy. Metz was the best. It was so nice in there, so cool and quiet. I was just trying to get that feeling back, that’s all.”

Amina reached for the soup. She handed it to Ellie.

“Eat,” she gently instructed. “And tell me about this cathedral. I have never been in one, and I should like to know what it is like.”

Ellie sipped the soup and considered Amina, who was leaning forward, her large brown eyes curious and attentive. Ellie knew that the girl was only trying to help, by distracting her from her plight, but it was also a moment of friendship. She forced herself to smile and began to speak.

Now back at home, Bridget could not smile. The muscles of her mouth had shortened, it seemed, so the heaviness at the corners could not be fought. What was there to smile about anyway?