Shallow Be Thy Grave (8 page)

“Good enough for me,” said Jo, pulling off her trousers and her bra from under her T-shirt.

“Did you lock the front door?” asked Lily.

“Sure did.” Jo climbed onto the double bed. Lily went back to the kitchen to retrieve
Hitler’s Children
, before getting under the covers on the single mattress, certain she wouldn’t sleep. Thoughts fizzed in her brain. “Jo?” she said in a quiet voice, “you don’t really think anything bad’s happened to her, do you?”

“I hope not. She probably just had a row with her boyfriend.”

Lily thought about this. It would explain the phone call, the tears. Smoking kills, but only love can break your heart. She tried to concentrate her mind on the book but no matter how many times she read the words, the sentences didn’t seem to make any impression on her brain. She folded the corner of the page over and lay the book down by the side of the bed. “Why do you think he nicked her diary?”

She waited a moment, but Jo didn’t answer. Lily envied her rhythmic breathing and resigned herself to waiting for dawn.

Lily did her best not to wake Jo until a reasonable hour, but by six o’clock she could stand it no longer. She brought a cup of black coffee through from the kitchen and shook Jo’s arm. “Grace might know who PS is. And whether he’s Fi’s boyfriend.”

“Jesus. What time is it?”

“Quarter to seven,” Lily lied. She passed Jo a ready rolled spliff. She’d spent the night skinning up. They had thirteen reefers, lined up like soldiers. “How do we find Grace?”

Jo hauled herself into a sitting position and yawned. “We need to hang out where the au pairs hang out.”

“Nell might know.”

“Who’s Nell?”

“The Beaumonts’ au pair.” Lily left the bedroom, then shouted back down the corridor. “We need milk and stuff.”

“I’ll go to the shop,” said Jo. “Just give us a minute.”

After breakfast they made their way by Metro across Paris to the Seventh District. Lily loved the underground. The speed and the anonymity of it. You could be anywhere in the world, while life went on above, without you. No one looked at them, despite Jo’s pink mohican and Lily’s dreadlocks.  As soon as they emerged into fresh air, Lily rang Stuart from a payphone. He wasn’t in, but she left a message on his answer machine.

It was quarter to ten by the time they reached the Beaumonts. Nell was bundling out of the front door with the three kids - the baby and the youngest boy in a double stroller. Sebastian was straining at his reins like a dog on a leash.

“Just taking the little buggers to playgroup,” Nell said, her jaw clenched. She had dark circles under her eyes. “Any joy?”

“Not yet,” said Jo. “Is Mr Beaumont home?”

“God, no. He leaves for work about half past five. I’m not sure he actually comes home most nights.”

“What were you going to say about him?” asked Jo. “Yesterday before Madame came in.”

Nell checked over her shoulder and made sure the front door was properly closed. She dropped her set of keys into her bag. “I don’t remember.”

“You said he was a complete…” Jo was trying to jog Nell’s memory.

Nell hurried down the steps towards them. “He’s a bit of a letch,” she said, lowering her voice. “That’s all.”

“Do you know someone called Grace?” asked Lily. “An au pair?”

“Never heard of her.” Nell noticed the look on Lily’s face. “But I’ve only been here a couple of weeks. I hardly know anyone.”

“We really need to find her,” said Jo. “She’s Fiona’s best mate.”

Sebastian started running in circles around Nell, entangling her in the reins. She fought to bring him to heel. “Does she work round here?”

“I guess,” said Lily. “Fiona must have met her somehow.”

“She looks after two kids,” said Jo. “One of ’em’s called Angelina.”

“Come with me to the playgroup. There’s bound to be someone who knows her,” Nell said when she was finally free of the reins. She pointedly looked Jo and Lily up and down. “But I warn you now, you’re not exactly going to blend.”

The playgroup was held in the upstairs room of a pavement cafe.  In the corner of the room were brightly coloured plastic mats and some toys, which most of the toddler-aged children were ignoring.  A couple of small girls in patterned dresses and matching pigtails sat crayoning at a table. Most of the au pairs, and there must have been at least a dozen, stood at the far end of the room, chatting to each other, as the rest of the children ran wild. The rich smell of French coffee filled the room. Lily was aware she was staring, but she couldn’t help herself.  It was like watching something out of a Robert Palmer video. ‘The Parisian Au Pairs’. Lily wondered whether there was an agency specialising - ‘Identikit Au Pairs’. Must be young, blonde, well-groomed and slim.

“I think the Beaumonts have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel with me,” Nell confided as she took the boys’ shoes off. “April’s not the best time to get yourself a nanny. Not an English one.” She dropped her voice to a whisper, “Most of the girls in here are just filling time ’til they find themselves a rich husband. Obviously a proper job is out of the question, so they’re developing their domestic skills while pretending they’re becoming more cultured.  Thick as pig shit most of them.”

 “So what are you doing here?” asked Lily.

“I thought I might like to work with children,” said Nell. “How wrong can you be?”

Nell led them over to a small group of three young women who were sitting together around a coffee table. They greeted Jo and Lily with the same sense of suspicion and mistrust that Lily was trying to keep from showing on her own face. Nell introduced them. Each one flashed a brief smile and Lily was struck immediately by what good teeth they all had. Straight, aligned, white as porcelain.

“We’re looking for an au pair called Grace,” explained Jo. “Kids are called Angelina and something. Do you know her?”

“She doesn’t come to this group,” one of the seated women said, as she fiddled with the small diamond studs in her ears. A small, uncomfortable silence followed, before she eventually felt moved to add, “It’s her morning off.”

Jo pulled her notebook from her canvas satchel and turned to a clean page. “Where does she live?”

The au pair pulled at her diamond studs until Lily worried she might rip them out of her ears. Her two companions avoided making eye contact with Jo or Lily.

“I’m Fiona’s sister,” said Lily, breaking the silence. “Fiona Winterbottom. Do you know her? She was the Beaumonts’ au pair before Nell.”

One of the three au pairs, the one on the left with, shock, horror, light brown hair, relaxed. She examined Lily in a new light. “Oh,” she made the vowel sound last several seconds. “Hi. I haven’t seen Fi for ages. She promised she’d keep in touch and then, not a peep. Did someone say she’s in Amsterdam now? Is she still au pairing?”

Jo answered as Lily’s jaw seemed to have slackened at the rich, posh tones. “We don’t know. We’re trying to find her.”

“We thought she was going south,” said Lily. “Amsterdam’s not south, is it?”

The au pairs stared back blankly. “Her grandfather’s died suddenly,” said Jo. “Out of the blue.”

“Oh, sad.” The young woman raised her hand to her mouth. Her fingernails were polished, shiny, with white lines painted on their edges. “Poor Fi.”

Jo seemed to sense her advantage. “The funeral’s next week. She’ll be gutted if she misses it. But no one knows where she is to tell her.”

“That’s dreadful.”  The young woman with the earrings, unhooked her handbag from the back of her chair and pulled out a leather-bound address book. Lily noticed her ear lobes were red. “I think she’s in Amsterdam. That’s what I heard. I’ll give you Grace’s address - she only lives a couple of streets away. She’ll be able to tell you where Fi is.”

She ripped a sheet of paper from the book and began writing on the blank page.

“Thanks,” said Jo as she watched her write out the address. She took the piece of paper and said in a voice Lily didn’t recognise, “Thanks awfully.”

They left the playgroup and walked along the pavement in silence for a while. Lily thought about how Nell had made several raised eyebrow expressions at them before they left, which Lily had taken as a, ‘don’t leave me with this lot’ plea. Poor Nell. That was no kind of life, and it suddenly struck Lily that it must have been no kind of life for Fiona either. True, Fiona was from a privileged background in terms of money, but she wasn’t posh, or stuck up. Lily couldn’t see her getting along with any of the au pairs they’d met, with their blonde ponytails and nervous, racehorse dispositions. Suddenly moving in with Brigitte didn’t seem too ridiculous an option – not if Brigitte was nice, which Lily found herself fervently wishing she was. She hated to think of Fiona alone in Paris with only that lot for company.

“Weird that they all think she’s in Amsterdam,” said Lily. “That’s not south, is it?” 

Jo was consulting the street map they’d picked up from the hotel. “Grace is only a few streets away. Let’s go and see her. It sounds like she’ll be able to tell us what’s going on.”

Grace was at the address they’d been given. She fitted the au pair mould, in that she had long blonde hair, but her face was covered with a splattering of freckles that looked like someone had taken a paintbrush and flicked it across her face. And she was a little on the plump side. Altogether she looked friendly and approachable, Lily thought.

Grace seemed overjoyed to meet Lily. “Oh my God, I’ve heard so much about you.”

She took them through to a kitchen that was half the size of the Beaumonts’, but still spacious. “What are you doing here? You know Fiona’s not here? She’s taken off for the summer.”

“Yeah, we know. That’s why we’re here. We need to find her,” said Lily.

“We just wondered whether you knew where they were heading,” said Jo.

Grace picked up a heap of clothes she’d obviously been sorting when they rang the bell, and threw them back into the wash basket. She didn’t look at either Jo or Lily as she spoke, “Oh right. No, I haven’t heard from her since she left. God, I miss her. She was my best friend here. We used to slag off all the other au pairs. And Michel.”

“Who’s Michel?” asked Jo.

Grace shoved the last armful of what looked like entirely pink clothing into the washing machine and shut the door with a flamboyant bang. “Who I work for. Michel Montre. His wife died.” She lowered her voice although Lily was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone else in the house. “He’s a bit of a tyrant. I keep trying to put it down to a broken heart. Insists on having the-”

“So you can’t help us?” interrupted Lily. Grace’s mention of dead relatives reminded her of the reason they were trying to track Fiona down. She watched Grace select the programme on the washing machine and push the start button. “We really need to get hold of Fi. Her granddad’s died.”

“Oh.” Grace straightened up and her hand went to her throat. “There’s me blathering on again. She’ll be really upset. Oh, course, he’s your granddad too.” She fixed Lily with a look of sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

Lily shrugged off the apology. She didn’t want to be reminded of her involvement in the family, because that would lead to other thoughts, thoughts she didn’t want to acknowledge right now. “We need to find Fi.”

“Oh blimey. All I know is they were going to Amsterdam first.”

“But she told her dad she was looking forward to getting a sun tan,” said Lily. “It’s not sunny in Amsterdam.” Lily paused and said with a little less certainty. “Is it?”

Grace flicked the switch on the side of the kettle. “Do you want a cup of tea? Kettle’s just boiled. My mum sends Yorkshire tea bags over. And there’s gateau. Or pain au chocolat?”

“Why Amsterdam?” asked Jo. “I mean, apart from the obvious.”

“Brigitte’s got them a job there.”

 “Why would she tell her dad she was heading south?”

“I don’t know. I think the plan is they’ll go to places like Portugal or Spain, once they’ve earned some cash, and the tourist season gets under way. Maybe she didn’t want him to worry.”

“What do you mean worry?” asked Lily.

“Well, you know, Amsterdam, it’s a,” she searched for the right word, “a vibrant city.”

“When did you last actually see Fiona?” said Jo, sitting down at the table and pulling her notebook out of her bag.

“Last week, a couple of days before they set off.”

“When exactly last week?”

 “It must have been,” Grace glanced at a long, thin calendar that was tacked to the wall, “the 3rd.  A week ago today. Thursdays are my morning off, although,” she glanced at the mountain of clothes, “you wouldn’t always notice.”

“And how was she? I mean, how did she seem?” asked Lily.

“Good,” Grace paused for a moment as if thinking for exactly the right words. “A bit distracted. It was all a bit last-minute.”

“She rang me,” said Lily as Jo scribbled things down. “Thursday night. She left a message, sounded really upset. Do you know why?”

Grace looked puzzled. “No. Maybe she was sad to be leaving Paris? I mean she’s got,” there was a slight pause, barely noticeable, but Lily heard it, “friends here.”

“When was she going?” asked Jo. “To Amsterdam, I mean?”

“The Saturday. They’d booked their train tickets. She showed them to me.”

Jo opened her notebook. “So Saturday, 5
th
May.” She wrote something down. “Ok, well we’re getting somewhere. Do you know whereabouts in Amsterdam?”

“Brigitte’s got friends over there, a guy called Frank.”

“Frank.” Jo wrote it down in her notebook and then sucked thoughtfully on the end of her pen.

 “Ok, so Amsterdam,” said Lily, trying to catch up with the sequence of events. “Do you know where they’re staying?”

“No,” Grace raised her index finger up in the air, like Lily had scored a point. “And that’s the weird thing, because she promised she’d ring me as soon as they got there and got settled. They should have got there by Sunday.”

The feeling of gnawing anxiety returned to Lily’s stomach.

“Brigitte’d got them a job in a café. Choice Exact.” She shrugged and looked at them both. “I thought it was a weird name for a café.”