Eden Legacy (30 page)

‘Is that right?’ asked Titch.

Something in his voice reminded Rebecca of the uncomfortable night he’d taken her hand and made his declaration. Maybe there was more to his flying out here than he was letting on; but she put the disloyal thought aside. ‘You must be starving,’ she said. ‘I know I am.’

‘You want to go out?’

She shook her head. She dared not leave the ransom money unguarded in her room, but nor did she much fancy lugging it around town.

‘I’ll pick us up some pizzas,’ said Daniel. ‘Give you two a chance to catch up.’

‘Thanks.’ She led Titch up to her room, out on to her balcony, talked him through everything that had happened since they’d last spoken. She was just finishing up when Daniel arrived back with beers and some boxes of pizza: thin, scorched crusts smeared with tomato sauce and sprinkled sparingly with toppings. Titch tore off a strip that he rolled up like calzone and stuffed into his mouth. Then he turned to Rebecca, flapping his hands from the heat of it, evidently wanting to say something, but struggling to swallow. ‘So what now?’ he managed finally.

‘I guess we wait for the kidnappers to contact us,’ said Rebecca.

‘Can’t we
do
something? I mean, what about that mobile phone guy?’

‘What mobile phone guy?’

‘The one the kidnappers called to give you your instructions.’

‘Someone just knew his number, that’s all.’

‘Yes, but how did they know to call just when you were passing? I mean, either he gave them the nod or they had someone watching.’ Rebecca frowned, a little worried she’d not thought of this herself. ‘Maybe we could talk to him in the morning, see if he knows anything.’

‘It’s a good idea,’ acknowledged Rebecca.

‘And there’s something else,’ said Titch. ‘The kidnappers originally contacted you up at the Eden Reserve, right?’

‘So?’

‘So what if they didn’t get your message in the clearing? I mean, what if they still think the best way to contact you is by slipping a note beneath Eden’s front door?’ Rebecca glanced at Daniel, who nodded. ‘The thing is,’ continued Titch. ‘Perhaps one of us should be there, just in case. I mean, it can’t be you, Rebecca. You’ve clearly got to be here in case they try to contact you or call your mobile, right? But
I
could go.’ He glanced back and forth between her and Daniel. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve ridden a motorbike, and you’d have to give me directions, but—’

‘I’ll go,’ said Daniel.

‘No!’ protested Rebecca.

‘He’s right,’ said Daniel, getting to his feet. ‘One of us should be there. It makes sense for it to be me.’

‘You’re not leaving now, are you?’ asked Rebecca, dismayed. ‘You can’t. Your headlight doesn’t even work.’

‘Yes, but I can leave at dawn, and that means filling her up while the petrol station’s still open. Besides, I’m bushed. It’s been one hell of a day.’ He put his hand on her shoulder as he made his way past her to the balcony door, and she felt the jolt of contact run right through her. But if Daniel felt it too, he gave no sign. He merely nodded at Titch. ‘It was good to meet you,’ he said.

‘Likewise,’ said Titch.

Daniel’s departure, and a stomach full of pizza, made Rebecca realise how tired she was. Titch began making noises about getting himself a room, but Rebecca’s had a spare bed and she felt the need for company, not least because of all that ransom money in the holdall. They washed and went to their separate beds, turned out the lights. She lay there on her back, watching the headlights of passing cars painting yellow lines upon her ceiling, making desultory conversation with Titch about the office and their various projects. She couldn’t help thinking, while they were talking, how
remote
London seemed, how indifferent she was to news and gossip of it. They
fell silent for a little while, then she said: ‘I’m going to stay here.’ She hadn’t consciously considered remaining in Madagascar until then, but the moment she said it, she realised it had been inevitable.

In the neighbouring bed, Titch drew in breath then pushed himself up on to his elbow. ‘How do you mean? For how long?’

She heard anxiety in his voice, decided to allay it. ‘Just until I can sort things out properly.’

‘What about America?’

‘Fuck America,’ she said, more vehemently then she’d intended. ‘This is family.’ She waited for him to respond, but he remained quiet so long that she realised there was a question he dared not ask. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay whatever happens with my father and sister.’

‘And what about us? What about our company?’

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘It won’t work without you.’

‘Yes, it will.’

‘It won’t. You know it won’t.’

‘Let’s talk about it in the morning.’

He seemed to accept that. They wished each other goodnight and within fifteen minutes or so, his breathing pattern indicated he’d fallen asleep. Rebecca found it harder to drop off. Her soft tissues ached from the day’s ordeals. Apprehension about tomorrow was exacerbated by not having Daniel at her side. She strove for soothing
thoughts, for happy places, but it wasn’t easy. She kept picking up her mobile to check the time, make sure the battery still had some juice in it; but each time she checked it, its dial would light up, draining it a little bit more. Her recharger was in Eden. Daniel was about to head that way. She wondered if she could justify going with him to collect it, but then she heard a motorbike outside. She slipped from the bed and went out on to her balcony, only to find his bike already gone.

She returned to bed, dozed off, woke a little later to find that it had grown light outside, and that the town was coming slowly to life. She still felt tired but she got up anyway, took out her copy of Mustafa’s loan agreement. She hadn’t had a chance to go through it properly before, and the more she read, the more it alarmed her. She kept setting it aside, telling herself not to worry about it now. But then she’d pick it up again. Mustafa hadn’t stinted himself, that was for sure. He’d told her about the five per cent interest, but not about his agent’s fee, nor that he’d demarcated the loan amount in its euro equivalent, according to the previous day’s tourist exchange rate; and that he wanted the principal paid back according to the exchange rate at the time of the repayment. The way she figured it, that would mean she’d have to pay the spread between the buy and sell rates
twice;
and the spreads here were notoriously punitive. She did a rough-and-ready calculation on the
back of one of the pages; she’d borrowed five hundred million ariary from him: yet under the various terms, she already owed him getting on for seven hundred and fifty million. He was, in effect, charging her a £70,000 management fee for arranging a ten-day loan. She felt a little sick, not just at the money, but also because it felt like she was being scammed. Her immediate instinct was to stiff Mustafa in return. Once she was back in England, after all, he’d never be able to sue her. But that was too easy an out; he’d surely have anticipated it. It took her a minute or so to find the sting in the contract’s tail: a clause stipulating her stake in Eden as security for his loan. That puzzled her, for she had no stake in Eden, not while her father was alive, at least. Suddenly she had a very bad feeling about this.

She shook Titch awake. ‘I need your help,’ she told him.

‘Of course,’ he said, stifling a yawn. ‘What?’

‘A hire car. Preferably a 4x4. And see if you can get them to rent you one without a driver.’

He nodded and threw back his sheet. ‘I’ll get on to it at once.’

‘We’ll meet back here in an hour or so, okay?’ she said, zipping the contract up in the holdall. ‘Only there’s a lawyer I need to go see.’

Next door, Knox had also slept poorly. He’d expected Titch to take a room for himself, but he’d been able to hear him and Rebecca preparing for bed then talking through the wall, though their conversation had been too muffled for him to make out what they were saying. It gave him a twinge anyway to think of the two of them together, for it had been obvious from the first that Titch was infatuated with Rebecca, and that she was fond of him too, though it had been less clear how fond. They finally fell silent, except for the creak of bed-joints as they tossed and turned, sounds that he found equally disturbing.

It came as a relief, therefore, when it finally grew light enough outside for him to be able to drive. He rose, paid for his room, then pushed his bike out on to the road so as not to wake the other guests when he started it up. A yellow dog dozed against a yellow wall, as if using it as camouflage. A family of four wobbled by on a ramshackle bicycle, the father standing up on the pedals, the mother sitting side-saddle nursing an infant, a boy balanced precariously upon the handlebars, giggling joyously. For a few miles, the road was busy with smallholders carting produce to Tulear’s markets, but soon he was beyond them and making quick progress, slaloming the track’s pitfalls. He passed
a paradise beach, the golden sand bevelled by footprints and scarred by the broken husks of old pirogues. The sun rose above the trees, grew warm. By the side of the road, two men sawed up an old truck tyre to make sandals. Everything had residual value here; everything was squeezed dry. A young boy dragging a snow-white goat by its hind leg grinned and waved. He waved back. Then he saw Pierre’s cabins ahead, a concrete reminder of the revelation that had been haunting him these past twenty-four hours, that he was quite possibly a father. It was an extraordinary thing, like discovering a new dimension in the world. He told himself to drive on, that this was no time for distractions, that his job was to check Eden for ransom updates. Yet he found himself turning off the track up towards Pierre’s house all the same.

The noise of his arrival brought Pierre to the door. ‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have a message for Therese,’ he said. ‘From Rebecca.’

‘Tell me. I’ll pass it on.’

‘It’s personal,’ said Knox. ‘She asked me to give it to Therese myself.’

He scowled but went inside. A minute passed. Therese came to the door carrying an infant in her arms, its face to her chest so that Knox couldn’t see. His heart gave a double thump all the same; he beckoned Therese to follow him out of sight and earshot.

‘Yes?’ she asked.

Now that the moment was upon him, Knox didn’t know quite how to proceed. ‘Is that Emilia’s son?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said warily.

‘So that would make him Pierre’s?’

Therese didn’t say anything at first. She looked instead at his face, as if assessing his state of knowledge, his intent. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Why you ask me this?’

‘I knew Emilia,’ he told her. ‘We became close when she came to England.
Very
close. Maybe she mentioned me?’

Therese’s eyes watered a little, but happily. She wiped a finger beneath them. ‘I think it must be you,’ she said. ‘When Rebecca tell me this Englishman is here, with scars upon his back …’

‘It’s me.’ He nodded at Michel. ‘So he’s mine?’ he asked.

She seemed to hesitate, as though still bound by some vow of confidentiality; but the situation had gone beyond that, and she must have realised it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s yours.’ She held him out. Knox took him in both hands and raised him up a little awkwardly, as though he’d just been presented with some undeserved trophy. Therese was talking rapidly; he didn’t take in a word of it, too numbed by those big brown eyes. Michel’s face clenched as though he was about to start bawling; but then he thought better of it, he looked up and away, as though mildly puzzled by some anomaly in the world. Knox saw
his sister in him, then, and his father too. And in that moment, accepting Michel as his responsibility, all the dead tissue around his heart was simply excised and thrown away, allowing what remained to breathe freely again. He remembered a simple truth he’d somehow forgotten in the loss of Gaille: that life was only worth living when it was lived for someone else. His vendetta against the Nergadzes was instantly over; they just weren’t worth it. And he realised, too, that his first duty now was to find Emilia, one way or another. Everything else could wait.

He passed Michel back to Therese. ‘I have things to do,’ he told her. ‘Will you look after him a little longer?’

‘Of course,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for everything.’

She nodded and headed back to the house, carrying Michel against her shoulder. He walked with them and watched them safely back inside. Then he straddled his bike and turned it towards Eden, profoundly aware that his old life was over, and a new one had begun.

Delpha didn’t pick up Mustafa’s agreement. He simply turned it to face him on his desk. His half-moon reading glasses proved inadequate for the small print, so he produced a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and used that instead, sliding it with such agonising clumsiness across the paper that Rebecca longed to do it for him. When he was finally finished, he looked up at her with the most melancholic eyes. ‘You signed this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I had no time. It was for a ransom. I was late and I—’

‘A ransom.’ He looked stunned. ‘Your father? Your sister?’

‘I spoke to him,’ she said. ‘He’s alive. They’re both alive.’

Delpha’s eyes glistened. He convulsed once, like a sob, put a hand to his brow. ‘Heaven be praised,’ he murmured.

‘Mustafa’s been after a stake in Eden,’ said Rebecca. ‘My father mentioned it in a letter. He also remarked that Mustafa was pestering the wrong person. What did he mean by that?’

Delpha gave himself a few moments to compose himself, then said: ‘You must remember something about Malagasy law,’ he said. ‘Since Independence, only citizens have been able to own land here. Your father has never become a citizen.’

Rebecca frowned. She’d always taken it for granted that her father owned Eden, yet Delpha was right: her parents had bought Eden after Independence, and her father had never become a Malagasy citizen. Then she realised how it must have worked. ‘My
mother
owned Eden? But what about when she died?’