Lie With Me (19 page)

‘We were all in the middle of our own private dramas that night,’ I said.

‘Andrew got rid of you but it all became too much for me. I had to get away from everyone, be on my own, so I left, leaving Andrew to it. But I got halfway home and realised I’d forgotten my cardigan on the back of the chair, so I drove back and ended up having another drink with Andrew and the French couple. It wasn’t much later that Yvonne arrived in the street, shouting that she’d lost her daughter. All these Greeks and other tourists were clustering round, but none of them spoke English, which is why I became involved. I was trying so hard to calm her, telling her everything would be OK. And then the police came and search parties were sent out . . .’

She broke off.

‘You did everything you could,’ I said after a while.

‘I didn’t. We didn’t
find
her. She had just vanished into thin air. She’d stormed out of their apartment after a fight with Karl – he’d told her she couldn’t go out dressed as she was. Yvonne had been in the shower during the row but as soon as she heard what had happened, she was out looking for her, determined to bring her home. They were staying in an apartment block, where Delfinos is now, and they’d gone along the beach, up the road, down to the port, to the club, searched the bars. They’d looked
everywhere
. That horrible feeling – I once lost Phoebe in a department store, when she was a toddler, and there is this moment when rationality is taken over by panic, and you don’t know what to do with yourself.’

‘Presumably the police thought she’d gone off with the boyfriend you mentioned and would be back in the morning?’

‘Yes. But no boyfriend ever came forward and Jasmine was never seen again.’

I said: ‘Well, you never know, we might find her today.’

She turned her head away from me to look out of the window. ‘Yes.’

The road began to flatten out after that. Alice seemed keen to change the subject. She asked me why I didn’t like Andrew. I looked straight ahead and told her that I felt he had designs on her body. She laughed.

‘Am I wrong?’ I said, trying to sound cool and unemotional. ‘I feel like there’s something between you.’

‘Are you jealous?’

‘Yes. I suppose I am.’

‘Well, that’s just daft.’

She flicked at my shoulder with her finger, then looked out of the window. I felt awkward, exposed, and to cover it I told her how much I liked Tina. ‘Yes, she’s perfection, isn’t she?’ She asked me how I ‘found’ the Hopkins children, a question I rose to magnificently, telling her that
her
kids were so much more alive and interesting, that Archie was insipid, and that Phoebe’s charm and beauty put Daisy’s in the shade.

‘And yet Daisy does so much better academically . . .’ she said leadingly.

‘It’s emotional intelligence that counts,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘And Daisy can be a little pert sometimes.’

‘She can be quite over-confident.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her smile. It always surprises me how competitive parents are, how they love to hear even their friends’ children
put down
.

‘Listen, about Louis,’ I said, thinking it was a good moment.

‘What about Louis?’

‘The other night. I saw you bring him back in the car. He was back later than you told the police.’

She laughed. ‘Poor Louis. He was paralytic. I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. If the girls found out, they’d make his life a misery. But that was early – don’t you remember? We woke you up; the girls were still out.’

‘I thought the girls were back . . . I thought they were . . .’ I stopped. I couldn’t admit to knowing they were back, because that would mean admitting to spying on them in the pool. ‘Oh yes,’ I said.

A tiny pause and then she added: ‘It’s interesting what you just said about emotional intelligence. Florrie was always cleverer than me at school. That’s why she went to Cambridge and I went to Bristol. But she was very impractical. She had no sense of direction, or spatial awareness. I was always having to lend her things, or help her look in lost property. She found it harder to make friends.’

I felt myself tense. I had remembered a few more details about Florrie. She’d written me a letter. I couldn’t remember the contents. I’d only skimmed it, before throwing it in the bin. ‘Poor Florrie,’ I said. ‘She was very sensitive if I remember.’

‘Yes.’

‘She never married or had children?’

Alice looked at me and away again. She frowned. ‘No.’

‘Did she have a job when she died?’

‘No, she had moved back home.’

‘That’s sad,’ I said, thinking,
fuck, it’s me. No wife, no kids, no job, living with your old mother 
. . .
‘I’m sorry. Suicide is a terrible thing for the people who are left behind.’

‘It is. I know.’

She looked out of the window, quiet now. I tried to think of something more cheerful to talk about, though it seemed insensitive to move away from Florrie completely. ‘Did you go to a birthday party she had?’ I said, after a few moments’ thought. ‘It was in the Fellows’ Garden.’

‘I did.’

I glanced at her. ‘Maybe we met.’

‘We
did
.’

The tyres hit a patch of rough gravel, and I looked back at the road. ‘Surely I should remember.’

‘One thing I have learnt about you, Paul Morris,’ she said – not without affection – ‘is you only remember what you want to.’

Epitara was on the west coast; it was windier there and the sea was different – waves broke a distance from the shore and rolled in. The sand was a darker yellow, almost grey.

A scrappy, spread-out village, it consisted of a run of buildings and tavernas set back behind a long scrubby beach. The place had an itinerant feel, with signs everywhere advertising ‘Rooms, Chambres, Zimmer’. One end of the beach, closest to where the main road came in, was dedicated to conventional tourism, with rows of fold-up sunbeds and tatty yellow umbrellas, but at the other, a makeshift campsite had been erected – mismatched tents, rubbish bins spilling their contents and a couple of vans with awnings under a group of trees. It felt hot and grubby. Toddlers played in the water, and brown naked bodies sprawled here and there like basking seals. A few of the women had laid out towels and were selling jewellery and hair-braids.

We parked in a small car park off the main road, and headed for a taverna where Alice said she knew the owner, an English woman who’d lived on Pyros since the 1980s. She walked round the back to see if she could find her and I sat on a narrow shady porch overlooking the beach and ordered coffees from a young waiter with sleeked back black hair and a neat moustache. It was windy – the plastic tablecloth kept flapping out of its metal clips.

Alice came through a door with a blonde woman in her fifties. ‘Paul – this is Niki Stenhouse,’ she said. ‘She used to live in Agios Stefanos – she was a rep with CV Travel when we first met her – but then she married Theo and they moved down here to run his family business.’

I stood up to shake the woman’s hand, appraising her: a combination of Sloane and hippy – a sensible bob and shirt dress, but also big dangly earrings, jangly bracelets and a necklace made of shells. Her face was wrinkled, and over-tanned, but there was a looseness in her movements, in the way she stood with her legs apart, that suggested she might be rather good in bed.

‘Well done for coming all this way,’ she said, her voice more Home Counties than I was expecting. She was still holding my hand and looking intently into my face. ‘I know Alice is grateful.’

‘Niki thinks she knows the girl I saw,’ Alice said. ‘But she says she’s newish here – only arrived this summer.’

Niki dropped my hand, and looked at Alice. ‘I have to say I had assumed she was German,’ she said.

‘But you don’t know that.’

‘It’s only that she’s shacked up with Gunter – he’s been here a while. The car isn’t his. It was dumped last summer and one of the longer-term residents spent the winter doing it up. They share it down there, I think.’

‘Drink your coffee,’ Alice said to me. She hadn’t sat down. ‘They’re living in the last camper van, so I think we should go.’

I downed the dregs and stood up, swaying my hips while clicking my fingers to show I was galvanised. It set slightly the wrong tone, a little too frivolous. Sometimes I forgot myself.

A smell, of pot and paraffin, of cooking oil and burnt cinders, became stronger the closer we got to the camp. A woman with white dreadlocks and a Mancunian accent came off the beach to ask Alice if she would like a foot massage. ‘No thank you,’ she said, staring ahead. She was tense, out of her comfort zone.

The last camper van was less retro and more of a mobile home, square and white, with an extending roof and three plastic chairs arranged around a table outside. Balls of screwed-up paper-towel were scattered around a grill on the ground. A couple of thin cats lay sprawled next to the wheels.

It was sheltered, less windy here. There was a heady smell of rotting vegetation and dope.

A door at the front was open but Alice knocked anyway. ‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Anyone in?’

The van rocked slightly, the sound of footsteps, and a woman came to the door and peered out. She was wearing a clinging faded brown T-shirt dress, no sleeves, no bra. Hairy legs and armpits. Her hair was pulled back in a long plait, and there were two black studs on her face – one in the side of her nose, one in the middle of her chin. She was probably the woman from Andrew’s photograph, but I wasn’t sure.

‘Hi,’ she said.

Alice stared at her. She swallowed hard. ‘Jasmine?’

The woman took a step back. Her face closed and her mouth tipped down at the corners. ‘What you want?’ she said.

Alice put her hands out. ‘I’m here to help you,’ she said under her breath. ‘Do you know who you are? Do you know your name?’

The woman laughed. ‘I don’t need your help. None of your business,’ she said, ‘what my name is.’

Her accent wasn’t English and, close up, I could see faint traces of lines on her forehead, and at the sides of her mouth. I was right. She was older than twenty-three, maybe even in her early thirties.

‘I saw you at the supermarket,’ Alice said. ‘Across the island. In Stefanos.’

The woman put her hand on the door and pushed it hard. It began to close.

Alice let out a small groan and I saw a chance to show my mettle, to demonstrate my commitment, and I stepped quickly forwards, getting to the door just in time and slamming my palm hard against it. It was propelled backwards, and the woman let out a cry.

She was on the floor, holding her forehead. Blood was dripping from her nose.

‘Oh God,’ Alice cried. ‘Is she all right?’

I bent down, tried to touch her, put my arm out to reassure her, but the woman pulled away from me, disgust and fear on her face. She was screaming now, obscenities in English and another language – possibly German, possibly Dutch – kicking out at me.

A man came running up from the beach, tall and rangy, bare-chested, in nothing but shorts; knees slightly bent and feet splayed, to get purchase on the sand. ‘Greta,’ he shouted, speeding up when he reached the van. He began to pummel me with his fists. ‘What the fuck you doing?’

I put my hands up, tried to push him off.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry!’ Alice shouted. ‘It was an accident. He didn’t mean to. It was the door. We just wanted to ask some questions.’

‘I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ I said.

The woman – Greta – got to her feet, pulling her dress down. She grabbed a tea towel and held it to her nose. ‘You crazy?’ she said.

‘I’m not crazy,’ I said. I put my hands out, a gesture of peace, and took another couple of steps forward. ‘We’re just looking for an English woman called Jasmine. We thought it might have been you. We just wanted to talk. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

The man shoved past me and climbed into the van. He put his arm around the woman’s shoulders, moving the towel to inspect her nose. ‘I get the police on you. You animal.’

‘No you won’t,’ Alice said calmly. ‘Because you are thieves.’

‘No Jasmine here,’ he said. ‘Leave us.’

Alice had begun to walk away, but I had one last chance to impress her. Remembering a detail I had read on the poster in Elconda, I darted back up the step. ‘Can I see your shoulder?’ I asked. ‘Do you have a scar there? The Jasmine we’re looking for has a scar.’

The woman simply stared at me. Without really thinking about it, I began to extend my hand towards the neck of her dress. Even as I was doing so, I felt two firm arms grab me around the chest and the man in the shorts hurled me sideways out of the van. I reached out to break my fall and took the skin off my palm.

‘Crazy man,’ the woman said as the door slammed.

A police car was parked outside the house when we got home.

Alice, her hand on my thigh, had fallen asleep against the window. I’d been as careful as possible not to jolt her, slowing right down on the bends, and avoiding the rougher patches of road. She’d woken as we’d bumped up the last section of track and I’d been about to capitalise on the closeness I felt between us by suggesting we went out for dinner alone. But she was out of the car before I could say anything.

I followed her round to the terrace where Gavras was sitting at the table between Andrew and Tina. The two girls were there, too, in their swimming costumes, their feet up on the seat of their chairs, fiddling with their toenails. No sign of the boys, though a sound of Xbox combat, of muffled explosions, was audible from the house.

‘Don’t get up,’ Alice said.

‘Mrs Mackenzie.’ He had got up anyway, with a half-bow. He was wearing a dark grey shirt today, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. ‘I hear you have been for a nice drive.’

‘Yes. We went to visit an old friend in Epitara . . . I . . . We . . .’ She was faltering. I knew why: it was embarrassment at having embarked on another wild-goose chase, of having once again been wrong.

I stepped forwards, shielding her with my body. ‘Alice was kind enough to show me some of the island.’ I stretched out my hand. ‘Paul. Paul Morris. I am not sure we’ve met.’