Nowhere Girl (17 page)

“And the chocolates, they’re good at those,” she added, an afterthought to prove she was not thinking about Ellie, but Olivier wasn’t listening. He was watching the door of the nail bar, and the young man who had just walked out. He was stocky, not tall, but held himself with a certain confidence as he walked towards a white van, and climbed up next to a man who was in the driving seat. The van did not pull away, and Cate saw it was advertising a swimming pool. The picture seemed familiar, but she couldn’t think why.

Amelia pushed away her plate. “Chips and chocolate it is then. Anything is better than that.”

Cate finished her salad and Olivier’s attention returned to them.

“Mum, Isabella was showing me her tracker yesterday. Most of the girls in my class have got one now. Can I get one?”

Olivier snapped to attention. “What nonsense! Those parents have more money than sense. There is no need for you to be tracked, Amelia, Luxembourg is the safest city in the world.”

Amelia shook her head stubbornly. “But my German teacher, Madame Schroeder, is telling us about self-defence, so she can’t think so.”

“That Madame Schroeder needs to watch it. She’s overstepping her remit. The police may need to speak to her about causing unrest.”

Olivier was angry and Cate had a flash view of what he must be like in an interview room, of how scary he must be if you were on the wrong side of the desk. Had Bridget experienced this, when she was questioned today?

Cate had headed straight to the school after leaving the beauty salon, and returned Gaynor to her home. Achim had opened the door. She had asked after Bridget, who she had seen standing at the lounge window, looking out. Achim hadn’t gone into any detail, simply said that the police had needed to speak with them. But why at the police station? Cate knew enough to think this was odd, and would have liked to ask Olivier. Wondering whether, if the police had no leads, they were instead focusing on the family.

Now Cate felt a pressing need to defend her new friend. “I think Eva,” she quickly corrected herself, “Madame Schroeder, simply wants to protect the girls she looks after, because of Ellie going missing. Parents are worried for their children, Olivier. It’s natural.”

“Maybe so. But not all parents are the same, Cate. You must know that, with all you have seen. We must keep an open mind.”

“What are you saying, Olivier?”

There was a silence and his face was serious, but he said nothing more, as always.

She knew she was pushing Olivier, but she couldn’t stop. “I don’t believe Bridget has anything to do with Ellie’s disappearance.”

“Cate, you do not know this woman. By all means take her daughter to school, assist her if you must, but please do not make the mistake of thinking that you know what has happened with Ellie.”

But it was too late, Cate was unable to remain silent. “I heard that Bridget was questioned at the police station today. Isn’t the poor woman going through enough stress, without that?”

Olivier’s shoulders were tense and his eyes seemed very dark. “That is not for you to judge, Cate. It is for the police to investigate, and it does not help with hysterical teachers scaring the children. There is always danger in a city.” Then, noticing Amelia’s alarmed face, he reached forward to touch her wrist. “But Luxembourg is a very safe city. The safest in Europe. And you have me to protect you.”

Then he lifted a euro coin from his pocket, and hid it in the linen napkin, making it reappear from behind Amelia’s ear so she laughed and begged him to do it again.

Cate returned her gaze to the window and the nail bar opposite. The van had pulled away and the young man was returning to the beauty salon. She could see him better from this angle, and noticed his distinctive yellow-blonde hair and skin as pale as alabaster. His clothes, she now saw, were old-fashioned and formal, a shirt and suit trousers, too hot for the weather.
An unlikely customer at a nail bar
, she thought. And judging by Olivier’s keen interest, she could see that he thought so too.

After their meal they caught the last opening hour of the Bastogne War Museum, and Cate was distracted from recent events by the tourism of remembrance. They sat inside the mini-theatre that was created to look like a forest, on seats made to replicate logs. A snowy landscape was set around them, above them was the projected image of planes, and they could see mannequins dressed as soldiers. For several minutes Cate was absorbed, but then she became aware that Olivier was not concentrating on the presentation, but was once again tapping a text message into his phone. Amelia pressed close to her mother, unsettled by the noise of gunfire around her.

“It’s okay,” Cate told her daughter. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

The final part of the tour was a short walk outside, with a view towards the Mardasson Memorial, the monument to fallen American soldiers. The evening sun gave Cate warmth and she tried to take in the breath-taking majesty of the monument, but Cate was blind to the view, lost despite knowing exactly where she stood, and wanted nothing more than to go home. Her real home, in England.

At that moment, Olivier had taken her wrist, waited until she was looking fully at him and said, “If you ask me again to breach confidentiality on this case, if you say any more about some danger you imagine exists in Luxembourg, then I will have to reconsider.”

He did not elaborate on what, nor did she ask, struck dumb by the cold tone of his command.

Olivier shifted his hold from her wrist to her hand, firm and controlling, but also the same hand that had been so gentle just last night, playing her body with ease so she made sounds, felt things, she had never allowed herself to before.

His threat was a moment, and it was gone. The beauty around them remained, Amelia was oblivious to what had just happened. “It’s like a fairy tale forest. Do you think there are any deer?” she asked, running off to look.

“She’s so happy here, Cate,” Olivier said. “Just relax, and you could be too.”

“I think I saw something!” Amelia ran back to the dusty path, her legs covered with dirt but also kissed by the sun, her hair blonder than since they arrived. She looked so pretty, so happy. Cate hated herself for ruining it.

Olivier squeezed Cate’s hand, and she felt him watching her anxiously, worried he had gone too far. “You know, I love you, Cate,” he said.

Cate turned back to him, in shock. He had not said this before. He pulled her forward, so they were again walking side by side.

“I may be a difficult man, with strong views,” he said. “But I think we are a good match. We just have to learn how to be with each other, and I think you are finding it hard to not be a probation officer. You are imagining worse crimes, something domestic becomes a kidnapping, to keep your brain busy. Perhaps you should start some voluntary work, would this help?”

Cate felt her anger soften and turn against herself. She too was in love, and Olivier had given both her and Amelia a chance to be happy. He was right. He was in the best place to judge if Ellie’s case was domestic or something wider. She should let it go.

“What kind of voluntary work?”

“At the prison, maybe. There are many inmates who have no visitors, and who prefer to speak English. Would you like me to arrange something for you?”

Just then Amelia gasped, and the three of them watched as a deer crossed their path, just a few yards away. It stopped, gazed at them, as from behind its young offspring darted, coming level with its mother and waiting until by some secret signal she indicated that they must leave. Mother and young ran into the protection of the trees. Only then did they hear a crack in the air. Men, following. Evening hunters.

Later, back at their flat, Cate stood in the bathroom brushing her teeth. It was a moment of solitude, just her and the mirror, the sound of the brushing, the thoughts in her head. She found that away from Olivier her thoughts ran differently, in a straight line: Eva’s advice on self-defence during German class, the leaflets at school and the texts on Olivier’s phone. Suddenly she had the creeping suspicion that his anger towards her was because she was onto something.

Their relationship, her first chance at love since her divorce from Tim, and she was risking it all.

She spat out her toothpaste, leaned over the sink and gazed at her own reflection. She wasn’t young anymore, her hair was turning more brown than red at the roots, her skin was less taut, though her eyes still gleamed brightly and she knew she was lucky. A handsome man, a life abroad, and she was jeopardising it. Better to be right and single or in love? She couldn’t fix anything anyway. So long as she kept Amelia safe did it matter what else might be going on in the city?

Compromise and silence. This might be what it took to have a successful relationship, a feat her parents failed at, as she had with Tim. Olivier’s parents seemed happily married, he didn’t have any divorce behind him. Maybe he knew more about what was required to keep a relationship healthy. She should stop rocking the boat.

“Mum?” Amelia called out from her bedroom. “Can you read to me?”

Cate splashed cold water on her face, gave herself one last look and then she went to read to Amelia.

“Malik say he wants to find a wife,” Jodie tells Amina that morning. They are sitting cross-legged on the thin mattress, both combing through their hair, yawning.

Amina listens to Jodie with growing anxiety. She is very pretty and Amina fears for her friend.

“Does he mean you?”

Jodie snorts, so hard she has to swallow. “I say to him a wife would want nice house, sparkling jewels. He just wants the nasty thing! If there’s no house, no garden, no ring, then there’s no wife and no nasty either.”

Amina doesn’t see why this is so funny, she wonders at Jodie who always seems to know so much more than her, yet she isn’t worried about ridiculing Malik in this way. Omi would say that such talk was disrespectful, and Samir would say it was sacrilegious. But Amina isn’t thinking either of these things, she is just worried for her friend, that her big dreams will come to nothing and she’ll end up as trapped in Luxembourg as she would have been in Algeria.

She wonders if Samir has returned from Paris, if he knows she has left. If the Algerian police are still visiting Omi, all the time, demanding to know where he is. He may be dead.

Fighting back tears, Amina wants to hold Jodie, and tell her she’s only a girl and not ready to be a wife yet, that they have their whole futures ahead of them. If they work and learn. But Jodie is too interested in boys as the ticket to a better future, to that house with the swimming pool she wants so badly. Amina has only met Malik a few times, but he always works with Uncle Jak, and so Jodie has seen him plenty. Amina fears for her friend, she fears for Omi too. She wishes more than anything to be free from this. All of this.

“You know, Amina. When Malik said ‘wife’ he looked at me like I was a delicious treat, so he could swallow me whole. He said my titties look like pieces of okra for him to chew.”

Amina reaches forward to grasp her friend’s leg. “Jodie, you mustn’t let him say these things to you. He is Uncle’s son, so like a brother to us. He is supposed to look after us.”

Jodie waved her hand dismissively. “Auntie won’t let him do anything bad! She was there and shooed him away, kicking his backside as he left. He’s frightened of her.”

Amina felt calmer, knowing that. Auntie wasn’t easy to like but Amina felt safe with her and that was more important.

“I don’t think he’s Uncle’s son, anyway. Malik does not call him father.”

Then Amina remembered that for once she had some news to share.

“Auntie put me to work in the front of the shop, where the customers are, but with a warning: ‘Nosy customers ask questions, so you no speak to them. Remember, you “
non parlez anglaise
”, okay? Once they know you do it will be, you so pretty, how old you are and then why you not in school. Next thing we in trouble. Nosy pushy, should just shut up and let us paint them nails, they so rich they can’t paint them on they own. Probably have maid at home cleaning up they shit while we file and polish.’”

Amina mimics Auntie’s voice and likes it that Jodie can’t stop laughing. She could always make Pizzie laugh. Never with words like this though; she can feel herself changing, becoming braver. More Western.

When Jodie caught her breath she put her hand over Amina’s knee. “Auntie is right about that, though. We, all of us, just seem the same to those Western types. They don’t see where we come from, our long history, our different stories. All they see is our brown skin. You and me, we speak Arabic differently, we follow different customs because our homes are far apart. But not to them.”

Amina didn’t tell her, but all the whites she had met so far looked similar. Sounded it too, loud booming voices, fleshy legs and arms, straight long hair. No wrinkles but shiny skin where the wrinkles belonged. Auntie had told Amina that these white women inject poison into their faces to freeze the lines, but she thought this must be a joke, as surely no-one would be so stupid. Wrinkles are pretty, Amina’s mother had many and they showed she’s had a good life, that she’s laughed a lot, at least until a few years ago. Amina hoped to get many wrinkles, to have things to smile about. She was waiting for this to happen.

“Come now, Amina.” Jodie pulled on her red dress. “I am ready for my breakfast.”

The day began as the others had before. Both girls had bread with jam, and the white tablet medicine that Auntie said was herbal and would help them relax, washed down with black tea. After breakfast, Jodie left with Malik and Jak and Amina opened up the salon to begin her work.

Though Amina had been told not to get into conversation with the white women while she was working, she allowed herself to look. And she was diligent, doing as she was told. Auntie had shown her how to clean the equipment with a blue solution so powerful she had to wear latex gloves that felt loose on her hands, so her fingers wiggled inside like the gloves are a plastic bag and she was reminded of their goat and how it felt to milk her. As she worked, Amina wondered if Pizzie was doing this very thing, right now. She often occupied herself with that thought, of what Omi or Piz may be doing, but sometimes she was too homesick and tried not to think of them at all. Amina used a tiny brush for the cleaning, and did a good job in making the tweezers and nail files gleam.