The Fallen (16 page)

She must have been three or four when her father had been promoted to lead a national investigation unit. His work had taken him all over the country, sometimes for months at a time, but he had been officially based at Jo’burg Central police station, which in those days had been known as John Vorster Square. She remembered sitting on a row of cardboard boxes in the Richards Bay house, watching her father help the removal men load their simple furniture into a van. Then they had embarked on the seven-hour drive to Johannesburg. It didn’t take that long today—the highways that had been built since then had taken a good hour off the journey.

By the time they had reached Johannesburg, it had been almost completely dark and, even now, Jade could still remember the sense of utter wonderment she had felt as their car crested a hill and there, in front of them, had been the last orange smudge of the setting sun … and the lights.

Twinkling lights in every direction, as far as she could see, stretching right to the horizon. Some bright, others so dim they were only a faint shimmer. Some clustered thickly together, some marching away from her in an orderly sequence, following the straight lines of the roads.

Jade had had no idea that a city could be so big. It had seemed to her like another planet. Foreign, mysterious and exciting.

‘Wow,’ she had breathed, turning her head from side to side to take in the dazzling view.

She remembered how her father had laughed, stretched out his hand and ruffled her hair.

Rose Village Retirement Home looked more like a prison camp. A series of stark buildings surrounded by a scruffy garden and a low brick wall, with not a rose in sight.

She’d asked David to drop her off at a shopping centre on the way, so that he wouldn’t know exactly where she was headed. Her quest to find out more about Elise de Jong was a private matter. She didn’t want David knowing—and most probably disapproving, since he knew who her mother had been. Jade had told him soon after she had found out, although in retrospect she wished she hadn’t.

At the shops, she had bought a big tin of biscuits as a gift for the old lady, and taken a close look at a street map of the area before embarking on the fifteen-minute walk to the retirement home.

Inside, the place smelled institutional, as if decades of bland meals and cheap disinfectant had seeped into its very pores. Jade asked for Mrs Koekemoer at reception and, after a short wait, was escorted down the corridor by a smiling coloured nurse.

‘Is she your granny?’ the nurse asked her, and Jade shook her head.

‘She knew my mother,’ she replied.

The nurse gave a soft knock on a door that already stood ajar, before walking inside. Jade followed her. The small room was warm—stuffy, even. Cream-coloured blinds were pulled up, revealing a rather grubby window that looked out onto the rear garden. Still no roses to be seen, but other flowers and shrubs filled the untidy-looking beds.

A portly, white-haired lady was sitting in a wheelchair by the window, staring out at the garden.

‘Mrs K?’ the nurse called. ‘You have a visitor.’

The elderly lady looked round. Her eyes were confused and somehow opaque-looking.

‘Mrs Koekemoer? I spoke to you yesterday on the phone. I’m Jade de Jong. You knew my mother, Elise, when you worked at the Richards Bay hospital.’

The lady stared at Jade, her expression blank.

‘Elise de Jong?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Jade said gently.

The old lady looked away.

‘She has some good days, and some days that are bad. Yesterday was a very good day for her. Today is not so good, I think,’ the nurse whispered.

Jade was beginning to wish she’d asked the questions over the phone the previous day.

‘What should I do?’ she whispered back.

The nurse shrugged. ‘Stay for a while. Perhaps she will remember just now.’

Jade stepped forward and put the Spar shopping bag down on the table next to the narrow bed.

‘I brought you a present,’ she said, taking out the tin.

The old lady’s face lit up.

‘Biscuits!’ she exclaimed.

‘Would you like one?’

‘No, no thank you. Later, with my tea. Who are you?’

‘Jade de Jong. You knew my mother, Elise. You looked after her in hospital. I’m her daughter.’

The old lady whispered something so softly Jade could hardly hear it. She stepped closer and sat down on the plastic chair that was obviously for guests. In her pocket, she heard her phone beep its low-battery warning and she pushed her hand against it to muffle the noise.

The old lady whispered the words again, and this time Jade heard them exactly.

‘She died. Buried in the gardens.’

Despite the warmth of the room, Jade shivered.

‘Yes, I know. That’s why I’ve come to visit. To find out …’

But Mrs Koekemoer interrupted her, again with words so soft Jade had to lean right forward to make them out.

‘Car accident, right here in town.’

Jade felt as if a bucket of icy water had just been tipped over her back. The skin on her arms turned to gooseflesh.

‘No … it can’t be.’

‘She was speeding,’ the old lady mumbled, nodding her head so that her white curls bobbed. ‘Going far too fast. She and her baby daughter, both. They’re with the angels now.’

A gentle touch on Jade’s shoulder made her jump.

The nurse was back, holding a glass of water on a saucer.

‘She’s talking about her own daughter,’ she said in a low voice, handing the water to Jade. ‘She’s the one who died in the crash with her baby. It was many years ago, but she still speaks about it as if it was yesterday. Sometimes she forgets it happened and asks us where Daphne is and why she does not visit.’

Jade nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Then, turning back to Mrs Koekemoer, she said, ‘That must have been terrible for you.’

‘Yes, yes. A terrible loss.’ Lacing her knotted fingers together, she bowed her head. ‘I pray for them every day. Pray they did not suffer.’ She glanced up at Jade again. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

Jade was beginning to think that this visit was a waste of time—that she should simply sit here and offer the elderly lady some company for a while, and come back another day.

One last try, then.

‘I’m Elise de Jong’s daughter. You looked after her at the hospital.’

When Mrs Koekemoer turned to stare at Jade, it was like a light had suddenly gone on behind her eyes.

‘You are so like your mother, my dear. I’d forgotten how she looked, but seeing you brings it all back.’

Jade took a deep breath. She realised her hands were clenched so hard her nails were just about piercing her palms. ‘You remember her well?’ she asked.

‘Oh, ja, of course. She had the very first
C-
section we ever did in the new maternity ward. A beautiful lady?’

Jade nodded encouragingly. ‘Yes.’

‘Her glass of red wine,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I remember that. Her husband would visit every evening, and he’d bring along a bottle of red wine and pour a glass for each of them. Just one glass each, every night. It wasn’t really allowed, but we turned a blind eye.’

Jade smiled. She could imagine her father’s pleasure in this evening ritual. He’d enjoyed red wine, although he’d only ever had a glass on special occasions. Perhaps her birth had been special enough for him and his wife to celebrate every night.

‘My father didn’t speak much about my mother,’ Jade offered. ‘There’s a lot I don’t know.’

Mrs Koekemoer nodded sympathetically. ‘I see.’

‘I don’t even know where she’s buried.’

The old woman’s eyes widened.

‘That’s a secret, my dear. I’m not allowed to tell. You must speak to the doctor in charge. What’s his name? Let me think now … Abrahams, that’s it. Ask him.’

This odd reply made Jade start to worry that Mrs Koekemoer’s window of lucidity was narrowing. Changing the subject, she continued.

‘My dad said she loved to dive. Loved the ocean.’

‘Oh, yes. She was a diver, wasn’t she? Until the accident, of course.’

The accident?

Jade sat forward, propping herself right on the edge of her chair. ‘What accident? I’ve never heard anything about that.’ For a moment, she thought that Mrs Koekemoer must be thinking of her own daughter’s car accident again.

‘She’d been out at sea. Not diving, of course, because she was pregnant. She was snorkelling. A boat ran right over her. Her arms were all cut up from the propeller—it looked like somebody had taken a carving knife to her.’

With those words, the vivid image of Amanda’s bloodied body flooded back into Jade’s head. She gave an involuntary shudder.

‘Elise was knocked out—she almost drowned. Luckily someone managed to get her back to shore before the sharks came along.’

Jade’s breath caught in her throat.

‘For a while, we were worried she might miscarry, but she didn’t. She made a full recovery, but I remember her saying that as it happened, all she’d been able to think about was her baby … about you. Elise told me in hospital that she didn’t
know if she could ever enjoy diving again. Having so nearly died had made her feel differently about it,’ the old lady whispered in a conspiratorial tone. ‘She said she was terrified to go back underwater, that she thought she had developed a fear of drowning.’

As Jade walked out of the retirement home, ready to make her way back to the shopping centre where she had said she’d meet David, her phone started ringing. The incoming number was unfamiliar.

She cast a glance up and down the narrow road before answering, but there was nobody to be seen except for a young black man in shorts and a ragged
T
-shirt walking ahead of her.

Jade punched the answer button.

‘Hello?’

The voice on the other side stopped her in her tracks.

It was sharp, confident, horribly familiar.

‘Babe. Thought I’d better give you a call, because I see you’ve skipped town.’

Jade snatched the phone away from her ear as if it were a red-hot coal.

Robbie. As soon as he spoke, she couldn’t help remember the way he’d looked when she’d last seen him, just a week ago, waiting for her in the darkness outside her cottage.

The new scar on his jaw, the gold rings on his fingers, the hardness in his eyes.

His expression when he told her he wanted her ‘help’ with a job.

Heart banging in her throat, she stared at the instrument, bitterly regretting having answered the call. How bloody ironic. She’d refused to help because of David, because she knew it was what he would have wanted. And now that David was getting back together with his wife permanently, her noble decision had been in vain.

She still wasn’t going to help Robbie, though. This was her chance—the opportunity to step out of his world and break ties with him forever. It would mean she’d just have to be more cautious when arriving home alone.

She raised the phone again, to find he was still speaking.

‘… haven’t heard from them for a few days now, and it looks like the assignment’s changed profile, so I thought I’d better keep you in the loop …’

‘Robbie,’ Jade interrupted him, speaking loudly.

‘Yes, babe?’

‘This job. I’m …’

And then, with the words she needed on the tip of her tongue, Jade heard her phone play the cheery little tune that meant the battery was drained.

She stared down at the blank screen of the instrument in exasperation.

‘Damn you to hell!’ she shouted, so loudly that the black man turned, noticing her for the first time, and stared at her for a long, assessing moment.

Jade raised her head and met his gaze until he looked away. Then she pocketed the useless phone and stomped back up the street.

Immersed in her own frustrated thoughts, it was a while before she noticed that the yellow car parked up ahead by the side of the road outside the entrance to one of the dilapidated blocks of flats looked oddly familiar.

She slowed down and took a better look.

The car stood out from its surroundings, by virtue of its colour as well as its shape. The number plate looked familiar, and the unusual sticker on the rear window advertising a Durban surf shop confirmed her first thoughts.

This car belonged to Neil Pienaar, the owner of Scuba Sands. She’d last seen it less than two hours ago, parked outside his house while he unloaded shopping bags from it.

What on earth was it doing here?

Jade’s first and immediate thought was that Neil was visiting a prostitute. After all, he was a single man and she’d seen no evidence that he had a partner or lover of either gender. So
perhaps this was how he preferred to conduct his intimate relationships.

But in this ramshackle part of town?

Jade frowned up at the apartment building, noticing the crumbling plaster, the rusty balcony railings, the two broken windows on the first floor.

And then she saw Neil.

Hurrying along the corridor of the third and top floor in the direction of the external stairwell. As she watched, he headed down the first flight of stairs and disappeared from sight.

He would soon reappear, though, and when he did he would see her. And until Jade knew why Neil had been on the top floor of a dodgy-looking building in an unsavoury part of Richards Bay, she wanted to keep her presence here a secret.

Jade sprinted to the opposite side of the road and crouched down behind the only available cover on that side of the street—another parked car, this one an old beige Toyota. If the car’s owner appeared, she’d be exposed and have some explaining to do. But Jade didn’t think the owner would be heading this way any time soon, because the car’s tyres were so soft that it was basically listing sideways on its heavily rusted rims.

Lifting her head, Jade peered through the car’s dirty windows and looked across the road. She heard the thud of Neil’s shoes before she saw him. He emerged from the ground-floor entrance and marched towards his car with shoulders squared, fists clenched and arms swinging by his side. He looked very different from the inoffensive and rather timid man that Jade remembered. Was he angry now? And if so, what had caused his rage?