Nowhere Girl (12 page)

Bridget could only continue to watch at the window, screaming silently into the body of the plush rabbit, until Ellie came home. All she could do was try and explain, and hope that it wouldn’t be long before Ellie would read her words. She took the notebook from the drawer.

Dear Ellie
,

Maybe tomorrow you will come home
.

You are lucky, to have that sense of home. It was one of the things I lost, with all my travelling. When I was out in the field, the locals were usually polite and glad to see me, but they also kept a respectful distance, which reinforced that I was a visitor to their country. I asked my driver once why this was, why none of the locals came for a drink after work, why they never invited us to their homes, and he said it was because they knew we’d leave. They were protecting themselves from any more pain, having already felt more than enough for one lifetime
.

My first placement was in Botswana for nine months. I had a break, and then was sent first to Tunisia, and then to Algeria. It doesn’t sound much, three placements in my short career with MSF, but it was enough. Each time, before and after, I’d go to Brussels for briefing and support and then board a plane back to England. That flight was the worst time for me. I still thought Durham was home, but when I was back, everything felt wrong. How was it that the buildings stood derelict, yet still more were being built? How could people be buying things with such ease, as if money was meaningless? All the wasted food. I was a stranger in my own land. Friends drifted away, and I didn’t care. They were frivolous, shallow. My parents, your grandparents, weren’t interested in hearing my stories, my mum would say it was too sad to hear of families torn apart by disease, but really I think she just didn’t care. More concerned that her neighbour Sheila had just bought a caravan in Hartlepool, or with my father’s dangerously high cholesterol level. They hadn’t seen what I had seen, and after a short time I learned not to speak about it. I went on the temporary nursing register at the local hospital and waited for my next mission to come through
.

Waiting is hard
.

What I feel now, Ellie, as I wait for you to come home, is that same desperate aloneness that I felt between missions. MSF had a policy of enforced breaks, they gave us this space to avoid burnout, but I couldn’t cope with normal life. I drank and I smoked then too. This is full disclosure, Ellie, I’m not going to hide anything from you, not anymore. I feel I’ve been pretending for too long
.

I want to drink now, I’m desperate for something to numb my brain, but I’m scared that if I start I won’t stop. The last time I had wine was at Schueberfouer and I bitterly regret that now. It affects the judgement
.

Instead I go to your room, telling myself I’m searching for your cannabis stash, but really you are the drug I need. Your smell is everywhere. The hair bands, still with strands of blonde silk caught in the nylon. I lie down on your bed and hope that, wherever you are, you are comfortable. That you are being looked after with the same care I used when I was caring for the children in Tizi Ouzou. I ask a god I don’t believe in to give me this, it is all I ask in return for those months I spent nursing strangers. Please, God, let my daughter be safe and well
.

Let her come home now
.

“Hello, Cate. It’s Eva Schroeder speaking. You may recall that I teach Amelia German… we spoke yesterday afternoon?”

Madame Schroeder. The teacher who had been giving tips on self-defence. Calling her at ten thirty in the morning and sounding tense.

“How did you get my number?” But even as she asked, Cate realised that as a teacher, Eva would be able to access all parents’ details. Then, quick on its heels, another thought. “Is Amelia okay?”

“She’s fine. I’m not calling about her, it’s about Ellie Scheen.”

Cate was surprised, but also keen to hear news of the girl. “Has she returned home?”

Eva made a sound that made Cate think she might be close to crying. “No. I’m afraid not.”

“I’m so sorry. Bridget must be beside herself.” Cate had thought about getting in touch properly, after seeing how distressed she was, but knowing that Olivier was now working on the case and that it was one of a teenage runaway, plus Amelia’s comments that Gaynor had seen Bridget hitting Ellie, she thought it was wiser not to get involved. Who knew what family dynamics were ticking away under that particular time bomb?

“So, what is it you want, Madame Schroeder?”

There was a surprised pause. “But you said you’d help.”

“I said I’d help with self-defence class, but I may have been…”

Irritated, the teacher cut her off. “You’re the only person I know with any direct knowledge of criminals. You told me, you’re a probation officer. And you want to help.”

“Hang on, Madame…” Cate had meant that she could give a talk to the children on avoiding danger, something like that. Her offer was limply constructed, and now it was coming back to bite her.

“Ah, there is the bell. I must go to my next class, but let’s arrange a time to meet. The Fischer café near the school, under the Bouillon car park? I have a free period after lunch for lesson preparation, so we can meet for an hour and a half. That should give us enough time.”

“Enough time for what? Honestly, Madame, there’s nothing I can do to help find Ellie. Teenagers run off all the time. I did it, for a few days. My sister did it. Ellie is sure to come home soon.” But even as she said it Cate remembered that her own sister had been gone for sixteen years before she returned.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

“Okay, Madame Austin, I really must go. But you should understand that Ellie’s mother does not believe she has run away. I will tell you more when we meet. Twelve o’clock, yes?”

Cate slid her phone back into her bag, immediately regretting agreeing to meet.

The Fischer café was ugly. Even though the sun was blistering, the interior was gloomy, the tables by the window closed off by strategically placed chairs so the only free table was near the toilets. Madame Schroeder was already seated in the corner, sunglasses on her face despite the dull light within the place. She was not what Cate had expected from her voice. For a start, she didn’t look German, with her small features, her dark eyes and chocolate-brown hair pulled into a girlish ponytail. She looked young, too young to be so serious. And she seemed nervous when she offered Cate her hand to shake.

“Please, call me Eva.”

“Cate.”

Cate ordered a bottle of Rosport water, a small one as she wasn’t planning on staying for long, and joined her.

“It’s so hot,” Cate said, sliding into the seat. “I’m not used to it.”

“A mini-heatwave,” Eva agreed. “Dogs die on days like this. But you wait, later there will be a storm.”

Eva nursed her glass of freshly pressed orange juice, waited until Cate was seated and launched into a speech. Cate liked her directness, though it puzzled her too.

“Thank you for meeting me, Cate. I knew you were not lying when you said you would help Ellie. She was in my class for eighteen months, ever since she first arrived at the school. German should have been her mother tongue, given that she was raised in Heidelberg and it is her father’s nationality, but she was too used to speaking English at home, so I gave her some extra help. She was a pleasure to teach, very vivacious, she had a real spark to her personality. I think people always say things like that when someone is missing, but it is true.”

“Nice girls still run off, Eva.”

But even as she said it she regretted her flippancy; she’d seen the impact around the school that very morning, immense and immediate. Word had spread among the ex-pat community and Cate guessed from the lack of cars in the kiss-and-drop area that some parents were keeping children at home until more was known about Ellie’s disappearance.

Eva and Cate sat across from one another, occasionally the waitress glanced up from her newspaper, but no-one else was there. Most locals went to the bistros for lunch, and the café’s main trade was in takeaway coffees for those about to jump on a bus. Cate noticed Eva’s hand was tight on her glass and when she removed it she left a paw of sweat; whatever her motivation was for getting involved, it was powerful. She had the zeal that Cate had seen in social workers before they burned out.

“I’m guessing,” said Cate, “that you haven’t always been a teacher.”

Eva looked down at her glass. “I am from a small village in Belgium, but I was ambitious. First in Arlon, then in Ghent, I worked in local government, public relations mainly. I enjoyed it, in the main. Until Brussels. There I worked for the mayor, as his PA, and I saw many things,” here she glanced up and Cate saw a steely determination in Eva’s face. “Public relations was more of a challenge in the capital. It was no longer school fêtes and charity galas.”

“Missing children?” ventured Cate.

Eva sighed. “Information would arrive, and my job was to put it somewhere, anywhere but in the public eye. Kidnapped children, spirited across Europe. The victims were usually travellers from Africa, not ‘us’, you understand? Children from government homes, refugees, people with no fixed address. People with no papers who did not officially exist. They simply disappeared, and to us, to the people in charge, they did not matter.”

“But they mattered to you,” Cate said softly, watching Eva closely, warming to this strange and intense woman.

“Very much. I blew the whistle, doing an interview with
Prospect
, a current affairs magazine, which attracted some interest and was shared online. Not that it did me any good. Or the missing children, more importantly. So, I was no longer a PA, and I trained as a language teacher. At least I did not have to hide things like this. I have always been good at languages, and this is how I met my husband. He’s German, and was working in Brussels, trying to learn Flemish. He enrolled on my night class, he was not a good student but I could tell he was a good man. We hadn’t been married long when my husband got transferred to Luxembourg and it seemed a wonderful opportunity, a chance for me to get away from all that sickness.”

Cate thought of the children she had known about, back in the UK. The “missing”, the ones that ended up on a poster, or at the Centrepoint hostel in London, but never made it as far as
Crimewatch
. She had known of children being collected from the local authority home by their drug dealers, their pimps, and the social workers on duty did nothing, said they were powerless. It was children like that who went missing, and everyone just gave a figurative shrug as if nothing could be done.

“Not all kidnappings are equal,” Cate stated evenly, sad though the fact was. But on this basis, if that was indeed what had happened, Ellie’s case should be high profile. An ex-pat, from a successful, high-achieving family. Why had it not ground the city to a halt, why had the international press not descended on Luxembourg? “So, why is Ellie’s case not in the news?”

“To be fair, the media here is not what you will be used to in England. We have stricter guidelines, and the police would not share so much with journalists. But even so, there has been nothing yet, not even in the local free paper. This is curious, especially as Achim is very high up in the banking district. My husband knows him from work and says he is much respected, a man with great ambition.”

Eva finished off her orange juice and collected a massive stainless steel pot from the chair next to her that Cate had not noticed before. Eva struggled to pick it up, and balanced it over her slender rib cage.

“So, you see that something is wrong with the way Ellie’s case is being handled. And we must go now, because I have just an hour left before the school will notice I am missing and twenty-two children have to learn the German names for farm animals without a teacher.”

Cate pointed at the steel pot. “What’s inside?”

Eva tapped the lid. “Our ticket inside Ellie’s home.”

Ellie’s house was on the edge of the old city, in the area directly leading up from Grund at the point where tall medieval buildings and cobbles made way for perfect square houses in delicate candy colours, that would have been better placed in California or Spain than the Petrusse Valley. Eva checked the number of the house she had scribbled in biro on her wrist. She adjusted the pot so it was across her chest, and led the way to the front door of the pastel pink house.

“Here we go, number eight. As my husband says, Achim Scheen is doing very well for himself. Ellie lived in the best house on the street.”

Cate didn’t comment on the past tense, though she silently acknowledged that either Eva’s English grammar was not perfect or she didn’t believe Ellie was coming home.

The door was opened by a tall, well-built man in a police uniform. His white shirt immaculate, and his navy trousers perfectly creased; a poster boy for the police, though not a man who had got his hands dirty, at least not today. He greeted them in deep Luxembourgish, and Cate was glad to have Eva with her, who spoke with him in the Germanic language, endearing herself to the officer. Cate’s own thoughts were scrambled by the sight of his uniform. What if Olivier was here, how the hell would she explain herself? Eva was smiling sadly, then pointing to herself and Cate, to the large goulash pot, and the police officer was nodding pleasantly, gesturing for them to wait. Clever Eva. Who would turn away a couple of women bearing the gift of food?

The police officer didn’t return to the doorway, but Bridget did. Cate saw how altered she was, how the anguish that had started just two nights ago had multiplied into sheer despair etched on her face. Her hair hung lank and unwashed, and her clothes were crumpled and too warm for the day’s heat. Cate suspected they had not been changed since the night of Ellie’s disappearance. In her hands she held a limp pink rabbit with long ears. Its eyes were closed, as if in sleep.

Bridget hovered in the hall, not moving to let them pass, her posture was broken but a flash of hope had shone in her eyes in the instant she first came to the door, only to be extinguished when she saw Eva’s cooking pot. That same hope that must surely have sparked every time the phone rang or someone arrived at the door, only to be cruelly dashed. A torturous emotional journey, from hope to hell, that would define her existence until Ellie was back home, safe and sound.