Nowhere Girl (6 page)

“Mum! I’m not going to get a tan with factor 50.”

“No, and you’re not going to get sunburned either.”

Amelia rolled her eyes, impatiently waiting until the job was done and she could swim. Cate then covered her own body with the thick white sunblock, much to Olivier’s amusement. She held up the bottle, offering him some, but Olivier laughed and rejected the offer. “I think I’ll take my Vitamin D neat, thanks.”

He stretched back on the grass and sighed in contentment, a moment that was swiftly interrupted by his phone beeping. In one elegant movement he was walking, phone to his ear, away from them and towards the shade of the trees, standing under their dappled shadow as he spoke in quick French to whomever had disturbed their Sunday outing.

“I’m going to swim. Come too, Mum. You never get in the water.”

“Because it’ll be freezing.”

“But it’s boiling!” Amelia protested, grabbing Cate’s hand and leading her over the flinty beach to the water’s edge, much to General’s delight. He didn’t need any persuasion, and bounded into the water, his black fur turning sleek, seal-like, as it became drenched with the waves of water each bounding jump produced. Cate stepped in, crocs and all, and winced.

“See?” she called. “Lake water takes a while to heat, even in August.”

Determined, Amelia waded deeper, so the water was at her knees then her thighs. General barked, and she splashed some water at him, making him even more excited. Cate stayed at the edge, watching her daughter play with the dog. Blinking at the water, it’s silvery blue-green sheen, transparent and beautiful. The lake was edged by fir trees that graded in colour from lime to deep moss green, flanking the hills around them. Cate felt lucky to have escaped the past and Suffolk and all that had meant for her, but she found that even in this place she was still herself. Unable to shake the pensiveness, her habitual tendency to see the glass as half-empty. That trait had always been something she had associated with her work, or her marital struggles with Tim, more latterly with her sister, Liz, reappearing in her life. She shivered, no longer from the cold, but now thinking about the court case against her father, which she was avoiding by being here. The first day of his trial was tomorrow.

She was miles away from all that, she had escaped all the darkness of her past and her career. Yet now, she realised her need to seek the darker side of a situation was habitual to her. Because rather than enjoying the beauty laid out in front of her she was straining her ears, and her terrible French, to try and decipher what Olivier was saying so urgently into his phone.

“Mum, look!” Amelia turned slowly, her face full of delight, and Cate saw the butterfly that had landed on her forearm, the copper wings and black body, no doubt attracted by the bright white of Amelia’s skin or the salty sheen of the factor 50.

The butterfly stayed put for so long that Amelia gave it a name, “Valeria, like the girl in my class,” and asked if she could take him home. Olivier was still in conversation under the tree, and the weather had not yet changed but the ice saints were there, in Cate’s mind and heart, the sudden drop from hot to cold that was so swift it could not be accounted for or predicted.
Something has happened
.

Olivier stopped talking, the phone was returned to his pocket, and then he was on the foreshore with Amelia, marvelling as the butterfly flew away in a flash of gold, and showing her how to choose the flattest flint to skim across the silvery surface.

Luxembourg was so different from the Suffolk landscape of yellow rape fields, its huge skies and brown marshlands. Cate was now in a setting that seemed straight from a fairy tale, unending forests of Hansel and Gretel, pretty stone turrets of chateaux and ancient castles. It was all unreal. Beautiful but strange. And the man she was with, she did not yet completely understand why he had asked her to come. Even now, six weeks after arriving in Luxembourg, she was unclear as to why he had invited her. It didn’t seem that they were in the midst of a great romance, though each night they made love, because each day his activity was a mystery to her. Paul had been right, she did not leave Suffolk because she wanted to be with Olivier; she was with Olivier because she needed to leave Suffolk.

She should really call home. Liz and her mother would, even now, be preparing for court. Her father, whom she had not seen in almost two decades, would be going over his statement, thinking through his defence, probably meeting his barrister for a final time before the trial. This was what she was running from.

And here she was, by a lake watching a white dingy sail past with baby blue sails, red buoys, yellow flags marked a path through the flat water. Isolated from all that was familiar, from her mother and Liz, from the career she had spent so many years working at. This was a chance to start again but also a blank page and whatever came to be written there, she was the only author. She was no longer a child, no longer subject to managers or budget cuts. There was no ex-husband breathing down her neck. This realisation was fascinating yet frightening.

Olivier re-joined her, sitting heavily on the grassy bank, looping an arm around her waist.

“Everything okay?” she asked him, picking up her sketch book and drawing the lines of the lake, trying to capture the way General’s hefty bulk became lithe and graceful once he began to swim.

Olivier paused for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he called to Amelia, “Amelia? What did you say her name was, your friend’s sister? The girl who got lost at Schueberfouer?”

Amelia called back. “You mean Gaynor’s older sister? Her name’s Ellie.”

“What’s their surname?”

Amelia thought for a moment. She had only known Gaynor a few weeks. “Scheen,” she said. “Like the cleaner, Mr Sheen. I think their dad is German.”

Cate leaned to look at Olivier’s phone, but he moved it from sight.

“Why are you asking? What’s happened?”

“Achim Scheen just called the police station in Hamm to make a missing person report. He tried to make a statement last night, but was told to wait twelve hours in case Ellie returned on her own.”

Amelia, still listening, shouted across, “Gaynor told me Ellie wanted to go to the fair with her boyfriend, but their mum wouldn’t let her. She said she might be with him.”

Olivier leaned forward. “Did Gaynor say anything else?”

Amelia splashed her hands on the surface of the water, ready to jump in again and bored with the conversation. “Only that her mum was really mad at Ellie, because she’d already wandered off once but they had found her. And Ellie has run away before. Last time she was with the boy all night.” Amelia says this last part with a shocked whisper.
Children
, thought Cate,
are always such prudes
.

Olivier was poised, listening intently. Cate had the unnerving feeling that Amelia was being interrogated.

“When she ran off before,” Olivier asked, “What happened?”

“Ellie was with a boy from upper school, and they were drunk.” Amelia raised her arms to the sky, ready to dive. “Her mum was really angry. Gaynor said she hit her.”

“Are you sure about that, Amelia? It’s a serious accusation,” Cate said quickly, aware that Olivier was taking all of this in. She had seen that look on his face before, when they were discussing a case at a risk-management meeting. He was acting like a police officer now, everything Amelia said was under scrutiny.

“I’m sure. Gaynor said that Ellie was hit so hard she had a swollen face for weeks. They thought her cheekbone was broken, but the doctor said it was just bruised.”

And then Amelia ended the conversation, disappearing into the water with such grace she left only ripples.

Amina did not mind travelling with the cattle, it was the three other humans in the truck that made her nervous, and so she found a place in the corner near where the heifer was tethered. The press of warm fur, the sweet smell of her udders, the sharp acrid smell of manure that soiled the floor of the truck, all reminded her of home. She sat on her wooden box of possessions, trying to keep steady and not slide to the floor, her cheek just inches from a solemn bovine face that watched her as the truck made its rocky way through villages.

Uncle Jak had stopped at two other houses before they left the commune. Picking up a boy and a girl at the first stop that looked so alike, they could only be brother and sister. Amina recognised them from the festival of Eid Al-Fitr, they both had the distinctive ivory skin and fine flaxen hair of the Berber people, but she did not know their names. The boy, with one protective arm around his sister, greeted Amina in Kabyle, and may have tried to say more, but the noise of the truck and the tiredness weighed down her bones and kept her silent.

The last girl to be picked up was the most lovely and also, at nineteen, the oldest. She was talkative, and moved her lithe body quickly, waving her long arms as she spoke, her eyes darting from the brother and sister, then back to Amina. She told them that her sister was supposed to make the trip but had fallen in love with a local boy.

“Fool her!” she scorned, looking around at the other four passengers. “So I said I’d come instead, make money for my family. If she wants to marry that farmer boy than she’s made her choice, but me, I want Paris, London, those places. I want to speak like lady and know things.” Her dark eyes glittered and she swished her silky black mane over one shoulder as she said this scandalous thing, making Amina hope that maybe this was indeed a gift they had all been given and that she, like this pretty vivacious girl, should be grateful. But she missed Piz, already ached to hold her sister’s small body within her own and snuggle the back of her neck.

“Hey, you with face as long as this here cow creature, who you?”

Amina jolted, aware that the girl was addressing her. “I’m Amina.”

“And I’m Jodie. Not my real name, this my European name, for this new life we are all here going to. Amina… hmm. Maybe you should be Tina, like Tina Sugandh. Smile big, Tina, like you’re a star or you will be thrown off truck before we reach Paris, London.”

“I don’t know who Tina Sugandh is,” Amina said, but she still forced herself to do as Jodie asked and smile big. It felt uncomfortable, like she was trying on a garment that was the wrong size.

“Good girl,” said Jodie. “We’ll have time to catch up with
The Newlyweds
when we arrive, then you’ll see why it’s better to be Tina Sugandh than Amina from Tizi Ouzou.” After pulling a sour face at the filthy floor, she moved her possessions onto her lap, kept safe by a wooden box that Amina recognised from the market as usually containing soft fruit. The box had no lid so Amina could see a folded
tapis d’prayer
, and a wooden comb with an intricately engraved handle. There was dried fruit, too, and a bottle that must contain oil. Oil was good for anything, cooking, cleansing the face, removing stubborn marks. Jodie’s items were useful, but there weren’t as many as Amina’s, sealed away in her box, which was now her seat. Omi had packed it, and from the whispers she guessed that Piz had put a surprise inside too. Amina would open the box when she arrived in her new home, it would make her feel better. The things she needed for the journey she held on her lap: her own tapis d’prayer and a gallet stone, smooth and pale grey, for cleansing herself five times each day before she knelt on the mat and prayed to Allah. She also had a pocketful of almonds, and another pocket of figs, which Omi had told her to eat slowly, spacing each mouthful so she never got so hungry she felt the need to eat all she had. It was uncertain how long the journey would last.

Jodie sighed, looked around the truck to where the brother and sister were sitting close together, talking quietly to each other, yellow heads pressed close. Jodie began speaking again as if Amina and she were in the middle of a conversation.

“You ignorant, don’t know who Tina Sugandh is or that this a big chance for us? Uncle Jak, he tell me one girl he took last year she now live in house with swimming pool and she has her own bathroom. You can imagine such things, long-face?”

Amina couldn’t. She often washed at the stream and sometimes she had paddled when she was hot from scrubbing the clothes in the river, but she had never been in a swimming pool. She didn’t even know how to swim, as the river only came to her thigh so what was the point learning? It was enough, back when the vineyard thrived each season, and they were one whole family. It was her father who first spoke to her of getting an education, using the money from the wine to send her abroad to study. He wanted his children to benefit from his success, to have chances that he had missed. But now he was dead, and that dream had died with him.

Jodie began to hum, a French song Amina knew from the schoolyard, and after a moment she joined in. Before long all four teenagers were singing the songs of home as the truck arrived at the water.
Harraga
would continue on a boat.

Amina was glad of the cave made by the rocks, it gave protection from the sand that was being whipped up by the wind. She pressed anxiously against Jodie, who told her that the plastic square machine Uncle Jak kept peering at was a GPS, a type of radio, and he was awaiting news of the boat. The young travellers had become a sort of group, not through conversation but from the shared experience of getting this far, the hope of arriving safely. Amina shared her figs with the others, marvelling at the yellow hair of the brother and sister, which was not unheard of among the Kabyle, but rare enough that she envied it. The girl’s name was Safiyya, and her brother was Reza. They were not just siblings, they were twins. His hair was not quite so light as hers, though they shared the same grey eyes and pale skin.

They too were leaving because of the activity in the mountains. Reza, as he was now eighteen, had started attending mosque with the men and there had been talk of him being recruited into the Brotherhood. He had told his father, who had begun immediately to think of ways to get Reza away from the possibility. Not all families wish to have a martyr for a son.