by Kate Riordan
‘I’ll ring the friend’s house,’ he says suddenly. ‘Where we took her. I’ve got the number. She gave it to me months ago when she needed picking up.’
Downstairs, I make him pull the phone cord as far as it will go, out into the hall. I don’t want to disturb you. Charles and Margaret exchange fearful glances.
It rings for a long time. ‘I told you,’ I mutter in Greg’s ear. ‘No one’s there.’
But then it connects, a lazy voice answering. ‘Oui?’
‘Is Élodie there?’
There’s a pause. The static is loud while we wait. I can’t quite catch my breath.
‘I think so,’ the voice finally says. ‘Maybe.’
Greg looks at me. See, his expression says. He’s so desperate for her to be there that he’s started to shake. I snatch the receiver off him.
‘Can you go and fetch her then, please?’ I say to whoever this girl is at the other end. ‘We need to talk to her now. It’s important.’
Another pause. Then the phone in that house, which I’m certain doesn’t contain my daughter, is dropped. I can hear voices in the background and the low thud of bass, the odd screech of laughter. After a minute of shouting into the mouthpiece, just when I think no one is ever going to answer, the girl comes back on.
‘Élodie’s not here,’ she says. Then she lets out a scream, which twists into laughter. ‘Arrête, Thierry! Look, someone said they saw her leave this morning. She got a lift with a couple of guys who were driving north. She said she might be back tonight.’
I don’t bother replying. I hand the phone to Greg and run outside, to begin another search for her – for further clues. My brain whirrs furiously as I scour every inch of the garden and the fields beyond. I’m finally realizing that I will have to act alone. I know I’m running out of time. I need to get her away from you, and I can’t afford to wait until she tries something like that again. I’ve been marking time for so long, waiting to find the proof that Greg has always demanded – the irrefutable proof that Élodie is dangerous. But if a necklace dropped next to the scene of a fire like a sinister calling card isn’t enough, I will have to manufacture something myself.
I think of it like a vaccine: a little danger now to protect you from the larger threat that’s drawing ever closer. Your older sister has tried to burn a building down with you in it, for God’s sake. What else am I supposed to do?
The choice as I see it is stark: one daughter or the other. And though in so many ways it breaks my heart, when it comes down to it, it feels like no choice at all.
Perhaps I’m slightly insane, I don’t know. I still believe I’ll be saving your life.
1993
I wake early in the light-soaked salon, the shutters left open and the voile curtains no match for the sun. My mouth is so dry I can barely swallow. I finish the dregs of tea in the glass next to me, then stumble into the kitchen to drink straight from the tap.
I’m so unsteady on my feet as I straighten up that I have to grab for the counter. I think I need to eat something. I take a spoon and eat the rest of the fromage frais without closing the fridge door, the chilled air on my legs making me feel slightly more alert.
A noise on the stairs makes me turn. It’s Élodie, fresh from the shower. There’s something I want to ask her but then it’s gone. The tisane glass on the counter catches the sunlight from the door to the garden. Even the tiles under my feet are warm today. A runnel of sweat creeps down my spine, though I suddenly feel cold.
‘Shall I make you another tisane, Maman?’ she says. As she passes me, I catch the shampoo scent of artificial fruit and some undertone that’s just Élodie. She’s suddenly back, her breath on the nape of my neck. ‘You’re so pale. Come and lie down again. You’re taking things too fast. You shouldn’t have got up yesterday. You shouldn’t be up now.’ I let her lead me back to the salon. A question is beginning to form slowly in my head, and it makes me think of the shiny white square of a blank Polaroid, slowly darkening into something recognizable.
‘Élodie, the tisanes –’
‘Do you like them? Someone at the ashram showed me how to make them. She knew all about herbs.’
‘What’s in it?’ I’m lying down now and, for the first time in a day – or is it two? – I feel a ripple of nausea.
Élodie covers me with the blanket again, although I can’t tell whether I’m hot or cold, goosebumps rising even though my skin is clammy. I open my eyes, although I can’t remember closing them, and she’s gone. I try to sit up and then I see you sitting there in the corner, reading Bonjour Tristesse, Greg’s old headphones on, too big for you, and a record on the turntable. She’s got you listening to our music – her music – but you’re so apparently fine that I allow myself to fall back against the cushions.
‘Hey, Mum,’ you say, pulling off the headphones. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Are you all right, darling?’ I murmur.
‘Yeah, fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’ The headphones are half back on.
‘Where’s Élodie?’
‘Swimming. She wanted me to stay here and keep an eye on you.’ And then you’re back in the music, instantly absorbed, just like your father used to be, and I close my eyes again, though I don’t sleep. The Polaroid in my mind is beginning to colour in.
1983
I hate the government-run Institut where Élodie is now receiving treatment, where your father and I have exiled her by signing our names on a piece of paper. It smells like I’ve always imagined an old people’s home to smell: pine disinfectant and desolation. There are attempts at homeliness, which fall flat and are almost worse than something more openly institutional: asinine watercolours and cheap cushions that haven’t worn well. There always seems to be someone shouting or screaming three or four closed doors away, muffled but still loud enough that you can’t ignore it.
She sits opposite me on an orange plastic chair. Her beautiful hair is greasy and lank and she has a cluster of spots on her chin. Her eyes look empty and my first instinct – despite everything – is to go to whoever’s in charge and get her out of there. But then I think about you, and I know I can’t bring her home.
‘You did do it, didn’t you?’ I say, like I did the last two times I came. ‘I know you did because I found your necklace right there, but I want to hear you say it. I need you to tell me why. I know you hate me but she’s just a little girl. How can you feel like that about her?’
She looks off to the side, out of a window that would be too high in a building that didn’t have security built into its fabric, the glass strengthened with criss-crossed wire. It reminds me of the little souillarde window. Such a bad mother, a voice says. But how much better would you have done? says another.
‘And the campsite up in the hills,’ I continue, when she doesn’t answer, determination and the ever-present anxiety making my voice shake. ‘That was you too, wasn’t it? Who were you trying to hurt then? Tell me, Élodie, because I don’t know when I’m next going to see you. Your psychiatrist says family visits can set patients back, that it would be better if we didn’t come at all for a while.’
I watch her profile, blue eye glinting darkly, and then she turns back to me so suddenly that I rear back in my seat.
‘I like it. I like fire. It’s pretty. I like the way things go up. Whoosh, like that.’ She slaps the table between us. ‘You must have been so glad when he said you shouldn’t come any more, if he even did. Was it actually you who came up with that idea and he went along with it? Like Papa letting you go and live in England?’
I shake my head. ‘You can ask the doctor yourself if you don’t believe me. How many other mothers do you see here?’
She takes that in and I watch her face flatten again, the fire fading from her eyes. We sit in silence. I watch the second hand on the clock at the end of the room glide round twelve times, and then she speaks again.
‘What about you, then? If I’ve confessed, then you must too, Maman.’
1993
I open my eyes and, for once, hardly any time seems to have passed. I wander into the hall, wondering where you and Élodie are. The kitchen door is ajar, and I grip the jamb because I’m still not quite steady on my feet. Élodie is in there, caught in the late-afternoon light, wet hair from the pool dripping on the tiles. She’s making me another tisane and I watch as she fetches ice from the freezer drawer, banging the tray on the counter to loosen a couple of cubes. She spoons in the tea, and water, and six sugar cubes, and then squeezes half a lemon into the mixture, stirring it so it swirls goldenly round.
Then she reaches into the back pocket of her cut-off denim shorts, and my heart stops dead in my chest as she brings out a handful of dark green leaves, which she throws into my mother’s old marble mortar and begins to crush. A pinch and then another is swept into the glass, and it’s the same colour as the swimming-pool water in a storm.
As she picks up the glass and begins to walk towards the door, I find I can’t move quickly enough, my legs not obeying me. When she finds me there, she doesn’t flinch. She never did.
She smiles instead. ‘What are you doing up? I was just bringing you this.’ She holds the glass aloft, the green gone now, disappeared into the gold.
I push past her clumsily and go to the mortar, bracing against the counter as I bend down to smell the contents.
‘What is it?’ she says, from behind me. ‘What are you looking for? It’s mint from the garden.’
And it is. I sniff it. It’s only mint. I turn to her and she has every right to say it – just because you did it – but she doesn’t. She only takes my arm gently and leads me back to the sofa.
1983
It’s two days since the fire in the barn, two days since we almost lost you. I’m convinced the air around the house still smells of smoke, though Greg says that’s impossible.
It’s almost four o’clock. You’ll be getting hungry for your goûter, the afternoon snack you love so much: three squares of good chocolate pressed into a length of baguette. On hot days like this, when the sunlight turns molten, the chocolate softens and spreads into the cloud-soft insides of the bread before you can finish it.
I’m not going to need it today.
You’re sitting on the terrace, under the shade of a parasol. Earlier, I laid out a blanket and helped you carry your miniature tea set down from your room, along with a selection of your beloved teddies. You still look for Maurice, the little monkey that was ripped apart, but you never mention him.
I glance towards the lawn to check that Élodie is still there, sunbathing on her front, and she is, bikini straps untied so she won’t get a tan line. Her hair is fanned out around her head, gold against grass. I haven’t spoken to her since before Cannes.
In the china teapot, you’re making a potion. We’ve lately read a book together about schoolgirl witches and you’re obsessed with spells and broomsticks and cauldrons. From my position at the salon doors, I watch you add a dripping slice of ripe pear to the watered-down sirop I’ve already mixed for you. A handful of raisins follows, then a crumbled langue de chat biscuit sparkling with sugar, and finally a splash of milk from the little jug. You stir it round with a tiny spoon and look inside. You sigh, not happy with it, and my heart begins to flutter wildly as I watch you cast around for more ingredients. I need to stop this, I think. I need to stop it now. I don’t move.
As I’d known it would, your eye alights on the vivid pink flowers I picked for you earlier, arranging them on the china plates, one each for the three teddies at the tea party. You pick one up and rub the petals between your fingers. As you drop it into the mixture, then do the same with the rest of them, I cover my mouth with my hand.
The spoon goes round and round, mushing up the contents to combine them thoroughly. You inspect it again and, apparently deciding it’s ready, pick up a cup and pour the brackish liquid. At first you take only a small sip, but it can’t taste too bad because you raise the cup to your lips again. This time you drink it all and pour another cup.
Nearly twenty minutes pass before it takes effect, every one of them stretching out as long as a year for me, still stationed at the salon doors. Élodie hasn’t moved and she doesn’t move when you get to your feet and cry out. I call your name and you turn to me, your hands clutching your stomach, your face pale and waxen. I scoop you up and rush you inside and up the stairs. Catching my reflection in the hall mirror for a brief second, I see my face is haggard with shame.
It happened to me once. I was only a little older than you, maybe five. I ate the same flowers from the garden because I thought something so silken and pretty would taste good. The poisoning came on dramatically: the garden tipping on its side, my stomach starting to twist and writhe. When Maman found me, a strange holy light surrounded her head, like the priest talked about in church.
I was horribly sick that night and into the next day, but then I was fine.
No harm done.
When I was better, Maman took me down to the oleander tree.
She knelt next to me. ‘You must never touch this tree, Sylvie. The leaves and flowers – all of it is poisonous. If you have too much, you can die. Tu comprends, chérie?’ She gripped my arm so hard I whimpered. ‘Tu comprends?’
I sit up with you through the night, rubbing your back when the cramps come. You’re not as bad as I was, but the guilt is still terrible. I try to keep the same image from the barn at the front of my mind: your dirty lemon T-shirt out of reach as the flames crept higher.
Downstairs in the salon, I hear the ormolu clock chime four times. It’s twelve hours since you drank it; you’re probably halfway through the sickness now. I think of what’s also in the salon: Maman’s big old medical dictionary. Attention hasn’t been drawn to it yet but there’s a particular page marked with a slim packet of cigarette papers. Greg smokes Gitanes; these papers are the kind Élodie uses. I took them from her room when she went outside to sunbathe.
There’s a single word at the top of that page, printed in bold black type. Empoisonnement. I planted another clue – an afterthought, really. A single long hair, caramel-coloured when held up to the light, as it will be tomorrow. I’ll show Greg and then I’ll phone the police.
1993
The next day I feel like myself for the first time in what seems an age. My stomach is flat but there’s no ache, no nausea.
As I step into the hall, I can hear you singing in the shower. It’s ‘Good Vibrations’.
When I get downstairs, Élodie is outside on the terrace drinking coffee, her tanned feet on the table, her hair pinned loosely on top of her head for once, showing her delicate neck. She jumps up when she sees me and there’s no accusation in her eyes. She puts me to shame.
‘You look so much better today,’ she exclaims. ‘Sit down. I bought croissants. There’s one in the oven for you, keeping warm.’ She goes inside and I do as I’m told. The sun is blinding and I close my eyes against it. Every muscle aches, as though I’ve been running all night. The sunstroke has left me but I’m still weak.
Élodie puts a plate down in front of me. ‘I went to the good bakery. The other one was always a rip-off.’ She smiles conspiratorially. ‘Do you think you’ll be up to the party tonight?’
‘Party?’
‘At the Martins’. I won’t go but you and Emma should.’
I’d completely forgotten about it. ‘Why not you?’
She shakes her head and looks down at her bare feet. She’s painted her toenails the colour of raspberries, and they shine wetly where the sun hits them. ‘They won’t want me there. Annette won’t anyway.’
I’ve never known if Laurent confessed anything to her about kissing me that time, or about that night by the pool. There was only one thing Annette and I had ever agreed on, and that was that Luc didn’t fall into the pool by accident. I also know what the local women thought of Élodie once she blossomed so suddenly into a woman: the village’s very own siren. She had become dangerous in a new way then, and they
hated her for it, even more than when she threatened their little ones. The memories feel different now, as I hold them up in my mind. There’s a different kind of sadness. For Élodie, for a young girl hated by grown women. It wasn’t her fault she was beautiful. I thought of Morel, telling me the first time that she couldn’t help it, that it wasn’t anyone’s fault, even mine.
‘I don’t think I’ll go tonight either,’ I say now. ‘I’m not up to it.’
‘Oh, but Emma will want to see Luc. You can’t deny her that.’ She laughs softly and glances up at me. It’s the amber eye I can see as she looks away again, framed by long lashes. From nowhere, I feel the urge to cry. I look down at my hand and wonder if I dare cover hers, just inches away. Mentally I check myself over again but the fear feels far off. I’m not afraid of her, not in this moment at least. Briefly, I have the urge to search her for identifying marks, but what imposter could ever fake those mismatched eyes?
The possibility steals into my head: perhaps nothing bad is going to happen after all. The past has never felt so distant at La Rêverie. I sit there, looking at my firstborn, and the memories fail to rush in. I glance down the garden towards the oleander tree, but it doesn’t seem to signify anything any more. It’s just a tree.
By seven that evening I’m showered and deciding what to wear. There’s a soft knock at the door and Élodie comes in.
‘Can I help you choose?’ she asks.