Nowhere Girl

by Ruth Dugdall

  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.

  She looked at them with such naked desperation that Cate felt crushed by it.

  “I’m so sorry, Bridget,” she said. What else was there to say?

  She was a mother whose child was lost, whose spine was now made of string, whose brain obsessively processed only one thought. It was the nightmare every mother knows too well, but one they usually wake from. This woman had now lived that nightmare for sixty hours.

  Eva thrust the goulash pot into the woman’s empty arms, and she clutched it automatically.

  “Please, Bridget, accept this. It’s all I could think of to do.”

  “Oh, Eva, thank you…”

  And Bridget, too polite to tell them to go away even though they had nothing for her, nothing she wanted anyway, invited them inside.

  The police officer was seated in the dining room, at the round mahogany table. Arranged in front of him was his radio and police notebook, all at perfect angles, which he was scrutinising with a short black pencil. Olivier had a similar notebook that was never far from his grasp. All police officers kept notes in case they were later required to give evidence in court.

  Bridget ignored him, he had already become part of the furniture. She walked past the dining room to the kitchen where she opened the fridge, standing uselessly in front of it as if she had suddenly forgotten why she was there. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

  Eva went to her, took the casserole pot from her hands and moved some items around to find a place for the pot, lingering a moment to rob some of the cold air before closing the fridge door. Then, with a hand cupping each shoulder, she guided Bridget to one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter. Cate perched alongside as Eva returned to the fridge for juice, then found glasses. All the while Bridget watched this other woman move around her kitchen as if she had no idea where she was.

  Finally, Eva took a stool opposite Cate and gazed at her expectantly, Cate understood: Eva had done her best, she’d found Bridget’s address and cooked the goulash, now she was passing the ball to Cate.

  Cate glanced to the hallway, thinking that just yards away in the dining room the police officer would be making notes in his book, about their arrival. He should h
ave taken their names, surely? Or was he assuming that woman bearing food could never be significant to any investigation?

  “We want to help, if we can.” Cate leaned forward, both to establish eye contact with Bridget and so she could speak softly, though the police officer was surely too far away to hear their conversation. “If there’s anything we can do…”

  The sentiment was as limp as the mother’s body, as empty as she must feel inside.

  “I just want her home,” Bridget said, plaintively.

  “Do you have any idea where she could be?” asked Cate, gently.

  Bridget’s head jerked as if Cate had said something shocking and then she quickly shook her head. Her lip wobbled and her eyes welled with tears.

  “What about any friends or boyfriends?”

  “Ellie has not run away,” Bridget answered firmly. “We are a close family, we love each other. She would not do that to me.”

  Cate thought that though this was undoubtedly how she felt, it could not be entirely true. Teenagers were selfish beings with secret lives, even Amelia had picked up that there was tension in the home. And hadn’t she said that Ellie had indeed spent a night away before, with a boyfriend? She felt uneasy, remembering also that Bridget had apparently slapped Ellie.

  “Whoever Ellie is with, there will be some connection.” She meant that it was unlikely to be a stranger, but didn’t feel able to state this so bluntly. “Maybe someone you disapprove of?”

  “Are you a police officer?” Bridget asked sharply, as if seeing Cate for the first time. Once again, hope darted through her expression, held there, waiting to be dashed.

  “Sorry, no. I was a probation officer, back in the UK. So I know about criminals, I suppose I have some knowledge about what makes bad people tick.” Cate felt a fraud even saying it, but she also knew it was her only ticket to ride. “And I would like to help, if I am able.”

  Eva put her hand on Bridget’s wrist. Her own role more clearly defined than Cate’s, as a supportive and nurturing friend. For a second, Cate envied her.

  “Talk to us, Bridget,” she urged. “Maybe we can help, and maybe not. Either way, what do you have to lose?”

  There was a long pause, until finally Bridget said, “We should never have left Heidelberg. We’ve been in Luxembourg for almost two years and I still feel like I really don’t belong. Before this it was other things that made me feel this way in Luxembourg, like dealing with people in shops or in the banks. The way they saw me, as a privileged ex-pat housewife, not as anyone who had anything valuable to contribute. But Ellie’s disappearance is something else, everyone I speak to, it’s as if they don’t even accept that it has happened. The whole situation feels beyond my control. The police aren’t listening. Their presence will stop Ellie coming home.”

  Cate raised a meaningful glance towards the dining room, where the police constable was seated. He must be able to hear. But Bridget didn’t care about offending him, she was too angry.

  “What is the good of him just sitting there? It’s just a gesture, probably to appease Achim. He’s been very insistent,” snapped Bridget. “But it will stop anyone from returning her, it will scare them away. And they won’t tell me anything.”

  “This is usual with the police, isn’t it?” Eva tried to sound positive and looked at Cate expectantly. “They play things very close until they have something concrete to share. It is us, us mothers, who must think the worst has happened, but it can often be fine in the end.”

  Bridget looked towards the landing that led to the circular staircase, as if checking it was still empty. “Achim, my husband, has called everyone on Ellie’s phone at least twice. He is wandering the streets, demanding that the school increase their security. He’s driving himself crazy, yet he hasn’t spoken with me once. He hasn’t even held my hand.” She was holding her own hand, clasping it in a grip that was so tight her knuckles were white. “I thought situations like this were supposed to bring a couple together, not drive them apart.”

  Bridget looked so lost at that moment, so confused by her husband’s behaviour that Cate winced for her. She had seen how relationships suffered when a child was hurt, had experienced it after her sister, Liz, went missing. After the accusations and the blame her parents had divorced, both convinced that the other was responsible for their runaway daughter. Even now, back in England, they were establishing who was to blame in court as Cate’s father tried to defend himself against claims that he had abused Liz. I’ll call this evening, Cate thought. I’ll find out how Liz and Mum are, how the court case is going. I’ll offer more support than I have.

  Liz had run away for a reason, and maybe Ellie had too. Thinking that Bridget herself may be to blame, if it was true that she hit Ellie, Cate had no comfort for her and looked away. She saw a police business card pinned with a magnet to the fridge. She recognised it as Olivier’s. Would Bridget throw her out if she knew she lived with him?

  “It’s the police’s job to find Ellie,” she said, as much to the card as to Bridget. “You must trust them.”

  Bridget turned in a fury of energy, following Cate’s eyeline, and snatched the card so the magnet went spinning on the ground, tossing it onto the granite worktop.

  “This man,” she spat, “Detective Massard. He tried to imply I abused my daughter at the fair! Some crazy idea he got from someone that I swore at her, that I hit her. That’s why he thinks she’s run away. Why he’s not taking this seriously.”

  It stung, to hear Bridget verbalise the very thought that Cate had just had, and of course she was right, Olivier did believe that. And Olivier’s source was Amelia.

  For the sake of disclosure she should tell Bridget, right now, that Olivier was her boyfriend. She should make her apologies and leave. But she stayed silent.

  Eva had to be back at work and Cate said she had things to do too, not admitting that her list consisted of walking General and shopping for milk. She had told Bridget that she’d collect Gaynor along with Amelia when school finished, save the poor woman the ordeal of the school run. It was the least she could do.

  Waiting outside the school entrance, with General straining at his lead, Cate saw the first trickle of school children run out onto the playground. In the corner, shaded by a single tree, Mary-Ann stood with a group of women and only when Cate drew nearer did she sense the panic being whipped up. By then it was too late to turn away.

  Katrina was regaling the group with a story about a boy who was taken from the school bus stop one morning, only to be found later that day, naked in a field. “But he had a scar,” she said, in hushed awe, indicating the place where a kidney would be.

  “Well, I’ve bought my daughter a tracker,” a diminutive but beautiful Japanese woman said proudly. “She wears it on her wrist and I can see where she’s at.” She flashed her gold iPhone, which showed a map with a red dot bleeping in the centre. Presumably the dot indicated the very place where they were now standing.

  Jesus, was this what it had come to?

  “Where did you get it?” Mary-Ann asked timidly.

  “Tokyo. But they sell them on Rakuten.com,” her friend added helpfully.

  Ellie’s disappearance had united the mothers, blurring the boundaries of nationality and language and given them a subject in common. She gathered from the chatter that Ellie’s father had attended the meeting, and implored them all to be extra vigilant.

  As Cate was backing away, tugging General so she could simply wait for Amelia and Gaynor on her own, the woman who’d bought the tracker thrust a flyer into her hand.

  “The Parents’ Association are issuing these to every child,” she said bossily. “The Ministry of Education has issued the same message to all schools in the city.”

  No doubt the result of the emergency meeting that morning. In Cate’s hands was an official-looking missive in bold print:

  Try to be accompanied by an adult to and from school.

  Do not accept a lift from anyone, if it has not been agreed befo
rehand.

  Avoid talking with anyone you do not know.

  If anyone approaches you, tell your parents and/or a member of staff.

  Cate didn’t realise she was holding up a line of women, eager for their copies of the flyer, until they tutted her out of the way. She folded it into quarters and slid it in her pocket, thinking she’d show it to Olivier later, See, people don’t believe this is just a teenage rebellion. You can’t contain this.

  Since Saturday she’d tried to talk to Olivier about Ellie’s disappearance several times but he’d been unwilling to share anything with her. It was not yet an equal partnership, she was reliant on him for a home and it still felt as though she was his guest. She knew that by moving to Luxembourg, she was escaping the trial. Even if she didn’t want to admit it. Since her sister Liz was taking their father to court, the abuse finally in the open, Cate felt unable to see any of her family. It was just too painful, the guilt about not being the victim, the endless wondering if she had failed Liz. The complicated feelings she felt for her mother, who had colluded with the abuse, but who was also a sad alcoholic. Cate vacillated between pity and contempt, but being in a different country, just as the court case commenced, brought her a distance that she grasped with sheer relief. She was yet to even contact home and find out how things had gone on the first two days of the trial.

  Frankly, she had wanted an escape and Olivier had offered one. But that respite was now in danger of becoming something else.

  Olivier was late home. He wasn’t interested in the pasta and jar of sauce she’d heated, and she could hardly blame him for that, but he opened some local wine and they took it outside, to the table and chairs on the balcony, savouring the warm evening. From where Cate sat it seemed the moon was directly above them, camouflaged by a smoke screen of mist. The street lights were orange love for the mosquitoes and gnats that buzzed around the glowing bulbs, the lamps set down the street so it was like a runway into the city.

  “Napoleon, he planted trees in lines like this,” said Olivier, pointing to the equidistant oaks, “so his soldiers would have shade as they marched.”