Nowhere Girl

by Ruth Dugdall

  I cough, as if a piece of bread is caught in my throat, and then my coughing is so violent that it actually happens, my mouth is a funnel but no air comes. I clutch my throat.

  Amina moves swiftly, she crouches beside me and bangs my back, hard and frequent, more slaps than it takes to clear my throat until I say, “Okay, I’m good. Thanks.”

  She’s sweating, beads of moisture dot her hairline.

  I daren’t eat anymore, and am so glad she’s close that I don’t move from where I’m sitting. Grateful for the kind human interaction.

  “Amina, what’s going to happen to me?”

  “You’re going to be alright,” she says, in a low whisper. “Nobody is going to harm you.”

  I don’t believe her, but I see that she wants this to be true.

  “Am I being ransomed? Have you asked for money from my mum and dad?”

  She bites her lip. “No money will be exchanged. It is not to be that way.”

  This makes me frightened.

  I remember now, I’ve heard my mother, talking to the television, when journalists or human rights workers are taken hostage in the Middle East. “Only an idiot would give in to a tactic like that.” She says that to pay a ransom would only encourage more kidnappings. But for her own daughter, surely such opinions would change.

  “Has my mum refused to pay?” I ask, terrified, suddenly convinced that this is what has happened, why I am still here.

  “No, truly,” Amina says quickly. “You are our guest.”

  “I don’t think so.” My mother believes that principles are everything, would rather suffer and do the right thing than take an alternative route. And whatever she believes is right, is always right. I learned that years ago. I may not agree with my dad a lot of the time, but he’s usually working so it doesn’t bother me too much. Thinking about Mum and her strong beliefs is much harder. I feel guilty about the last few months, for shouting at her, for staying out with Joe just to spite her. For not taking Gaynor on the ferris wheel.

  “I haven’t been getting on with my mum lately. I was planning on leaving, going back to England to live with my grandmother. She found out.”

  And I want to cry then, for the part of me that was so sick of her, so sick of Luxembourg that I wanted to leave. She was so mad when Grandma told her that I’d asked if I could move to England, because I wanted to study sixth form in Durham. We argued so badly that I went to Joe’s, and stayed the night. I was frightened of her, but all I want now is to hug her tight and tell her I love her. Because my mum may be controlling, not an easy person to live with, but I always knew she could make things right. And right now I need, more than ever, for her to do just that.

  Bridget

  In another part of Luxembourg, Bridget sits on the bed frame fixed to the wall of the police cell. She sits primly, neatly, waiting. The solicitor is on her way and so is Achim. She knows now, what she has to say. She was a fool to trust the police, to think that the truth would help her to find Ellie. She cannot do that from inside a prison.

  Whatever she has to say, whatever it takes, Bridget has made up her mind. She will be free.

  Dear Ellie,

  You should be home by now. You should never have left.

  The police have questioned me, my darling, but I made a grave error. I told the detective what I have not yet told you. You deserved to hear it first. The man who took you, I know him.

  I imagine you hearing me say this, the shock you must feel, the anger. So I wait a moment, let this sink in, before I continue. Because continue I must, there is no going back now.

  He was a man who hid in the mountains, a radical. We were warned about such men, as early as my induction training in Brussels, when Algeria’s bloody history was explained, we were told that for those men, killing was a way to serve God, their own deaths a way to become a martyr. I didn’t know much about religious fanaticism. My only encounter with religion was RE classes. I regretted not paying attention when I received my posting, though, trying to dredge up what I remembered about the Muslim faith.

  Algeria was in a state of emergency and all volunteers sent to Tizi Ouzou were under no illusions: this was a nasty place. The Islamic Salvation Front and other off-shoot groups were killing civilians, journalists and children. The fury in the country, the bloodlust, was uncontainable. There seemed to be no end to it, and we would be called to villages where whole families had been attacked, trying to find one person who might still be breathing. It was a desperate time, a desperate place, and I have never felt closer to death nor so very much alive.

  You will not have heard of this, Ellie, and I wish I’d told you about it sooner. There was a massacre. Actually, there were many, but this one especially, shocked the world. In a village not twenty miles away, fifty-three people lived and on one terrible day, the year you were born, fifty-two of them were killed, their throats slit as their souls fled.

  Only one villager lived.

  I think you may be guessing that the man who survived was the man who is your kidnapper, but that is not the case. The soul that lived is still a young man, and was just a baby then. And the person that saved him is your kidnapper. The person that saved him is me. I was the nurse to whom the boy was brought, wrapped in the uniform of the man who had been ordered to leave no-one alive.

  One more death, that was all it amounted to, what is one baby when fifty-two have died? But the soldier brought me that baby, he begged me to save it. The baby wasn’t unwell, just hungry. A baby would die without a family, we had no way to care for the child longer-term, and in a war-torn country there is no such thing as adoption or care homes. As I cared for the baby, I wondered why the soldier had saved him. A baby is defenceless, it can’t protect itself, and you were already inside me. I had already decided on the abortion though, that my fate was to work and help others. I thought then that all the soldier had done was prolong the agony, as the baby would surely die anyway.

  But the following day the soldier returned. He was dressed differently and his gun was gone. He had a backpack and had cut his beard shorter. He took the child and promised me he would raise him as his son. He called him Malik.

  And that was the moment, Ellie, that snapshot of a moment, when I chose to be a mother.

  Our fate was changed by Jak. And he is changing it once again.

  Jak owes me his son’s life; he said that moment saved his own too. I thought I would never see him again, but there he was at Schueberfouer, and I asked him to help me as I had once helped him. I asked him to take you, for one day. To show you a different life, to shock you into goodness. To teach you a valuable lesson.

  I thought I was being a good mother, doing a wise thing.

  But it has all gone so terribly wrong.

  Cate

  Sleep did not last long enough and Cate woke before the day had really begun. Beside her, Amelia was lost in the dark alleyways of dreamland, her mouth open and her eyes blinking under thin blue lids. Cate turned slowly so she wasn’t disturbed, though the wooden bedstead creaked. Through the gap in the pink damask curtains the sun cast a flame and birds were chattering noisily, their day already old although it was not yet six thirty. Suddenly longing to see Olivier, Cate could not stop herself from quietly padding along the hallway to his room. Josephine and Roland wouldn’t be awake for an hour or so and she wanted to see her fiancé, she wanted to hold him. Had they even kissed since his proposal? She didn’t think so. She didn’t knock, not wanting to make any noise that would disturb his parents, opening the door quietly as she entered.

  The bedroom was a young boy’s paradise, air fix planes hung on string from the ceiling, and a pair of child’s skis was balanced against the wall along with ski poles. The bed was another antique, with a high wooden base and decked with a patchwork quilt in red, white and blue checks, which Cate imagined was made by hand, but not by any that still lived. On the dresser was a wooden yacht, neatly held in its wooden stand, and next to it a neat pile of faded comics. It was a child�
�s room from another era, with no posters of pop bands, no topless women, a child who had not grown up. It was a time capsule.

  Olivier was not in the room, but the blue-and-white wool rug was awash with papers and his laptop was balanced on a square footstool covered in the same checked fabric as the quilt. The screen was alive with light, and it was open at his email page.

  Cate should have made herself stop, realising that Olivier must be downstairs. She should have left, backed away, returned to her own room, or gone downstairs to the kitchen to join him, but her feet continued on and she crouched down on the rug, feeling every bit the young child for whom this room was designed. Every piece of paper spread there, every printed email, related to the disappearance of Ellie Scheen. Cate could no longer stop herself, even if she wanted to. Her fingers grabbed the reports and file pictures, she pulled at the laptop and scrolled through emails, gorging herself on new information.

  Some of the police papers were in French, so she missed the meaning of most words, but the Scheen statements were in English and Cate began to read.

  Bridget had told Cate that she had watched Gaynor and Ellie board at the ferris wheel, that she had remained below as the wheel turned, that she didn’t understand how Ellie had vanished. Yet Cate read that one witness had seen her drinking heavily at a pop-up bar, had seen her talking with someone, whom they described as a well-built Arabic male in his fifties. Bridget had lied about her whereabouts.

  An even more damning statement came next. A customer at the fair, a parent from the school who recognised Bridget, had come forward when she heard about Ellie’s disappearance, to say she had seen Bridget slap Ellie, hard on the face. The woman speculated that Ellie had run away to escape her violent mother. Paper-clipped along with this, as though they were connected, was a statement from the school nurse. She acknowledged that Ellie could be very difficult with teachers but when she spoke with Bridget she had been dismissive and defensive.

  More damning was the short, cryptic, statement from the family doctor, saying that Ellie had attended the surgery with a fractured cheekbone. Bridget had claimed that she had fallen from a zip-wire in Merl park. The doctor had last seen Ellie two weeks ago, when Bridget took her for a morning-after pill. The doctor had asked to see Ellie alone and when Bridget had left the room Ellie had insisted there was no need for the pill, that she was in fact still a virgin, and her mum was just trying to teach her a lesson for staying out. The doctor made no comment on either fact, the fractured cheekbone or the seemingly baseless demand for emergency contraception.

  The last statement in the pile was from the European director of Médicins Sans Frontières, and was in French. Cate stumbled over the words but gathered that Bridget had worked for them, in several countries over a period of a few years, but they had let her go. She had become political, she had got involved in something forbidden, assisting a criminal in some way. Cate re-read the paragraph but no indication seemed to have been given as to what Bridget had actually done. They had no choice but to terminate her contract.

  Frustrated, fascinated, unable to stop, Cate sifted again through all of the information that Olivier had, every scrap of the police case, not hearing the door open or Olivier come in behind her.

  “What the fuck do you think you are doing?”

  She turned to him, and before she had time to fully register his ashen face, that his eyes that were puffy, she shot back, “This case has become a witch-hunt, hasn’t it? All of this, it’s about accusing Bridget, not finding Ellie. Is it all you have?”

  Olivier lifted his chin and Cate saw then, that he was angry. Angry and upset, but not with her. His face was already mottled, his eyes were bloodshot.

  “Yes, it’s all I have. That and what Bridget admitted to me, that she knows who took Ellie, that she asked the Arab man to do it. She is now denying that the conversation ever took place, but I have a witness who saw her talking with him. She is adamant that I have lied, that I am mistaken in my understanding. Bridget has just been released.”

  “What?” To digest this, when she had just learned of the arrest, was hard.

  “She got a clever solicitor, and said many clever words, and now she is free. And this morning she is giving a press conference at the British Embassy. So we need to return to Luxembourg. Now.”

  Olivier gathered the paperwork from the rug, and Cate left his bedroom in a flurry of confusion to wake Amelia. Josephine and Roland had just begun to surface as they were making their way downstairs, and Olivier explained to his mother that they had no time for breakfast.

  Cate drove at speed back to Luxembourg, Amelia was yawning in the back seat and General whined plaintively, desperate for his morning walk. Olivier sent texts and spoke in rapid French to colleagues, about the woman who was now free, about the accusations she had made against him, and what they were going to do about it.

  The British Embassy was close to the city centre, down a tree-lined street. The residence itself was quietly grand, with an iron fence and an imposing stone face that suggested wealth and importance, but not glitz. It seemed the perfect place for a British Ambassador to work, though Cate’s knowledge of what such a job might involve was limited. Two vans were parked on the kerb outside, one from the Luxembourg television network, RTL, and the second from the BBC.

  Olivier saw the van too. He paused, sucking in his cheeks, then leaned over and kissed her cheek drily, and simply said, “See you tonight.” That was all. Not an idyllic start to their engagement.

  The next stop was the school, despite Amelia complaining that she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and wanted to go home and change. But there wasn’t time. Not for Cate. Because she had somewhere else she wanted to be.

  Without thinking about possible consequences, only knowing that she needed to do so, she drove back into the city, and parked underground, just around the corner from the Embassy. She hadn’t thought through what she was doing, and hadn’t stopped to ask herself if she’d even be allowed in to the press conference, but walked determinedly to the building, knowing only that she had to hear what Bridget was going to say.

  There was a bustling crowd in the corridor and Cate found herself pressing against the backs of journalists holding notepads. She followed them, trying to look like she belonged, as they edged their way into a grand room, where a marble fireplace dominated, and cornicing on the ceiling matched its elegance. Wooden folding chairs had been placed in straight lines for the meeting.

  The room was already packed and Cate was lucky to get a seat, albeit at the back. Around her journalists checked the batteries on their microphones or fiddled with camcorders. All lenses, all faces, were directed towards the raised platform, upon which was a table with a white cloth, a bank of microphones. No-one was seated at the table yet, but glasses of water waited, as did a box of tissues.

  Cate felt someone watching her and looked up to see Eva, five rows ahead. Eva nodded and gave a tight smile that looked slightly triumphant. Cate didn’t know how she herself felt about Bridget being released, and she was glad of the distance from Eva, so she didn’t have to hear her opinion. Not yet, at least. Olivier believed Bridget was guilty, and if he was right then this press conference was a travesty.

  A side door opens and camera bulbs flash as Bridget, flanked by a smart looking woman in a navy suit and Achim looking sombre and serious, makes her way to the central chair. God, how different she looks from the woman who gazed out of the window clutching the pink rabbit, thought Cate. Bridget walks tall and she looks determined not to cry. Her outfit is loose, not a stiff suit but a cotton dress in yellow with intricate beading around the neck and cuffs. But what Cate notices most is that her hair has been washed and dried smooth, so it falls to her shoulders which are pulled back, her chin raised, her eyes taking in the crowd. She looks every inch like her daughter, like the pictures of the rebellious teen Cate had seen on the leaflets. Cate can see for the first time how Bridget would have conducted herself in her previous professional li
fe; there was a toughness to her that Cate hasn’t seen before. Bridget’s dress dazzles, the beads flashing turquoise and red like an exotic form of Morse code, and she looks as if from another world to everyone else here. She must have chosen this dress deliberately, as if to say that she has travelled, has seen things. She is a woman who knows the world and should be taken seriously.

  In contrast, the woman in the navy suit beside her looks conservative and solid. She speaks first, introducing herself in accented English as Bridget’s solicitor and saying they had called the press conference as a direct response to the feeling that the police were not taking Ellie’s disappearance seriously. Cate hears the words but it is Bridget she watches, her face is fixed as if she is detached from the information that the journalists are frantically scribbling down. She seems to be staring at a fixed point at the back of the room, but when Cate turns to see if someone is standing there it is only a picture, an old-fashioned painting of a young girl in a yellow dress, sitting in an idyllic garden.

  The solicitor begins by thanking the British Ambassador for her support, and turns to gesture to a woman who is standing discreetly to one side. She takes a step forward and turns to the audience, the cameras around the room follow her, the journalists lift their dictaphones higher. The British Ambassador is sombre in her appearance, professional, in a neatly cut maroon dress with simple gold jewellery. She gives a curt nod, her gaze seeming to assess everyone in the room. She slides a stray blonde lock of hair behind her ear and speaks without needing a microphone. “I want to thank you all for coming. I also want to make it clear that this conference is not a reflection of any ill feeling between the British Embassy and the Luxembourg police. We know they are doing all they can to find Ellie Scheen. However, I have a duty of care to all British nationals and Ellie is still missing. If hosting this event brings forward any information that leads to her coming home safely, then that is our one and only goal.”

  Eva turns again to look meaningfully at Cate, and though she is too far away to speak, Cate can see from her expression that Eva thinks the Ambassador is impressive.