by Ruth Dugdall
Cate was about to reply when the phone went dead.
The receiver, in her hand, emitted a single-note tone. Whoever it was, they were gone.
Our van may be seen, the caller had said. There had been a white van outside Bridget’s house, with the swimming pool depicted on the side. She’d seen it at dinner in Bastogne that evening with Olivier as well.
Do you know Saarburg?
In the nail bar, she had picked up a leaflet for a swimming pool there.
And now she recognised the voice. It belonged to the girl who worked there.
DAY 8
Cate
Cate told Bridget that she would take the girls out for the day.
What she didn’t say was where she was taking them.
Saarburg is just beyond the Luxembourg border into Germany, a pretty town with a castle ruin perched over sloping vineyards. Because Cate didn’t want to reveal the real destination of their trip, she took Amelia and Gaynor to the arctic slide first. Amelia’s excitement evaporated when she saw just how steep the steel run was as it zigzagged through the trees..
“Can you come with me, Mum?”
Cate looked at Gaynor, who had still barely said a word since leaving home. “Why don’t you girls ride together? I can just watch from over there.” She pointed to a raised platform, which gave a view of the slide area. But also of the town, which Cate was far more interested in.
Gaynor shook her head. “I don’t want to do it.”
Cate felt she may have made a mistake.
“Okay, Gaynor, you don’t need to slide if you don’t want to. Why don’t you go and get a Coke? You can watch us from here. Just make sure you come back and don’t leave this spot, okay?” She gave the girl a five euro note and turned to Amelia. “Do you want to sit up front and control the brake?”
Amelia nodded vigorously.
Cate sat on the steel sledge, helping Amelia to find a comfortable seat between her legs, enjoying the warmth of their closeness, closing her eyes as the machine clicked into gear and the car began to climb.
“Look, Mum, Paranormal!”
Cate saw the massive sign, directly above the restaurant where Gaynor was now sat, sipping her Coke. “It says panoramic,” she corrected her, laughing. “Nothing to do with the film.”
The sledge began its long descent, Amelia screamed as Cate clung to her.
Relieved to be back on safe ground, all three were pleased to arrive at the swimming pool, and Cate explained to Gaynor that she had packed an extra swimsuit and towel. She wanted her to understand that it was alright to have some fun, that she shouldn’t feel guilty, but she could see from Gaynor’s expression that this was a big ask.
The water park was almost empty, which was surprising as it looked fantastic with three pools of turquoise waters, one with a flume, a bridge connecting them, and a whirlpool in the middle. Local teenagers should be crowded round, flirting and enjoying picnics, but the grass and benches dotted around the place were empty. It made no sense, especially when the entrance fee was only two euro.
The café-bar at the pool was closed, the chairs pulled up and leaning on the plastic tables, the umbrellas folded down. The few people who were there looked like visitors from the local campsite, families from other parts of Germany, red from the sun, smoking and sipping local beer in the heat.
Cate led the girls to a spot under a shady tree and Amelia and Gaynor pulled on swimsuits under their towels. After a generous slathering of suncream for them both, the girls slipped into the water like seals, not even testing the water first.
A drilling noise made Cate lift her head.
A man was beside the closed-up café, working on a block of wood at his feet and orange cans over his ears, a tan face with light blonde hair escaping from under a woollen hat. Handsome, youngish, Cate thought she had seen him before somewhere and racked her brain. Had she seen him at the fair, or in the city? But then she remembered: he had been in Bastogne, coming out of the beauty salon, the one that Olivier had seemed so interested in. She saw a movement at the window above. It looked like a girl, gazing out. Cate held her breath, a desperate hope rocking her. Could it possibly be Ellie?
The young man switched off the drill and walked towards his van, which she saw was advertising the swimming pool, the same white van. Cate’s ribcage tightened, and she realised her hunch was right: I’m onto something, there’s a link between this place and the nail bar and to Ellie. Her heart surged with the ridiculous, terrifying, amazing realisation: I could find her.
The man had left the door to the café hanging open, a chance that Cate could not ignore, not now the forlorn hope of finding Ellie had entered her reasoning.
Amelia and Gaynor were fine, splashing around and riding the flume. They wouldn’t even notice she’d gone, she would be so quick. If she alerted them, she’d alert the man with the van, and she couldn’t risk that.
She pushed the café door wider and slipped through, her bare feet stung by the rough sawdust. Cate self-talked, an inner dialogue that was banal but soothing: If anyone challenges me I’ll say I’m looking for the loo, I’ll speak rapid English and pretend not to understand that I shouldn’t be here.
That such an excuse would be tolerated, especially if Ellie was here, was crazy but Cate could not allow logic or good sense to intervene. If she did she would never be able to keep walking forward.
The room was large, presumably intended to be a restaurant one day soon, but right now it was full of rubble and half-finished projects, no way would any tourist think this was the way to the loos. Cate continued, ignoring the splinters catching in her soles. She could no longer hear the cascade of water from the flume, but instead she heard a voice. A woman’s, no, a girl’s. Then a man’s, guttural and incomprehensible.
A movement, a door opening somewhere close, heavy boots approaching. Cate stepped into a side door, hoping it was a closet, not thinking but simply reacting, her pathetic “looking for the loo” alibi tossed aside.
She was inside a bedroom. Small, with only a mattress on the floor. The blinds were closed but the window beyond must be open because she could hear that outside Amelia was calling for her.
“Mum! Mum, where are you?”
Amelia was too close, standing just under the window. Go away, Cate inwardly begged. It’s not safe here.
“Mum?”
Cate was momentarily frozen by fear and stupidity. About to turn back she suddenly thought of the girl at the window.
There was a door, and she knew the answer was beyond it. With shaking hands she opened it. The room was empty. There were two thin mattresses side by side. Each was stained with something yellow.
The room held a memory, a sordid heaviness that Olivier would not understand but Cate could. Despair.
There was an odour, the salt of sex and the sweat of nightmares. The air was old, thick with the dust of shed skin. It was time to leave. But as she turned, something stopped her. Her eye saw it and then her brain caught up, and she moved forward, breath held. There was a mark on the skirting board, an etching in the wood. It was a heart, and inside the heart was a word. A name. Cate ran her nail over the etching, saying the letters softly.
Safiyya.
A girl’s name, but not the right girl.
She heard the voices again and strained to listen. French, quick words with such a strong accent that she couldn’t get the meaning. And then a female voice, a teenager’s youthful tone, but unhappy.
She knew now that she couldn’t hide, she had to confront what was happening. She left the filthy room and realised the voices were further along the passageway now, walking away from her. She inched along the darkened corridor, hands feeling the way.
She heard the van, outside, its motor revving into action. Through the smeared glass of the nearest window she saw an older man was sitting in the driving seat, and a girl was getting in beside him. She was blonde, her skin was like milk.
Ellie?
Cate’s heart was in her m
outh or she would have screamed the word. She was so certain, in that moment, and then the girl turned.
But no, it was another girl’s face. Not Ellie, this girl was younger. Fragile looking, moving nervous.
Another girl needing help.
Cate pushed the window, so it opened just a few inches. “Safiyya?” she called, shouting the name with a voice that had been hushed for too long, so the name came out ragged.
The girl looked up, her head on one side. She had heard, at least a rough whisper of her name. Something was happening here, and Cate needed to know what.
She began to run, no longer caring for her own safety but needing to speak to the girl, Safiyya, her bare feet landing hard on a shard of glass, stopping her with a fall, a twist to the floor. When she righted herself and made it to the next window she saw that the van was pulling away. She had been close to something, she felt it, but it had sped away.
Cate’s cut foot left a trail of bloody marks along the corridor marking her passage to freedom.
By the time she made it outside, the van was gone.
When Cate returned Gaynor back to her home, the front door wasn’t opened by a police officer or by Achim, but by Bridget herself. The toll of the day showed; no longer glossy and strong as she had been yesterday at the press conference, Bridget’s hair was tangled and limp with grease, her skin sallow to the point of jaundice. But worse of all her eyes had the flat dull focus of a woman in despair. She had given up.
She gazed at Cate with something like unsurprised disappointment. When I tell her about Saarburg she’ll react differently.
A female voice called from somewhere inside the house, “Who is it, Bridget?”
Thank God for Eva, who bustled forward to see for herself, then beckoned Cate in with a look that went from surprise to a gloating relief, guiding Bridget back into the lounge, and into the soft embrace of a heavily padded sofa, and pointing Gaynor and Amelia upstairs. “Go to Gaynor’s room, girls. I can bring you up some juice and biscuits.”
Gaynor’s bedroom door opened then closed, and in seconds pop music could be heard through the ceiling. It was as though all three women in the lounge had been waiting on this signal.
“Hi, Cate, we’re glad to see you,” said Eva, as if she and Bridget were one being. “I just arrived myself.”
Cate sat gingerly, she had not been in the lounge before and she was unable to ignore her surroundings. The room was impossibly neat considering Bridget had two daughters and Gaynor was Amelia’s age. Where are the bunched up socks, the open books, the half-eaten tube of sweets? Not only neat, but oppressive because hung on every wall were photos. Pictures of Ellie and Gaynor and their mother, perfectly dressed, with backgrounds of famous places. The Eiffel Tower, Pyramids, Windsor Castle, the Golden Gate Bridge, a desert island somewhere. Cate couldn’t see Achim’s face in any of the photos, it was always just the three of them, smiling at the camera. Perhaps he was the photographer.
One wall, nearest the window, was solely dedicated to pictures of Bridget, her hair scraped back wearing a nursing tunic. Holding a child who is missing a hand, leaning over a woman with cataracts.
“Was that when you were with Médicins Sans Frontières?” asked Cate, wondering if she could find a way to ask why they had terminated her contract.
“My life’s work,” said Bridget, pulling the words from somewhere deep. She looked at the picture that Cate had seen. “That was in Africa, my first placement. That woman was looking after eight grandchildren and she’d lost her sight. All she needed was a simple operation, it took us fifteen minutes to change her life.” Bridget sounded proud, misty with remembrance. “In some ways it was easier then. It was obvious what needed to be done.”
“Now,” said Eva, “I’ll go and make us coffee. Then, Bridget, you must tell us what happened today with your solicitor.”
Bridget’s head lolled. “What does it matter?”
Eva actually clicked her fingers under Bridget’s nose. “It is important! The police are treating you like a criminal. But first, I shall make coffee.”
She left, and Cate shared Bridget’s dejected silence.
Cate admired Eva’s drive but also marvelled at her naivety. To think that Bridget was in any position to galvanise support in that way; the woman was broken.
Cate moved seats, so she was next to Bridget, and took her hand. It felt dry and papery.
“Are you my friend?” Bridget asked Cate, a pathetic question that she could not answer.
“I think I’ve found something, Bridget. A place in Germany, with the same van that I saw here. I think it was your friend’s van.”
Bridget made a loud sound, primal and shocked. “Jak is no longer a friend of mine.”
Eva came running back into the room, a jar of coffee in her hand, a spoon in the other. “What is it?”
Bridget was staring at Cate, grasping her hands together as if in prayer, “Please, Cate. Oh God, please, tell me you found her.”
“I was following a hunch, it could have come to nothing. But at the swimming pool I saw a girl’s name, etched into the skirting board.” Both women looked at Cate with such raw desperation that she added quickly, “Another name, not Ellie’s. But the van was there. I think it was where Ellie was taken, though she’s not there now.”
The silence stung. A heartbeat of loss. Had they missed an opportunity? Were they too late to save her?
“There’s something else,” she added, slowly. Knowing that her choice to tell this first to Bridget and Eva, rather than Olivier, would be her undoing. “The reason I went to Saarburg was because I had a phone call.”
“Jak?” Bridget breathed.
“It was a young woman’s voice. The call was cut short, but before they hung up on me they said they had Ellie and they wanted to meet. I thought I recognised the voice, I had a feeling it was a beauty salon I’ve visited.”
“So what do we do now?” Eva asked.
Cate said, “I don’t know why the call was cut short, but I feel certain they will call back. We should tell the police before we do anything else, now we know the beauty salon is involved, before they call a second time.”
“No!” Bridget jumped up, with more energy than Cate would have expected, and grabbed Cate by the wrist. She pulled her to the stairs.
“Where are we going?” Cate asked, following Bridget along the hallway, also covered in photos of huge buildings, impressive scenes from the Middle East.
“Here.” Bridget opened the door to a room that had a KEEP OUT sign on the door, handmade in some plastics class by the look of it. Inside was a teenager’s room, obviously Ellie’s bedroom, and Cate felt the absence of the girl. Here, too, was the mess she would have expected to see downstairs. But Bridget was impatient, placing firm hands on Cate’s shoulders and moving her forwards, to the window.
“See?” she said, with arched triumph. “There he is. Watching.”
Cate could just make out the nose of a car, its bulk blocked by an oak tree. But she knew the car. Olivier must know she was here.
“He’s watching me, Cate, he’s not out in Germany or wherever searching for my daughter. And Jak’s people, they contacted you. We have to do this together. Anything we tell the police will just confirm my involvement. And yours. Please, Cate. We have to find Ellie first. If we involve the police I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.”
Amina
“I spoke to the girl again today.”
Jodie, who had been combing her hair free of tangles and tiny flecks that look like pieces of straw, stops and lifts her head. “How did you manage that, Amina?”
“Auntie takes Fahran for a nap every day, when the salon is shut. Usually I clean. But today I went to see Ellie.”
“Not a good idea, Amina. That girl could mean trouble for us.” She pulls a blade of grass from her hair, and finally it seems free of debris.
“Why are you so dirty?”
Jodie holds her slick mane up for me to inspect. “Not anymore. D
irt like this can be washed away.” Then she lets her hair drop and places her hands in her lap so I think for a second she is praying.
“Stay away from her,” Jodie says, which annoys me because why should she always be the one to give commands. She is examining her legs now, checking some scratches that have appeared on the shins, red and angry marks.
“How did you get those marks?”
“I tripped. It’s nothing.”
I feel I am losing her, somehow.
“Jodie, what has Jak told you about this girl? Auntie says she is our guest, so when is she going home?”
“You think my job is to rescue everyone in this world?”
Jodie is mad at me. She places her mouth on her knee as if she is kissing it. Both her legs are pulled up now and I see that on her inner thigh is a purple bruise, as perfectly round as a coin and then I realise that she is not just angry, she is also upset. And this pain is not nothing.
“What is it you do with Uncle Jak when you go out each day?”
Jodie moves her head so her forehead is to her knee, her words almost lost inside the curve of her body, which looks so small and damaged, the first time I have thought of her this way. Where is my Jodie, who kept me strong on the journey here and dreams of a better life? And then I see not Jodie but Pizzie, and I take her in my arms. This time I will be the strong one.
“Jodie, what is it that happens to you when you leave this house?”
And when she speaks, streams from her nose are running in her mouth and her eyes are weeping. “Don’t you see, Amina? They didn’t bring us here to help us better ourselves. We are here to be used up, our beauty and our bodies. What is happening to me now will soon be what happens to you, and to Ellie. Harraga is a factory, and we girls are what it produces. But we are broken goods, and I am the first to break. When I am all used up, you will be next, little one.” And I hug her harder then, comforting her but also myself, because I have never known Jodie to lie and it terrifies me.
I go to the mattress and lift it, checking the money from the English women is still there. For a moment I don’t feel it, but there it is, carefully placed in the folds of my yellow dress. I slide the dress free, smoothing the cotton and catching Omi’s scent. Inside the material is the twenty euro note.