I thought it interesting that she should withhold her address when she’d been so happy to air her private thoughts about her husband – and Sylvie’s.
‘And this is another neighbour, Sylvie Woodhall. Have you met before?’
As Sylvie turned at the sound of her name, I rose, unwilling to remain on my knees, subservient and reduced. ‘No, we haven’t. It’s nice to meet you. I think I might have met your husband,’ I added, but regretted it at once because it was clear from her glower that, whatever her similarities with Nina, she did not possess the other’s self-assurance. The idea that I knew her husband (and had stood to announce the fact) was not received as the casual claim I’d intended it to be. She was an anxious, suspicious spouse, evidently, and I knew better than to show I’d recognised this by blurting some unnecessary detail.
The exchange ended as Aislene handed Sylvie her wrapped package. ‘There we go. I hope your sister likes the design. It’s come out really well, hasn’t it?’
Sylvie just nodded, evidently too preoccupied to respond to the pleasantry, while Nina turned dismissively from me, from this port of call and back to her friend. ‘Right, Sylv, I think we deserve some lunch, don’t you?’
As they left I heard her say, ‘You hope what?’ There came more of that distinctive, lupine laughter. ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, darling. No chance, he wouldn’t dare, not after last time.’
My shelves restocked, I began collapsing the cardboard boxes, wondering what fear of Sylvie’s Nina had pre-empted, wondering when ‘last time’ had been and whether it was anything to do with the achievement of ‘almost two years’ that she had earlier been urging her friend to celebrate.
Wondering why my face burned so hot.
Chapter 5
Tabby
Emmie’s employer was an Englishwoman called Moira, the proprietor of an agency that managed seasonal lets and supplied cleaners and maintenance staff to the owners of second homes on the island. She lived with her French husband and children on the mainland, travelling to her office in La Flotte across the same bridge with which Tabby was determined to avoid being reacquainted. She was in her fifties and had a pleasant face, blurred but not ruined by the decades, and a quiet, measured manner that Tabby guessed must once have been brisk and eager.
‘Tell me a bit about yourself,’ she said.
This was not a question that could ever silence Tabby; the trouble was selecting from the ready outpouring those details that might actually be relevant. ‘I’m twenty-five and I’m in France for the summer, maybe longer if things work out. I have huge amounts of energy.’ It was true that since taking residence at Emmie’s she had avoided getting under her benefactress’s feet by taking long walks along the coast and through the vineyards, exploring her temporary home with the wonder of a newcomer to Eden. ‘Emmie sent me,’ she added. ‘She said I had the right experience.’
At Emmie’s advice, she had turned up at Moira’s office without an appointment at twelve-thirty. During the lunchtime hours of noon till two, when the French did not do business, the British had time to fill. She had been admitted at once.
Moira listened to her plea, complete with claims of experience that were not quite true but that Tabby was reasonably confident could be lived up to, and seemed content to accept them as reference enough. Even at first glance Tabby could tell she was one of those middle-aged women who had retained a soft spot for the young, even a fond memory of it, as opposed to the envy or begrudging of it that you were sometimes faced with in women past their best (her mother sprang to mind, though Tabby was expert in the rapid extinguishing of any thought of her). Perhaps it was this that made it so easy to imagine how love had once led Moira to this foreign place – she’d met her husband on holiday, Tabby decided; it had begun as a seasonal romance – and how, twenty or thirty years later, as she worked from a small first-floor office above an immobilier, an estate agent, in La Flotte, the exhilarations of love had had to be consigned to history, her marriage now moribund.
But she was being ridiculous. There was nothing in Moira’s face to suggest disappointment or resignation. She needed to conquer this compulsion to project her own miseries on to everyone she met. She needed to stop the self-indulgent fantasies and focus on raising herself from penury.
‘I’m very keen to work,’ she declared, not sure if she had already said this. ‘No job is too low.’
‘Well, I can always use a hard worker,’ Moira said, ‘and your timing is good.’ This was not a comment Tabby had heard much lately. ‘I have several clients who are letting their homes from the end of this month right through to late September and there’ll be regular changeover work on the weekends.’
‘What does that entail?’ Tabby asked in earnest tones.
‘Basically, you clean up after one lot and get it brand-spanking-new for the next. A quick inventory check in case anything’s missing or broken. We usually do check-out at eleven in the morning and check-in at three, so you’ve got four hours to turn it around. But sometimes it’s just a couple of hours. It’s very hard work, especially in the summer months when it gets very hot here. Do you think you can handle it? Are you fit?’
‘Very. I just walked here from Saint-Martin and yesterday I walked twenty kilometres to Loix and back.’
‘That’s quite a hike. Do you not have your own bike or car?’
‘Not yet. I’ll use the bus.’ The idea of owning a car was about as likely as being crowned the Queen of Sheba. ‘Would I need my own cleaning materials?’ This could be a deal breaker; she couldn’t afford to buy products, and even if she had the cheek to ask to borrow some from Emmie, her new friend would surely need them for herself.
‘No, it’s all stored in the individual houses. If you need to get something urgently, you buy it and I’ll reimburse you when you submit a receipt.’
Tabby prayed that wouldn’t happen before she was paid. Having given Emmie twenty, she was down to her last few euros now.
A thought occurred. ‘I wouldn’t be taking work from Emmie, would I? She would still get first refusal?’
Moira eyed her with interest. ‘I’m impressed by your loyalty, though, as I say, there should be enough jobs to go around.’ She paused. ‘How do you know her? You came to the island together, did you?’
‘No, we just met a few days ago, actually. I’m staying in her spare room in Saint-Martin. I came along just as she was thinking of getting a lodger. I’ve been very lucky.’
‘Yes.’ Moira drew her lips between her teeth and bit down. Tabby wondered what she was trying not to say. ‘Emmie’s not everyone’s cup of tea,’ she offered finally, ‘she keeps herself to herself. But if you’re as diligent as she is, I’ll be very happy.’
‘I will be.’
‘For your first job, I’ll come along and show you the ropes. There’s a bit of juggling at first but you’ll soon get the hang of it. What’s your phone number?’
‘My phone isn’t working at the moment,’ Tabby admitted, ‘and I don’t think we’ve got a landline.’ Nor was there an internet connection in the house, Emmie had told her, and sooner or later she was going to need to find a way to get online. ‘Should I call in every so often instead?’
‘Yes, or I can get you on Emmie’s mobile, presumably? I’ve been texting her her client details a day or two before each job. It’ll be easier in a few weeks when you get regular slots and keep a set of keys yourself.’
‘I’m sure that would be fine,’ Tabby said.
As she pedalled back to Saint-Martin on the bicycle she’d borrowed from Emmie, she marvelled once more at her extraordinary reversal of fortune. As if those inauspicious beginnings had never occurred, Emmie had in the space of forty-eight hours assumed the role of landlady, colleague, even mentor. That a sensible private citizen should take in a penniless drifter, offer her a home and expect rent only in arrears; that she should find her work and share her only means of transport: it was almost too good to be true – and at exactly the point at which Tab
by had thought things too awful to believe.
What was it that had made Emmie choose to trust her? For that was what it was, a deliberate choice, that almost magical moment when she had turned to Tabby with the mugs of tea, her face alight with the decision that she was going to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was going to give her a break. Tabby was not at all certain that she herself would have been so generous had their positions been reversed. Well, she would learn from Emmie, she vowed. Just because kindness had become a rare commodity, it didn’t mean it should be treated with suspicion.
Besides, she had a good feeling about the island generally. Not yet swollen with the throngs she knew to expect in high season, it was a tranquil place, a haven from the Atlantic, which at full tide lashed savagely at the sea walls. When the tide was out, the shores heaped with glossy black seaweed and scarred with oyster beds, it felt more as if the place was forgotten, abandoned even by the ocean, a mood that suited her circumstances perfectly.
Her walks over the last two days had revealed a join-the-dots trail of small, low villages with old cobbled streets and handsome stone churches; she’d seen an antique bandstand, a medieval market, row after row of shuttered fishermen’s cottages. By chance, Saint-Martin appeared to be the jewel in the crown, the warren of streets contained within grand, star-shaped fortifications built centuries ago by some famous military engineer called Vauban. She’d studied a booklet from the tourist information office, feeling a certain pleasure in not being a tourist. She had switched sides, she was to be a cleaner for tourists. She would clean, she would save her earnings and live frugally, she would make some sort of plan, build herself a future.
What had Emmie said about forgetting traumas? Well, this would be the perfect place to forget her own – or to try to, at any rate.
She’d insisted on having them laid bare, her faults – or rather the single consuming fault of her being Tabby Dewhurst. ‘Too much in what way?’ she asked him, and she had to squint into the brightness, close her ears to the street. Varanasi: it was an epic, intense backdrop, though she was not sure anywhere would have suited humiliation of this sort.
‘Too needy,’ Paul said. ‘Too clingy. Too serious. You want me to be everyone.’
She was indignant, already desperate. ‘No, I don’t. Who? Who do I want you to be?’
‘Friend, counsellor, family.’ He took a breath then, deciding whether or not to continue. But you had nothing to lose when you’d already decided to rid yourself of everything and so he did go on: ‘I’m sorry your father died, but I can’t be him as well as everything else. I’m sorry you don’t speak to your mother, but I can’t be her, either. The friends who’ve let you down or you say don’t listen to you, I can’t be all of them. Especially not here. I’m not some kind of travelling therapist. I’m not any kind of therapist!’
She listened, aghast. It was true that he had been far more than a partner to her in the four years of their relationship; he’d been a saviour, a crutch. She couldn’t have survived her father’s death without him; she couldn’t have come to terms with estrangement from her mother; she couldn’t have filled all the holes.
‘But that’s what boyfriends are supposed to be,’ she said, ‘and girlfriends. They give each other whatever is needed.’
‘Not all the time,’ he said, ‘and not to the point where they want to stand in the street and scream.’
He wanted to scream.
Tabby began to tremble. ‘I’m no different from how I’ve always been, Paul.’ But straight away she saw she’d hanged herself with that, she’d made his argument for him. The unbearable neediness of her was cumulative.
And there was worse to come, before he walked away, before he left her swinging.
‘I’ve tried to tell you before,’ he said, ‘but you never get the message.’
That choked her badly, made the single syllable hard to mouth: ‘When?’
‘Like before we left England, for one.’ His hands gestured with frustration. ‘That would have been…’
He did not finish the sentence, but she heard it anyhow: it would have been better, cleaner; he’d wanted to travel alone. Or he had wanted to go in order to bring an end to them, it had been the only way he could see to loosen her suffocating hold. The man she loved had been prepared to leave the country to shake her from him and not only had she not recognised this but she had insisted on going with him! She’d had no idea she was sharing a mission to escape herself.
‘You never said you wanted to break up,’ she protested. ‘Why didn’t you spell it out? I can’t read your mind.’
This time his expression answered for him: pity and fear. Pity that she had no one else, fear that when she fell apart he’d be too far away to do anything about it. The pity remained, but the fear had been overcome.
‘This trip was what I needed,’ she said, with a conviction she could not feel. ‘I’m over all of that now. I’m over the past.’
‘So am I,’ he said.
Later she would understand that he had been the only one speaking the truth in that conversation. But this was not the sort of realisation you made on the spot, in the moment, when despairing eyes and helpless hands distracted you, when inflating lungs and deflating hearts competed with words and won.
As it went, Moira found work for her just two days later. Another of her cleaners, a local girl called Sophy who lived in the southern village of Sainte-Marie, had fallen sick and there were four remaining weekly clients to be covered: could Tabby step in? The thrilling – and unfamiliar – sense that she had found herself in the right place at the right time deepened.
As promised, Moira instructed her at the first appointment. It was straightforward enough work, pretty much what she had done unpaid while living with Paul, what most women did but faster, and she worked ceaselessly to impress her new employer, the muscles in her arms hot and aching by the end of the three-hour shift.
‘Very good,’ Moira said on inspection, and paid her cash. Folding the notes in her hand caused a surge of tears to her eyes: she felt relief and gratitude and something close to a renewal of faith.
Now trusted to work alone, she set about her tasks with exactly the same vigour as the trial session, mopping tiles and vacuuming rugs and scrubbing toilets as if her life depended on it – because it did. In those first houses in La Flotte and Saint-Martin, empty of occupants during her working hours, she hardly took a break at all, much less thought to indulge her natural preference to lie on the most comfortable bed in the house and fantasise that she was the owner.
She had been in very few private homes in the last seven months and there was much to satisfy her curiosity. The houses were French-owned, either weekend homes or occupied full-time, and she enjoyed seeing the unfamiliar furniture styles and bathroom fittings, even the French cleaning products. Hers was an imagination easily sparked, and the smallest personal clue – a family photograph, a sports trophy, an old Larousse with an inscription on the flyleaf – was enough to set her off, picturing these people in their daily lives, devising lifestyles for them, inventing little histories that couldn’t possibly be true but that made the hours sprint by.
By the third house she was already slipping open the bedside drawers and bathroom cabinets, casually auditing the items her clients kept private, the books and trinkets and contraceptives, in one case a padlocked teenager’s journal. She was scanning the tops of wardrobes and poking into the backs of deep shelves with the thoroughness of a participant in a treasure hunt, but there was nothing to find of course, at least nothing exotic, only an out-of-date soup mix or a pair of scratched swimming goggles. The faint suspicion that her interest might be in some way perverse was easily eclipsed by the conviction that she was dedicating herself to the service of cleanliness and order.
The fourth place was a holiday unit that was let all year round and bereft of all personal clues – a sniffer dog would be in and out in two minutes – and this, she knew, was typical of what she could expect of all he
r jobs when the summer season began. A locked cabinet held what must be the only private items, otherwise it was a case of removable sofa covers, stacks of IKEA basics in the kitchen dresser, cupboards absent of any surprises. She’d been advised by Moira to throw away opened kitchen products in the holiday lets, and Emmie had said it was permitted for the cleaners to take them instead for themselves if they wanted, but the shelves in this one were empty, waiting to be filled by the next set of arrivals. Only in the last ten minutes did she find an abandoned item, a three-pack of apple juices – the branding was Sainsbury’s, she supposed a British family must have stayed here last – but since the pack was intact she followed the rules and replaced it on the scrubbed cupboard shelf.
Five minutes later, preparing to leave, she found herself in a peculiarly nervous state of mind: it seemed that the unremarkable discovery had disturbed an emotion, a memory of her father she had kept tightly folded these last years, as she had so many concerning him from the period following his divorce from her mother. A triple pack of apple juices, little green boxes with straws, the kind you gave to kids in their packed lunch: something this innocuous was reviving a vignette that encapsulated much of her feelings during her teenage years, feelings of isolation and failure, intense ones. Locking up and beginning the walk back to Saint-Martin, she pictured herself as a sixteen-year-old, the day she’d arrived at her father’s house having argued with her mother about her stepfather Steve.
The Disappearance of Emily Marr Page 7