The Missing Twin
Page 17
‘But … but why?’
‘You are very lucky that they found no drugs, Edie. You would face a long prison sentence if you were caught.’
‘I don’t do drugs – I never have and I never will.’ Edie shouted, incensed that her reputation should be so tarnished. The ‘never have’ bit wasn’t entirely true but it might as well be and it was accurate enough for Vlad. ‘If you really thought I was taking or dealing drugs, you’d throw me out in an instant. So why are you lying to me?’
Vlad stood motionless, staring into the distance.
‘Stop screaming, Edie. The whole resort does not need to hear this.’
‘Because you know I’m right. You know it! And I’m the one who should be complaining. Who took the scarf?’ She was screeching uncontrollably, shaking with rage and hysteria. ‘Who took Laura’s scarf?’
Vlad reached out his arm and took Edie by the hand. She was too surprised to resist. He led her onto the path to her room and she went with him, silent now, her confusion and exhaustion precluding further protest.
‘You don’t need to work at the bar tonight, Edie. Go to bed. Do not mention Laura, the scarf or the police again.’
He wasn’t tall but his slight frame seemed to loom over her, blocking out the moonlight.
‘Do I make myself clear?’
Edie nodded, defeated. She turned and scuffled through the sandy soil back to her room, her feet dragging dejectedly. Once inside, she made a half-hearted attempt to clear up the mess. She wanted it all to go away, to go to sleep and hopefully wake up with all the problems solved and the doubts and uncertainties swept away by a fresh day. That was all she wanted, just then.
She kicked a stray pair of sandals underneath the bed, and then leant forward to pick up an empty water bottle. The door of her room was behind her. It swung slowly open. Prickles on the back of her neck told her there was someone there. She stayed stock still, bent down, her hand halfway to the bottle. She waited, tensed for the pounce, for the steel grip of hands around her throat. Her heart was pounding, her veins pulsating as her blood ran cold. A sound, like a footstep. Yelling out her fear, eyes closed, she turned around, thrusting her fist forward, bracing herself for the counterblow. She encountered only air. Nothing else. She summoned the courage to open her eyes. The door swayed lazily to and fro.
There was no one there.
Outside, darkness shrouded the still olive trees and cloud cover partially obscured the moon. The cicadas thrummed their endless tune. There was no intruder, just her imagination. She fell forward onto the bed, her head drooping between her shoulders. She reached to the fridge and yanked out the vodka bottle, pulled off the top and took a long slug. It was freezing and foul-tasting, much too strong. It burnt her oesophagus. She shuddered and swigged another mouthful. Getting up, she lurched to the door, staggering slightly already from the effect of the alcohol; it had gone straight to her head. Locking the door firmly and putting the key under her pillow, she lay down on her bed. She was becoming delusional. Vlad was right; she needed to sleep.
Fatima
When she saw the knife Fatima knew that they had made a terrible mistake. And that they had been lied to. There were not going to be forty-five people on the boat. At least seventy were gathered together on the beach, jostling and pushing in the shallow water that lapped softly against their feet in a way that would be enticing in any other circumstance.
‘We’re not getting on,’ she shouted, raising her voice to be heard above the muttering of the crowd.
The knife was against Ehsan’s waist, prodding him on board. At that moment, seeing him under threat, Fatima realised exactly the extent of her hatred for Ehsan. But also that she didn’t want him to die, not like this, not at the hands of an unscrupulous, parasitic people smuggler.
Ehsan climbed aboard, ignoring Fatima and obeying the knife. Youssef followed, mutely. Maryam was clinging to Fatima’s legs and screaming, whilst Marwa stood, tight-lipped and grey with fear.
‘I want to go home,’ sobbed Maryam. ‘Go home, Mummy. Go home.’
And then Marwa, always the stronger and feistier of the two, seemed to cave in on herself and she too began screaming.
‘Daddy! I want my daddy!’
It was the first time either girl had mentioned their father since they had set out on their journey. And now she had started, it seemed that Marwa couldn’t stop. She howled and wailed and pleaded for Fayed and Fatima could not calm her. The smuggler was still herding people aboard, pushing the boat a little further into the water as each body added weight that lowered the rubber floor onto the sandy bottom.
Another child, a boy of about eight, was crying out, ‘I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die …’ Endlessly, over and over again, his cries rang out.
The smuggler was getting impatient, wanting his vessel filled and on its way. Some of those on board had just arrived at the coast, having spent three hours packed like cattle in a windowless van to get there; a woman had told Fatima that story but Fatima couldn’t see her now. The boat was so crowded it was impossible to make out individuals in the feeble half-light of the moon.
Now the knife was at Fatima’s waist. She thought about the island they were heading for, how close it had seemed when seen by daylight, the sea so calm and welcoming. Behind her lay only misery; even death at sea was preferable to going back. She passed the girls into the boat. And if it wasn’t okay, as long as they all died together, it would not be so bad. She clambered aboard and the boat slipped a little further into the water.
TWENTY-THREE
Edie
The mood of excitement and anticipation amongst the assembled guests the next morning, eager for the rafting excursion to begin, was not one in which Edie was able to share. She had slept badly and felt tense and unrested.
‘Have you brought some warm clothes, Edie?’ Ivana asked, concern pervading her tone.
‘Oh yes,’ Edie replied, airily.
‘It can get cold in the evening,’ Ivana continued, as if Edie hadn’t understood.
All the more reason to snuggle up close to Vuk. This is what Edie would have thought only a few days ago. But now – his absences, his failure to be there when she needed him, his inability to find Laura for her, his feeble excuse when confronted about the place Edie had found the scarf – well, now it all seemed a little different. Was she starting to think that Vuk wasn’t being completely straight with her? Edie struggled with such a thought, wanted to dismiss it outright. But just the fact that there was a ‘but’ was desperately worrying. Everything she had thought certain, all she had believed in, had been turned upside-down in a matter of a day or so. And Edie felt entirely lost because of it.
‘And,’ Ivana hesitated, still taking an unprecedented and frankly irritating interest in Edie’s attire, ‘do you have a more substantial T-shirt?’ She eyed Edie’s skimpy top disparagingly up and down. ‘It’s important for resort employees to look professional at all times.’
‘I’ll get one,’ replied Edie, with no intention of doing so but wanting Ivana to leave her alone.
Ivana gave up, turning on her heel and heading back to the office, saving Edie the necessity of responding. Instead, she stuck her tongue out at Ivana’s receding figure. Giggles from behind her made her jump and look around. The journalist’s children – what were they called? – were standing behind her, grubby fists clenched around chocolate croissants.
‘Why don’t you like her?’ asked the boy.
For a moment Edie was going to tell him but then she thought better of it; remember the resort’s effing reputation …
‘It was just a joke,’ she explained, feebly. She could tell they were about to engage her in conversation so she walked away, looking ostentatiously around her as she did so as if she had urgent business to attend to.
Zayn turned up, as lugubrious as he always was these days.
‘Morning, Zayn.’ Edie tried out a bright, cheerful voice. ‘Are you coming too?’
Zayn d
id not respond in kind. ‘I’m driving the bus,’ he replied, kicking at one of the tyres. Edie was silenced by the misery that emanated from him. A fleeting pang of sympathy seared through her. He had seemed so desperate for love when she had indulged in her brief flirtation with him. She was sorry she’d had to let him down.
A sudden, hideous burst of self-realisation made her wonder if she had come across the same way. Had the salvation she sought in Vuk been as piteous?
‘That doesn’t sound bad enough to account for how miserable you look,’ she countered, unsympathetically. Of course she could never seem as pathetic as Zayn. How ridiculous.
A half-laugh, half-snort of derision erupted from deep in Zayn’s throat. ‘The bus, this trip, the resort – all are nothing compared to the real worries of the world.’
Edie opened her mouth to question him further, but he was already climbing into the driver’s seat, making it clear that the conversation was over. His words rang in her ears. The real worries of the world.
What was he talking about? Laura’s disappearance? Did he know something he wasn’t saying?
Edie watched him as he fiddled with the side mirrors, and then took his phone out of his pocket and studied it, seeming to read something intently before putting the phone away. Then taking it out again.
It was clear that he was deeply troubled but she was the one who had lost a sister; a twin. What could have happened to him that was worse than that?
Fatima
They obviously had not done their research thoroughly enough. Neither Fatima nor Ehsan had realised that the smugglers do not generally drive the boats themselves. Each rubber dinghy is an expense on the profit and loss account that is only ever expected to make one journey; a refugee is given the job of skipper. That way, if the boat is intercepted by the coastguard, there is no one to arrest, no trafficker to hold to account. Just hopeless, desperate people who have a right to claim, if not to receive, asylum.
In this case, on this voyage, Ehsan had been given the job of getting the vessel and its human cargo to the island. Fatima knew for a fact that he had never been in a boat in his life. But then again, neither probably had most of the rest of them. And Ehsan, of all people, had the spirit of survival, an instinct for looking out for number one, that would ensure he gave it his best shot. So perhaps he was a good choice, even though one made completely at random and certainly without any concern on the smuggler’s part that he had the ability to do it. To him, it was merely a duty discharged and a pocketful of dollars.
Fatima found herself next to an elderly man who cradled his youngest granddaughter on his lap like a piece of priceless treasure. At first, as they ploughed gently out of the bay, the sea was calm and smooth. The man told her that his family business, a bakery, had been razed to the ground in the bombing a year or so ago, and his house also destroyed.
‘All my family, me and my wife, my son and daughter-in-law and their five children, we had to ask relatives to take us in.’ The old man wiped his hand across his mouth as if to take the badness and foul taste of his words away. ‘Imagine the embarrassment. We had been the rich ones, the ones who others asked for help. Now we were the beggars.’
Fatima nodded in the darkness. She knew that scenario only too well.
‘But then their village came under fire and we all had to flee again. They decided to stay in a camp just over the border but we –’ he gestured around him, to the family he had come here with but could no longer see, spread out as they were on the overcrowded boat – ‘we knew we had to get as far away as possible, away from all the fear and bloodshed. And so here we are.’
He clasped the slumbering child so tightly Fatima thought he might suffocate her. ‘Here we are.’
A single tear fell from his eye but he did not brush it away.
In the time it had taken for the grandfather to recount his miserable tale, the boat had reached the open sea. It began to buck and fall on the waves like a defenceless cork. Fatima did not manage to ask his name due to the nausea that overcame her; she was soon vomiting unstoppably, and though she tried to aim into the water the strong wind blew it back into the boat, onto her face and that of the twins and those sitting nearby. With every roll of the sea, the passengers rolled too, clinging onto each other, unable to stay in position, constantly destabilising the boat.
Soon everyone was vomiting and the stench and the cries of the children and the roar of the sea became a nightmarish vision of hell. The stars that twinkled so brightly and cruelly above were utterly indifferent to their plight. A cloud blew across the moon and Fatima felt an invisible rush of water fall into her lap and soak her.
And then the engine cut out. The sudden silence was deafening, thundering in Fatima’s ears so that she wanted to clasp her hands to them to shut out the sound.
The sound of the end.
Edie
Thoughts of Laura, of where she was and what she was doing, and of Zayn, locked in some private torment, were still eating away at Edie’s thoughts like an infestation of unpleasant insects when she felt a hand on her shoulder, steady and calming. She turned, knowing who she would see. She could tell Vuk’s touch from anyone’s. He looked more handsome than ever, his skin burnt a deep brown and his hair bleached even lighter at the ends than it had been the last time she had seen him. He bent forward to kiss her briefly and then, as she was trying to bury her face in the comforting bulk of him, wanting this to be the moment when all the doubts that pestered her were dispelled for good and all, he pushed her away.
‘I’m at work now, Edie,’ he whispered, his eyes not on her but on the rest of the small crowd of people, smiling at all the gawking tourists rather than devoting himself to her. He held out his hand to Patrick who, unseen by Edie, had joined the group with his loud children and plain wife.
‘Morning sir!’ Vuk shook Patrick’s hand vigorously. In the past, his vociferousness in this had always made Edie laugh, as if Vuk believed that the object of the exercise was to take the person’s arm off. Now she scowled. She wanted to go back to normal, to the time when she had unquestioningly adored Vuk, set her heart on claiming him for her own. Now she didn’t know what normal was, or if she wanted it anyway.
‘Morning lady!’ Vuk shook Debs’s hand too, hardly any less forcefully, and then moved through the rest of the raggle-taggle bunch, being so friendly it was almost as if he genuinely liked them and was truthfully glad to be there.
Edie threw her rucksack into the luggage compartment and climbed into the van. She sat there for a few minutes, a sudden, unpleasant thought fomenting in her tired mind. Should she actually be leaving the resort right now, when so much was at stake, when she knew so little about Laura’s whereabouts? Shifting uneasily, she gazed out of the window, thinking hard. The minibus was packed with stuff; bags, suitcases, travel pillows and handbags crammed into nooks and crannies and underneath seats as well as in the luggage area at the back. Edie’s eyes flitted wildly from side to side. She shouldn’t be here, she should go, now. She was half out of her seat when Vuk was suddenly next to her, sitting down beside her, taking her hand and kissing it, and then placing it on his leg, his thigh, not only blocking her way but also ordering Zayn to drive on, urging him to get a move on as they were already running late.
‘What’s the matter, little one?’ Vuk’s voice, deep and sultry, was full of tenderness. ‘You seem agitated. You should relax; you have been working hard and worrying too much. Now is your time to do nothing, sit back, enjoy the view.’
He put an arm around her shoulders. It was heavy, anchoring her to her seat. She tried to cleanse her mind of all the noise and clutter, the buzzing doubts and worries. Vuk was right, there was nothing she could do right now. It wasn’t Laura the police had come about and it was probably true that no news was good news. She should make the most of this opportunity to see some more of this beautiful country and to put her relationship with Vuk back on track. He was so sweet, so caring. She was going mad, thinking there was anything suspe
ct about any of his actions. He worked hard, he had a lot of responsibility, it was natural that sometimes he was distracted, preoccupied. She had not been paying enough attention to his needs, she’d been so obsessed by her own. Now was the time to put that right.
She settled back into the upholstery, leaning her head against Vuk’s muscular biceps. Zayn drove skilfully and the minibus ate up the miles. It was a perfect day, the sky cloudless, the light so bright that it bounced off every surface and made harsh outlines of the cars and buildings that they passed as they sped towards the north.
However many pictures she had seen of the river canyon, they had nothing on the reality. When the great gash in the ancient limestone appeared before them, cut through by the turquoise and white river, it was so deep as to literally take her breath away. Here and there, the gorge sides were studded with black pines, some of which grew at impossible angles, stretched out at right angles to the rock and clinging on with giant twisted roots. A restaurant perched on the cliff edge provided a bird’s eye view of the tumbling water far, far, far below; here Zayn pulled up the minibus and they all got out.
Edie, who had never been good at heights, had to suppress the feeling of sickness and vertigo that rose up inside her. She noticed Debs corralling the two children as if they might disappear and plummet over the edge and for the first time she actually felt sympathetic towards the woman. The depth was terrifying.
Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket to look at it. For a few seconds, her eyes could not focus, were not able to decipher and decode what she was seeing. When she had managed to read the message through and understand it, the words made her feel even sicker and giddier than the precipice below.
Fatima
They had run out of fuel. The smuggler must have known that there wasn’t enough to reach the island. What did he care? They’d be in European waters by the time it happened so it would be someone else’s problem. Or they’d capsize and die; nothing to do with him anymore. Seventy plus people, the old, the young, the unborn, were floating in the middle of a heavy sea, utterly helpless. There were no oars. Nothing. Ehsan repeatedly tried to restart the engine, pulling on the cord with a force that eventually ripped it off.