“But still it doesn’t feel right to me.”
“I don’t care what it feels like to you.” The word “feels” came out long and slippery, giving her the shudders. “You’ll do what I bloody well tell you, you stupid bitch!”
He slammed his hand against the dashboard in the way that someone hits an object rather than the person they really want to hurt. Marion’s eyes began to sting. She tried to stop her face from crumpling, but it was impossible. If he saw her crying, that would only make him angrier, but John knew her so well, he could sense tears long before they were pouring down her cheeks.
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t start the bloody waterworks now.” He sighed.
“I’m sorry—” But Marion could not stop herself.
John forced a gust of air from his mouth.
“All right—I’m sorry for shouting at you. Just try and calm yourself down.” His voice became gentler.
Marion searched inside the glove compartment for a tissue but found only a single beige leather driving glove, supple as living skin, a pair of scratched sunglasses, and an uncapped tube of hand cream encrusted with grit. John gave her a clean white handkerchief from his pocket, and somehow the fact he was being kind to her made Marion feel even worse. She rubbed her eyes with the handkerchief and blew her nose. If the girl was coming, then Marion wished she would please hurry up, so they could get all this over with and be back home as soon as possible. She closed her eyes for a moment, filling her head with thoughts of her aunt’s flat with its soft pastel light and cozy furniture; she imagined herself lying on the sofa while Agnes cooked something nice for supper. She could hear her singing “My Favorite Things.” Marion began to hum the tune in her head.
“There she is,” said John suddenly. “That’s her, Violetta.”
Marion opened her eyes. A young woman with long black curly hair, dressed in a short denim skirt and wedge heels, was walking down the slip road and dragging a large wheely suitcase made from shiny pink plastic behind her. The girl’s legs were thinner than Marion’s wrist, and it seemed impossible that they could support even that tiny body.
The girl had to skip up onto the sloping grass verge to avoid a red car that was heading towards the McDonald’s drive-through lane. Her suitcase got stuck on the curb, and the driver of the red car beeped, even though he had more than enough room to get round.
Violetta. To Marion the name sounded gypsy-ish. You could see the raspberry-colored lipstick and glint of hoop earrings across the car park.
The girl glanced in their direction but didn’t seem to register the car. There were no other vehicles in the car park aside from a white painter and decorator’s van and a massive red Land Rover. Still the girl seemed hesitant and began to drift towards the McDonald’s building.
“What’s she bloody well playing at? I told her to look out for the silver Merc,” said John. “You’ll have to go and get her.”
“No, no, I don’t want to.”
“Just get out and wave at her.” John jabbed the soft flesh of her upper arm. “Then she’ll know we’re here to meet her.”
Legs stiff from sitting in the same position for so long, Marion got out of the car and waved at the girl. Violetta stared back blankly, then began dragging the suitcase towards them.
“You are the family of Adrian?” she called out in a strong foreign accent.
Though she was small, there was something fierce about the girl. The way she looked at her made Marion feel the way she did around animals; that they were working out the best place to bite or scratch.
“Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Marion.
Violetta wedged the pink suitcase onto the backseat of the car, then got in next to it. She looked about eighteen, nineteen at the most; her perfume of sickly sweet chemicals stung the back of Marion’s throat.
“I have had to walk so far in the rain and then I am nearly killed by cars. It was almost impossible to find this stupid McDonald’s. I do not know why you could not come to meet me at the proper place when I get off the ship.”
“It’s a ferry, not a ship,” corrected John.
“Ferry—ship—who cares—it is the same.” Violetta made an angry huffing sound, then bounced back heavily in her seat. “Adrian is not here?”
“No, no, Adrian couldn’t come,” John said briskly, “didn’t he tell you in the message?”
“Yes, but maybe—I had hoped.” Though she could not see her face, Marion imagined from her voice that the girl was pouting.
“You’ll see him in a few days, don’t worry.”
“So you are the people who will be giving me a job?”
“Yes.”
“You have child?”
“No. No we don’t,” answered Marion. “We aren’t married, we are brother and sister.”
Anxious that she should have kept her mouth shut, she glanced at John, but his face revealed nothing. As they left the car park, the old Mercedes tottered forwards, then stopped. John revved the engine. A car behind them sounded its horn. Marion felt the girl’s small strong hands grip her headrest, trapping a few strands of hair so they pulled on her scalp. Then the girl let go and began chattering away, filling the car with her loud, bright energy.
“Is the weather always so horrible in England? You know I like the sunshine. I think I will die of cold fever if is always like this. This is Mercedes car, right? It is very old, though, why do you have such an old car? Can you not afford to be in newer car?”
Neither John nor Marion answered these questions, but that didn’t stop her from asking more:
“It is very big, the house you live in? I will have good room and bathroom all to myself, correct? You will be very pleased with me at housekeeping, I am excellent at vacuum, remove dust, polish glass and metalworks. I learn skills in top five-star international hotel. I am very thorough. I can also cook many foods.”
Then she recited a long list of foreign-sounding dishes that Marion had never heard of.
“But I only do this job until I can save money to go to fashion clinic and become designer. You understand this? Adrian has told you, I think? I make clear to him in emails. Is not my ambitions to become housekeeper. Just to save money.”
Marion wondered what “fashion clinic” was. Did she perhaps mean fashion college, or something else altogether? Still, there didn’t seem any point in asking her to explain. Listening to the girl prattle on, Marion could not believe that this was the sort of person John was likely to get along with. She seemed too pushy and money-minded, interested only in shopping for designer clothes and luxuries; what could they even have found in common to talk about in their correspondence? Of course she was pretty, yet there was a glossy hardness about her, a sweetness you could break your teeth on, like a candied apple.
When they got back onto the motorway, iron-gray nails of rain began battering the car. John drove fast, swerving from lane to lane, while the wipers barely managed to clear the windscreen for more than a split second at a time. Violetta declared she wanted to go to the toilet.
“You should have gone in McDonald’s,” said John gruffly.
“I would be embarrassed,” the girl whined in a baby voice. “You shouldn’t go toilet in restaurant if you don’t eat something. They don’t like it. Maybe the manager shouts at me in front of many peoples.”
“Well, we can’t just stop on the motorway—you understand English, ‘motorway’? No stopping. Do you have motorways in your country?”
The girl made a high-pitched huff to show that she was offended. Did they even have proper toilets, wondered Marion, or just holes in the ground that you squatted over? But the girl had noticed the little man and woman shapes on the sign for a service station and even she knew that meant there were toilets.
“It is no good, you must stop, or do you want me to go toilet in your fucking car?” said Violetta, instantly switching from spoilt baby to angry vixen.
“Hey,” said John, the stern schoolmaster. “Mind your mouth, young lady.”
Red signs burning through the rain indicated a speed limit of twenty miles an hour. The traffic had slowed almost to a stop.
“John, we might not be home for a long time,” said Marion. “We could stop at that place just ahead, where we got coffee on the way up? I wouldn’t mind using the loo.”
John kept his eyes fixed on the Tesco lorry in front.
“No. I’m not stopping. You’ll both have to wait.”
“But why?” said the girl. “This is not human,” she cried. “You can’t treat even animal this way.” Then with her voice filled with fake tears: “Please, I am desperate.”
The traffic crawled forwards for another five minutes until they came to a dead stop. Signs advertising Burger King and Marks and Spencer were visible next to the flat buildings of the service station a few hundred yards ahead. The girl saw her opportunity and opened the door.
“You can’t bloody well just get out here,” shouted John. “Get back in the sodding car!”
But it was too late. Violetta, dragging her conspicuous pink suitcase behind her, was running along the steep grass embankment towards the service station. Then the Tesco van in front suddenly darted forwards, and the traffic in their lane began to move. They were holding everyone up, and the other cars started beeping their horns.
“Can you believe that?” He turned to his sister. “What does she think she is playing at?”
“John, just let her go, please. Just keep driving.”
“What if the police picked her up? She’s breaking the law running along the side of the motorway like that.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just let her go, please,” Marion replied.
John swerved into the lane for the service station. There was a look of terrible purpose in his eyes, and the veins in his neck were fat and twisted like earthworms.
“No, I won’t let her go. All that bloody planning would be wasted. And she took money. She’s not getting away now.”
The service station was very busy, and John got angrier and angrier while trying to find somewhere to park. When they finally found a space, it was as far from the entrance to the building as it was possible to be.
“You’ll have to go and find her, Marion.”
“But, John, that girl—I mean, perhaps it would be better to just let her go—don’t you think?”
“We can’t just let her wander off like that. The police could pick her up, they’ll want to know what she is doing here.”
“But why do I have to find her?”
“Because you’re a bloody woman, you can talk to her. And what would it look like, me chasing after some young girl?”
She knew John would not leave the car park until she went and got the girl. Frightened and weary, she forced herself out of the car. If only she had put on her raincoat. Her wool coat soaked up the rain as she made her way towards the main building. The car park was nearly full, and impatient drivers looking for spaces kept beeping their horns at her as she got in their way. I just want to be home again. She prayed silently, Please let it be over.
Marion went through the sliding glass doors of the service station and found a food court, a small supermarket, and gift shop, but no sign of Violetta. She went into the ladies’ toilets. The long queue consisted mostly of elderly women who all seemed to be traveling on the same coach trip around England. “I was very disappointed by Stonehenge,” said one of them. “Will you hold my handbag and coat, Margaret, I don’t like to put anything on the floor, you don’t know how often they clean these places,” said another. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, Marion realized she blended in seamlessly with the ladies on the tour. How lovely it would be to slip onto their coach with them and escape!
As she waited, Marion noticed the central cubicle in a row of five remained occupied, and a strip of pink plastic was visible in the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. Marion took her time using the toilet, and when she came out again, the room was empty except for herself and the occupant of the middle cubicle.
Marion knocked on the door.
“Violetta?”
She heard a sound that might have come from a small trapped animal.
“I’m sorry John wouldn’t let you go to the loo, but he was worried that stopping would make us late getting home.”
“I don’t like you people,” said the voice from inside the cubicle. “You English are very mean and have no good manners. You are scaring me. The old man, he scares me the most. I don’t want to come work for you.”
“John doesn’t mean to shout,” said Marion. “He’s just tired from all the driving. He is a very kind man, really. When you get to know him better, I’m sure you’ll like him.” Then she sighed wearily. “Please come out and get back into the car with us.”
There was a pause, then a sharp: “No!”
A part of Marion wanted to tell the girl to take her chance and escape. Run away and keep running. Whatever you do, you must not get back in that car. Something dreadful will happen. You will never see your family or the light of day ever again. Please just go. Run. Anything that happens to you will be better than coming with us.
Instead, she heard herself say:
“But what about Adrian? You know he is so looking forward to seeing you.”
“But he hasn’t met me yet. Only photograph. Maybe when he sees me, he thinks I am ugly.”
“I’m sure he will think you are very pretty. I think you are.”
“Did he talk with you about me?”
“Yes, yes, he said he was excited about meeting you after all this time.”
Marion could hardly believe she was capable of putting on an act like this, but she had to get away from those service station toilets before another coach party came in.
“And is he handsome? Like in the photographs online?”
“Well—of course I’m his aunt, so obviously he looks handsome to me.” She hesitated, then thought of that young man Simon from the estate agents. “He has a lovely smile and he is very charming.”
“Do you think I will be his girlfriend?”
“Perhaps—he doesn’t have a girlfriend at the moment. I think he would like that very much.”
“I—I am scared that he won’t like me—that—that he will send me away again.” Her words were punctuated by little sobs and gasps. “This is my only hope, I just want someone who takes care of me. . . . I can’t go back home now—Mama, she has this new man and baby—they don’t want me—she makes me leave, and I have to sleep on floor of my friend from hotel, but she doesn’t want me now either—there is nothing for me except this.”
Marion felt a sudden wave of sympathy for Violetta. She wanted to believe that the girl’s dreams would come true, that Adrian was a real person who would rescue her and care for her for the rest of her life.
“Then you’d better come now, hadn’t you?”
A woman and her small daughter came into the toilets. The mother gave Marion a suspicious look and then used her hand to guide the child’s eyes away, as if to prevent her from witnessing something inappropriate.
“Now, come on, we have to get going.”
The bolt of the cubicle door slid back. Violetta rushed out and wrapped her thin, sharp arms around Marion’s waist. Damp curls pressed against Marion’s face. The girl was surprisingly strong, and it felt strange to have this tiny, tough little thing pressed against her body. How long since anyone else had hugged her? She couldn’t remember. Lydia as a child used to wrap her arms round her just like that, usually when it was time to go back to Judith’s house and she didn’t want to leave, but that was many years ago. If John embraced her, she would have died of shock. Hugging had not been commonly practiced when they were children. Mother, though she might press dry lips against her children’s cheeks at birthdays and Christmas, considered overt displays of affection “classless” and likely to spread infection.
Something about Violetta’s fierce embrace made Marion want to cry.
She patted
the girl’s back, feeling the ridges of small hard bones through her clothes.
“Come on, we have to get back to the car now. John is waiting.”
Violetta slept for most of the journey home. John tuned the radio to a program that was playing old Broadway hits. They listened to songs from shows like Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music.
• • •
THEY FINALLY PULLED up outside the house at 9 p.m. Marion, her head fuzzy from the hours of staring at the road ahead, got out of the car and opened the front door of the house while John woke Violetta. As she walked into the hall, the girl stretched sensuously then looked at John.
“What about suitcase?” she asked sleepily.
“I’ll get that later,” said John.
The inside of the house was barely warmer than the street outside, and the air smelled strongly of damp; or perhaps, having been away from it for the day, Marion just noticed it more. As she walked through the hall Violetta looked around at all the piles of newspaper and rubbish with an expression of dreamy confusion on her face.
“Come this way,” said Marion, leading the girl through the dining room into the kitchen.
“Is Adrian here?”
“Not yet, but you’ll see him soon. Would you like a cup of tea?”
The girl gave a drowsy nod. Then she looked in her handbag for something and frowned.
“Phone is gone.”
While the girl was sleeping, Marion had noticed John take her phone from her bag and throw it out the window somewhere along the M1.
“Maybe you dropped it in the car,” said John. “We can go and look for it when we get the suitcase, but let’s have tea first.”
The girl seemed too tired to object.
John already had the special mixture ready; he had placed the pills ground up in the blue cup before they went out. He left Marion alone in the kitchen with the girl. She put the kettle on. Her hands were shaking as she poured the tea, but Violetta didn’t notice. She made sure to add lots of sugar, just as John had instructed her to do. It was nearly over; she had done all that John asked. Soon she could go and rest. As she tasted the tea, the girl screwed up her sharp little nose, but drank it down anyway. She probably thought all English tea tasted funny. It took ten minutes of anxious waiting until her head began to drop towards the table.
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