Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  In the beginning I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of the man, and Maman, and the house, and the animals, and even Josie. All I wanted was to go back to The Other People, but that’s a long time ago now. Sometimes it’s like I see their faces when I’m looking at someone else, like one of the children in my class. Gabin’s face becomes the face of The Little Boy in The Other Family. Lyder. When I thought he was my brother I didn’t like him because he always tried to take my things and sometimes he hit me and told lies. But now I don’t have a brother anymore I sometimes think about how funny he could be and how he made me laugh by doing really silly things, like pushing Coco Pops into his nostrils. Gabin does things like that too, and maybe that’s why I’m his friend even when the other children think he’s weird.

  In the night-time, if I can’t sleep, which is often, I say the names of the children in my old class out loud. I don’t know why. I want to remember them, but I can’t remember all their faces now. Mille-Theodora, Konstanse, Olivia, Ella, Max, Hans-Christian – no, Jens-Christian – Ylva… Before I’ve remembered all of them, the names of the children in my class now come into my head instead. Gabin, Carel, Sophie, Jean-François, Raphaël, Enzo, Lila, Josiane, Noémie…

  ‘Alors,’ says Maîtresse and I notice that she is standing right next to my desk. She picks up my writing book and sees that I’ve only written one of the seven sentences. It is: ‘Liberty means you can do what you want.’ She reads it aloud but in a mean voice and some of the girls look at each other and laugh. Maîtresse moves on to Gabin and he hasn’t finished either. His handwriting is so crooked that Maîtresse makes a big show of not being able to read what it says at all.

  ‘You two,’ she says, ‘come with me.’

  In an empty classroom Gabin and I have to write ‘Je suis trop grand pour faire des bêtises’ fifty times each while the other children play outside. We can hear them laughing and screeching through the open window. I don’t care because Gabin is funny and the whole time we’re writing he pulls crazy faces like his face is made out of plastic, and he sings the sentence in strange voices:

  ‘I’m too big for nonsense.

  I’m too big for nonsense.

  I’m too big for nonsense.’

  *

  ‘Drive faster!’ we shout, and Maman pushes her foot down on the pedal a bit harder so the car goes faster, but still the drive home takes so, so long. By the time we get to the track that leads to another track that leads to a muddy driveway that leads to Le Tachoué, me and Josiane have started chanting ‘Boulette! Boulette! Boulette!’ and Maman can’t help laughing.

  When we park in front of the house, a little white car is there and the man who owns Boulette’s mummy, Safina, is standing there, holding Boulette in his arms.

  Much later, when I wake in the night, Josie is sitting on my bed, smiling and pressing her finger to her mouth. We open the creaky door in the way that stops it from creaking, lifting it up a bit by the handle, then we sneak across the landing and listen.

  The house is quiet. I picture Boulette in her crate, small and afraid, whimpering like a baby that’s made to sleep alone in the kitchen.

  We hold hands down the stairs and across the hallway, because it’s big and dark and frightening at night. In the library we stop and listen again and this time we do hear something. It’s a soft sound, not quite crying, and it’s coming from the sitting room, not the kitchen. Maman must have put Boulette’s crate in there. It’s the warmest room in our house.

  We move closer and see a soft glow from the door, which is half open. The sounds are louder, and now we can tell that it’s actually voices, and Maman laughing. We creep up to the door and peer in, and Maman is on the sofa with the man who owns Boulette’s mummy. She is sitting across him and her sweater is off and Josie pulls hard on my hand and we run back down the long hallway to the library, where we stop and look at each other and cover our mouths as we giggle. Maybe Boulette heard us because there’s a little puppy cry from somewhere. We sneak back towards the kitchen, turning right after the library instead of left into the sitting room, and there she is in her crate. Josie scoops her up in her arms and we rush back upstairs as quietly as we can.

  In the tent, Josie and I giggle at Maman making kissy noises with the man. It’s weird. But the man is nice.

  ‘He can come and live here with Boulette’s mummy and daddy and they can have puppies every year,’ I whisper and Josie nods sleepily.

  We hold Boulette between us, running our fingers through her soft fluffy fur, and there is nowhere I would rather be in the whole world.

  *

  It’s Sunday and I wake up early, with the sun. Josie and Boulette are still asleep. We’ve had her two weeks now and she’s getting fatter and even cuter every day. The house is quiet, and I go and stand in the window.

  I decide to go and see Samba. I put on my farm suit, which is like a waterproof onepiece that’s so tough you can slide down a muddy, pebbly hill in it and it won’t get broken – I’ve done that.

  I let myself into the barn and breathe in the sweet and strong smell. Samba begins to bleat because she knows it’s me and she loves me. I open the latch and she tumbles out, making her funny laughing sounds, and I laugh too, hugging her close, but she scrambles out of my arms because she wants me to run about with her.

  I put her on the rope and we go outside, across the courtyard and down the path that leads to the garden. The sun is making the sky pink and red and purple. In the garden behind the house, Samba and I play chase. She likes it when I run after her, but most of the time I win because she stops to chew the leaves off the bushes. She can’t help it – leaves are like candy to a goat.

  After a while, I sit down on the grass, but I get cold as soon as I stop moving. Samba skips around me, waiting for her treat, and I get the carrot out of my pocket and giggle as she pulls the whole thing into her little pink mouth. She doesn’t want to go back in her enclosure and it takes me a while to get her in there – I have to tie the rope around her neck and yank it hard to get her to move. She sits on her hind legs and stares at me with her blue eyes. In the end, she comes, but only after a really long time – goats are very stubborn.

  I go back towards the house. Maybe Josie and Boulette will be awake now, and Maman too, and the house will be filled with the smell of coffee and we’ll sit down for breakfast together. I cross the courtyard, jumping through a couple of deep puddles from the rainstorms, but just then I hear the crunch of tires. I stop and stare, because we never get visitors, except for Antoine. It’s a black car, but it’s not Antoine coming to visit Maman. It’s the man from before.

  44

  Jacqueline

  ‘Maman! Maman!’ Lulu-Rose is shaking her awake, little fists frantically pummeling her, hysteria edging into her voice. ‘He’s back! The man is back!’

  Jacqueline sits up fast and looks around the room, still dim with the soft grey light of early morning. She’s alone; it’s the first night this week that Antoine hasn’t slept over.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘The man. Mikko. He’s here!’

  Jacqueline leaps from the bed and rushes to the window. It’s true, he really is there, leaning against a car she’s never seen before, smoking a cigarette, shielding his eyes from the sharp sun that’s just rising above the mountains across the valley.

  ‘Putain,’ she whispers, her mind crowding with thoughts. Just breathe, she tells herself. She’d known this could happen someday. It suddenly seems ridiculous that it wouldn’t. Why would anything ever just go to plan so she could live happily ever after?

  ‘Stay here,’ she says to Lulu-Rose, before pulling her close in a quick hug. ‘Go to Josie and play in the tent for a bit, okay?’

  ‘Please don’t let the man take me away,’ the child says, her soulful brown eyes brimming with tears.

  Over my dead body, thinks Jacqueline, fearing that might turn out to be the case. No. She hasn’t got this far only to have Mikko Eilaanen come back and take it all
away from her.

  ‘Nobody will ever take you away,’ she says, before rushing down the stairs and pushing the massive main door open.

  Mikko smiles as she appears, as though he’s a welcome visitor, as though they’re old friends. His face is scratched and his skin is greyish – he looks like he’s been sleeping rough. ‘Ah, the lady of the manor,’ he says, chuckling.

  The downy hair at the back of her neck prickles and rises at the sight of him. ‘Mikko.’

  ‘Long time, no see.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  At this he chuckles again, but harder now, and it leads to a cough, which makes him wince and press a hand to his side. ‘Well, a cup of coffee would be nice. Long drive.’

  She shows him through the long series of interconnecting rooms leading to the big farmhouse kitchen – library, sitting room, dining room – disturbed at the thought of this man’s eyes roaming around her beloved Le Tachoué and her ancestors’ possessions. In the kitchen, she places the kettle on the stove and turns around to face him. Mikko is half-slumped across the table, exhaustion carved into his face, his right hand pressed to his side.

  ‘I… I think I might need you to help me, actually.’

  ‘Help you?’

  ‘I’m a little injured.’ He removes his hand from inside his sweater and it comes back red and slick with blood.

  ‘Jesus, Mikko, what the hell…?’

  ‘That fucking asshole Batz stabbed me. And Vilkainen’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? What the hell…? And… Batz? Have you been back to Belgium?’

  ‘Yeah. Had no choice. I was in Sicily, but I ran out of cash and the police were closing in on me.’

  So that’s why he’s back here. ‘Why are you here, Mikko?’

  ‘Can you please just help me clean this up a little? It’s not deep, but it feels like it might be getting infected.’

  She leads him into the library and over to the chaise longue by the window and carefully folds back his filthy woolen sweater, moist with cold, sticky blood. He has a clumsily bandaged wound on the side of his stomach. Blood oozes through the bandage and when she peels it back she sees that the gash is vivid red with the start of an infection. It’s a wide slash, but it doesn’t look deep.

  ‘What the fuck, Mikko,’ she hisses. ‘You can’t just show up here like this. I’m not your fucking wife.’

  ‘Yes, well, you owe me.’

  ‘I owe you?’

  ‘And you know it.’

  Jacqueline’s knees tremble as she takes the stairs – with fury and with fear. She shouldn’t have let him leave the first time, when he brought Lulu-Rose home. She’d tried to stop him from going – she was all too aware that the only way she could ever be safe in this life was if only one person knew the truth about what happened to Lucia Blix: her.

  She rummages through the wicker basket beneath the bathroom sink and finds gauze bandages, hydrogen peroxide and antibiotic ointment. She looks at herself in the mirror, holding her own cool gaze for a long while, telling herself that she will come out on top in this situation. She has survived so much, and all she needs to do now is stay calm and maintain focus on what is really important – her simple but beautiful life at Le Tachoué with Josiane and Lulu-Rose.

  ‘You okay?’ she asks as she settles back down on the little stool next to where Mikko is reclining.

  ‘It hurts.’

  She nods and very gently runs a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide around the periphery of the stab wound. Mikko winces, his bottom lip protruding like a stubborn little boy’s.

  ‘Tell me about Sicily,’ she says, keeping her voice steady and gentle.

  ‘I went there to take the heat off. The Blix case blew up big time, didn’t it? Batz and the guys have been doing a lot of business down there for years. As long as you pay, the police leave you entirely alone. Corrupt as fuck.’

  ‘What kind of business?’

  ‘Migrant stuff.’

  ‘Migrant stuff?’

  ‘Getting people from A to B. People without papers.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s fucked up, what’s going on down there. At first it was stuff like, you know, taking a bunch of guys up the coast at night, that kind of thing. High risk. The way I like it.’

  She runs another cotton ball across the wound, pressing it into the fiery red tissue, making him gasp with pain. She enjoys this little moment causing him some pain.

  ‘But then, as time passed, I saw some seriously fucked-up shit. Once, off the coast of Marettimo, we came across a tiny upturned boat with a mother and her baby clinging to it. She’d lost her other three children in the waves. Three, Jacqueline.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah. So we started going out more and pulling people out of the water, and there was always someone needing help. But there were also lots of nights I didn’t go out there, didn’t rescue anyone, when I was drinking in a skanky bar in Agrigento…’

  She gives him a sad little smile and presses the new gauze bandage gently into place. ‘I think you need to get this stitched.’

  ‘Can’t, though.’

  ‘We’ll have to look at it again tonight.’

  He makes as though to get up, but Jacqueline stops him with a hand on his shoulder. ‘Stay there.’

  She returns after a moment with a steaming mug of black coffee and his face lights up. Nobody has ever taken care of this man, she thinks, and for a brief moment she feels a pinch of empathy for him, this big, crude thug who makes his living transporting people from country to country in the dead of night.

  ‘Why are you here, Mikko?’ she asks, her voice still calm, but firm.

  ‘I want more money, Jacqueline.’

  ‘Impossible. I don’t have any.’

  ‘Then you find it.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to do that? We had a deal! You can’t just turn up here asking for more.’

  ‘Look at this place – I’m sure you’ve got a few bucks stuffed in a mattress somewhere. You find it or I take that little kid for another ride. I can think of more than one buyer who’ll pay more for her than you did. Much more.’

  Jacqueline’s heart hammers so hard, she worries Mikko can hear it, but she forces herself not to rise to his threats. ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifty grand now. And another fifty next year.’

  He could hold her hostage forever, turning up at Le Tachoué every time he runs out of money or falls out with his dangerous friends.

  ‘Okay,’ she says, releasing a long, shuddering sigh. ‘Fine. But I need you to be gone by tomorrow.’

  45

  Lucia

  I can hear Josie’s stomach growling. We’ve been in the tent, drawing, for a very long time. The voices from downstairs are muffled one minute and shouty the next. I draw a family of fish leaping through a stream, their fish faces smiley. There’s a knock on the door, then Maman enters.

  ‘Salut, les filles,’ she says, smiling at me and Josie when we stick our heads out through the tent flap.

  ‘Salut, Maman,’ we say.

  ‘Listen, I know you’re worried about Mikko coming back here, but it’s going to be okay. Hey, don’t cry, Lulu-Rose.’ Maman reaches out and wipes a tear off my chin before I even realize that my eyes have begun to cry.

  ‘He… he said he was going to take me away again.’

  ‘He’s not.’

  ‘He said.’

  ‘I’m sorry you heard that. I’ve spoken with him, and we’ve agreed he’s just going to stay here for one day, okay? He’s not feeling very well, but as soon as he’s better, he’ll go.’

  ‘No, Maman,’ says Josie, ‘he’s a baddie.’

  ‘He’s not really a baddie,’ I whisper, ‘but I don’t want to go anywhere with him.’

  ‘Look, you’re not going anywhere. I’m going to fix this. I need you girls to help me, okay?’ Maman has dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Get ready, we’re going to go out in a little while. I know an amazing ice-cream shop in Saint-
Lizier.’

  ‘Ice cream!’ says Josie, clapping her hands. I try to picture a big chocolate ice cream with sauce and sprinkles, but all I can see is the man.

  In the car, Maman doesn’t say anything. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel because she’s holding it so hard. I suddenly remember how The Lady used to drive, stopping and starting a lot, sometimes swearing, joking that she was ‘better with airplanes’. Josie keeps looking at me and I can tell she’s afraid. There’s something about Maman’s face that’s wrong; it’s pinched and scared, like she’s just bitten into a rotten apple. She pretends like everything is normal. I take Josiane’s hand in mine and we both squeeze every now and again as we drive through the fresh snow into the valley. It is almost summer and all the snow melted and then it snowed again and Maman said ‘Merde!’.

  In Saint-Girons we wait in the car while Maman takes money out of the bank, first at Carrefour, then at Caisse d’Epargne behind our school, then at Société Générale. We read the signs out loud, and Josie makes me laugh by pronouncing everything as if she’s reading Norwegian. There’s nobody around on the streets because it’s early Sunday morning. Maman gets back in the car, her face red with cold, her eyes sad, though she smiles at me and Josie.

  ‘Time for ice cream!’ she says. ‘The whole point of this excursion.’

  ‘What is the man doing at Le Tachoué?’ asks Josie.

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ says Maman. ‘He needed some rest. Listen, girls, this is what we’re going to do: we’re going to be really, really nice to him for one day, okay? Just one. Then he’ll be gone by tomorrow. I promise.’