by Alex Day
Padding from the bathroom into the open plan kitchen/sitting room, she saw the spare key hanging from a hook on the wall. It occurred to her that it was somewhat annoying that Vuk had never offered it to her. But at the same time, he’d never told her that she couldn’t have it. The phrase that she and Laura had always parroted forth, in sing-song voices, when appropriating something of James’s that he’d left lying around – his sweets, the 20p pieces he begged from every passing friend and relative, the key-rings he collected – came to her now. Finders keepers. Putting Laura’s scarf down on one of the dining chairs, she added Vuk’s key to her lanyard that held those to the kitchen storeroom and the cleaning cupboard.
Flicking on the lights she looked around for the things she needed to write Vuk a note. As usual, the cabin was utterly bare, impossible to imagine that anyone actually lived there. She poked her head around the door of the bedroom, just in case that yielded anything. No pen and no paper, but she did see something that made her frown in puzzlement. A woman’s skimpy white camisole top hung from one of the wardrobe door handles. Edie went up to it. She put her hands on each side of it, widening it out to wearing size, studied it and then dropped it to the floor.
It wasn’t hers.
Was it Laura’s? She stared at it long and hard, wanting and simultaneously not wanting to know whose it was and what Vuk was playing at. As she considered it, a profound silence fell on the room and the white noise of nothing became deafening. Edie was suddenly paralysed with an inexplicable fear, an innate sense of impending doom. There was someone watching her. She shook herself. This was ridiculous; she had worked herself up into a state of paranoia with her covert actions of earlier.
A bird squawked outside. Edie’s heart thumped so hard that she thought her chest would explode. She did not dare turn around. She was not imagining it; there was someone there, creeping up on her. A shadow slid across the wall and her heart stopped.
A pair of strong hands flattened over her eyes, blinding her. She screamed, long and shrill.
‘No one will hear you with the doors shut,’ a voice whispered in her ear.
For a second, she felt as if her legs would give way. Laura had been abducted and now her attackers had got her, Edie, too.
Then her brain registered the voice and relief suffused her.
Vuk. It was just Vuk.
The hands fell from her eyes, releasing her.
Edie looked up at him to see that he was appraising her with a half-smile curling across his face. He was handsome, familiar, her lover. She smiled back. This Laura stuff was making her loopy; she was in Vuk’s room, the safest place she could possibly be. Wasn’t it? That’s how she had thought of it up till now.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘Was I expecting you?’
Edie sat up and pouted crossly. ‘No, but that doesn’t mean you have to creep up on me like a mad axe murderer.’
‘You are in my room, Edie.’ Vuk clearly had no intention of apologising. ‘Don’t polite English girls know they should wait to be invited?’
Edie looked up at Vuk through her eyelashes, sensing the changing mood. ‘Don’t mean, lean, bad, Balkan men know that not all English girls are ladies?’
Keep true to type, she heard Laura instructing her. Entice him by being flirty and frivolous. Men liked that.
Vuk regarded her silently for a moment. And then laughed; a short but robust guffaw.
Relief coursed through Edie. He wasn’t cross. She could ask him to help with the Laura poster and he would see what a good plan it was and think how clever it was of little her to have hatched it. She waited for him to ask what she was there for.
Instead, Vuk stepped forward and around her, picking up the discarded camisole. Carefully and deliberately, he hung the flimsy garment on a hanger and put it in the wardrobe, then quietly shut the door.
‘You know I don’t like mess, Edie.’ He clearly wasn’t going to explain its presence in his room. Jealousy burned through Edie, only dampened by the thought of her mission, the reason she had come.
He turned to her. ‘So what can I do for you, little one? You are here for a reason?’
Vuk’s words were followed by a deep silence. The air-conditioning was off and there was just the white noise of emptiness.
‘I was looking for you.’ Edie pulled her face into an expression which she hoped said innocent-but-knowing. ‘It’s becoming my full time occupation, looking for people. You, Laura …’
Her voice tailed off as Vuk strode towards her.
‘Perhaps I should add the owner of that top to the list,’ she added defiantly, momentarily unable to resist the childish envy that suffused her.
In response, Vuk threw her unceremoniously onto the bed, slid her shorts off and pulled her knickers to one side. He bent his face close to hers, his lips nuzzling her ear.
‘If you’re thinking that the top belongs to Laura,’ he whispered, his breath hotter even than the air that sweltered around them. ‘It doesn’t. I’ve never set eyes on your sister, let alone undressed her and fucked her.’
Sitting herself up, Edie grabbed Vuk’s arms, wanting him to face her and tell her the truth. Why was he mentioning Laura with regard to the top, what gave him the idea that she might suspect it belonged to Laura? His biceps were rock hard. Her fingers made no impression upon them at all. Vuk moved towards her as if to kiss her, then pushed her backwards to lie on the bed where he held her, unable to move.
‘It is not a girlfriend’s, either. It is my cousin’s. She was staying here recently.’
Edie gazed up at him, overcome by bewilderment, fury and disbelief in equal measure. Cousin, my arse. How come she hadn’t seen or heard of this elusive relative? But there was no chance to interrogate further as Vuk was on top of her, his weight pinning her down, biting her nipples, his hand between her legs. The questions, the doubts, the idea that if he could lie so easily about this he could lie about anything, fought with her devotion to him. Vuk entered her, pushing himself deep inside her, his mouth narrowed in concentration, his gaze focused on something far, far away as he pumped into her time and time again. She loved him, she knew she did. And, to make love to her like this, he must feel the same about her, mustn’t he?
As soon as he had finished, Vuk got up and went to the bathroom. She heard the whoosh of the water and the thud of the shower door closing. Edie lay on the bed, close to tears. Now it was over, she realised that she hadn’t come to have sex, unusual though that might be. Vuk hadn’t asked her either, hadn’t considered at all how she might be feeling. Confusion suffused her. At moments like this, she realised how inept she was and probably always would be. She was sure that, by having sex with her, Vuk was trying to make her feel good and to show her how much he cared. Perhaps to take her mind off her sister. She was sure he was trying to do what was best for her.
It just didn’t feel much like that right now.
***
When they had both showered and Vuk had poured two glasses of home-brewed rakija, Edie pulled forth the poster from her bag. She had fought against and resisted the urge to leave, to cut and run in the face of her bewilderment. The plan was, must be, her priority.
‘I need your help, Vuk. There’s a couple of things.’ She looked down at the poster, from which her own smile – or was it Laura’s? – shone up at her.
‘Firstly, can you write the script for this poster? In both alphabets? I’ve done the English version here; you just need to translate it into your language.’
Vuk said nothing. Edie wasn’t sure whether to go on, whether to take his silence as inviting her to continue or the opposite. She ploughed on regardless.
‘And the other thing is – that I found something …’ she blurted the words out as she retrieved the scarf from the chair where she’d dumped it. She held it up for Vuk’s inspection.
‘This scarf. I think it belongs to Laura.’
She stopped, eyeing Vuk expectantly. The scarf was a silvery grey she could see now, under
proper lighting. The crosses, which had seemed pure white in the moonlight, were actually ivory. The overall effect was pretty and delicate; just like Laura. Vuk took it from her and examined it closely as if precise identification that it was Laura’s might reveal itself upon rigorous scrutiny. Finally, he put it down onto the table and turned back to look at Edie once more.
His face was utterly expressionless but Edie was sure that something lingered behind the façade. Anger, perhaps, or disdain.
‘You shouldn’t go poking around the old buildings, Edie.’ His demeanour was still completely neutral, as was his voice. He could have been asking the time. ‘They’re not safe, they might collapse at any time. And sometimes there are – undesirables, shall we say – hanging around there.’
Edie let her gaze drop away from Vuk to the scarf, and then the poster. He was just concerned about her safety, that was all; that was why she sensed fury bubbling beneath his blank visage. He cared about her; how sweet was that?
She pushed the poster around the scarf and towards him. ‘So will you write it?’
Vuk went to a drawer in the kitchen and returned with a pen. ‘Of course.’
He read the English out loud:
Missing
Have you seen this girl?
If you know where she is or have any information, please call: 07977710939
Considering it carefully, he wrote down the translations.
‘Can you make my handwriting out?’ he asked Edie when he had finished, passing the paper back to her.
She went over it with him, word by word, to be sure.
‘Thank you,’ she said when it was finished, leaning forward as if to kiss him and then suddenly pausing, retracting, standing up straight again. ‘I really appreciate it.’ This at least was still one-hundred per cent true. She faltered and frowned before continuing. ‘But back to the scarf … how do you think it got there?’
Something was troubling her, something didn’t sit right, but she couldn’t quite get her head around what it was.
Vuk twisted the pen around in his fingers. ‘You said Laura had all afternoon on her own, while you were working.’ He shrugged and placed the pen deliberately onto the table. ‘She went for a walk, went exploring. Dropped the scarf and it’s been there ever since.’
Edie grimaced doubtfully.
‘You English girls, with your insatiable appetite for exploration. Your search for new experiences,’ Vuk interrupted, a sardonic smile spreading over his face. ‘She’s just the same as you.’
They sat in silence for a while, Edie contemplating the mystery, wondering if she were being as insanely melodramatic about it as Vuk seemed to be implying.
Feeling Vuk’s gaze intent upon her, she lifted her eyes to his.
‘What are you staring at?’
‘You. You look so beautiful. And much, much more interesting than a scarf.’
He got up, took Edie’s hand and led her to the other end of the table. Undoing the towel wrapped around his waist he let it fall onto the tiles and then removed hers. He turned her around and bent her forward over the wooden surface. ‘Laura is your identical twin, after all,’ he whispered in her ear, his breath soft against her skin. ‘No wonder she’s as nosey as you.’
And then he was fucking her again, so hard she felt the breath knocked out of her. It lasted a long time and when he had finished, he went to sit outside and lit a cigarette.
Edie joined him, standing on the edge of the pool and staring at the still water. She suddenly understood what, precisely, was odd about Vuk’s comments about where she’d come across the scarf.
‘Just one more thing,’ she said, dipping her toe in and swirling it backwards and forwards, watching the smooth lines she created form and dissolve in the water.
‘How did you know I found the scarf by the old buildings?’
SIXTEEN
Fatima
A kind young man saved them. He was a doctor, fleeing like everyone else but perhaps better prepared, certainly better equipped. He could have stayed, could have continued to patch up the fighters and their victims and he might have been OK, if he’d managed to keep on the right side of whoever was currently dominant in the incomprehensible confusion of it all. But his hospital had been hit by an airstrike one night when he had been operating and he had decided enough was enough. Having arrived at the border, despite his education, his qualifications and skills, his fluency in three languages, he had to take his chances along with everyone else. It was luck that led him to end up sheltering from the sun under the same tree as Fatima. He saw Marwa, noticed immediately the horrible sight that was her leg and put out his arms to take the child.
‘I’m a doctor,’ he said, in a tone of voice so concerned, so solicitous, and at the same time so matter-of-fact and authoritative, that Fatima could no longer stave off the tears.
‘Oh dear,’ the doctor said as he inspected the area more closely. ‘That doesn’t look too clever.’
He wasn’t paying attention to Fatima any more, all his training and expertise directed at Marwa. Fatima couldn’t speak. Her head was pounding, the deep thirst that desiccated her throat making her want to reach out her tongue and lap up her own tears, however salty.
‘Have you anything clean you can put down?’ he asked, indicating towards the ground beneath their feet. He ignored Fatima’s crying. She supposed he was used to it. Sobbing relatives were an occupational hazard.
She laid out the scarf she had been using as tablecloth and bread wrapper. It wasn’t exactly clean but it was better than the bare earth.
‘My name’s Ahmed,’ the doctor told her as he laid Marwa on it. ‘I have some antibiotics I can give her, if we can get her to swallow them. She should have liquid ones but here— ’ He looked around as if to emphasise his point.
Ahmed had antiseptic wipes which he used to clean the area, his touch tender and light. He murmured words of comfort to Marwa as she squealed in agony, her body bucking involuntarily with every excruciating contact with the wound and surrounding area. Fatima clenched her fists and bit her lip, her heart thumping against her chest as she bore Marwa’s distress.
When Ahmed was ready, Fatima held Marwa’s nose whilst Ahmed put the pill on her tongue. As he filled her mouth with water from a plastic dosing syringe, Fatima blew strongly onto Marwa’s face and even in her half-conscious state, the little girl swallowed instinctively, gulping down the water and the pill. It was Fatima’s own proved method of getting the children to take medication.
Ahmed was impressed. ‘Well done.’
He took the antibiotics box and showed it to Fatima, explaining the dose to give her and how often. ‘By the time you’ve finished them all,’ he said, ‘you should be on the other side and you’ll be able to take her to a hospital. It should be properly stitched. They have excellent doctors, there.’
Fatima wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by ‘there’.
‘Thank you,’ she stuttered, still not quite believing what good fortune had struck. ‘Thank you so much. But I must pay you for the drugs.’
Ahmed shook his head. People all around were shouting and there was a rush of footsteps passing by their little huddle.
‘I must go.’ He thrust the box and the plastic syringe into her hand.
‘Good luck,’ he called over his shoulder, already running with the crowd. ‘You’ll make it. Just keep trying.’
Fatima gathered Maryam into her arms as she watched Ahmed go. Youssef and Ehsan were standing watching, seeming as shocked and overcome as she was. It was clear they were not going to run with him, not this time, not with Marwa lying supine on the ground.
As she stared after Ahmed’s receding figure, Fatima had only one thought in her head.
Maybe angels do exist, after all.
***
Ahmed must have made it because they didn’t see him again. Their wait continued. Youssef did his best to cheer the twins up, performing funny walks, pulling faces and pretending to magic sweets out of thei
r ears. But even he fell silent by the end of day three. Fatima tried to make it all seem like a fabulous game of hide and seek.
‘We’re all going to play. We have to see if we can run from here to …,’ she gesticulated wildly into the distance, ‘– to over there, and then we hide!’
The twins were gazing at her with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Youssef just looked puzzled and slightly disgusted. He could see straight through the pretence and he was not impressed.
‘What fun!’ she concluded, so lamely that no one, not even three-year-olds, could possibly be taken in.
It wasn’t anything like hide and seek. It was an interminable torture of waiting in the hot sun with not enough food and barely any water, unwashed, unrested and increasingly losing their last reservoirs of resolve. They snatched sleep on makeshift beds of cloths and pieces of cardboard they’d gathered up, with rolled up clothes for pillows, not wanting a second to pass when they were not poised ready to leave, always anxious that the signal could come at any time. As the hours and the days went by it was clear, despite all Fatima’s talk of running, that Maryam was too exhausted to do more than walk and Marwa, though vastly improved, was still not able to run. She and Ehsan agreed that they would carry one twin each and Youssef would take his own backpack plus two of the plastic bags. Fatima was grateful for Ehsan’s support. There were women here on their own with one, two, six children. But she was preoccupied with the idea that he harboured resentment about the burden she and the girls were.
He’s wishing he came on his own with Youssef, she couldn’t help muttering to herself as she opened one can of fish for five of them to share. Of course he is, it would have been so much easier for him, for the two of them.
She wondered how Ali had got out; where he was now. Europe or the States, most likely. Canada, maybe. He had probably just gone to the airport and got on a plane. Fatima gave a snort of anger and resignation. That was the old days. Everything was different now. But wherever he was he might be able to get them all there, too? Angrily, she pushed the thought away. She didn’t have the effrontery to approach the brother she had not tried to get in touch with all the years before – before thinking he might be useful to her. He would think she was the worst kind of gold-digger, looking for favours where none were owed.
