Vanessa tells herself again that she hasn’t done anything wrong. She’d paid another two nights in advance, and left a note saying she’d come back. She’d gone on paying, and returned to the hotel every day. Then she cleared the room. She hadn’t been worried at that stage, just rather cross. It was only later that she began to be troubled by the images of that afternoon. Her hands picking up clothes and putting them in a bag. Intimate objects. Some hair conditioner, the bottom half of a bikini, very large size by the way, a paperback of a Japanese novel, Kafka on the Shore, with a picture of a cat on the cover. A pack of fortune-telling cards. Vanessa thought her daughter’d never told her she did that sort of thing. Some red socks with holes in. A packet of cigarette papers. A little blue pottery scarab by the bedside table, a soft green scarf she hadn’t seen before, that smelled of a sweet scent. A pair of yellow high-sided Converses. It was as if she was stripping the room of its intimacy, effacing Valentine’s presence, as she packed her stuff into the little orange rucksack she’d been carrying the day she arrived. It was such a small bag that it had reassured her in the middle of her panic, the kind of bag you take just for a weekend. She’d packed the things carefully inside. She’d stayed for a short while, leaning out of the window, it was a nice view, on to a little square with a church. A decapitated angel was sculpted on the façade, alongside a Virgin and Child.
And then she had closed the door and given back the magnetic card to reception. These images are engraved on her mind, a long take in a film. Vanessa didn’t cry after that. It just remained like an imprint.
The Hyena, sitting opposite her, insists, without trying to rush her, ‘And you kept her things?’
‘I spent the afternoon down at Barceloneta Beach, I went into all the bars, I asked if they had seen a plump little French girl, about sixteen, called Valentine. That night I called Camille, I said I was dining with some girlfriends. And I went on looking. I combed the beach as far as Poblenou. I didn’t know what to do with the bag, to hide it somewhere would put me in an awkward situation. In Paris, I’d have thought of someone I could leave it with, but here… I dumped it in a dustbin.’
That was the clearest image of all. She was exhausted, after walking all day. A little after midnight, she’d pressed the lever of a big municipal rubbish bin. The orange bag, once inside, was too deep down to be visible. That’s the image, exactly. Engraved on her eyes. Even if basically she thinks Valentine is all right. She tries to stop herself thinking that it’s possible someone has done exactly the same thing with her daughter’s body. Chucked it in a ditch, into a river, off a cliff. Just another little news item.
The detective asks, ‘Do you remember what happened the day before she disappeared?’
‘Yes. And the days before that. Not many of them. I don’t think we talked about anything in particular.’
‘She didn’t seem out of the ordinary that day?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘And you didn’t report it to the police.’
‘No. Are you going to do that now, for me?’
‘It wouldn’t help us much. Do you think she’s still round here somewhere?’
‘I don’t know what happened. I don’t think all her gear was at the hotel. I get the feeling she must have taken more stuff with her. But I’m not sure. She always dressed the same way. Not very feminine.’
‘And you still haven’t told your husband?’
‘It’s too late now. Perhaps if I’d told him at the beginning. But after four years with him, I’d be surprised if he just took it calmly, gave me a kiss and changed the subject. You know he’s …’
She has the words ‘a good catch’ on the tip of her tongue. That is exactly what she’s thinking but she’d prefer to put it differently. Because Camille is a good catch. Her age doesn’t bother him, she knows that she’s not the sort of beauty that fades quickly. She’s got another good ten years ahead of her. But no need to say that. People mock mutton dressed as lamb. Vanessa only mocks women who do it without being able to carry it off. She thinks that she needn’t worry about her age if she really wants to start over, but she’s happy with Camille, and doesn’t want it to stop. And that’s why she threw the backpack into a grey rubbish bin by the sea, before getting into a taxi, and coming home to him, and not saying a word.
WE GO BACK DOWN TO THE CAR IN SILENCE. I check the time on my mobile: we stayed three hours at Valentine’s mother’s place. There were times I wanted to shake her, to hurry her up a bit.
The Hyena stops, in the middle of the pavement, and looks round, puzzled.
‘This is where we left the car.’
‘You must be wrong.’
All the streets look alike in this goddam residential area. Trees everywhere, nice houses, all more or less dilapidated, and no obvious landmarks.
‘Could someone have stolen the car?’
‘If I was a thief, I wouldn’t choose ours. There are plenty of top-of-the-range cars around here.’ The Hyena spots a little triangular sticker on the edge of the pavement. She kneels down to unstick it.
‘They’ve towed it.’
‘You’re joking! We paid a fortune when we got here. Three euros an hour, in case you think I’ve forgotten…’
‘Yeah, for two hours, but we were much longer.’
‘Must be a mistake.’
‘I did warn you when we got here. Daylight robbery’s a fine art here. Benvingut, darling.’
‘They tow away a car for overstaying by one hour? When we’d already paid for two?’
‘Ones with foreign plates, yeah. They know we’ll come running to reclaim it. Come on, let’s look for a taxi. Don’t look at me like that, you’re not going to let me go and do it on my own, are you? Anyway, your bag’s in the boot, yeah?’
I had thrown together some things when I left the flat that morning, swearing I’d never ever spend another night in that sink of depravity and vice. At five in the morning, they were still making a huge racket and all night I didn’t dare cross the corridor to go and have a pee.
The Hyena goes down the street without hesitation. All round us, nothing moves, not a person, not a car. I wonder where we’re going to find this famous taxi.
‘Do you know the district? Or where you’re going?’
‘You heard what she said, opposite the big mast it’s the sea, so the city’s in between. We’re going into town. So it’s this way.’
For want of any better idea of the direction to take, I follow her.
‘She’s pretty sinister, the mother, eh?’
‘Sinister? Not what struck me most about her. Did you see her hands? And her legs? And the fragrance? Even her elbows are beautiful, did you notice? She had superb elbows. And the way she breathes, you can see the majesty going right into her lungs. It makes you want to be air. I just loved her voice… no, the grain in her voice, as if there was sand in it. You can imagine her singing when she comes. But actually no, I don’t even want to think about it, it’s too much. I don’t know if you noticed how she holds her coffee cup to drink. The way she puts her fingers round the handle, the grace of her wrist. You didn’t look? Unforgettable. I’ve hardly ever seen such a fantastic creature close up.’
‘Excuse me. I was thinking about what she said, not the way she looked.’
‘No problem, Sherlock. You can concentrate on the investigation and I’ll just enjoy the décor.’
‘Do you think something terrible has happened to Valentine?’
‘I’d incline to think she’s just split. Our Vanessa, the more you might want her in your bed, the more she’s really bad news as a mother.’
‘Leaving all her stuff behind?’
‘Leaving pointless items. A book you’ve finished reading, some cards, an old scarf… you said the kid has an iPod, right? Well, no iPod in the hotel room. And I bet she took a few pairs of knickers with her. She didn’t just bring a swimsuit.’
‘So your instinct tells you she took off of her own accord.’
‘My i
nstincts, at the time, were occupied with something else. But common sense advises me she ran out and slammed the door. That cat’s better cared for than the kid. I like animals fine, that’s not the problem. They’ll pollute the planet less than some dumb little teenager… but still, when it’s your daughter, when you did a deal over her for some rotten apartment, when she comes back to see you, it would be the least you could do, take her home for a glass of Coke, wouldn’t it?’
‘Do you think the mother’s lying about anything?’
‘About anything that interests us, no.’
‘So what happens next?’
‘We go to the car pound.’
She guides us on to a road where there’s some traffic. She raises her hand and stops a taxi. A black and yellow cab. The Hyena spends some time talking to the driver. From the top of a street running downhill, looking out over the whole city, you can see the sea. It brings a rush of calm. I ask myself why certain landscapes give so much pleasure.
The Hyena settles back in her seat. ‘He doesn’t even need his GPS, he knows the way blindfold: he says round here the car pound is one of the few things that works properly.’
‘I’ll need to find a hotel afterwards.’
‘We’ll go on and take a look at the one Valentine stayed in. It might be OK. You could take a room there. You don’t have to, you know, you can come back to Staff’s and stay with me.’
Staff must be the blonde Frenchwoman who took us in. I don’t even answer, I look out of the window.
She asks: ‘You didn’t sleep well?’
‘I’m not used to orgies. And before you say anything, whether it’s women only or mixed, doesn’t matter, just not my scene at all. I was a bit uncomfortable, yes.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t want you to feel awkward… I didn’t think it would be so, er, full on… I hope you didn’t feel, well, threatened?’
‘No, it just seemed childish to me.’
‘Childish? Oh. Is that what you call it? Pity you don’t work in a nursery school, the kids would soon learn to like school, eh?’
She loses some of her good humour when, after queuing for half an hour behind two French couples who have trouble proving their cars belong to them, she finds that our bill comes to 215 euros. She changes tone, leans her elbows on the counter, and I don’t know what she says, but it rises in a crescendo. On the face of the car pound official, there’s a succession of expressions: polite refusal, annoyance, incredulity, anxiety, panic, and finally pure terror. He gives her a form without a word, and she walks away, muttering various curses and threats. I follow her. We cross a huge parking lot, far larger and fuller than the car park of a provincial shopping mall the Saturday before Christmas. She carries on for a couple of hundred metres in silence, then turns to me.
‘So this time, you aren’t too shocked? I don’t exactly have the car’s papers. Well I do, but they’re not in my name. It’s a borrowed car. I was afraid that might cause problems, so I thought the best strategy would be for the guy to want to get rid of me as fast as possible. It worked. I promise you, I don’t like that approach any more than you do, but really nothing makes people get the picture better than scaring them a bit.’
‘At two hundred and fifteen euros, you can’t be the only one who gets angry.’
‘That’s better, you’re catching on. It makes a change when you don’t moan.’
We go straight to the hotel where Valentine stayed. The Hyena is now bringing out an aspect of her personality that she hadn’t shown me before: she’s very good at dealing with young men. At first sight, the youth in reception has no intention of giving us any information, he’s polite but firm, and extremely busy. I expect her to grab him by the collar and give him a little ‘mandala to realign his chakras’, instead of which she lays on for him a feast of smiles, good humour and friendly insistence. And it works. He interrupts what he’s doing, calls the manager, a chambermaid, a waiter and even the night porter. I listen from a distance, a blur of syllables, trying to interpret their body language. I like not understanding what’s going on, it makes my bubble more airtight, and it’s less upsetting that people aren’t paying me any attention. Sometimes she turns to me, and sums up in a sentence or two. That’s enough for me.
There’s a big staff turnover, many of the people who work here hadn’t been hired a week ago. Can’t pay very well. As for the others, well, one tourist’s much like another, and no, they don’t remember the girl who stayed a week. Luckily, the mother left more of an impression on them. The manager remembers Vanessa. He must even have been quite keen on her, because he asks his staff to try and remember. One chambermaid now recalls Valentine: she didn’t leave her room much, it was hard to get in to make the bed. The kid was there almost all day long and wanted to bribe the staff so that she could get room service, which was never possible. The kitchen worker snaps his fingers, yes, in turn it’s coming back to him. She was always first down for the buffet breakfast, she could put away as many as seven croissants at a sitting, he’d started to keep an eye on her. And apart from that? I watch the tourists walking past, Germans, Japanese, French, Americans, all coming up to the counter. I imagine being Valentine in this hall which is a bit too grand, and full of adult couples or families. She must have felt lonely.
‘Do you want to take a room here? You can take advantage of it, no building works, I asked. And they’ll offer us a reduced price.’
‘No, absolutely no way.’
‘Ah, oh well.’
In the street she asks me, ‘So where do you want to go?’
‘Just a normal hotel. I don’t like this one, it’s depressing. I bet the rooms are cold.’
‘The Argentinian chambermaid was quite clear about it: Valentine only went out for about two hours a day. She must have spent her evenings, her mornings, and most of the afternoons all on her own here. All the stuff about “new girlfriends” and Barceloneta Beach was just made up.’
‘Meaning she was just waiting for her mother the whole time. Sad.’
I don’t dare say what’s going through my head: it must mean she could have followed anyone who’d deign to spend a bit of time with her. I can easily imagine what it must be like, a whole week in a strange town, with nobody to talk to. Waiting in her hotel room for the night to come. I say, ‘That was a really shitty day, I feel grubby, I hate this.’
‘God, you are negative, aren’t you? Is that why you don’t have a boyfriend? You turn them off in less than two days.’
‘Nothing to do with it. I’ve only been a very short time without a partner.’
Except that’s not true. It hasn’t ever happened to me before to be on my own for so long. It’s the job. I don’t even like telling potential boyfriends where I work. It seems hard to explain how I spend my life. And it’s hard to see how I can start a relationship when one night in two I’m stuck waiting under some kid’s window to see they don’t make a run for it, and following them if they do.
The Hyena insists: ‘And you’re over thirty-five. For you straight girls, that’s your sell-by date.’
‘Oh, it’s much better for lesbians, is it?’
‘Like everything else. Old dykes are just brilliant, they have lovely skin, they stay young-looking, they haven’t been ground down by a putrid life. With us, thirty-five isn’t even the beginning, just the prologue. The peak is when you hit fifty.’
‘So you have a regular girlfriend then?’
‘I’d love to. Fidelity is my utopia. But I’m too attractive to the girls, I can’t do that to them. So what about this one as a hotel?’
I hadn’t realized we were walking with a destination in mind. She’s brought me to a nice little guest house, I look at the rates and find it dear, but I think it’s the same everywhere here. She seems to read my mind.
‘You won’t find better value. And it’s very respectable. I’ll leave you here, or do you want to come and have dinner with us?’
‘No thanks. I think I’m… familiar enough with your habi
ts now. I’ll be fine.’
‘As you like. But well, we’re meeting on the beach. On the sand, the atmosphere will probably be calmer.’
I doubt if the sand will be enough to damp down their ardour and I’m getting ready to reply that I feel sleepy, then I picture myself in my hotel room, all alone in front of the TV, and I realize no, I’d like to have a drink and see the sea. The day’s left a nasty taste in my mouth. And her reflections on my unattached state, my thirty-five years and my negativity have just finished me off. The kind of little sentence, quickly said, that stabs through you like an arrow, letting out a black tide.
‘Can you wait? I’ll just take my stuff upstairs then I’ll come with you.’
She seems surprised. Pleasantly surprised. Makes a sign to say ‘take your time’.
The group is easy to spot from a distance, sitting on the grass, just above the beach. About fifteen of them, listening to some old techno on a red Discman, patched up with Sellotape and wired to some small speakers that look like they were retrieved from a dustbin.
Around them, people are walking their dogs, families are playing ball, couples lying on the sand are kissing or smoking. Some groups of young Englishmen are drinking beer. None of them comes within ten metres of where we are.
I nod briefly to the ones I recognize and sit in my little corner. I realize quickly that I’ve installed myself right by the spot for lines of speed, which they come up to take, two by two, off a magazine. They are discreet, but not too bothered. I glance anxiously at the families and strollers round about. No one is paying any attention.
The girls aren’t at all inhibited between themselves about yesterday’s goings-on. They congratulate each other, pat each other on the back, kiss each other on the neck or put an arm around a shoulder.
There are a few boys in the group who weren’t there yesterday. They’re sweet-looking, and they too are happy to kiss each other.
Apocalypse Baby Page 17
