Fatal Choices

by Anne Morgellyn

  ‘I don’t want to work here. What would I do? Take a registrar’s job, spend my afternoons cutting up stiffs? I’ve been there and done that, Louise. You’ve been there with me. But I’ve moved on. My research is in London. It’s called progress, forward movement. You know why I wanted the house? It was so we could put down roots.’

  ‘Like in New Zealand? I don’t want to move back to London. Shall I fetch another bottle?’

  ‘No. I’ll see what Nick is up to.’

  I sat on, infused with a sort of guilty relief. Gradually, I became aware of another presence. Rodolfo was up there, watching over me. A smoke ring floated down above my head, just like a halo.

  25

  Androssoff was subdued throughout the rest of the weekend, although he took Nicky out on the lake on Saturday, and on Sunday they went to the cinema while I lay in a scented bath and read a novel. Nicky was excited about going to big school. He was up at half past six on Monday morning, half an hour before I’d set the alarm. There were already signs of autumn in the park, a chill in the early morning air, the odd shrivelled leaf on the grass. The infant department was just beyond the Kindergarten, and I was glad to see familiar children approaching the building with their parents. Nicky didn’t seem at all bothered when it was time to say goodbye to his father – perhaps he was still sore about his kite. Androssoff said very little on the ten minute walk back to the villa, although I chattered on about it being a new milestone in Nicky’s short life. I knew he was thinking about the lost house, although he hadn’t mentioned it again and nor had I.

  After Andossoff had left for the airport, I thought I’d call Drew to see how he was getting on. It was a few weeks since he had left Geneva – assuming he had left Geneva. He hadn’t contacted me again and I was beginning to get the message that he had no further use for me. He had got what he wanted, the five hundred euros to use as a deposit on a gaff in Paris. I didn’t judge him, as Rodolfo had done. I had no reason to feel disenchanted, as Androssoff had been over losing the house in Chalcot Crescent. I hadn’t got to know Drew Joffey. I had simply projected my grief onto him and conjured a spectre of neediness. But Drew wasn’t Buz, and he wasn’t a spectre. He may have been reduced to busking in the Paris metro but, as Rodolfo pointed out, he wasn’t in extremis. I decided not to call him again. I didn’t want to send him any more misleading signals.

  With Nicky at school from eight o’clock now – he settled in straight away to the full time routine – I was at a loose end. Food shopping soaked up some of the hours. Since I no longer had the car, I had to shop for food on a daily basis, which was no bad thing really since it got me out of the apartment, away from Rodolfo’s watchful eye. I was not looking forward to returning to the women’s project. They hadn’t given me any formal notice and were, as far as I knew, expecting me back in the second week of September, but I didn’t want to face humiliation when I walked through the door and hung up my jacket, only to have Pocock inform me that my services were no longer needed. She would relish that.

  Pocock was no longer there. Masha, who embraced me when I walked into the office, told me she was the manager now and I could take on some of her research. The intern who had covered for me in the summer still came in part time, on a paid basis, to take care of the admin.

  ‘Where has Penny gone?’ I asked, as Masha was brewing the coffee.

  ‘She’s some important missionary now. She was called, just like saint. Poor poor African people.’

  ‘She was a missionary before she came here, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Who cares? She’s gone. Nobody liked that woman. Veronique is nice – our new administrator. She’s very quiet. She only comes on Wednesday and Friday mornings. She’s taking course at university, international law.’

  ‘That’s impressive. How’s Zonni?’

  ‘She went to Zurich.’

  ‘Today, you mean?’

  ‘She moved out of flat.’ She handed me a mug of very black coffee. I would have to remember to bring some milk along to work, now Pocock had gone. She drank English breakfast tea.

  ‘Eventually you will do some interviews, probably with girls from West Africa. Some are facing deportation from UK. You speak French, so you don’t need interpreter. I can interpret for Belarus, Ukrainian, Russian and Polish. The interviews are short and often difficult. Not every woman will co-operate. You can come with me today to observe interview with Romanian woman – she speaks French so Red Cross interviewer will be there too.’

  ‘I’ve seen the reports. I’ve filed the reports.’

  ‘I will be concentrating on field work so you will be in charge here when I am away. We need to increase your hours. Maybe Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays ’til three o’clock, then you can have Thursday and Friday off and work from home sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays when your husband is here. Your boy is at school in mornings now so it won’t be a problem, I think.’

  ‘No, that all sounds very flexible. Something to get my teeth into, thank you.’

  ‘Good, so you can begin by taking look at this.’ She indicated a file on her desk – my desk, now. ‘This is woman I will interview this afternoon. Read it now. We need to check if she’s consistent so lawyers can build case.’

  ‘Thank you, Masha, for your confidence in me,’ I said. She seemed to have forgotten that afternoon in Carouge when I had tried to get her sympathy. I knew better than to press her about Zonni.

  ‘Pocock didn’t understand you had small boy. She is cold person.’

  ‘No, she had no empathy, no compassion. She was so unapproachable.’

  ‘Well, she is gone now to preach to poor poor African people. Read the file. You need to read it all before interview this afternoon.’ She went to sit down at Pocock’s desk – her desk now, and woke up the computer.

  ‘Dana Iliescu,’ I said. ‘Born Bucharest, 30 January 1992.’

  ‘I have read it, Louise.’

  The welcome back session was over. It was clearly time for me to apply myself.

  ‘I met a trafficked woman this afternoon,’ I told Androssoff when I touched base with him that evening.

  ‘Good for you. I dissected a malignant brain tumour and turned it into slides. Is Nick OK?’

  ‘Yes, he’s really happy at the school. He worships Monsieur Nestle, his new teacher, he’s supplanted Mrs Kingsley. The children call him Mr Chocolate. The young woman I observed was nineteen, a university student with a bright future. Instead of graduating, she was abducted by a gang of traffickers and bundled off to The Hague. They beat her and told her she owed them money for the journey. She had no passport and no ID. They made her service up to thirty men a day, and then they bound and gagged her and took her in a freezing mini-bus with some other young women. She had no idea where they were because the gang members spoke some Gipsy dialect, and the punters just grunted. In the end, she managed to escape. She got as far as Belgium then the police arrested her because she had no ID, so she appealed to the Red Cross. She’s ...’

  ‘Louise ... Louise! Listen! It’s great you got promoted, just spare me the gory details. I don’t want a daily case report. I’m just interested in you and Nicky.’

  ‘It’s a big promotion. Can’t you just be happy for me?’

  ‘I’ll be happy, Louise, when we’re all living together, in one house, and in one place.’

  ‘Quand on n’a pas ce qu’on aime, on aime ce qu’on a. Did you get that? Nicky’s French is really coming on.’

  ‘When you don’t have what you like, you like what you have. You mean I just have to put up with it.’

  ‘It’s a compromise, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think I’ve done that already.’

  ‘Yes, Chas, and so have I.’

  26

  The Charon Enquiry published its findings at the end of September. The Clinic had been fined for illegally depositing funerary urns in Lake Zug, but beyond that, they were deemed to have been operating with probity, and within the law. The accounts had been scrutinised
, and there was no charge to bring against Maitre Moulenc. No report was given about the procedure, but there was a recommendation that the Clinic should take more care over its choice of premises. There was nothing about my car. The Fondation Charon was back in business.

  I posted a summary on the online bulletin, but since Masha and Zonni were no longer in touch, I didn’t think it right to contact Zonni for a comment, although I had a mobile number for her somewhere. Masha and I had gone for a drink one Saturday night, when I thought she might elaborate on the subject of the break-up, as I had elaborated about my semi-detached relationship with Androssoff, but she obviously didn’t want to talk about it. She had grown a hard shell to protect herself, I guessed, from all the ghastly things she had experienced, from her impoverished and neglected childhood to the abuse she was exposed to in the sex trade. She was sitting on a time-bomb, there, I thought, but I wasn’t going to be the one who set it off. In the interviews with other trafficked women, she was always calm and professional. The women trusted her. She had an honesty and clarity that invited trust. An over-sympathetic, emotional approach would not have offered that, I thought. Zonni had been the excitable one.

  The late autumn mists had set in over the lake; the walks across the park to school and back were increasingly chilly. The snow would come soon. I looked for a new down jacket for Nicky since he had outgrown the one he had in Wellington. If I needed reminding of the forthcoming frost, all I had to do was look across the lake to the icy peaks of Mont Blanc. Beyond were the French départements of Franche-Comte and Bourgogne, and beyond them, the rolling countryside that spread northwards towards Paris and a sessions man in a dingy room. Five hundred euros would not by much rented space in Paris.

  On my shopping forays, I was intrigued by the little chocolate cauldrons that started appearing in windows all over the city. I asked a woman about them in the confectionary department of the Globus store in Rue de Rhone. They were called marmites. The chocolate shell was filled with marzipan and they were traditionally demolished at the Escalade festival in early December to commemorate Switzerland’s victory over the Savoyards. Nicky loved Marmite soldiers, although I found the yeasty spread too salty.

  I thought I would fool him with the chocolate marmite when he got back from school. I was setting it out with his snack on the kitchen table when Drew turned up out of the blue again. Rodolfo was upstairs. If he had seen Drew ringing our bell, he was sure to come down and make a fuss. He had been very clear about a situation like this, but I felt had no choice but to ask Drew in. He looked ghastly, in the fullest sense of the word. He no longer looked the slightest bit like Androssoff. His hair was plastered to his head with sweat and grease, his cheeks were sunken and grey. He looked as though he was in extremis. I took hold of his rucksack and helped him through to the salon where we collapsed together on the sofa. I tried to straighten myself up, but he clutched my arm. His breath was like rotting meat.

  ‘You’ve got to help me, Louise.’

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Tea,’ he wheezed, ‘the great British cure-all.’

  ‘There’s whiskey.’

  ‘No, I’ll have tea. I haven’t had a decent cup of tea since I was here last.’

  I stood over the pot while the tea was infusing. He was ill, that was plain enough, and he looked destitute. His hand was shaking so much, he scalded himself and the tea splashed over the parquet, the mug rolling away under the gilt-topped chair. I was terrified by this apparition. Where did we go from here?

  ‘I think you need a doctor, Drew.’

  ‘I’ve seen enough doctors in Paris. They can’t do anything more for me. I’m riddled with it.’

  I wiped my hands on my skirt and sat down facing him. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘They can’t give me any more treatment. I was falling over, like before. I can’t play now, no coordination.’

  ‘Are you in pain?’

  ‘Just my upper half. It’s in my lungs now and my spine and liver. Those French doctors send you for all kinds of tests. You’re supposed to be able to claim your money back, but I’ve lost all the stickers. Not much point in claiming it back anyway. I know the score.’ He started coughing, a horrible, rattling cough.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in hospital?’

  ‘What for? There’s nothing they can do for me. I’ve done with Paris. I’ve come back to Switzerland to die.’

  ‘I can’t let you do that, not that.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d see it from my point of view. I’ve got three hundred euros left, or thereabouts. If you give me the rest – it’ll have to be a gift because I’ll never pay it back – I can die in peace.’

  ‘I can’t do it, Drew. I can’t give you money to kill yourself. You really need to be in hospital.’

  ‘Can you call that doctor who saw me before, you know, in the car?’

  ‘Dr Schlosser? Oh God, Drew, no. Not the Charon Clinic. There’ll be other clinics where they can make you comfortable. Look, I’ve got to fetch Nicky from school soon. I’ve made him some peanut butter sandwiches. Would you like one? I can easily make some more when we come back.’

  ‘I can’t keep anything down.’

  ‘But you must eat, or you’ll feel worse.’

  ‘Go and get your boy. I’m all right here for a minute, aren’t I?

  27

  Nicky told me they’d had Frikadellen for lunch with salad and rösti. I was always informed by the surveillante if he hadn’t eaten much, but on the whole he was enjoying the school catering. He liked eating with the other children, even though he said some of them made a mess because they couldn’t hold their knives and forks properly. I told him we had a visitor at home who wasn’t very well, and so we needed to be very calm and very quiet. He gave Drew a cautious appraisal as he passed the salon, then he took the marzipan-filled marmite to his room and started playing on his Game-Boy.

  Drew was looking less haggard. Some vestiges of colour had returned to his sallow cheeks.

  ‘Could you fancy some home-made chicken soup?’ I asked him. ‘It might buck you up.’

  ‘Maybe later if it’s still on offer. I’m all right. It’s good to rest up.’

  Every time I roasted a chicken, I boiled the carcase for stock as my grandma had taught me. Waste not, want not. Androssoff called it Thrift Soup, but he always ate it all.

  I could hear Rodolfo walking about upstairs. It was really none of his business who I invited into the apartment. There was nothing in the lease about guests, only the usual Swiss municipal regulations about not holding a party without notifying the neighbours and the authorities, refuse and recycling rules, etc. On the other hand, I didn’t want to antagonise him. We were friends again now and I liked living in the villa. It would be a nuisance to have to look for somewhere else since apartments near the school were hard to find. He sometimes came down on Thursday evenings with a bottle of liqueur. I would have to say Nicky was sick. Rodolfo dreaded catching anything. He had advised me to take vitamins because I was sure to pick up all sorts of bugs from the infant school.

  ‘You can stay here,’ I said. ‘Until you get your strength back. Chas will be here tomorrow. He can take a look at you. Maybe he can get you into hospital.’

  ‘I’ve told you, there’s no hospital that will treat me. They can’t treat me.’

  ‘There must be somewhere they can make you comfortable. I’ll get your bed ready, then I’ll heat up the soup for you.’ I would have to shift Androssoff’s papers and pull the sofa-bed out. There was an extra duvet and plenty of clean sheets. I sent our sheets to the laundry. Rodolfo had put me up to it; the van collected them when it came for his linen.

  Nicky was in the salon when I had finished. He had put the television on; I switched it off.

  ‘Mr Joffey isn’t very well.’

  ‘His name is Drew. He told me.’

  ‘I don’t mind the telly,’ Drew said. His voice was sounding much stronger.

  ‘Have you eaten
all your sandwiches, Nicky?’

  ‘Yes, and the chocolate jar. It was yummy.’

  If he ate a big lunch like he had today, he wouldn’t want much for supper.

  ‘Do you want to see my dinosaurs?’ he asked Drew. ‘You can come in my room if you like.’

  ‘Nicky, Drew is very tired. Why don’t you go and choose a couple of your favourites and bring them in here?’

  ‘He’s a lively kid,’ Drew commented. ‘He’s big too, for his age.’

  ‘His father is tall.’

  ‘Here he is again. I know what that one’s called. It’s a brontosaurus.’

  ‘Bet you don’t know what this one is?’

  ‘Course I do. It’s a terrywhatsit – I can’t get the word straight. A terry ...’

  ‘Pterodactyl. I call him Terry, though. I’ll get the other ones.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d like you to go and have your shower now and put your pyjamas on.’

  ‘But it isn’t bed-time.’

  ‘Not quite, no, but if you get ready for bed now, you can spend half an hour on your Game-Boy before you go to sleep and I’ll bring you some cheese and biscuits. How about that?’ He could eat cheese spread on oatcakes till the cows came home.

  ‘Don’t change your routine on my account,’ Drew spluttered. His cough was back again.

  ‘Come on, Nicky, you heard what I said.’

  ‘I don’t see why I have to put my pyjamas on now.’ He threw the models on the floor and ran out to the bathroom.

  ‘I’ll have to see to him,’ I told Drew.

  ‘Of course. You do your thing.’

  ‘I’ll get you something for that cough first.’ We had a cupboard full of the stuff because Nicky got chesty sometimes.

  It took me a while to calm him down. He was cross with me and excited about Drew being here. While he was under the shower, I heated the soup in the microwave and took it in to Drew on a tray. He had drunk from the bottle of medicine but was still coughing.