The Girl in the Shadows

Chapter 3

Alice

Alice sat on the 5.40 a.m. Eurostar from London to Paris. Her Lonely Planet guide lay on the table in front of her, Post-it notes sticking out at every angle. Next to it was a French edition of Alice in Wonderland. The cover’s stitched lettering was worn away from years of stroking the name her father had given her, in memory of a mother who read it out loud whilst pregnant. Tucked inside the first page was a letter from her father, her name written on the envelope in his neat, black script.

Ever since his death she couldn’t bring herself to read his farewell.

She pushed both books away, staring out of the rain-lashed window and wondering about the face reflected back at her. There were deep circles underneath her eyes, highlighted by the paleness of her skin that refused to tan even when subjected to two weeks on the beach. Her hair was thick and unruly, scraped back into a ponytail that sharpened the angles of her cheeks, the fullness of her mouth.

She had examined every detail of her face in the mirror countless times before, looking for clues, looking for her mother. And now there was a chance to find her, because her father had lied. She was alive. Her mother was alive.

***

Alice had watched them approach, two by two in some kind of banal nod to Noah’s ark.

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ The same trite apology, always accompanied by a drop of the eyes, a momentary touch of hand somewhere about her person.

Then she would reply with a false smile, ‘Thank you.’

What did the words mean? Were they anything more than the vibrations of muscle over bone? No one brave enough to speak the truth, to admit they had no idea what to say to an orphan, even one already grown.

She traced over the surface of the fossil in her palm – indentations on her skin catching the rough texture at one end, then finding comfort as it graduated to smooth. It was her talisman, her lucky charm, given to her by her father on her first day at school.

‘I can’t go in with you, poppet,’ he had said as he crouched down and adjusted the collar of her blouse, ‘but if ever you get nervous, give this a squeeze and know that I’ll be thinking of you.’ He handed over the fossil then, one they had found together during a trip to the coast.

She remembered running the very tip of her finger around its coils, feeling the grooves so well preserved. It fit snug in her hand, a reassurance hidden in the folds of her pinafore, a shared secret between father and child.

The fossil remained in its perpetual state, but as she had grown its necessity receded. Until now. Until today, when she had stood at the front of the school chapel and attempted to summarise her father’s life into a scribble of meaningless sentences.

The line of people trailed up the gravel path, a monotonous snake of greys and blacks, overshadowed by the grizzle of rain that seemed to follow the scent of death, seeking it out and reminding those in mourning that for some the sun would never shine again.

She scanned the faces as they came towards her, the accumulation of her father’s life, friendships and acquaintances gathered over the years. She listened to their accents as they passed on their condolences. Even now, on this day steeped in sorrow, she couldn’t help but wonder if someone connected to her mother would come.

The removal vans were arriving in the morning, which was why Alice forced herself to go into the study. She needed a copy of her birth certificate to send to the school she would be teaching at in Africa, but so far all searches had proven fruitless.

Looking around the room she was haunted by a ghost she could not see. The faded aroma of beeswax that he used to polish his leather chair. The ashtray still clinging on to particles left behind by his pipe, which lay upended next to the dragonfly fossil she had given him one Christmas. Sunlight filtered through the windows, catching layers of dust in its descent to the rug, the track of his thoughtful pacing evident where parts had been worn threadbare.

She still remembered the trepidation she felt as a child, knocking on the polished wood and waiting for permission to enter. It was her father’s private domain, where he spent the majority of his time when not at school. But it held no clue as to the man he was, contained no remnants from his past. Alice had learnt to accept this, that her father was not a sentimental man. This was not to say he did not provide for her, indeed he gave her the very best of everything. But what she longed for, now more than ever, was to know something about him, about the man he used to be before.

Before. It all came down to before. Before he died. Before the diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour. Before the move from a beloved home in County Durham. Before his wife died giving birth to their only child.

At first Alice found nothing more than folders full of receipts and utility bills, shelves full of books and a filing cabinet detailing the academic grades of every child in the school for the past sixteen years. Her own name sat between two others, just letters typed on a page.

Then she came across the box, stuffed at the back of the bottom drawer under a pile of periodicals. A small shoebox that had once contained a pair of her school plimsolls. Tucked inside were souvenirs of her childhood, each wrapped up in tissue paper. A baby tooth, a lock of hair. A tiny pair of pink, patent shoes, the thin laces still tied in a bow. Alice’s stomach constricted at the affection her father had struggled to show whilst alive.

At the bottom of the box was a plain, white envelope. The paper was soft with a hole on one corner and the glue had never been licked. Slipping her fingers inside Alice pulled out a photograph of a woman holding a young child, a girl. The woman’s hair was tied back in a chignon, lilac-grey eyes smiling at the camera. It was her mother.

Looking again at the photograph Alice took in the way her mother’s thumb rested on the child’s cheek, fingers curled protectively around her head. The girl was gazing up at her mother with one chubby hand grasping a pearl necklace nestled in the V at the base of her neck. Alice noticed that the child was wearing a red smock coat and pink patent shoes – the same shoes that now sat in a box atop her father’s desk. The child in the photograph was her. It was Alice.

Bile flooded her throat and stars appeared at the edge of her vision as she leant against the desk.

Her mother had died in childbirth. So who was the woman in this photograph? In all the photographs her father had ever shown her? Was it her mother, or someone else? But they had the same almond-shaped eyes, the same pronounced Cupid’s bow and full bottom lip. If this really was her mother, what did that mean?

Flipping the photograph over she was met by her father’s neat, black script.

‘Paris, 1997.’

So Alice would have been at least one, perhaps closer to two years old when the picture was taken. Was her mother alive? Or had she died at a later date? But then why would her father lie to her? Why say she was dead? Why on earth would he pretend that Alice had never known her mother, never laid eyes on her face? Then out of the depths of her mind came a darker, guilty question. Why did Alice not remember her?

She remembered what he had told her. Springtime in Paris, two students overladen with books as they rushed to escape a sudden downpour. A young woman tripping over her own feet, her father stopping to collect the papers she had dropped. Raindrops suspended on the edge of long, dark lashes as he removed black-rimmed glasses.

Her smile, the way it tugged at the very centre of his heart, and he knew in that moment he was lost to her.

She used to cuddle that memory, one of so few her father was willing to share. The perfection of it enchanted her, carried her through lonely nights and empty days of longing.

But if she wasn’t dead, where was she? Was anything he had ever told her true, or just stories designed to placate a child’s endless questions?

Alice ran her eye along the shelves, reaching high for the first in a long line of albums stood in chronological order. She flipped over the pages, searching the photographs for anything she might have missed.

Her parents stood outside a church, squinting into the sunlight: her father’s face barely containing his unequivocal happiness, her mother holding a small bouquet of peonies.

Her father stood underneath the legs of the Eiffel Tower, arms spread wide and cigarette dangling from his lips.

The silhouette of her mother looking out of an open window at the rooftops of Paris, one hand cradling the stretch of fabric pulled tight over a swollen stomach.

She knew each and every one off by heart – the images melted into her mind through fingertips that would brush over the glossy surfaces, hoping that one iota of her mother would somehow come back to her.

Then the album’s memories changed to pictures of her as a baby. Swaddled in her father’s arms, his weary face and awe-struck eyes turned to the camera. Strapped in a high chair with the remains of a meal smeared over her face, in her hair, on the wall behind. Another of her sat in the middle of brightly coloured building blocks, arms reaching out for the photographer, a jagged line held together by Steri-Strips on the side of her skull, peeping out from amongst tufts of blonde hair.

Like a little bulldozer, her father would say, barrelling straight through things instead of going around. Alice wound her fingers through her hair, seeking out the tiny thread of scar tissue, only one of several that decorated her skin like milky tattoos, a permanent reminder of childhood accidents.

Putting the album to one side she began to pull other files from the shelves, tearing out records of a lifetime spent together but nothing bringing her any closer to the truth. Tax returns, medical records and her father’s employment contract see-sawed through the air to land in a haphazard circle on the floor around where she stood.

She thought back to Barnard Castle, to the gothic architecture and a grumpy tomcat that would run into the kitchen at the first sign of rain. Was there anyone who remembered their arrival from Paris? She could picture the hazy outline of faces: a woman with furious ginger hair and glasses strung on plastic beads around her neck. A man who carried with him the scent of burnt toast and the constant expression of one who had woken only to forget where he was supposed to be.

But nothing about Paris. Nothing about her mother.

What was the point of rifling through his belongings looking for answers that he was unable to give?

She sank to the floor, clutching the photograph to her chest. There was no one to ask. Her father, like her, had been an only child – his parents long since dead and buried. He never spoke of her mother or her family so Alice had no clue, not one bloody clue as to what had really happened.

***

The photograph lay in the pages of the guidebook in front of her, one full of questions. She opened the guide book, easing apart the pages and feeling the creak along the spine. A map of Paris lay before her, the river at its centre like a serpent that curved through the streets, twists and turns reminiscent of the Thames in London.

She remembered a trip she and her father had made to the town of Donaueschingen in the Black Forest, where the source of the Danube rose in turquoise bubbles after a journey through strata of chalk and gravel. The tradition was to throw a coin over your shoulder and make a wish. Alice had complied, the whispered desire passing over lips, a repetition of every time she blew out the candles on her birthday cake.

Bring my mother back to me.

After a lunch of schnitzel and kartoffelsalat her father had wiped the froth of beer from his moustache and drawn a map of Europe on a paper napkin, a ragged line representing the river Danube as it passed through Vienna, Budapest and out to the Black Sea.

‘Where does it come from?’ she asked through mouthfuls of Schwarzwald Kirsch Kuchen, cherry juice sticking to her tongue in the same way as the unfamiliar words had when she ordered her dessert.

‘From everywhere and nowhere at all,’ her father replied, stretching his arms high and wide. ‘The constant change of our planet prevents us from ever knowing all of its secrets.’

He had always encouraged her inquisitiveness, allowed her to pull apart each new intrigue, forever ready with answers to all the questions in her mind.

But never about her mother.

Alice thought of the diaries she would write as a child: naive observations interspersed with wonderings about her mother. About the clothes she wore, the foods she ate and the house in which she lived. There was a drawing on the inside cover of each book, added to and amended each year, but in essence the same. Whitewashed walls, pitched roof, blue shutters and a room under the eaves complete with window seat piled high with cushions. A view over Paris and the knowledge that downstairs, perhaps in the kitchen preparing supper, or maybe pruning roses in the garden, was her mother.

This drawing was an invisible lifeline to a childhood lost – one she had yearned for and perfected over the years. She had even gone to the school library, sought out a map of Paris and chosen the street on which her version of herself, an imaginary twin, lived. South of the river, next to a small park where her mother would watch as she played.

But none of this was real and now the cacophony of streets on the map in front of her promised nothing, gave no clue as to her mother’s whereabouts.

It was a new challenge, a new puzzle to figure out. Anything to stop the whispered imaginings in her mind.

‘Where on earth am I supposed to start?’ she asked, her eyes following the outline of the river Seine as it cut the city in two.

Chapter 4

Veronique

Veronique danced around the room, her feet bare, the only sound a soft thwack as her boxing glove made contact with the leather bag. The sky hung heavy outside, dawn seeping through the leaded windowpanes and casting shadows across the polished wooden floor. She didn’t have long before her solitude would be interrupted.

Perspiration gathered at the base of her neck, a line running in between her shoulder blades as she circled the bag. There was comfort in the rise and fall of her ribcage as her body pumped oxygen to her aching muscles – the familiar repetition of movements allowing her brain to relax, to process.

There was something about Christelle Benazet that didn’t quite fit. Veronique had expected a grieving mother, finding instead a mask so cleverly painted that she was unable to see past the layers of Botox and mascara. Was she really unaware of her daughter’s habitual drug use, or was this conveniently ignored? Veronique understood the pull drugs could have, how easy it was to slip inside their darkness. Was this what had happened to Mathilde?

A light came on in the corridor outside and she turned to see Christophe pushing the glass door ajar, dressed head to toe in skin-tight Lycra.

‘You want some company?’ he asked, easing off biker boots and woolly socks to reveal bright pink toenails.

Veronique nodded towards his feet.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘It’s the only make-up I can get away with in the lab.’

She smiled, wiping the back of her arm across her forehead as Christophe scooped up two pads and slipped them over his wrists.

‘Not too hard, remember.’ His eyes found the mirror on the wall behind as he adjusted his bleached-blonde quiff. ‘And stay clear of my face. I’ve got a date tonight.’

‘Who’s the poor soul this time?’

‘I take offence.’ Christophe’s hands flew upward as Veronique struck out with a right hook. ‘I am nothing but chivalrous to all of my dates.’

‘That’s my point.’ Veronique landed a one-two, gloves returning to position as she hopped backward. ‘There’s so many it’s a wonder you can ever tell the difference.’

‘This one’s a lawyer on secondment from Italy for six months. He’s got cheekbones to die for.’

‘I thought you had a pact to steer clear of lawyers? Something about it being against your moral code? Legs.’ She indicated for him to lower the pads before bringing her right knee up and then spinning full circle to strike out with her foot.

‘Sometimes it’s necessary to make exceptions. Stretch your boundaries, explore other territories.’

‘Meaning you want to see inside his pants.’

He raised his hands as Veronique came towards him. ‘That too. But there’s no reason we can’t enjoy a nice dinner first, especially if he’s paying. So did you take the case?’

‘I did.’ Two jabs, followed by an uppercut.

‘But?’

Veronique dropped her arms. ‘I don’t know. The mother isn’t what I expected.’

‘What were you expecting?’

Veronique shrugged. ‘Something more?’

‘Everyone has secrets; just because you don’t trust anyone that’s not to say she’s hiding something from you. Again?’

‘No, I’m done.’ Pulling at one glove’s Velcro wristband with her teeth she allowed Christophe to pull one hand free, then the next. The straps binding her fingers were wet, drops of sweat collecting at her feet as she unwound them. ‘But that’s just it, she has been hiding something, something significant. First of all there was a boyfriend.’