“Non. I can stay. We can talk.”
Perhaps she’s tired, I think, after the madness of last night. Anyway, she seems pretty sure about it, so I put her to work with a chopping board and a big pile of veg.
“So how did you break your arm?” I ask, after Cat and Nate and the kids have found all their kit and eventually headed out. “I did mine falling off a ladder in my parents’ kitchen. I was seventeen.”
“I was six. Actually it happened the same day as my story about the cake. The exact same minute. Those things happened together.”
“Ouch, how did that happen?”
She glances toward the door, almost as if she’s checking that we’re definitely alone, then gives me a long look, like she’s deciding whether to say something or not. Finally, she gives a little Gallic shrug, an almost what-the-hell, and, with her face completely composed, says, “My father was fucking his secretary in the pantry.”
I stop kneading the dough. “Wow.”
“I was already in there, hiding under a shelf. And because of the noise they were making and because I was little and didn’t understand anything, I thought he was hurting her. So I crawled out from my hiding place and said, I’m telling Maman.” She pauses, no doubt taking in the horror on my face, then continues, “And I tried to run out of the pantry, but my father grabbed hold of my wrist and yanked me back so hard my arm snapped. We literally heard it break, me, my father, his secretary, all three of us. Then we all just stood there for a moment, I remember that very well, because I was exactly head height to his dick and his trousers were still around his ankles. So I screamed and then the secretary screamed and ran out of the pantry. And my father let go of my arm and I crashed backward, straight into my mother’s birthday cake and the whole thing smashed.”
“Shit.”
“Yes, well. My father was a brute. He filled our home with fear. My mother was afraid. My sister was afraid.”
“Wow.”
“Me, I was not afraid,” she says, each of her words shimmering with an intense energy. “I was angry.” She holds my eyes, then shrugs, and the heat that surrounds her seems to ebb away. “I don’t see them anymore.”
“I’m not surprised.” Thoughts orbit my mind like the hazy photographs of some distant galaxy, shadowy and unfocused.
“By the way, I want to say I’m sorry about last night. About the argument. I should have done better than that. I’m usually better at dealing with dickheads.”
“Forget it. That was quite a performance from Jamie. We should probably be apologizing to you.”
She shakes her head. “Some people are very ignorant.” She pauses, then says, “And his girlfriend, Weela, does she think like that?”
“God, no, Willa’s lovely. She can be a bit fragile at times.” I put down my rolling pin and face her. “Something truly awful happened to her, years ago. Her sister disappeared. I mean she vanished, into thin air, without a trace. She never got over it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?”
She doesn’t respond the way most people do when they hear that story. Most people express sympathy or concern. I’ve seen it a hundred times. They’re curious too, keen to hear more: details about the case, exactly what happened and when. Specifically they want to know about the missing girl. But Claudette just looks at me blankly and her next question feels like an odd one, because it’s not about Laika at all.
“And you met Willa when, just after that? How was she then? What was she like?”
I pause, playing for time as I try to bring a thought into focus. “Why?”
She holds my eyes, and for a moment it feels like I’m looking at somebody very familiar, rather than somebody I’ve only just met. It’s the oddest sensation. I feel like I’ve known her for years. “She wasn’t in a great place. Not then, and not now.”
That’s all I’m prepared to say, so I look down and start rolling out the pastry to bring the conversation to an end. For a few minutes we work in silence, listening to the Christmas songs on the radio: “Fairy Tale of New York,” “All I Want for Christmas,” “Jingle Bell Rock.”
When Wham!’s “Last Christmas” comes on, Claudette says, “God, I haven’t heard this song for years. My mum was a huge George Michael fan.” I stop rolling and look up. Claudette is looking down, placing the knife thoughtfully along the line of a carrot. But, for me, the rolling earth stops turning. Because in that single, shining moment, I know exactly what she’s going to say even before she’s opened her mouth. “She used to sing us Wham! songs in the bath.”
The previous night’s events rip through my mind, and I see Claudette standing over Jamie, the absolute force of the words she’d hurled at him: Leaving home is terrifying. I feel as if my heart has actually physically stopped. I am looking at Laika. Without any shred of doubt, I know it. Laika is alive, and Laika is standing next to me, here, in my kitchen. And Laika is…French?
How is that possible? My eyes whip over her, this dark-haired woman, this mix of serenity and fire. Again, I hear her shouting, Leaving home is terrifying. And now too I hear Jamie’s voice, his casual, flippant reply, You sound exactly like a Brit.
I look at her again. It is Laika. I am absolutely certain of it.
But, if it is, why didn’t she and Willa run straight at each other and not let go? Did she know? Was she pretending she didn’t? God, no wonder Willa was beside herself. What the hell was going on? And, if it is Laika, how could she not have let Willa know where she was years ago, that all this time she was okay? How could she have seen all the posts on Willa’s website, all the endless poems and letters and photographs and all the love and not have instantly got in touch?
Is it possible she hasn’t actually seen it?
“Come here a moment,” I say, wiping my hands on my apron. “I want to show you something.” I’m trying to sound composed, but my heart is yammering in my chest.
Claudette puts down her knife and comes to join me at the kitchen table. I push aside a bunch of papers, photographs, packets of basil seeds, letters, bank statements and picture books. I open up my laptop and navigate to findlaika.
I angle the screen toward her and then I watch her face as she scrolls through the hundreds of posts. Her breath quickens.
“I’m an admin,” I tell her, “so you can see all the direct messages too if you want.”
I tap on the mailbox, and she reads through all the contact we’ve had over the years and our notes about our attempts to follow them up. She stops on one, reading it first in French and then translating the words into English: Picardy. She was Ilisabet, and kind.
“When was this written?”
“About a year ago.”
“Jabir,” she breathes, “oh my God.”
Watching her scroll through the posts, one hand moving to her mouth, eyes filling with tears, I know then that this is the first time she’s ever seen the site. She didn’t know any of it, and I am filled with tenderness and sorrow for this woman who, I’m now sure, is Laika.
I have one chance to get this right. Time it badly or use the wrong tone of voice and she’ll almost certainly deny everything. I put my hand on her arm. I leave it there. When she looks at me, I speak.
“Laika.”
She folds her lips over her teeth and I see she is biting down, physically sealing her lips as her eyes move to the ceiling, filled now with strange light. I give her all the time she needs. Eventually, she turns to look at me directly and, in unaccented English, says in a voice that is quiet and clear and completely direct, “Yes.”
***
We stay in the kitchen, talking for a long time. I tell her everything I know: the number of times we went to investigate a sighting. The places we went to, the people we met. She tells me about their childhood, things I didn’t know, things Willa has never been able to say. She tells me she’s not Laika anymore, that Laika is gone, that she is now one hundred percent Claudette. I tell her about the love that I know Willa and Bianka have carried for her over the years, the weight of their loss, their grief.
“And rage?” she asks.
“Rage?” I’m not sure I’ve heard her correctly.
“Have you ever felt true rage? No, or you’d understand my question straight off. It’s volcanic, uncontrollable. If you’ve felt it even just once, then you spend the rest of your life trying to stay in control of it. You have to know your triggers. Do you understand what I’m saying? When you’re filled with napalm, you’d better make damned sure you know where the matches are kept. Rage is terrifying. We all had it. All three of us: me, Mum, Willa.”
“Willa?” I say, “I’ve never seen Willa get angry in her entire life.”
She looks at me like I’ve totally missed the point, “No,” she says, “neither have I. But believe me, she’s got it. I know it’s there and, more importantly, so does she.” She shrugs. “Trust me. It’s in our DNA.”
There is so much more to say. But, first, I need to ask her about the thing that has sounded in my mind like a small alarm since we first started to talk.
“How did you get to France?”
For a long time she holds my eyes. Then she says, “I had my passport. My father met me at Dover. He gave me my passport,” and her voice is so steady, and her eyes so direct, that I know without a shred of doubt that she is telling me the truth, and that I am hearing a truth that is so terrible, so stunning, that I am almost knocked off my feet. All this time, through all these years of watching Willa and Bianka go through all those endless cycles of hope and disappointment and heartbreak and loss, Bryce knew exactly where Laika was. The whole bloody mess of it flies through my brain. The absolute betrayal.
