Beautiful(58)

He was young and personable and seemed very serious. He had gone to Oxford, and was thirty-four years old. He had tousled sandy blond hair and blue eyes and looked very British.

He interviewed several of the nuns, and most of the nurses, as well as Dick. They gave him one of the guest rooms in the dormitory. He was very unobtrusive, and got some wonderful shots of the nuns laughing, the nurses working, the children in the wards and their families, and he talked to Dick Dennis at length about the medical side of the story. It was several days before he got around to Véronique. She had already heard that he had gone to Oxford. His credentials were excellent, and he’d published some articles in the States as well.

Véronique was sitting in the shade for a few minutes, after a morning spent in the ward, and he came to sit down next to her. He smiled when he sat down, and glanced at her.

“I keep wanting to catch a word with you, but you never seem to stop. You’re busy every time I look, holding a child, or consoling a mother, or making a bed. Are you a nurse?” Unlike the others, she didn’t wear a uniform.

“No, I’m just here as a friend.”

“You’re French?” He heard her accent, and had assumed she was American or British, like most of the others. She nodded.

“My father was American,” she added proudly.

“What brought you here?” There was something about her that intrigued him, and he hadn’t figured out what. She kept her distance, although she was friendly, but guarded.

“Dr. Dennis. I met him in New York, and he told me about it. It sounded interesting, so I came to see for myself.” In the meantime, she had gotten passionate about a mine-free world too.

“Just like that?” She nodded with a mysterious smile. He had noticed the scars but didn’t ask her about it. He was very polite.

“Yes, just like that,” she confirmed.

“Are you a medical person of some kind, if not a nurse?” He couldn’t peg her.

“No, I liked the sound of what they’re doing for these children. They do wonderful work. I’ve been here for more than a month, and I’m amazed every day. I’ve gotten interested in projects that people dedicate themselves to, to make a serious difference in the world.”

“That’s noble of you.” He smiled at her. There was something about her face that seemed familiar. “Why do I get the feeling that I’ve seen you somewhere?”

“I must look like someone you know,” she said coolly.

“Not that I can think of. I don’t meet women who look like you every day, Véronique,” he said, and she looked embarrassed.

“A wanted poster in the post office perhaps?” she teased him.

He laughed. “Why? Have you been in prison?”

“Not lately.” He smiled at her answer. She was playing with him, and he suspected there was something behind it. He had a good nose for people, and she wasn’t giving him answers.

“Are you here incognito?” he teased her back.

“Not at all.”

“Well, you’re definitely a hard worker,” he complimented her.

“I love being here. I’d only been to Johannesburg before.”

“For work?”

She nodded. She noticed that there was something sad about his eyes, as though something bad had happened to him. It was a look she understood and it aroused her interest about him.

“It’s healing being here,” he said, and she nodded, and stood up. She agreed with him but felt she’d said enough.

“It’s time for lunch,” she said, and he stood up too. He watched her move ahead of him up the steps of the dormitory, and it was driving him crazy. He knew he had seen her somewhere before.

He sat down next to Prudence in the dining hall, and Véronique sat down with the nuns. Prudence was flirting mildly with Patrick. She had a boyfriend in London, but she hadn’t seen him in months. They were going to meet in Zimbabwe in August. She noticed Patrick staring at Véronique as she chatted with the nuns, and he said something to Prudence about it.

“I don’t know why, but I have the feeling I’ve seen her somewhere before.” Prudence didn’t answer for a minute and nodded.

“You and the entire world,” she said in a low voice, and then said even more softly, “does the name Véronique Vincent ring any bells?” He looked startled, and stared at her.

“The model?” He glanced back at Véronique then, and there it was. It clicked. “Oh good lord.” He could see the right side of her face as he stared at her from the distance, and the scars in all their glory. “What happened? A car accident ended it?” He thought she must have gone through a windshield to have scars like that.

Prudence was serious when she answered. “Something a lot worse.”

“What could be worse than that?”

“You’ll have to ask her about it. It’s not my secret to tell.”

So he hadn’t been wrong when he guessed that she was there incognito. There was something mysterious about her, as though she was hiding something. He went to his room after lunch, and googled her. He got a million of her modeling pictures one after the other, looking more spectacular in each one. Then the recent documentary on French television came up. He clicked the link and watched the beginning of it. He spoke enough French to understand it all. Then he knew the story. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it, or she would have told him. But she wasn’t hiding it either, if she had been the main interviewer on the TV show. He got the feeling that she’d be upset if he asked. His heart ached as he listened to the stories, and then he came to the part where she explained her part in it and what had happened. He felt as though he had opened a Pandora’s box and he shouldn’t have. But it explained why she was here in a remote part of Africa, obviously looking for some new meaning to life after what had happened. He felt overwhelmed with sorrow for her, living with the scars she had, and losing a major career couldn’t have been easy for her. A career that had obviously defined her since it was all about her looks. She had said on the show that she had lost her mother in the blast, and a friend who was with them.