Songbirds(38)

I took in her words but said nothing. There was a stillness in the room; the fan was off and the heat was immense.

‘When you die,’ she said finally, ‘your energy passes into another form. Imagine having two candles. You pass the flame from one candle to the other.’

I knew she was talking about our unborn child, the child that would never be born as our daughter or our son. But I didn’t respond. I found it hard to speak, to know what to say. I simply listened and stroked her hair. Soon she was asleep.

I looked around the room. On the nightstand was a religious statue and her reading glasses. On the old wood dressing table, her makeup and jewellery. In the far corner of the room was an ironing board next to a laundry basket filled with clean and fresh towels and bed linen that had already been ironed. Behind this, a feather duster and a couple of multicoloured aprons hung on a hook on the wall.

Of course, I’d seen her tending the garden, but I had never, ever imagined her life beyond her bedroom door, her life as a maid in this house.

I gave Nisha a soft kiss on her forehead as she slept and left her room through the glass doors. Back in my flat, in the bathroom, the toilet was still full of Nisha’s blood and what looked like clots and grey tissue. I heaved. There was nothing else I could do but flush the toilet and leave the room.

The meal we had not eaten was still in the kitchen, the glasses empty on the counter. The ring was in my pocket. I took it out and stared at the light bouncing off the diamond. Then I put it away in the cabinet. I knew I couldn’t propose now: I would have to wait until Nisha was better, wait for the right time.

*

The sun was setting as I made my final delivery. I was ready to return to my apartment, the spare room now empty and, well, spare. But not for long. Seraphim and I would be hunting again in just under a week. And I had a lot to ask him.





15

Petra

O

N MONDAY MORNING AT THE shop, I showed Keti the bracelet. She examined it closely, turning it over in her hands, her brow furrowing at the broken clasp. ‘It doesn’t look like she took it off herself, on purpose,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Will you take it to the police?’ she asked.

‘What’s the point?’

Keti nodded in understanding.

‘Why don’t we make posters,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe someone saw her . . . I could draft a flyer on the computer,’

‘Could you?’ I nodded. ‘I think it’s a good idea.’

‘Do you have any photographs of Nisha on your phone?’ she asked.

I scrolled through and found one. It was a close-up I had taken of Nisha and Aliki on Aliki’s birthday almost a year ago. They were in the garden beneath the tree, Nisha’s arm around Aliki’s shoulder. They were both smiling.

Keti sat down at the computer in the back office and drafted a flyer:





MISSING PERSON


IF ANYONE HAS SEEN THIS WOMAN

PLEASE CALL 9-------

THERE WILL BE A GENEROUS REWARD



She cropped the photograph I had given her to remove Aliki from the photo, and zoomed in on Nisha’s face. Her eyes were arresting: anyone who saw this would recognise her immediately if they’d ever seen her. Nisha’s eyes aren’t something you forget.

Keti printed many copies of the flyer and we split them between us. Even though Keti lived near the university, we thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to show them beyond my neighbourhood.

Before we locked up that night, I thanked Keti heartily.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Nisha was a friend. You don’t have to thank me.’

Soon Nisha’s face stared out of flyers on every street in the area.

*

I was managing to keep my business running smoothly– no small thanks to Keti, who had even begun coming in early to dust and sweep the shop, trying to make up for the cleaning that Nisha would have done. I couldn’t bring myself to hire a new cleaner, not yet. It would feel like an admission that Nisha was really gone.

Life at home, however, was falling apart. My mornings were put back by having to make Aliki breakfast and take her to school, and I had to let Keti open the shop on her own. I would run out after lunch to pick up Aliki, and Mrs Hadjikyriacou would watch her in the afternoons, while I returned to work. I would come back again in the evenings often later than I had planned, due to trying to finish enough work at the shop, squeeze in as many appointments as I could. I was exhausted. I felt like I was failing on all fronts.

At home, Aliki was restless. She would wander around the house, putting on and taking off her Converse trainers. She would match different colours then regret the choice. She’d walk around with one pink shoe, one chequered. Then one green shoe, the other striped. The cat called Monkey followed her around, sniffing her feet, rubbing its face against her hands as she tied the laces. She avoided the garden and I could hardly blame her: the garden was covered in snails. On the boat, particularly, there must have been about thirty, of various sizes, with their glossy shells and nimble eyes at the tips of their tentacles, slithering over the bow and stern, climbing languidly up its hull. After rain, Nisha would have peeled the snails off the boat, one by one, gently so as not to hurt them. But in her absence, nature had taken over.

On Tuesday night I had to stay at work very late. When I got home, it was past nine o’clock and Mrs Hadjikyriacou was asleep in the armchair by the fire. On her lap, with her hands resting on it, was the framed photograph of Stephanos in his military gear. When she heard me, she opened her eyes. The fire was dwindling.