Songbirds(7)

What a beautiful lake it is. Copper bleeds into it from the past. The lake is a consequence of what has been left behind: when the mines were abandoned a crater was left. As winter approaches, just as it does now, the crater fills with water. After a rainstorm, rivers of yellow and orange trickle into the red water, changing its colour – this is how the sunset appears.

But why not a sunrise?

Because a sunrise is infused with the promise of a new day.

A sunset holds the expectation of something else – the hush and darkness of the night. The lake exists on the verge of darkness.





6

Petra

I

T WAS 6.30 A.M. WHEN I woke up. Nisha would have just had a shower and gone out into the garden with long, damp hair, picking oranges and collecting fresh eggs. After bringing in the eggs, she would fry or boil them. When we had courgette flowers or wild greens, she would scramble the eggs over them and add lots of lemon and pepper. This was Aliki’s favourite.

On this morning, Nisha was not outside. A silvery mist rested over the leaves, as if the garden had exhaled. The lira on the ground now glimmered in the sun.

In the kitchen, Aliki was sitting at the table, still in her pyjamas, swinging her legs and playing a game on her iPad. Her loose hair fell about her face and shoulders. By this time, it was usually in a neat ponytail and she should have been wearing her school uniform and finishing off her orange juice.

‘Where is Nisha?’ I said.

Aliki looked up from the screen and shrugged.

‘Have you eaten?’

She tutted, no. I saw a stroke of uncertainty in her eyes. I thought she would speak but she slouched and sank further down into her seat.

I went into Nisha’s room and found that she wasn’t there. In fact, her bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in.

Returning to Aliki, and with as much cheer as I could muster, I said, ‘Why don’t you go and get changed and I’ll make breakfast? Then I’ll take you to school.’

She got up, reluctantly, but did as I’d suggested. In the meantime, I called Nisha’s mobile a few times, but it went straight to voicemail.

‘Nisha,’ I said. ‘Where are you? Call me back.’

I began to boil the eggs and make toast, opening all the cupboards to find where Nisha kept the fig jam. I was becoming increasingly irritated – fear hadn’t gripped me yet.

It was Aliki who had the deeper instincts that I lacked. After I had peeled the eggs and laid the table, Aliki still hadn’t come back to the kitchen so I went to her room and found her in front of the mirror, crying. She’d put on her uniform, but she’d been unable to tie up her hair. The elastic band was stuck in a knot of curls.

I told her to sit on the bed and I perched beside her and gently untangled the band. Then, with a wide hair-brush, I tried to bring all that hair together into a high ponytail, like Nisha did. But the curls were wild and unruly and tried to escape – as I brought one side up, the other side fell out of my grip and tumbled back down to her shoulder.

I could feel her shifting, uncomfortable and impatient.

‘I’ll tell you what!’ I said. ‘Forget the ponytail. Let’s do something different.’

So, I plaited her hair and she pulled the thick black braid over her right shoulder and stood to look at herself in the mirror. Her patio doors were open and the room was full of sunlight and music from the birds. Even the mist came in, like a lost spirit.

Such a crisp autumn day, and it should have been a happy morning, like every other. But what I saw in Aliki’s eyes as she stared at her reflection was a broadening expanse of worry.

*

I took Aliki to school, something Nisha usually did. I also had to leave work for an hour to collect her in the afternoon – my shop assistant, Keti, didn’t work on Mondays. I then had to bring Aliki back to work with me for a while. We made our way through heavy traffic to Onasagorou Street, just by Eleftheria Square, to the main branch of my clinic, Sun City – I am an optician – which sat in a stately row of expensive boutiques, ice-cream parlours, patisseries, restaurants, galleries, cafes, and also the base of the British Council – a converted townhouse on Solomou Square. Aliki amused herself by trying out the least expensive pairs of glasses and doing impressions of people in front of the large mirror at the front. In a pair of metal-rimmed, round specs she pretended to be Gandhi; in some round transparent anti-blue light glasses she was a K-pop star; in a plain brown-framed pair she was Nisha, and she grabbed the feather duster and cleaned the shelves.

*

That night, Nisha still hadn’t returned. I made some dinner, but Aliki wasn’t hungry. She sat in front of the TV.

‘Your food is on the table. I’ve covered it to keep it warm,’ I said. ‘I’m just popping out to speak to Mrs Hadjikyriacou next door. Find out if she’s seen Nisha. I’ll be outside if you need anything.’

Aliki nodded and continued to watch the news, which I’m sure she wasn’t really paying any attention to. She seemed preoccupied, and she was sucking the knuckle of her index finger as she had done when she was much younger.

I’d never paid much attention to the other maids in our neighbourhood before. The maids here did everything – they were hired and paid (lower than the minimum wage) to clean the house, but ended up being child-carers, shop assistants, waitresses. Outside, two women, probably Filipinos, walked along the street with a young Cypriot child between them – a little girl with pigtails, holding each by the hand. She ran and skipped and they lifted her by the arms. In a house down the road a maid whacked the dust out of a rug on the railing of the porch. She waved at the two who were passing. Now, turning the corner, another maid was being pulled along by a huge sand-coloured hunting dog. Outside, Yiakoumi’s shop, yet another maid was bringing in the antiques – displayed on a table during the day – in order to shut up shop for the night. To the right, Theo’s restaurant was starting to get busy, as it was close to dinner time. His two Vietnamese maids dashed about in their rice hats, holding drinks or trays of dips. Each time I saw one of these women, my heart dropped, hoping that Nisha might appear beside them.