The Family Remains(69)
As she unpacked in her hotel room she remembered where she was this time last year: the wooden stilt house in the Seychelles with the bed that was wider than it was long. She thought of the silly little props she’d packed into her suitcase that had seemed innocuous at the time, a bit of fun, but that had fractured her marriage. But she knew that if it hadn’t been then, it would have been another time, another trigger, another ‘mistake’. Michael Rimmer was a timebomb waiting to go off and now she just wanted to know that she was not alone in this world.
She wanted to know if he had raped Lucy too.
Marco’s school was in a rough suburb called L’Ariane that looked nothing like any part of the south of France that Rachel had ever seen or envisaged before. Tower blocks loomed overhead, freeways knitted together in angry graffitied tangles, empty shops were shuttered behind cold metal grilles. She pulled her puffa coat together and zipped it up to cover her expensive-looking outfit, then she pulled up her hood, even though the sun was still warm.
The school was behind a high brick wall, the sun glowing gold between two six-storey blocks. The campus was huge and looked more like a prison compound than a school. A sign by a gated entrance said ‘COLLèGE’ with an arrow pointing ahead. Other parts of the school were signposted at two other entrances. One said ‘PRIMAIRE’. The other said ‘PETITE éCOLE’. Rachel realised she had no idea which part of the building she was meant to be waiting outside; all she knew was that Michael’s son was around eleven. She didn’t know what class he’d be at in school in the UK, let alone in France. It was nearly four thirty, and groups of parents were beginning to cluster around each entrance. She turned on her phone and looked again at the photo that Jonno had sent her. A shot taken from the school’s online newsletter, accompanying an article about a class trip to the aquarium. He was third from the right, taller than his peers by two inches and with a thick mop of dark wavy hair and a somewhat arresting attitude. M. Rimmer.
Rachel had assumed that Michael’s son would be at a private school, or an international school, a school with views of the ocean and palm trees in the grounds and children in uniforms clutching folders. She had assumed that Lucy would be like her: alone, but comfortable. She had pictured her playing her violin in an ensemble, her hair held back in a chignon, seated in front of red velvet curtains. She had imagined her to be bohemian, arty, shabby chic. But this school did not speak of bohemia or shabby chic, it spoke of poverty, and for the first time it occurred to Rachel that maybe Lucy was poor.
She saw some children start to emerge from the gate nearest her and watched quietly from under her hood. They looked around the right age group, early teens, so she waited where she was, her eyes not missing a child as they passed. And then she saw him. It was definitely him. Taller than his friends. Better-looking than them too. A hint of Michael, but much more of someone else with his thick mop of hair, the slightly wild, uncaged look of him. There was a boy on his left with a shaved head, carrying a Minecraft rucksack. To his right was a small blond boy wearing a dark woollen hat and a red puffa coat. Marco bumped fists with both of them in turn and then peeled away. He didn’t look around for a parent as some of the other children did but headed instead towards the entrance labelled ‘Petite école’, where he smiled at a teacher standing at the gate and held out his hand for a tiny girl with golden-tipped ringlets and took from her a pink and gold rucksack with tiny furry animals hanging from it.
Rachel flinched. A sibling. Marco had a sibling. That was another thing that Rachel hadn’t expected. But why not, of course why not? Why wouldn’t Lucy have another child? Or maybe more? She wondered if Michael even knew about this girl.
She fell into step behind them and followed them to a bus stop and then on to a cold, creaky bus that travelled for over half an hour before finally pulling off a highway and on to the bustling back streets of Nice, where the children disembarked. They walked for nearly twenty minutes through the city until they reached the far end, by Castle Hill, and she followed them to a scruffy blue house, built high up the winding coastal road, with grimy, sea-salt-encrusted windows overlooking the ocean on one side and grimy, car-exhaust-mottled windows overlooking the street on the other. Marco used a key to let them in through a scuffed, peeling door painted with the words ‘Maison de la Mer’ and then they were gone.
Rachel didn’t know what to do now. The sun was growing low and fat, tilting lazily towards the horizon. The temperature began to drop. She thought of her warm hotel room with its squishy bed and towelling robes. She thought of a meal in a candlelit bistro or brasserie. Behind the dirty windows she saw moving shadows, lights going on, curtains being pulled across. In the lowest window she saw a small man with a moustache and a scrubby beard sitting at a computer in a scruffy room with peeling paint on the walls, his face lit by the screen. A button by the door said ‘Concierge’.
Rachel stood for a moment, her fingertip extended towards it, weighing up her options. She could ask the building manager which room Lucy was in, and then what? Her cover would be blown before she’d even decided what she wanted to do. But she couldn’t stand out here all night either. Lucy and the children probably wouldn’t be going out now – it was getting dark – but as she thought this, she heard noises behind the front door and quickly moved out of the way; she stood in the next doorway down studying her phone. Glancing up, she saw the children leave the hostel, followed a second later by a willowy woman with long dark hair swept over one shoulder, a velvet coat, lace-up leather boots, and an instrument case slung across her back. On her head she wore a beanie hat with a furry pom-pom. The girl wore earmuffs now and the boy had a thick scarf wound high around his neck and a pair of ski mittens.