The Disappearance of Emily Marr (8 page)

I wondered what it was that Sylvie did. I suspected amateur interior design or some unprofitable enterprise involving semi-precious stones; she’d be her own boss, certainly, no kneeling on shop floors among the piggy-banks for her. As for Arthur, I had of course Googled him since our last meeting and knew now that he was celebrated and revered, one of the top specialists in the world in an area of eye medicine called strabismus, his reputation having been established many years ago when he had treated a member of the Royal Family who had suffered problems with his vision following a stroke. My fifteen minutes on Matt’s laptop had also told me that he worked in a private practice in Harley Street as well as at St Barnabas’, and had in fact two secretaries, not one, to make his restaurant reservations and calls to the plumber. There were strings of letters after his name, a name he lent, along with several days’ surgical time a year, to a charitable enterprise in a West African country. He appeared occasionally in the society pages.

‘Well, I don’t see why it
shouldn’t
compare,’ Nina said, ‘just because he’s a famous surgeon. I mean it’s not like it’s anything heroic, is it? Like A&E or heart transplants for babies. It’s just squints. Double vision. Come on, most of us can cure that by cutting down our wine intake a couple of nights a week.’

‘Yes, well,
I
did, I suppose, didn’t I?’ They both hooted at this private allusion, Arthur’s wife’s laugh a low, bitter sound that lasted longer than Nina’s barking staccato. Though Sylvie’s humour was self-deprecating, I could tell she greatly enjoyed this opportunity for irreverence towards her husband. I supposed it didn’t come her way very often, not if my own rapt response to him was anything to go by, and that Nina gave her the confidence to rebel. I sneaked a longer look at Nina. Though nervous of her in a primal way, I could easily appreciate her appeal: she was bold and strong and funny. It was she who drove the mood of the conversation, championing her friend with a gusto none of mine did me (nor I them). How had Sylvie, a pale, complaining creature, won her as a friend – or Arthur as a husband, for that matter? Had she once been different? I longed to know the full story of it. And so did other people, for I could tell that I was not the only one eavesdropping: several customers had let their own conversations lapse in order to listen in. Even for this place, Sylvie and Nina were being indiscreet, something I put down to pure arrogance. At parties or when among their own kind, they were probably more vigilant, but somewhere like this, where it was mainly mothers with younger children, or people who’d travelled from other, lesser postcodes, or staff who were by definition below consideration (so far below as to be underground, I thought wryly), there was no need for caution. Everybody counts, Arthur had said to me, but for women like these two that was not true. No one else mattered, except for those in their own lofty sphere.

That wasn’t to say that once in a while someone or something outside it would not catch their eye, as I did now when I shifted my position on the floor and rolled back my tensed-up shoulders to ease the beginnings of an ache, sliding the half-full box closer to the storage unit.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ Nina called out, regarding me with interest. As Sylvie reached the front of the queue and handed over the plate for wrapping, she took a step towards me, evidently enjoying this test of her memory. ‘Where would it be from…?’

‘You might have seen me here before?’ I suggested timidly. Under her direct beam, my skin reacted, stinging with sudden high colour.

‘That’s not it, I never come here. Weren’t you at Marcus and Sarah’s party at Christmas?’

‘I was,’ I said, swallowing. ‘I live next door to them. But I don’t think we met, did we?’

She looked amused by the idea that I might not be sure, might be able to consider her in any way forgettable. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Emily Marr.’

‘Emily Marr,’ she repeated, not exactly with distaste but with a certain precision, as if sensing it would benefit her to remember it. ‘Nina Meeks,’ she offered in return, and her name caused a noticeable catch in the atmosphere. If anyone had been in any doubt as to who this droll, charismatic woman was, they knew now.

‘I’m at the other end of the Grove from Sarah,’ she told me. ‘I won’t say which number out loud, though. You never know where your enemies might be hiding.’

I thought it interesting that she should withhold her address when she’d been so happy to air her private thoughts about her husband – and Sylvie’s.

‘And this is another neighbour, Sylvie Woodhall. Have you met before?’

As Sylvie turned at the sound of her name, I rose, unwilling to remain on my knees, subservient and reduced. ‘No, we haven’t. It’s nice to meet you. I think I might have met your husband,’ I added, but regretted it at once because it was clear from her glower that, whatever her similarities with Nina, she did not possess the other’s self-assurance. The idea that I knew her husband (and had stood to announce the fact) was not received as the casual claim I’d intended it to be. She was an anxious, suspicious spouse, evidently, and I knew better than to show I’d recognised this by blurting some unnecessary detail.

The exchange ended as Aislene handed Sylvie her wrapped package. ‘There we go. I hope your sister likes the design. It’s come out really well, hasn’t it?’

Sylvie just nodded, evidently too preoccupied to respond to the pleasantry, while Nina turned dismissively from me, from this port of call and back to her friend. ‘Right, Sylv, I think we deserve some lunch, don’t you?’

As they left I heard her say, ‘You hope what?’ There came more of that distinctive, lupine laughter. ‘Oh,
don’t
be ridiculous, darling. No chance, he wouldn’t dare, not after last time.’

My shelves restocked, I began collapsing the cardboard boxes, wondering what fear of Sylvie’s Nina had pre-empted, wondering when ‘last time’ had been and whether it was anything to do with the achievement of ‘almost two years’ that she had earlier been urging her friend to celebrate.

Wondering why my face burned so hot.

Chapter 5

Tabby

Emmie’s employer was an Englishwoman called Moira, the proprietor of an agency that managed seasonal lets and supplied cleaners and maintenance staff to the owners of second homes on the island. She lived with her French husband and children on the mainland, travelling to her office in La Flotte across the same bridge with which Tabby was determined to avoid being reacquainted. She was in her fifties and had a pleasant face, blurred but not ruined by the decades, and a quiet, measured manner that Tabby guessed must once have been brisk and eager.

‘Tell me a bit about yourself,’ she said.

This was not a question that could ever silence Tabby; the trouble was selecting from the ready outpouring those details that might actually be relevant. ‘I’m twenty-five and I’m in France for the summer, maybe longer if things work out. I have
huge
amounts of energy.’ It was true that since taking residence at Emmie’s she had avoided getting under her benefactress’s feet by taking long walks along the coast and through the vineyards, exploring her temporary home with the wonder of a newcomer to Eden. ‘Emmie sent me,’ she added. ‘She said I had the right experience.’

At Emmie’s advice, she had turned up at Moira’s office without an appointment at twelve-thirty. During the lunchtime hours of noon till two, when the French did not do business, the British had time to fill. She had been admitted at once.

Moira listened to her plea, complete with claims of experience that were not quite true but that Tabby was reasonably confident could be lived up to, and seemed content to accept them as reference enough. Even at first glance Tabby could tell she was one of those middle-aged women who had retained a soft spot for the young, even a fond memory of it, as opposed to the envy or begrudging of it that you were sometimes faced with in women past their best (her mother sprang to mind, though Tabby was expert in the rapid extinguishing of any thought of
her
). Perhaps it was this that made it so easy to imagine how love had once led Moira to this foreign place – she’d met her husband on holiday, Tabby decided; it had begun as a seasonal romance – and how, twenty or thirty years later, as she worked from a small first-floor office above an
immobilier
, an estate agent, in La Flotte, the exhilarations of love had had to be consigned to history, her marriage now moribund.

But she was being ridiculous. There was nothing in Moira’s face to suggest disappointment or resignation. She needed to conquer this compulsion to project her own miseries on to everyone she met. She needed to stop the self-indulgent fantasies and focus on raising herself from penury.

‘I’m
very
keen to work,’ she declared, not sure if she had already said this. ‘No job is too low.’

‘Well, I can always use a hard worker,’ Moira said, ‘and your timing is good.’ This was not a comment Tabby had heard much lately. ‘I have several clients who are letting their homes from the end of this month right through to late September and there’ll be regular changeover work on the weekends.’

‘What does that entail?’ Tabby asked in earnest tones.

‘Basically, you clean up after one lot and get it brand-spanking-new for the next. A quick inventory check in case anything’s missing or broken. We usually do check-out at eleven in the morning and check-in at three, so you’ve got four hours to turn it around. But sometimes it’s just a couple of hours. It’s very hard work, especially in the summer months when it gets very hot here. Do you think you can handle it? Are you fit?’

‘Very. I just walked here from Saint-Martin and yesterday I walked twenty kilometres to Loix and back.’

‘That’s quite a hike. Do you not have your own bike or car?’

‘Not yet. I’ll use the bus.’ The idea of owning a car was about as likely as being crowned the Queen of Sheba. ‘Would I need my own cleaning materials?’ This could be a deal breaker; she couldn’t afford to buy products, and even if she had the cheek to ask to borrow some from Emmie, her new friend would surely need them for herself.

‘No, it’s all stored in the individual houses. If you need to get something urgently, you buy it and I’ll reimburse you when you submit a receipt.’

Tabby prayed that wouldn’t happen before she was paid. Having given Emmie twenty, she was down to her last few euros now.

A thought occurred. ‘I wouldn’t be taking work from
Emmie, would I? She would still get first refusal?’

Moira eyed her with interest. ‘I’m impressed by your loyalty, though, as I say, there should be enough jobs to go around.’ She paused. ‘How do you know her? You came to the island together, did you?’

‘No, we just met a few days ago, actually. I’m staying in her spare room in Saint-Martin. I came along just as she was thinking of getting a lodger. I’ve been very lucky.’

‘Yes.’ Moira drew her lips between her teeth and bit down. Tabby wondered what she was trying not to say. ‘Emmie’s not everyone’s cup of tea,’ she offered finally, ‘she keeps herself to herself. But if you’re as diligent as she is, I’ll be very happy.’

‘I will be.’

‘For your first job, I’ll come along and show you the ropes. There’s a bit of juggling at first but you’ll soon get the hang of it. What’s your phone number?’

‘My phone isn’t working at the moment,’ Tabby admitted, ‘and I don’t think we’ve got a landline.’ Nor was there an internet connection in the house, Emmie had told her, and sooner or later she was going to need to find a way to get online. ‘Should I call in every so often instead?’

‘Yes, or I can get you on Emmie’s mobile, presumably? I’ve been texting her her client details a day or two before each job. It’ll be easier in a few weeks when you get regular slots and keep a set of keys yourself.’

‘I’m sure that would be fine,’ Tabby said.

As she pedalled back to Saint-Martin on the bicycle she’d borrowed from Emmie, she marvelled once more at her extraordinary reversal of fortune. As if those inauspicious beginnings had never occurred, Emmie had in the space of forty-eight hours assumed the role of landlady, colleague, even mentor. That a sensible private citizen should take in a penniless drifter, offer her a home and expect rent only in arrears; that she should find her work and share her only means of transport: it was almost too good to be true – and at exactly the point at which Tabby had thought things too awful to believe.

What was it that had made Emmie choose to trust her? For that was what it was, a deliberate choice, that almost magical moment when she had turned to Tabby with the mugs of tea, her face alight with the decision that she was going to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was going to give her a break. Tabby was not at all certain that she herself would have been so generous had their positions been reversed. Well, she would learn from Emmie, she vowed. Just because kindness had become a rare commodity, it didn’t mean it should be treated with suspicion.

Besides, she had a good feeling about the island generally. Not yet swollen with the throngs she knew to expect in high season, it was a tranquil place, a haven from the Atlantic, which at full tide lashed savagely at the sea walls. When the tide was out, the shores heaped with glossy black seaweed and scarred with oyster beds, it felt more as if the place was forgotten, abandoned even by the ocean, a mood that suited her circumstances perfectly.

Her walks over the last two days had revealed a join-the-dots trail of small, low villages with old cobbled streets and handsome stone churches; she’d seen an antique bandstand, a medieval market, row after row of shuttered fishermen’s cottages. By chance, Saint-Martin appeared to be the jewel in the crown, the warren of streets contained within grand, star-shaped fortifications built centuries ago by some famous military engineer called Vauban. She’d studied a booklet from the tourist information office, feeling a certain pleasure in not being a tourist. She had switched sides, she was to be a cleaner
for
tourists. She would clean, she would save her earnings and live frugally, she would make some sort of plan, build herself a future.