The Girl Below(57)

“Is that what I am?”

My father looked ever so slightly troubled. “It’s more that we came to New Zealand to start a new life. That’s why everyone comes here.”

“A new life,” I repeated. “Without the old one.”

Ludo plunged his hands into his pockets and looked at the ground. “It was your mother’s idea not to keep in touch. She thought it would be easier for everyone, and I went along with it.”

It was easier for him, I could see, to say that it had been her idea. And I would never know whether that was true or not.

My coach arrived, and Ludo carried my pack over to the luggage compartment. He pulled out a white envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. “Don’t open it until you’re on the bus,” he said. “I really am sorry about Hillary.”

I took the envelope and hoped for a moment that it held instructions for what I should do next, but it was too light, too thin, for that.

“It isn’t much,” he said. “But I hope it helps.”

The bus was almost empty, and I found a window seat and stowed my bag on the overhead rack. Ludo’s sedan was still in the car park, but as the bus pulled away, I couldn’t see him anywhere. I tore open the envelope as soon as I sat down. In it was a check for eight hundred dollars, made out to cash: an extravagant amount, a respectable charity donation. I folded the envelope carefully and pushed it to the bottom of my backpack, out of sight, but not entirely out of mind. I wondered what I’d buy with the money, or if I was the one being bought.





Chapter Twelve


London, 2003





When alone in other people’s houses, I figured everyone snooped, even if just a little bit, glancing at a private letter, opening a drawer that was already ajar. I hadn’t meant to do so much of it at Pippa and Ari’s house while they were away, but I seemed to be so often bored, and the only one there. I was in their bedroom one afternoon when the phone rang and I jumped, feeling caught red-handed. I was shaking when I picked up the receiver and heard Pippa’s voice on the other end.

“It’s only me,” she said. “We’ve arrived on Skyros—though I’d hardly say in one piece.” The journey had been arduous. On the way, Peggy had fallen ill with a mysterious travel-related ailment—Pippa’s tone implying that it was all in the old lady’s head. In Athens, they’d taken Peggy to a doctor, but she’d pronounced his surgery unclean and had refused to be treated by him, forcing Ari to sneak back and beg him to write out a prescription for penicillin, codeine, tranquilizers—anything to stop her complaining. Since arriving in Skyros she’d made a miraculous recovery and was now spending her waking moments directing Ari’s mother and aunts in the shifting of furniture and beds. “I’m already exhausted,” said Pippa, coming to the end of her tale. “I think we shall just send Mummy back in a cardboard box.” She paused. “I don’t mean that, of course.”

She sounded disappointed when I told her Caleb was out, and said she’d call back in a day or two to speak him. “I’d get you to call us, but Elena doesn’t have a phone.”

Earlier in the day, Caleb and I had had a quarrel of sorts after he’d come into the kitchen, accidentally knocked a bottle of sweet chili sauce out of the fridge, then left the resulting red gunk and broken glass to seep across the floor. I had been walking around it for an hour when he reappeared downstairs with his jacket on.

“I’m going out,” he’d said.

“And the sauce?”

He’d looked at it, then at me. “What about it?” he said.

“Well, aren’t you going to clean it up?”

He had zipped up his jacket and was already heading for the door, but just before he got there, the little shit had turned around and said, “You should get out more.”

He was right about my getting out more, but instead I had mopped up the sauce then gone upstairs and wandered into Pippa and Ari’s room. It was promisingly messy but no intrigue was forthcoming. They did not seem to hold on to letters or even newspapers, and most of the paperbacks on the nightstand were dusty but unread. Under the bed, I’d found a decrepit rowing machine left over from some nineties fitness fad and a few odd socks, but nothing uncommon. Especially no diaries or journals. Married folk suffered angst, I was sure, but I supposed they couldn’t very well write it down in a notebook for their spouse to discover and read.

On the opposite side of the room from the bathroom, there was a walk-in closet, knee deep with piles of ground-down sneakers and stilettos, and more clothes on the floor than on hangers. I had been peering into it when the phone rang.