Katherine Debona - The Girl in the Shadows

Without needing to raise her gaze Veronique sensed the waiter approach and she moved her arm to cover the photograph on the table. She heard the change in his footfall, imagined his surprise as he looked from the left side of her face to the right and back again. She tilted her chin and smiled at him, the creases below her left eye intermingling with the deep scar that ran across her cheek, melted muscle and sinew preventing any symmetry across her features.

‘Madame?’ the waiter asked, standing a little too far from the table and eyes fixed on a spot just behind her.

‘C’est ton premier jour,’ she replied, ‘but tomorrow you won’t be new, so I’ll only forgive your mistake this one time.’ Holding her cup out she waited for him to take it. ‘Every morning it is the same. Espresso. Double, with a single shot of mocha and a spoon on the side.’

The waiter leant forward to take her cup, eyes widening as they focused on the uneven stretch of her skin over bone. He was about to return to the bar when she grabbed hold of his wrist, pulling him close.

‘Take a good look,’ she whispered. ‘Most people don’t get this close.’ She turned her left cheek towards him, exposing not only the silver scar that traversed one side of her face, but the milky sheen to her unseeing eye.

Dropping his arm she turned back towards the window, a shadow cutting her in two. At this time of day her scar would be hidden from passers-by as the sun rose over the square.

Veronique listened as he stumbled his way back to the bar, the intonation of his voice telling her what he was saying without the need to understand individual words. She was good at listening, on picking up the nuances in others’ speech, at the subtleties each pitch would bring to the words they were uttering. Years spent spying through doors left ajar and eavesdropping on conversations best left unheard had provided her with an excellent tool to aid her work as a private investigator.

Reaching into her bag Veronique unzipped an internal pocket to retrieve a small notebook. Unwrapping the cord she opened the book to a clean page, easing aside the spine and flattening the sheets underneath her palms. She picked up her fountain pen and began to make notes, her right eye flicking between the police report Christophe had managed to acquire and her own small, rounded script.

Usually she didn’t take this type of case, but there was something about the missing teenager that clawed at her, demanded she take a second look. Examining the photograph supplied to the police by the grieving mother, Veronique listed identifying features: blonde hair – mid-length with a natural curl, hazel eyes, small nose, beauty spot on the chin, six-inch scar running from left clavicle towards her elbow.

The resemblance was coincidental but unsettling. The girl had the same nervous, wide-eyed gaze: a gaze that hinted at a buried fear from which Veronique had been running ever since the night of the fire.

She sat back in her chair, placing the pen on her notebook and clasping her hands in front of her, determined not to bring her fingertips up to her face. She already knew her own scar by heart – had no need to touch it to remember each dip and fall of her tarnished skin, the way it would ache in the mornings if she had lain on the wrong side.

Is that all it was, she wondered? The scar? Or was it more to do with the money? She only needed a few more lucrative cases like this and she would have enough to make the final payment, no more ties to bureaucracy. Then the appartement would be hers, her own little piece of the city, along with stability and the possibility of a future.

There was more. The reminder of someone she was forever trying to forget. The idea of a lost daughter and an anxious mother waiting for her to come home. Something Veronique had never known. Besides, the opportunity to find holes in Guillaume’s investigation, to prove him wrong, was too much to resist.

The waiter returned, laying the coffee cup in front of her with a trembling hand.

‘Merci,’ Veronique said with a small nod, picking up the silver teaspoon in her left hand and stirring the dark, viscous liquid twice anticlockwise. After tapping the spoon on the rim of the cup she placed it on the saucer, curling the index finger of her right hand through the cup’s handle and bringing it to her mouth. She inhaled the bitterness before it made contact with her lips, feeling the heat pass over her tongue and down her throat.

‘Madame?’ the waiter asked, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

‘Yes, yes, you did well, young pup.’ Veronique waved the young man away as she took another sip of coffee.

‘ Excusez-moi, Madame , you like something to eat also?’

‘Are you suggesting that I should eat something?’ Veronique said, leaning her arm over the back of the chair, her silk T-shirt rising up to expose a toned stomach. ‘Or perhaps that I should not?’ A tease tugged at the corners of her mouth, the eyelashes on her good eye dipping to her cheek and back up again. She was fully aware of the effect she had on men, even with only half a face at her disposal.

The waiter’s gaze dropped to the pair of boxing gloves tied around one handle of Veronique’s handbag.

‘Laurent told me you always have the eggs,’ he said, eyes travelling up over her tanned thighs, pausing at the hem of her black lace shorts where the tail of a Celtic tattoo was broken by scar tissue. The waiter looked back up at her face, awaiting a response.

She understood what it was to have people stare at you, both from awe and shock. She had been truly beautiful once, before the fire, but now she was doomed to be a walking contradiction.

‘Nothing today, thank you,’ she said to the waiter, picking up the police file and reading the address of the missing girl, Mathilde Benazet. ‘I have somewhere to be.’

The square outside was busy with people criss-crossing one another as they began their day. Veronique stepped between them, her own footfalls intermingling with the sounds of Paris waking up. A moped sped over cobblestones, flicking up dew that stuck to her bare legs. The scent of the river Seine rose towards her as she looked behind to where the tip of the Eiffel Tower jutted over the rooftops.

Crossing the Solferino bridge, she ran a hand over the thousands of padlocks that had multiplied like germs to encompass the railings. She was intrigued by the sentimentality behind the ritual of locking one piece of metal to another and believing that it would prevent your love from ever breaking. This was only one of many such bridges in Paris, infested with people’s naivety.

Bypassing a group waiting at the lights she ran over the road and into the Jardins des Tuileries . The path was flanked either side by horse chestnut trees, the crunch of gravel underfoot doing little to muffle the growing sound of rush hour around the Louvre. She didn’t need to turn around to see the building, all four storeys rising out of the banks of the Seine, its glass pyramid like a shining beacon at its centre, drawing towards it tourists and locals alike. She wasn’t a huge fan of galleries, of being told which pieces were important enough for her to pay attention to, yet there was something comforting about wandering the halls, listening to muted conversations that bounced off the old masters.

A man passed at a jog, a small dachshund struggling to match his strides. Veronique followed them, watched as the man bent to pick up the dog and continued running towards the fountain at the far end of the park.

Veronique searched the park for a reason as to why Mathilde came here, to this specific park the night she disappeared. Was she meeting someone? Using the park as a cut-through to a different destination? Her digital imprint suggested a life focused on specific areas of the city: her appartement , university and then Montmartre near where she worked. Why then had she headed south, towards the river?