Katherine Debona - The Girl in the Shadows

Chapter 3

Alice

Alice sat on the 5.40 a.m. Eurostar from London to Paris. Her Lonely Planet guide lay on the table in front of her, Post-it notes sticking out at every angle. Next to it was a French edition of Alice in Wonderland . The cover’s stitched lettering was worn away from years of stroking the name her father had given her, in memory of a mother who read it out loud whilst pregnant. Tucked inside the first page was a letter from her father, her name written on the envelope in his neat, black script.

Ever since his death she couldn’t bring herself to read his farewell.

She pushed both books away, staring out of the rain-lashed window and wondering about the face reflected back at her. There were deep circles underneath her eyes, highlighted by the paleness of her skin that refused to tan even when subjected to two weeks on the beach. Her hair was thick and unruly, scraped back into a ponytail that sharpened the angles of her cheeks, the fullness of her mouth.

She had examined every detail of her face in the mirror countless times before, looking for clues, looking for her mother. And now there was a chance to find her, because her father had lied. She was alive. Her mother was alive.

***

Alice had watched them approach, two by two in some kind of banal nod to Noah’s ark.

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ The same trite apology, always accompanied by a drop of the eyes, a momentary touch of hand somewhere about her person.

Then she would reply with a false smile, ‘Thank you.’

What did the words mean? Were they anything more than the vibrations of muscle over bone? No one brave enough to speak the truth, to admit they had no idea what to say to an orphan, even one already grown.

She traced over the surface of the fossil in her palm – indentations on her skin catching the rough texture at one end, then finding comfort as it graduated to smooth. It was her talisman, her lucky charm, given to her by her father on her first day at school.

‘I can’t go in with you, poppet,’ he had said as he crouched down and adjusted the collar of her blouse, ‘but if ever you get nervous, give this a squeeze and know that I’ll be thinking of you.’ He handed over the fossil then, one they had found together during a trip to the coast.

She remembered running the very tip of her finger around its coils, feeling the grooves so well preserved. It fit snug in her hand, a reassurance hidden in the folds of her pinafore, a shared secret between father and child.

The fossil remained in its perpetual state, but as she had grown its necessity receded. Until now. Until today, when she had stood at the front of the school chapel and attempted to summarise her father’s life into a scribble of meaningless sentences.

The line of people trailed up the gravel path, a monotonous snake of greys and blacks, overshadowed by the grizzle of rain that seemed to follow the scent of death, seeking it out and reminding those in mourning that for some the sun would never shine again.

She scanned the faces as they came towards her, the accumulation of her father’s life, friendships and acquaintances gathered over the years. She listened to their accents as they passed on their condolences. Even now, on this day steeped in sorrow, she couldn’t help but wonder if someone connected to her mother would come.

The removal vans were arriving in the morning, which was why Alice forced herself to go into the study. She needed a copy of her birth certificate to send to the school she would be teaching at in Africa, but so far all searches had proven fruitless.

Looking around the room she was haunted by a ghost she could not see. The faded aroma of beeswax that he used to polish his leather chair. The ashtray still clinging on to particles left behind by his pipe, which lay upended next to the dragonfly fossil she had given him one Christmas. Sunlight filtered through the windows, catching layers of dust in its descent to the rug, the track of his thoughtful pacing evident where parts had been worn threadbare.

She still remembered the trepidation she felt as a child, knocking on the polished wood and waiting for permission to enter. It was her father’s private domain, where he spent the majority of his time when not at school. But it held no clue as to the man he was, contained no remnants from his past. Alice had learnt to accept this, that her father was not a sentimental man. This was not to say he did not provide for her, indeed he gave her the very best of everything. But what she longed for, now more than ever, was to know something about him, about the man he used to be before.

Before. It all came down to before. Before he died. Before the diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour. Before the move from a beloved home in County Durham. Before his wife died giving birth to their only child.

At first Alice found nothing more than folders full of receipts and utility bills, shelves full of books and a filing cabinet detailing the academic grades of every child in the school for the past sixteen years. Her own name sat between two others, just letters typed on a page.

Then she came across the box, stuffed at the back of the bottom drawer under a pile of periodicals. A small shoebox that had once contained a pair of her school plimsolls. Tucked inside were souvenirs of her childhood, each wrapped up in tissue paper. A baby tooth, a lock of hair. A tiny pair of pink, patent shoes, the thin laces still tied in a bow. Alice’s stomach constricted at the affection her father had struggled to show whilst alive.

At the bottom of the box was a plain, white envelope. The paper was soft with a hole on one corner and the glue had never been licked. Slipping her fingers inside Alice pulled out a photograph of a woman holding a young child, a girl. The woman’s hair was tied back in a chignon, lilac-grey eyes smiling at the camera. It was her mother.

Looking again at the photograph Alice took in the way her mother’s thumb rested on the child’s cheek, fingers curled protectively around her head. The girl was gazing up at her mother with one chubby hand grasping a pearl necklace nestled in the V at the base of her neck. Alice noticed that the child was wearing a red smock coat and pink patent shoes – the same shoes that now sat in a box atop her father’s desk. The child in the photograph was her. It was Alice.

Bile flooded her throat and stars appeared at the edge of her vision as she leant against the desk.

Her mother had died in childbirth. So who was the woman in this photograph? In all the photographs her father had ever shown her? Was it her mother, or someone else? But they had the same almond-shaped eyes, the same pronounced Cupid’s bow and full bottom lip. If this really was her mother, what did that mean?

Flipping the photograph over she was met by her father’s neat, black script.

‘Paris, 1997.’

So Alice would have been at least one, perhaps closer to two years old when the picture was taken. Was her mother alive? Or had she died at a later date? But then why would her father lie to her? Why say she was dead? Why on earth would he pretend that Alice had never known her mother, never laid eyes on her face? Then out of the depths of her mind came a darker, guilty question. Why did Alice not remember her?

She remembered what he had told her. Springtime in Paris, two students overladen with books as they rushed to escape a sudden downpour. A young woman tripping over her own feet, her father stopping to collect the papers she had dropped. Raindrops suspended on the edge of long, dark lashes as he removed black-rimmed glasses.

Her smile, the way it tugged at the very centre of his heart, and he knew in that moment he was lost to her.

She used to cuddle that memory, one of so few her father was willing to share. The perfection of it enchanted her, carried her through lonely nights and empty days of longing.