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As a child, I never had a day when I went hungry, or a night when I felt lonely. Agnesa lay next to me, or Aunt Polina. Mama and Papa were in the next room. Even the sound of water in the pipes or ice forming on the windows or Papa snoring made me feel safe.
I was an eavesdropper, a listener at doorways and at the top of the stairs. Sometimes, when my parents were entertaining downstairs, I would fall asleep lying on the landing listening to the murmur of the conversation and laughter. Papa would find me and carry me to bed, kissing my forehead as he set my head on the pillow.
When I was small, I loved to watch him cook. He hoisted me onto the kitchen bench beside the stove and I helped him rub pieces of meat with salt and preserved lemon, before he added spices and sealed meat inside a clay pot, which he half buried in glowing coals. Those same hands could carve up a carcass and saw wood and hammer nails but were also capable of the most graceful of gestures and the gentlest hugs and unbearable tickles. They could toss me high in the air and catch me under my arms and toss me even higher. From way up there above his head, I looked down at his wide, crooked smile, his cleft chin, his trimmed moustache, and his dark brown eyes, and I understood love.
Papa taught me how to fish and how to find worms and how to put them on a hook. He showed me how to make him tea and choose the best apples and propagate plants and graft one branch of a fruit tree on to another.
Memories like this catch in my throat, but at the same time, I know they’re beginning to fade. I sometimes struggle to remember his smell and the feel of his unshaven cheek against mine and the silly song that he sang about a billy goat. I wish Agnesa were here. We could help each other remember and talk about the things that I can’t discuss with Cyrus. Girl stuff.
Agnesa began as my orbiting moon, but became more like a comet, flashing across the sky, dashing in and out of the house, changing her clothes, grabbing something to eat, barely pausing to say hello or goodbye. She had friends. Hobbies. Admirers. I was an afterthought; a nagging, needy little sister, who wanted to be included and complained to Mama if I was left out.
The cottage only had two bedrooms, which meant that Agnesa and I shared a double bed, which annoyed her. We also took turns in the same water at bath-time, although Agnesa insisted on going first when the water was warmest because she accused me of peeing in the tub, which is probably true, but I still thought it unfair.
I didn’t realise we were poor, because everybody we knew was the same, except for our landlord, Mr Berisha, who owned a restaurant and a timber yard and lots of houses. He had five children, but only one son, Erjon, who was three years older than Agnesa, but in the same class at school because he had an IQ just above room temperature.
Being older, he was bigger and stronger than the other boys and liked to throw his weight and money around. He always had chocolate bars and soft drinks and American sneakers and Levi’s 501s, which none of us could afford. One of his favourite games was to open a bottle of Coca-Cola, take a sip, and leave it sitting in the middle of the road on a corner where the lumber trucks would release their brakes and accelerate after a long descent down the mountain. Boys would take up the challenge, dashing out from the trees and seizing their prize. Truck horns blasted, brakes screamed, and tyres left trails of rubber on the tarmacked road. Some drivers, pale-faced and trembling, would pull over further down the mountain, swing out of their cabs and yell curses, shaking their fists at the boys, who vanished like water soaking into the ground.
Until the day that Fisnik Sopa, aged thirteen, hesitated as he left the trees. Maybe because of his spectacles, or the scoliosis that bent his spine, or his unusually red hair, Fisnik was always a step behind where he should have been or wanted to be. And as he snatched up the soft drink bottle, grinning in triumph, the lumber truck bore down on him with locked brakes and smoking tyres.
Fisnik turned. Almost there. Almost safe. But the truck clipped his back heel, and he disappeared beneath the wheels. Bump. Bump. Bump. A red stain covered the road beside a shattered bottle and his crumpled body. Later, when the police came knocking, asking questions, nobody mentioned Erjon or the Coca-Cola or the dare.
12
Cyrus
DI Carlson finds me in the waiting room of the MRI suite. He’s holding a calico beach bag with my mobile phone, car keys, credit card, two towels and my flip-flops.
‘Someone handed this in at the station,’ he says.
‘My faith in humanity has been restored.’
‘I’ll need more proof.’ He glances through the observation window. ‘Your friend can speak Albanian.’
‘Evie was born there.’
He runs his fingers over his short-cropped hair. ‘I need her help.’
‘She’s not an interpreter.’
‘The boy keeps asking for her. He’s frightened. Jumping at shadows. Evie might be able to reassure him.’
‘I heard there was another migrant boat this morning.’
‘It came ashore further south. Sixteen on board.’
‘What about the bodies at Cleethorpes?’
‘Afghans, Syrians, Libyans and Iraqis. It could take us weeks to come up with names.’
‘I met a young lawyer last night, who has text messages from someone on board the boat that sank.’
Carlson is suddenly interested.
‘The messages suggest it might have been deliberately sunk.’
The detective doesn’t hide his scepticism. ‘Who is this lawyer?’
‘She works for Migrant Watch.’
