“Zawadi,” Deborah said. “Commanding presence and compelling voice?”
“I’ve thought about her, more than once. She’s not a celebrity but the rest is definitely there.”
“And?”
“I’m giving her . . . let’s call it ‘space’ for the moment. She’s not happy with me, and flexibility is not her middle name.” Narissa bent over the map. She was holding a red felt-tip pen, and she used it to mark smallish dots on various sites. She said, “Peckham Common will work. The Somali Community Centre, Myatt’s Fields Park in Camberwell, St. Thomas’ Hospital, Middle Temple. No. Not Middle Temple. Stupid idea. Not Myatt’s Fields. What am I thinking? Brixton Market is better.”
“What’ll they provide?”
“A backdrop for the narrator so she’s not sitting behind a boring desk or in front of an equally boring bookcase. Also footage to be used when the narrator’s off-camera and doing a voice-over.”
“In front of a schoolyard with children—all girls—at play. A children’s play area?”
“There was one on Camberwell Green. There’s another at the far end of Peckham Common.”
“Children playing, children’s voices. The voices fade out as the narrator speaks?”
Narissa glanced in her direction and gave her a smile that appeared only halfway reluctant. “You could be good at this,” she said.
“Thanks. Nice to know there’s a second career waiting out there for me. Can I ask you something?”
Narissa capped her red pen. “Ask away.”
“Can we . . . ?” Deborah indicated the out-of-doors. Narissa followed her outside and onto the green. It was lined with pollarded acacia trees, oddly umbrella-like in appearance. Deborah led her to one of them. She said, “I’ve been thinking a bit about this girl who’s disappeared, the one with the long name but they call her Bolu. Do you know about her?”
Narissa was silent for a moment before she said, “I saw it on the telly. What about her?”
“I was struck . . . Well, this morning I saw a copy of The Source.”
“You were lining your dustbin, I hope.”
Deborah smiled. “Walking the dog. I found The Source along the way. There was a story—on the front page and inside—about her parents.”
“What about them?”
“It’s just that when Bolu first disappeared, she was with two teenagers and they were on the Central Line, coming from Gants Hill.”
“And?” Narissa was distracted momentarily by the arrival of her two technicians. She called to them, “I’m set up already. I’ll be along directly.” And then to Deborah, “What’s your point?”
“Just that the Central Line goes through Mile End, and if they changed trains there for the District Line? And then got off at Stepney Green?”
“The girl’s at risk,” Narissa said.
“So Zawadi—”
“All you need to know is that she’s at risk, Deborah. The girl said something. Someone overheard. The pieces were put together. That’s all it takes. So if you want to prove yourself more than a white Lady Bountiful snapping away with her expensive camera, you’ll keep everything you know and everything you think you know to yourself.”
That said, Narissa turned and made her way to the chapel. When she got to the steps, she turned and said, “Do you understand what I’m talking about?”
Deborah nodded. She walked back to the chapel, back to her pictures.
THE MOTHERS SQUARE
LOWER CLAPTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Mark Phinney knew that he couldn’t go on in this way. He had responsibilities coming at him from every corner of his life, and, while he was meeting them at work, he wasn’t meeting them with a decent degree of professionalism. He also wasn’t meeting them with a surplus of compassion, empathy, love, or whatever else at home. At Empress State Building he was fast mastering the art of listening without listening, as well as taking in and reading reports on activities without actually digesting a thing. He attempted to hide his growing indifference to the job at hand as well as his grudging acceptance of his duties to his wife and his daughter. But whereas he was fairly competent at hiding his lack of interest at work, at home he could hide virtually nothing when it came to Pete.
He didn’t wish to be read by his wife. He wished to be free. He wanted desperately to be out in public, finished with clandestine meetings that left him feeling three times the traitor to everything he once believed in, and to everything else he’d once held dear. He could cope with the guilt, with the betrayal of his marriage vows, with the many ways he was failing his colleagues, with the entertaining of unspoken wishes about his only child. What he could not cope with—and had not even once anticipated—was falling in love and having to suffer the consequences of that love in a situation in which any move he made was going to crush someone.