Simon looked at Deborah. “Did you know?” he asked.
“What?”
“That Orchid House is involved in the girl’s disappearance. The director of Orchid House, it seems.”
She glanced at the window. The sun was beating on the garden, announcing another steaming day. She said, “I suspected because of some things that were said. But that’s all.”
On the television, Charles Akin’s wife was saying to the journalist, “。 . . a rash act that’s been committed against us because my husband’s Nigerian. Yes, FGM is still practised in some few parts of Nigeria, but the Nigerian government, like our own, has outlawed it.”
“Yet it remains a practice in London amongst some families in the Nigerian and Somali communities,” the journalist pointed out.
“We would not ever allow any such thing to be done to our daughter,” Aubrey Hamilton said. “We’re being discriminated against because of my husband’s place of birth.”
On that note, the interview ended, the programme shifted back to the studio, and there suddenly was Zawadi, sitting with the presenters, one of whom said to her, “There you have it. Any comment?”
To Deborah, Zawadi looked completely uncowed by the interview she’d watched or by the question from the presenter, a woman in red with a helmet of blond hair that looked as if it would stay in place in the midst of a hurricane. “It’s very simple,” Zawadi said, sounding more than reasonable. “My comment is this: If parents have nothing to hide and desperately want their daughter returned, they will cooperate. They will do anything it takes to have her back. Our remit at Orchid House is to protect girls from harm and from the potential for harm.”
“Does that mean you maintain your belief that the Akin child will come to harm without your protection?”
“I maintain that Boluwatife is perfectly safe at the moment—as other girls who come to Orchid House are—and she will remain where she is until such a time as we are certain she will not be harmed.”
“But if she didn’t come to you on her own, if she was brought to you by two adolescents whom you refuse to identify—”
Cotter used the remote to switch off the telly. He looked at Deborah. He looked at Simon. Deborah saw their wordless exchange. “What’s going on?”
Simon poured both of them a coffee as her father went to the fridge and brought out eggs. As he passed the sugar and milk to her, Simon said, “Deborah, you do see that there’s a chance this woman’s a blind crusader, don’t you?”
Deborah became immediately hot when she heard his maddening paternal tone, the main trigger to every argument they had. “No, I do not see that. And she isn’t. Unless this woman’s passionate commitment to a cause equates to blind crusading these days.”
“A figure of speech. I apologise. And I do know you hate being lectured to or advised, particularly by me.”
“True. But you’re going to lecture and advise anyway, aren’t you.”
Cotter cleared his throat. Deborah knew very well that—despite the fact that she was his daughter—his first loyalty was always going to be to her husband. So she was not the least surprised when he said, “Could be that lady sees only what she wants to see, Deb. ’F you know something ’bout where the girl is—”
“I’ve already told you I know nothing.”
“How is that possible?” Simon asked her. “You’ve been there daily since—”
“For God’s sake. I’m white, Simon, which I presume you’ve noticed. That doesn’t exactly make me a figure of trust. London didn’t turn into a Utopia of racial equity while I was otherwise engaged, did it?”
“The girls are speaking to you, aren’t they?”
“That’s completely different, and you know it.”
A silence. The cat’s door flapped, announcing Alaska’s intention to join them. Peach was asleep in her basket and did not notice the nearly silent feline intrusion into her domain.
Simon looked down at his shoes, then up again. “Do you believe that those people—one a barrister and the other a physician—actually intended their daughter harm?”
“I don’t know. I’m not meant to know anything about this situation. But Orchid House exists to keep girls safe, and someone brought her to Orchid House for a reason. That needs to be sorted.”
“Shouldn’t cops do the sorting, Deb?” her father asked.