*
That night, Nisha still hadn’t returned. I made some dinner, but Aliki wasn’t hungry. She sat in front of the TV.
‘Your food is on the table. I’ve covered it to keep it warm,’ I said. ‘I’m just popping out to speak to Mrs Hadjikyriacou next door. Find out if she’s seen Nisha. I’ll be outside if you need anything.’
Aliki nodded and continued to watch the news, which I’m sure she wasn’t really paying any attention to. She seemed preoccupied, and she was sucking the knuckle of her index finger as she had done when she was much younger.
I’d never paid much attention to the other maids in our neighbourhood before. The maids here did everything – they were hired and paid （lower than the minimum wage） to clean the house, but ended up being child-carers, shop assistants, waitresses. Outside, two women, probably Filipinos, walked along the street with a young Cypriot child between them – a little girl with pigtails, holding each by the hand. She ran and skipped and they lifted her by the arms. In a house down the road a maid whacked the dust out of a rug on the railing of the porch. She waved at the two who were passing. Now, turning the corner, another maid was being pulled along by a huge sand-coloured hunting dog. Outside, Yiakoumi’s shop, yet another maid was bringing in the antiques – displayed on a table during the day – in order to shut up shop for the night. To the right, Theo’s restaurant was starting to get busy, as it was close to dinner time. His two Vietnamese maids dashed about in their rice hats, holding drinks or trays of dips. Each time I saw one of these women, my heart dropped, hoping that Nisha might appear beside them.
Right next door sat Mrs Hadjikyriacou, who Aliki called the Paper-Lady. She was sitting on her usual deckchair, in the front garden next door to ours. Her skin was so white and creased that she looked as though someone had scrunched her up into a ball and opened her up again. She sat there most of the day, and late into the evening, sometimes until midnight, watching the day go by, the seasons change, and she remembered everything – her mind like a journal, full of pages and pages of the past, or at least every bit of the past that has walked her way. It is a well-known fact that her hair turned white overnight, during the war, when the island was divided. That’s when she started storing everything in her mind, so that nobody could take her soul from her. This is what she told me once, many years ago.
She sat there now, perched on her chair, watching TV, which had been brought outside; the wire was stretched almost to breaking point, plugged into a socket in the living room. She spat phlegm into a handkerchief, inspected it, then shouted at the TV. She was furious, it seemed, about a decision the president had made.
I hoped that she might have seen Nisha leave.
I watched as her maid came out with a tray of fruit and water, placing it on a small table by the old lady’s side.
‘I don’t want any,’ she said, flicking her wrist in dismissal, and the maid mumbled something in her own language before returning to whatever she had been doing inside. This maid was new and hadn’t yet learned a word of Greek or English, so they communicated with their respective mother tongues, plus gestures and eye-rolls.
As usual the Paper-Lady was surrounded by cats, all of which Aliki had named. One of the cats was sitting to attention, staring at her, meowing.
‘What is it, my dear?’ she asked, with a sigh. ‘What is it, my darling sesame dough? You want to drink? You want to eat? Come to me and I’ll kiss you!’ In response, the cat turned its back to her. Then, without even looking my way, she lowered the volume on the TV, and said, ‘Petra, come over and have some fruit.’
I approached, with usual pleasantries about the weather, taking a slice of orange out of courtesy, and then I asked whether she had seen Nisha the previous night or, in fact, that morning.
Sitting back with her fingers laced together, she searched her mind, her head tilted slightly to the right, towards the light of Yiakoumi’s shop. She fixed her gaze on the window display. ‘According to seven of Yiakoumi’s clocks, it was ten thirty when I saw her. According to one, it was midnight.’
I waited for her to say more but instead she scooped up one of the cats and placed it on her lap. The black cat’s eyes were gold, with an area of patchy blue that looked like the Earth from a great distance.
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘She was in a hurry. She said something about meeting a man.’
‘Who?’
‘Do you think if I sniff my nails they will tell me the answer?’ Her stock phrase.