Josie nods and beckons me forward. I kneel beside her chair and set the journal and box in her lap. She looks down at them in blank surprise at first and then a smile slowly spreads across her face like a sunrise. ‘My treasures.’
I take her hands in mine. ‘I found them. I’ve been keeping them safe for you,’ I say, my voice low, trembling with all the conflicting emotions I’m trying to hold in. ‘I hope you don’t mind, I read your story. I thought you were lost, like them. But now I’ve found you, too.’
The backs of her hands are covered in ornate henna designs and I stroke them very gently with my thumbs. ‘And look,’ I say, with a smile. ‘You no longer bite your fingernails.’
She turns my own hands over and inspects the raw, scaly skin, taking in the scarlet welts and the painful cracks across my knuckles. ‘Zoe,’ she says, as if trying out my name. ‘Zoe, who has read my story. But I see you have a story of your own to tell. And so you’ve come looking for the dreamseller.’
‘I don’t have a story, really. I just haven’t been sleeping too well lately. Partly because I was searching for you in my dreams, I think. And now that I’ve found you and I know that you were saved, I’ll probably be fine.’ I push to the back of my mind the knowledge that I’ll be leaving both my marriage and Casablanca soon, and the thoughts of how hard the future will be as Tom and I go through the cold formalities of a divorce.
She fixes her piercing green eyes on my face and shakes her head. ‘These hands do not belong to a woman who is “fine”。 I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll finish telling you my story.’ She pats the journal in her lap. ‘After all, I didn’t get the chance to complete it in here. And the ending turned out to be somewhat different from the one you’d probably expected, as real-life endings so often do. Would you like that?’
I nod.
‘And then,’ she continues – and something in the tone of her voice tells me this is not a question but a statement of fact – ‘when you’ve finished listening to my story and you feel ready, you will tell me yours.’
Zoe – 2010
Nina is highly protective of Josie. When I return to the riad a few days later, she brings us mint tea in the courtyard and hovers anxiously until Josie tells her to stop fretting and come and join us, patting the cushions beside her.
Josie turns to me. ‘Nina worries that you will tire me out. My mind can be a little treacherous at times. Not for nothing did my sister christen me the mad woman in the attic! It turned out to be prophetic.’
Nina protests. ‘Now Josie, you know we don’t think you’re crazy. You just have to be careful not to overdo it.’
Josie pats her hand fondly, then continues, ‘Trauma can do strange things to the mind, can’t it, Zoe? Sometimes mine simply shuts itself down when I try to approach things that are too much to bear. That’s why I can become a bit vague at times. It’s a sort of safety valve, I suppose. But necessary, I think, until we find other ways to bear the pain.’
I squirm a little under the piercing gaze of those sea-green eyes and try to resist the urge to pick at the frayed edges of my fingernails. She’s talking about herself, but it’s as if she’s reading my mind as well. She knows nothing about me and yet she has a disconcerting way of talking to me as if she’s known me for years.
‘Thank you for giving me back my journal,’ she continues. She’s had it for a few days now, to give her a chance to reread it before telling me what happened to prevent her from taking it with her when she left the house in the Boulevard des Oiseaux. Nina insisted it would be wise to give her some space to do so, to allow Josie some time with her memories first. ‘It’s been good reminding myself of my previous life. How privileged we were! And yet we were stuck here along with all the other refugees fleeing the war. As helpless as little white mice. But you will want to know how I came to leave behind my most treasured possessions, and what became of us all.’ She opens the journal at the last page, reminding herself where she left off, almost seventy years ago. Then she nods and begins.
‘On the Saturday evening, Nina and I went to the library on my bike, to return my books. Back at home, my suitcase was packed. All I’d need to do was put the last few things in a bag I’d carry with me on board the ship the following week. But, although Maman had everything well organised, we hadn’t reckoned on the Americans attacking. I was in the library, returning the last of my books and saying my goodbyes to Mademoiselle Dubois, when Annette came tearing in. Maman was in a taxi waiting outside. The news had come through that the Americans were about to invade further along the coast and the ships in the harbour were preparing to leave immediately. We had to go, right now. I protested, of course, that I needed to go back to the house, to fetch my most treasured belongings. But Maman said there was no time, we had to get to the port straight away. She had my suitcase in the taxi, that was all I could take. I think Annette must have known how desperate I was feeling because she gave my hand a little squeeze of sympathy, but there was no going back.