Page 57 of Deep Blue Lies
FIFTY-SIX
I look into Eleni’s strange dark eyes, and I know that I’ve seen her before. I know it has to be me.
“Callie? That’s my name?”
“The name of the baby,” Maria reminds me, but her voice seems to be coming from far away. “We don’t know for sure who the baby?—”
“Um, guys, you might want to look at this.” Sophia interrupts us both, her voice suddenly very serious. “Oh my God. This is kind of big.”
I look at her, with no idea what she’s saying.
“What is it?”
Eleni is still talking, opening the book now and showing us the contents. On one page a tiny envelope has been stuck down, the same light pink colour.
“What? Sophia? What’s she saying?”
“OK. I don’t know if this is going to be helpful, but I think it might. Apparently when Mandy Paul made this book, when the baby was born, she cut a lock of hair, it’s still here.”
Eleni pushes the envelope into my hands.
I catch the name on the front, the girlish script, the name, Callie Paul , but I’m pushed to open it, the flap is not stuck down.
Inside is a tiny cutting of hair, bound together with a rubber band and folded inside a thin strip of muslin.
I stare at it in wonder. A fragment of the past. So real I can finally touch it. My past.
“Um, so I think you’re getting this without the translation?
” Sophia goes on. “When Eleni took custody of the child, she got all this along with all the baby’s other things.
Only when she had to give the child away she kept it, to remember her.
And like, not an expert in forensics and everything, but with this you can prove it, no?
Like do a DNA test?” I turn back to look at Eleni, smiling her yellow-toothed smile at me, and now she breaks into a few words of English, stabbing a bony finger towards me.
“Remember you . ” She turns the finger back towards herself. “ Me. Remember you. ”
We go for lunch in a cafe overlooking Kastria’s main square.
While we eat Sophia takes the lead, trying to work out the practicalities.
Quickly we find that commercial DNA testing is available to ordinary members of the public like us, but it’s expensive and would take six to eight weeks to get an answer.
Maria shakes her head at this, and puts in a call to Papadakis again.
They speak in Greek and I don’t understand anything of what’s said, except for the look of surprise on Sophia’s face as she listens in.
When Maria finally hangs up her face is heavy.
“What?”
“He says he will help. He still has a contact at the testing laboratory the police use. He believes they can get an answer in just a few days. If this is what you want?”
It takes me a moment to realise this is a real question. Is this what I want? But I know the answer. I never imagined it could happen like this, but after all these years, I’m finally going to know.
“Yes. I want to know.”
After lunch we drive back to Papadakis’ house, and wait in the kitchen while he rummages in a drawer for an old Covid testing kit. He explains that the same swab used to check for the Covid virus can be used to take a sample of my DNA, to compare against the hair from the baby.
“Here.” He finds what he’s looking for and hands me the test. For a second it’s weird. There was that time when all these things were so familiar. Now I’d almost forgotten they exist, it’s like a reminder that time moves on, our realities with it. But it only lasts a second.
“May I see the hair sample?”
I give him the envelope and he opens it carefully, then takes it out and inspects it.
“There may be a problem.”
“What?” It’s Maria who answers. He turns to her.
“The hair sample does not contain any remains of the root. Hair fibres only contain mitochondrial DNA, not the nuclear DNA we would usually use to perform a DNA test.”
I feel a wobble of worry. Don’t do this, not now.
“Does that mean we can’t run the test?” I ask.
“No,” – he shakes his head seriously – “not exactly. Mitochondrial DNA can tell us if you and the baby come from the same mother – in this case the murdered girl, Mandy Paul. We cannot say anything about the paternal line. We cannot test if you and this baby share a father, the information will not be there.”
It takes me some time to understand this, because it seems so simple. If the baby is simply me, wouldn’t the test be really easy, to show this? But Sophia gets there quicker.
“But that doesn’t really matter? If Ava is this baby, then obviously they’re both going to show the same mum? And that’s what she wants to know?”
“Yes,” Papadakis nods. He takes the hair sample and slips it into a plastic bag taken from the testing kit.
Then he watches while I rub the swab around the inside of my cheek.
When I’m done I slide it into the plastic tube and fit the stopper.
I hand it over. Papadakis seals the bag with practised ease, and I watch as my name is written neatly across the label.
“When will we know?” Sophia asks .
Papadakis keeps writing as he answers. “A few days,” he says. “I’ll let Maria know.”
He puts the tube down, with the words Ava Whitaker written down the side.
My name. Ava Whitaker. Except, if this test comes back positive, it won’t be my name anymore.