Page 26
Feeling she could get used to hanging out poolside in Florida, this time at Gabe’s intriguing Floral Grove residence where a small forest of climbing plants and huge, colourful pots filled the deck, Cristy watched Evie pour tea over five large glasses of ice, while Lukas settled himself next to Gabe at a mosaic-topped table. An assortment of delicious chocolate-chip cookies, taken from the club, was laid out centre stage and managing to look almost as irresistible as the gently lapping blue water beside them. Beyond the exclusive garden the sprawling pond that was actually a lake shimmered and rippled in the glorious afternoon sun.
The whole place was, without a doubt, a little piece of heaven set amongst the development’s many other secluded homesteads, some vast, others discreet, all in their own grounds, while this one, occupying the end of a leafy cul-de-sac seemed to have a charm all of its own. The exterior was whitewashed and gleaming behind its shining, exotic foliage, while the interior was airy and light, filled with unusual and beautiful paintings – apparently many done by Gabe – and various treasures collected during their travels around the world.
‘Have you ever been to the South of France?’ Cristy had thought to ask.
‘Oh yes, several times,’ Evie assured her, ‘but not for a few years. I think the last time was when we visited an old friend of Gabe’s in a small town called Vence. Do you know it?’
‘Not really,’ Cristy replied. ‘And do you all live here, in this house?’ she’d asked, as Evie showed them through to the garden.
‘We do,’ Evie had confirmed with a smile. ‘Gabe has his studio and private rooms upstairs, and Lukas and I have a lovely suite in the West Wing.’ She giggled. ‘The place isn’t big enough to have wings,’ she added quietly, ‘but it’s what we like to call it. Mostly though we’re here, in the kitchen and sitting room, or out on the deck – when we’re not going about our busy days, of course. We enjoy one another’s company, which is lucky or this little arrangement would never have worked.’
Arrangement?
‘Are you here all year round?’ David was asking Lukas now, as Cristy admired a vividly coloured sculpture, apparently from Sicily. ‘I’m just thinking of how hot Florida gets in summer,’ he added.
‘Oh boy does it,’ Lukas agreed. ‘No, we close the place up in April and drive to Wisconsin where we generally stay until just before Thanksgiving.’
‘What’s in Wisconsin?’ Cristy wondered as Evie passed around the iced tea.
‘Lake Geneva,’ Evie replied. ‘Gabe’s cousin, Salina, has two cottages on the shore. We always take the smaller one and very often Verity and her family are in the other. We were hoping you’d meet her while you’re here – she and her husband have a place at Port Royal, that’s the really fancy neighbourhood of Naples – but they’re in Brazil right now and we’re not sure when they’re back.’
Unable to imagine – at least for the moment – anything much fancier than where they were, Cristy said, ‘So how did you all come to be here?’
Evie twinkled. ‘It’s all down to Verity,’ she replied, as if sharing a secret. ‘If it weren’t for her heaven knows where any of us would have ended up, especially Gabe. Howeeeever,’ she drew out the word, ‘we thought we’d start at the beginning – or Lukas will, and Gabe will fill things in as we go.’ Lowering her voice she added, ‘You’ve probably already gathered that he’s not much of a talker, but rest assured he takes everything in and he feels things very deeply even if he doesn’t always show it.’
Wondering, not for the first time, if Gabe, apart from being photophobic, might have other issues, Cristy discreetly set up to record. Perhaps he’d suffered some sort of damage from drug abuse over the years? Certainly his reticence was marked, and the way he occasionally veered off subject could be both disconcerting and puzzling.
‘So, are we all ready?’ Evie asked, rubbing her hands excitedly.
‘Bring it on,’ Lukas encouraged, while Gabe managed a half-smile and next to Cristy David stretched out his long legs preparing simply to listen and, later, be a helpful sounding board as they went through it all.
After checking everything was working, Cristy said, ‘Let’s just treat it as a chat, OK? We don’t have to be formal, or even chronological with events – that can always be sorted in an edit. But as you seem to have discussed how you want to tell the story I’m guessing you’re going to start us off at the beginning, Lukas?’
He nodded and beamed. He really did have the most engaging way with him, seeming so full of warmth and good humour. However, his expression sobered as he prepared to share his memories, and his dark eyes appeared to lose focus, conveying a more serious and reflective side of his nature.
LUKAS: ‘You have probably learned by now that Janina and I are originally from Georgia – county, not state – but our father was Lithuanian so we moved to Vilnius when we were still quite young. This became a very fortuitous move in later years, but I will come on to that.
‘We have another sister, Audra. She is older and was already married to her husband, Yuri, when Janina took the decision to leave Lithuania. She, Janina, was nineteen at the time, headstrong, beautiful, eager to explore the world … She had many qualities – and failings – but they only made her, in my opinion, even easier to love. We always believed she’d grow up to achieve great things, not only because of her beauty and lively spirit, but because she was intelligent and compassionate, interested in people, and oh boy was she daring. She was definitely the risk taker in our family, the one who showed us how to be brave in the face of our many adversities. We were very poor, you see, and our adopted country was still suffering from the after-effects of the Soviet occupation. So few opportunities for us, and so often very little food to eat.’
CRISTY: ‘Can you tell us a little about your parents?’
LUKAS: ‘We barely knew our father, he died soon after we moved to Vilnius, and our mother passed away the year before Janina left. Looking back, as I often do, I believe Janina was not seeing things clearly because of grief, and out of fear of what would happen to her now that she no longer had our mother to advise her. I told her I would always take care of her – we were very close, we always had been. I wouldn’t say I was a father figure to her, I was too young for that, but by the time we are talking about I was working very hard to keep us in our mother’s apartment and to make sure we could eat. Janina wanted to help, of course, but the path she chose was not one that either I or Audra approved of.
‘We didn’t know about it at first, only found out later that she’d been introduced to an overseas employment agency by a co-worker at the hotel where she helped in the kitchen … I am sure you know many stories like this, of young girls who are promised better lives in faraway lands by unscrupulous men … It is tragic how many fall for it and I’m afraid Janina was one of them.
‘It was through these traffickers , because that’s what they were, that she came to meet Gabe. They – the agency in Vilnius – were acting for clients, usually men, in search of “housekeepers”, “companions”, “secretaries”, “nannies for their children” … There were all sorts of opportunities, and there was, of course, no mention of sex work or dance clubs or worse, but even if there had been I think some girls were so keen to get to the West that they’d have gone anyway. Janina wasn’t one of them. She truly believed she was going to keep house for a man with aristocratic connections and a lot of money. She was even shown a photograph of him and, in spite of him being a clear twenty years older and having no name yet, she insisted she already trusted him. He had kind eyes and a lovely smile, she said.’
GABE: ‘I was also shown a photograph of her and I knew right away that I wanted to meet her.’
Cristy’s eyes moved between the two, picturing the scenario Lukas was painting and reflecting on how romantic they were making things sound. Love at first sight by photograph, organized by a criminal gang? An instant connection with a stranger who Janina must surely have feared was far more likely to be a tyrant than a saviour?
LUKAS: ‘Neither Audra nor I were aware of the arrangements to smuggle Janina out of our country until they were already made. As soon as I knew of them I tried to stop Nina, of course, but by then she had built up such a rosy picture of how her life was going to be, working for this aristocrat, living in a big house with plenty to eat and always warm, that she refused to listen. Audra was very angry and afraid, we both were, but then suddenly one day Nina had gone and there was no more we could do, other than wait for her to be in touch to say she was safe.’
GABE: ‘She was safe with me.’
LUKAS: ‘But we didn’t know that. She was still very young and she’d allowed herself to be transported out of her country by evil strangers in order to be delivered to someone who might not even exist.’
CRISTY: ‘When exactly was this?’
LUKAS: ‘The end of ’96 – before Lithuania was a part of the EU, so Janina would have been an illegal immigrant in the UK, if that was in fact where she’d been taken. As far as we knew she could have been anywhere. I tried to find out from the agency where she might be. I was desperate, but I had nothing to offer that they wanted in exchange for information, and each time I confronted them they had me beaten up.
‘It was a terrible time, full of fear for Nina and for ourselves. We knew what could happen to families if the trafficked person didn’t comply with demands. Audra had two children by then and I had already been hospitalized twice. Worse though, was not knowing what Janina was enduring and if we would ever hear from her again. No money came, though she’d expected to be able to send some, and no letters or phone calls either.
‘A whole year went by, maybe longer, but then one day, out of the blue, a postcard turned up at the apartment telling me not to worry, that she was fine and would be in touch again as soon as she could. Of course I had no way of knowing if she’d sent it herself, or if it was true that she was all right, but at least it was something. A postcard showing a forlorn beach at a place called Minehead in Somerset, England. Audra and I decided that this small contact was Janina’s way of letting us know where she was and that we should try to rescue her.
‘It took all our savings to buy my passage into the UK, and it was several months before I could actually get one. But I did in the end – I won’t go into the details of my journey, they are not relevant here, but it took many weeks to finally get across the Channel and eventually to this small town in Somerset. Once there, I lived in doorways and bus shelters, ate from dustbins and washed in the local facilities, all the time searching the streets and coastline for Janina. People didn’t want to talk to me, I was dirty and smelly and, although I already spoke English well because we’d learned it at school, my accent was thick.
‘Then I met Natalie and she was kind to me in a way no one else had been. She snuck me into where she worked, at the local holiday camp, let me use her room to wash and sleep and brought me food. I’m not sure how she managed to fix me up with a job – I think they were desperate for staff at the time – so I then had somewhere to stay, two good meals a day and on my days off I continued to search for Janina. The internet wasn’t really a thing back then, not like it is today, so it was mostly showing people photographs and asking if they’d seen her. No one had. At one stage I contacted a private investigator, but even though I could very well explain the situation and my concerns, I couldn’t afford his fees so he was unwilling to help. I considered going to the police, but of course, if I did, I’d have been deported right away.
‘In the end it was like a miracle happened. I had been in Minehead for more than six months and I had started going to church to ask God to help me mainly because there was no one else. Then one day, maybe less than two hours after I had said my usual prayers, I was leaving a café on the high street and there she was, right in front of me. I couldn’t believe it, and nor could she. We stared at one another, needing to be sure, then we laughed and threw our arms around one another and jumped up and down with joy. It wasn’t so easy for her, she was quite heavily pregnant, but we clutched onto one another anyway and people passing by looked at us strangely, or laughed and shared in our happiness.
‘We went back into the café and she told me all about what had happened to her since she’d been brought to Somerset. She was living with Gabe – George as she called him – some way further along the coast and he was the father of her child.’
Cristy’s heart jolted, not only with surprise, and God knew it was that, but at the way Lukas had come out with it so simply, as if assuming they already knew. Her eyes moved to Gabe, as her thoughts went to Sadie and what this was going to mean to her.
LUKAS: ‘What Janina told me that day was very upsetting, but also a big relief. Gabe treated her very well, she said, and she loved him, and was happy to be having his child. But there was a darker side, as I knew there must be. Gabe – George – was being used, exploited is probably a better word, by the traffickers who would only allow him to keep Janina if he agreed to them using his farm as a kind of holding place for girls from all over the continent. When they came, having been made all sorts of promises, they soon found themselves being auctioned to the highest bidder. Anyone could “try them out” and if they were chosen they were taken away to act as sex workers in other parts of the country. Nina told me how George allowed the girls a lot of freedom when no one else was around, but very few of them ran away, they were too afraid of what would happen to their families if they did.
‘Janina assured me she was always left unmolested in return for the traffickers’ use of Gabe’s home, but she was warned that if she ever tried to contact her own family, or did anything at all to disrupt their business, she would never see George again. This is why she took such a long time to reach out to us. She knew, because she’d seen it, just how brutal these men could be. She’d even experienced the trauma of witnessing girls being beaten to death, and there were no consequences because no one cared about girls who didn’t officially exist.’
GABE: ‘We never knew what happened to the bodies. It would have been foolish and dangerous to ask.’
LUKAS: ‘All that mattered to Gabe, and Janina, was that she and their unborn baby were left unharmed. They talked all the time about finding somewhere to hide, a refuge far away from the evil all around them, but George’s family wouldn’t help him, and they were too afraid of what would happen if they were caught. Then Sasha was born and so began the most terrifying time of all. Janina was in fear that her daughter would be taken away and sold or simply disposed of and left to die. But it didn’t happen. Time went on, Sasha grew and was loved by her parents, and by the girls who came to stay. And as long as she was nowhere to be seen when the traffickers were around they carried on as if she wasn’t there.
‘Then a new man took over. His name was Matis Albescu. He was Romanian, from Budapest, and everyone was afraid of him, even his own men. He had no kindness, only hate in his soul. I should say here, that by the time his reign of terror began, I had come to know my niece well. Janina used to bring her to Minehead and I’d take her into the camp to play on the rides, and with other children. George would stay at the farm with the “guests” – this was how they referred to the girls. He was expected to be there in case the traffickers turned up unannounced.’
CRISTY: ‘Did you meet George while Janina was with him?’
LUKAS: ‘Yes, a few times, walking on Kylve beach. He would be with Nina and Sasha, and I’d wander past as if we were strangers stopping to talk about the weather. It never felt safe for me to visit the farm – but these brief encounters assured me of his feelings towards my sister and niece.
‘I need to tell you more about Albescu. Janina had felt him watching her for some time, and then she was told that the next time he came to the farm he was going to take her as a gift for his son who bore his name and was like his father in every way. This meant Nina would be taken away from George, and no one had any idea what would happen to Sasha once Nina had gone.
‘She didn’t discuss her plans with me or with Gabe. I’m not even sure how well formed they were when she carried them out … She was acting out of panic and love and a desperate need to keep Sasha safe from Albescu. Gabe didn’t even know when she returned to the farm one day without Sasha what she’d done with her. She would only say that it was best he didn’t know but Sasha was safe. She told him nothing at the time about the Winters sisters, but we learned later that she had read about them in the local paper and had decided they would take care of Sasha until she could come back for her. It was a big risk, of course. If the sisters went to the authorities Sasha would be taken into care and she, Janina, would be found and deported, but even that would be better than whatever fate Albescu and his son had planned for them.’
As Lukas’s voice died away Cristy was caught in the moment of learning that Sadie had not been stolen, that Lottie’s story was real. It had always been possible, of course, but she’d doubted it for so long … Her eyes moved to Evie as she began to refresh the drinks. For his part Gabe remained motionless, head averted, but then his mouth trembled slightly and as he put a hand to his head she saw that it was shaky too. She watched him get up and walk to the fence, his back turned as he stared out across the lake, and she found herself imagining the times he might have gazed out over an altogether different body of water, the Severn Estuary, with Janina and their daughter, Sasha.
It felt oddly surreal, and displacing as she watched him now and wondered about the truth of what she’d heard so far. Moving and credible though the story sounded, something about it wasn’t adding up and she knew what it was. She could even see it in her mind’s eye – the photograph of George and Janina with Lottie, the three of them captured on film at a café table, engaged in what appeared to be a heated exchange. So the claim that Janina returned one day without Sasha, and neither George nor her brother knew where she’d left her, simply couldn’t be true.
Deciding not to mention it yet – she wanted to find out first where the story was going next – Cristy smiled a thanks to Evie and glanced at David. He appeared pensive and worried, as if he too was mulling over the veracity of Lukas’s account of giving up Sasha.
‘There’s a turtle,’ Gabe said quietly, pointing down at the water.
Cristy watched the reptilian head bob up and down on the silky surface, its mottled shell glinting silver in the sunlight.
She glanced at Lukas and saw that he probably hadn’t even heard Gabe speak. Maybe he was focusing on how to continue lacing his story with enough truth for the falsehoods to sound more credible.
Evie said quietly, ‘Everything’s OK, Lukey. Just keep going.’
Lukas looked up and seemed to brighten a little as he said, ‘Do you have any questions? You must have some by now. Maybe I’ve left things out … It was more than twenty years ago, you understand.’
Since they were still recording, Cristy said, ‘Tell me more about Sasha and what happened to her. You said Janina didn’t tell you at first, but she did later?’
Lukas nodded and continued to nod as Gabe returned to the table and sat down quietly. In the end he was the first to speak.
GABE: ‘Janina didn’t tell us then. There was no time to. She was taken from me by Albescu.’
Though Cristy couldn’t see his eyes, she heard the emotion in his voice.
LUKAS: ‘We had no way to find out where she was. Sasha was gone, so was Nina. Our world was … empty, shattered, more frightening than ever. None of Albescu’s men would speak to us about it, it was possible they didn’t even know where Nina had been taken. There were no leads, nothing at all to guide us. Our only hope was that she would find a way to contact us.’
GABE: ‘When we heard on the news, a long time later, that Albescu Senior had been killed in a police raid we waited and waited, but she still didn’t come.’
LUKAS: ‘And we still had no idea what she’d done with Sasha. It was a hellish time. We even feared for a while that she’d killed Sasha rather than see her fall into Albescu’s hands. Then one day the police turned up at the farm asking about Janina and Sasha.’
GABE: ‘The vicar had reported them missing.’
Recalling ex-detective Catherine Shilling telling how Gabe – George – had wept when they’d questioned him, Cristy regarded him closely now and wondered if he too was remembering his show of emotion.
LUKAS: ‘Gabe was afraid to tell the police anything in case he made things worse for Janina, so he said she’d gone back to Lithuania and taken Sasha with her. It probably wasn’t the right thing to do, but neither of us knew what was. Then I was stopped one day on the street and taken into custody. After that I was deported without being able to speak to anyone first.
‘I couldn’t get back to the UK until a very long time later, after my country became a part of the EU. That was in 2004, but it took me a while to sort out a passport, having been born in Georgia. So it was in 2005 that I returned. I hadn’t heard from Janina in all that time, and by then I’d also lost contact with Gabe. What I didn’t know until many, many years later, when I next saw him, was that Janina had managed to make her way back to him in the middle of 2005 and they’d fled the farm soon after. So they’d gone by the time I managed to get there. We worked out later that I missed them by only a few days.’
Cristy watched Lukas look at Gabe as though waiting for him to speak, but Gabe simply nodded, as if to confirm what had been said.
LUKAS: ‘Gabe still finds it difficult to talk about Janina and Sasha, so we’ve agreed that even though this next part of the story is his, I will tell you what happened and if I make any mistakes he will step in to correct me.’
Lukas paused as Evie put a comforting hand on Gabe’s arm and for several moments there was nothing more than the sound of birdsong threading and flaring through the hum of the pool pump. Then Cristy became aware of a beautiful scent, like peonies but sweeter and more pungent, and she glanced around to see where it might be coming from. There was no obvious source, but there never was when she picked up this unexpected drift of fragrance. It came out of nowhere, often when she was thinking about her mother, and it made her feel as though she was close by now. She asked Evie where the scent was coming from and Evie seemed puzzled, as if she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
LUKAS: ‘After I was returned to Lithuania Gabe was left alone at the farm. The traffickers had stopped using it after they took Janina and he had very few visitors …
‘He didn’t answer the door if anyone knocked. He’d look out first to see who it was and if it was someone he didn’t know he stayed quiet until they left. He went out only to buy food and to walk the beach; he read, listened to music and started to paint … He waited and counted the days, the months and then the years, always believing that Janina would come back to him and then … then … she did.’
Evie’s hand tightened on Gabe’s arm.
LUKAS: ‘For almost five long years Janina had been enslaved to Matis Albescu’s son, a man with the same name as his father and whose depravity was perhaps even worse. She wouldn’t tell Gabe what had been done to her, only that she would have killed herself if it weren’t for the need to see Sasha again. It was what had kept her alive after the many cruel beatings she received for trying to escape. Finally she managed it and made her way to the farm, in spite of knowing that Albescu would expect her to go there. But she had no other way of finding Gabe, the farm was all she knew and when she got there …’
GABE: ‘She was terrified and dirty, so thin that I hardly recognized her …’
Gabe’s voice failed and Cristy saw how pale he’d become.
GABE: ‘She was cold. So cold.’
Lukas waited a moment in case Gabe wanted to say more.
LUKAS: ‘He cleaned her up, bathed and fed her and then he took her to a hotel before Albescu could find them. They kept moving, one small hotel after another, all the time heading to Gloucestershire where Gabe’s parents gave them shelter, but only for a few days. They were ashamed of the kind of person he’d become – they believed he was involved in the trafficking and that he’d fallen in love with one of his victims. They wanted no part of his world, or his crimes, so they made him leave.’
GABE: ‘They are not kind people. There was very little love when I was growing up. I think they despised me for being the way I am. Not quick and clever like the rest of my family. I am sometimes slow to understand or to react …’
LUKAS: ‘Gabe’s only happiness in childhood was with his cousin Verity. She always cared for him and he cared for her, but then her parents moved to the States and eventually she married Sylvan …’
GABE: ‘I’m sure she’d have helped me with Janina and Sasha, but I was afraid of bringing her to the attention of the gangs. She would have despised me for that.’
LUKAS: ‘So after being expelled from Gabe’s parents’ home they continued to move from place to place, and it was a month, maybe more, before Janina was finally able to find out where the Winters sisters had gone after they’d left Exmoor. By this time she’d told Gabe all about how she’d left Sasha on the beach below the sisters’ home and had watched from a short distance as one of them had come down from the house and taken Sasha in. She truly believed the sisters would be kind to Sasha. Everything she’d read about them had told her they would be, and when nothing was reported on the news about a missing child she took heart and went to the house early one morning. She didn’t knock, she simply delivered photographs and some of Sasha’s favourite toys. It was her way of letting the sisters know that Sasha had a family who loved her but who couldn’t take care of her right now. She had no idea as she made her way back to the farm that day that Matis Albescu was already there waiting to take her away.’
Gabe started to speak, but his voice was barely audible. Cristy leaned in and gently eased the recorder closer to him.
GABE: ‘I wanted to kill him. I would have. I had a knife, but he had men with guns. They locked me up … There was nothing I could do … I heard Janina screaming for me, and I shouted for her, but then they were gone and I still couldn’t break free.’
LUKAS: ‘She’d had no time to tell him where Sasha was. She was helpless, they both were … I was the one who released Gabe from the cellar a couple of days later when I went to the farm to find out why I hadn’t seen Nina. We were frantic and powerless to act. We knew no one and nothing that could help us. At that point girls were still being brought to the farm, but the men who escorted them only laughed at us or beat us. I am sure it was one of them who tipped off the authorities and that is how I came to be deported.’
Needing to move things along, Cristy gently brought them back to when Janina and Gabe had finally found out where the Winters sisters were.
LUKAS: ‘Yes, they were in Guernsey, so Gabe and Nina went there, not to cause a scene, or to do anything to disrupt Sasha’s life, they simply wanted to find out if she really was there.’
CRISTY: ‘What age would Sasha have been by then?’
GABE: ‘She was seven and beautiful and lively, just like her mother. We watched her being taken to school and driven home again … We could see that she was happy, and healthy, but we wanted her so much. She was our daughter, she belonged to us, but we had no home; we were still running from Albescu …’
LUKAS: ‘It was an impossible situation, they had very little hope, but Janina needed to let the sisters know how grateful she was that they’d taken Sasha in and treated her as their own. She was very eager to explain how desperately she and Gabe wanted to be a part of Sasha’s life, if they would allow it. So they went to the house and left a note in the mailbox addressed to Emilia and Carlotta Winters saying who they were and asking if they would meet them at a café in St Peter Port.’
So that was when the photographs had been taken, Cristy realized, long after Sadie had gone to live with the sisters, not before. Hadn’t Anna suggested that, and Cristy had just dismissed it? In any event, it seemed that what the photographer had captured wasn’t some sort of transaction in which Sadie was being bought and sold, it was her parents begging to be allowed to see her.
LUKAS: ‘They went to the café at the same time every day for over a week until eventually one of the sisters came. She listened to their story, sympathized with them even and understood how much it would mean to them to be a part of Sasha’s world. At the same time she explained how disruptive that would be for Sasha, and confusing. They were only going to bring sadness and even danger to Sasha and she couldn’t allow that.
‘Janina begged and pleaded with her, saying Sasha didn’t have to know who they were, they’d pretend to be old friends, or new neighbours, anything if they could just have some contact with their child. She became so desperate that she threatened to go to the authorities to report the sisters for abduction. Of course she couldn’t do that, they would all suffer if she did, Sasha most of all if she was removed from the home she’d come to know and love.
‘In the end the sister agreed to think things over and to meet them again in a couple of weeks. She said perhaps something could be worked out, she just couldn’t see what it was yet. She asked where they were staying and promised to be in touch soon. Eventually she did contact them and asked if Janina could meet her at one of the sisters’ other properties, further south on the island. She wanted Janina to come alone while Sasha was at school.’
CRISTY: ‘Why another property, and why alone?’
LUKAS: ‘She said it was because she didn’t want her sister, Mia, to know anything yet, and she didn’t want Gabe there because she was afraid he might try to harm her.’
Cristy glanced at Gabe. He didn’t appear at all intimidating now, but she couldn’t deny she’d considered him sinister in the photos she’d seen of him from that era.
LUKAS: ‘So Janina took the little car she and Gabe had bought to get around the island, while he waited at their rented apartment for her to come back with news. When she left he had no idea that was the last time he’d see her.’
Cristy’s heart clenched. This wasn’t what she’d expected to hear, although she had no clear sense of what she’d been thinking, where she’d imagined this would go.
GABE: ‘Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?’
Cristy stared at him helplessly, having no idea whether Gabe believed she could answer that, or if he simply couldn’t let go of what was surely a vain and desperate hope.
CRISTY: ‘You must have gone to the sisters’ house to find out what had happened to her?’
LUKAS: ‘Yes, he did, but Lottie told him she’d waited all day at the other property and Janina hadn’t turned up. He began searching the island, desperate to find her, and in the end Lottie said they should go to the police, as long as he swore not to mention anything about Sadie.
‘The car was found the next day, at the bottom of a ravine not far from the address where Lottie had waited. It was a dangerous stretch of road, there had been accidents there before, people who didn’t know the island … Nina wasn’t in the car, and they never recovered her body.’
Realizing that must be why Gabe was unable to give up hope of finding Janina alive, Cristy allowed several moments to pass before continuing.
CRISTY: ‘Do you think Lottie is responsible for whatever happened to Janina?’
Lukas looked at Gabe and more hushed seconds passed, filled only by the twitter and song of birds and, strangely, another drift of the exquisite, unidentifiable perfume.
GABE: ‘I did think that for a while, I was certain of it, but now I believe that Albescu Junior’s people managed to find us and they … they took her away.’
Cristy thought of the café photographs and wondered again who had taken them. Whoever it was, they’d ended up with Lottie, so did that mean Albescu had not only found Janina, but a way to extract money from the women who had the child?