Page 17 of The Island of Lost Girls

8 | Robin

The police station and the customs post share a building. She walks past it three times before she spots it, because the xandarmerie sign is half-hidden by one of the many national flags festooning the street for the festival.

She pushes the door open to a high-ceilinged old warehouse, where uniformed staff from the yachts queue at a kiosk on the right and three swarthy men in uniforms of royal blue lounge, playing with their truncheons, behind a reception desk on the left. She goes left. Leans on the desk and waits to be seen.

The three men stare as though she were from outer space. Offended by her intrusion. They mutter among themselves, sweeping her with their eyes. One grunts and leaves his chair, comes forward.

‘What you want?’ he asks. Defaulting straight to English, because her nationality is that obvious.

Rude.

She takes a breath. Minds her manners.

‘Help, please. I’m looking for my daughter.’

He cranes around the office. ‘No daughters here.’

He smirks, pleased with himself. I’m not upset enough, she thinks. He’s mistaking my British manners for not being upset.

‘No, I—’

He picks up a pen and clicks it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I really need your help. My daughter is missing. And I saw something – on the internet – that suggested she might be here.’

He pretends to scan the empty office again. He’s still not taking her seriously.

Men.

‘No, not here. On La Kastellana. She said she was coming to La Kastellana. Something about a birthday party. So I came. To look for her.’

He stares, silently.

‘I’ve been looking for almost a year.’ Her eyes fill with tears.

He perks up. ‘A birthday party?’

‘Yes, she … ’

He puts his elbow on the desk and smiles, suddenly warm.

‘All of La Kastellana has birthday party this week. El duqa – our duke. His birthday. Official birthday. Like your queen, yes? A celebration. A festa.’ He studies her a bit more, and his face clouds. ‘Your daughter is friend el duqa?’ he asks, doubtfully.

She tries to find words. She knows so little about her daughter, about the life she’s been living. That stuff she’s been telling Nasreen and the others could be pure fantasy, for all she knows. Gemma could be staying with one of her friends, or shooting up in a basement in Newham. But some of the stuff semi-checked out, when she Googled. People and places and times.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I think maybe a friend of a friend.’

The man’s face darkens some more. ‘How old she is?’

‘Seventeen. She’s just turned seventeen.’

Some reaction she can’t pin down. A flickering eyebrow. Something.

He asks her the question Sinjora Hernandez asked. ‘You lose your daughter, she only seventeen?’

Robin wants to howl. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Please help me. She’s just a kid.’

‘What you want I do?’