The Boat House

SEVENTEEN

It was midway through a Friday afternoon, and Adele Venetz had taken the restaurant's van to the cash and carry for all the last minute supplies they'd be needing for Saturday's party catering job, leaving her sister and Alina to manage the business alone. It was quite a drive and quite a list for when she got there, so she was unlikely to be back before the early evening; but this was no great problem, because they'd soon be closing the doors so that they could make a start on the next day's preparations. It had been a quiet afternoon so far, and it showed no signs of picking up. A few day trippers and walkers had stopped by, but almost no locals at all.

When the outside deck stood empty and all the tables had been cleared and reset and there still wasn't a prospect of any trade in sight, Angelica said to Alina, "Come on, let's take a break," and they headed into the kitchen.

Alina mostly took her breaks alone; she'd sit in a corner with a magazine, usually one of Adele's old wildlife partworks, and be about as obtrusive as a church mouse until her time was over. At which point she'd stand, lay the magazine aside, and get straight back to business. When they did converse, she said little and mostly listened; it had only recently struck Angelica that she knew almost nothing more about Alina now than she had at the end of that first day.

And, as for the reason why it had stuck her…

"I had to make a guess this morning," she told Alina, glancing back over her shoulder from the Cona machine as she waited for the water to run down through the filter. "I hope I guessed right."

"What do you mean?" Alina said, warily. She'd moved over by the window and had been reaching for a chair, but now she stopped. She wasn't sure where Angelica was leading, and so Angelica went straight to it.

"Whenever we employ somebody, there are formalities we have to go through. Tax. National Insurance. It can get complicated."

"I'm sure it can."

"Especially," Angelica said, "when you're trying to make out a form for somebody whom you know won't appear anywhere in the records."

She glanced over her shoulder again.

Slowly, Alina closed her eyes. Her face was as blank as a porcelain mask. She lowered her head, as if to look at the floor.

Angelica went on, "I'm right, aren't I?"

Alina nodded.

"Want to tell me about it?"

"Sing for my supper," Alina said with a kind of bitter weariness that ran completely against Angelica's perception of her character. It stung her to a sharp reply.

"Nothing of the kind," she said, the coffee forgotten as she turned to face her. "It's just possible that I may be able to help you."

Still guarded, as if the real centre of her personality stood behind glass and in silence, Alina said, "What do you want to know?"

"You might start by trusting me. I think I've earned it. Begin at the beginning."

Alina looked at her for a while. It was as if she was deciding. And then she shrugged. What had she got to lose, she seemed to be saying, now that it had come to this?

She folded her arms, and leaned back to rest against the work surface behind her. "I was never a waitress before I came here," she said. Her gaze was level, a challenge to disbelief. "I've told you that already."

"I know, you've learned fast. What were you before?"

"I was a schoolteacher. This was at the language school in Leningrad, with all the lessons in English. It was a good job, a very good job, but I lost it."

"How?"

"I never knew. It was one of those mad things where you don't know if you've done something wrong and no one will ever tell you. What happened was, one of my students wrote something in an examination essay and it got me fired. I never found out what. I never got a chance to defend myself and I wouldn't have known the right thing to say if I had. I couldn't get another job. After a while I started to get official letters threatening to send me to prison if I didn't find work. I lost my flat, and I had to move in with friends. I was living off my car savings for a while, but then they ran out. For a while I was sleeping on a floor… I'd never had to live like that before. I finally got one job offer, but when I turned up to work I found that it had been a mistake. I'm pretty sure that someone had called them."

This was worse than anything Angelica had expected. She said, "Is that why you decided to get out?"

"That, and other reasons." Alina looked down. "I'd had some old trouble. They were threatening to bring that up, too. I couldn't face it. So I decided to leave. But the first try was a shambles, and I was caught."

"They took you back?"

"Worse. I was examined by three doctors and declared insane. They did that kind of thing, back then. They put me in the prison hospital. I was there for nearly six months and by the end of the first week, I wanted to die. Sometimes I thought I was going to; sometimes I was even more scared at the thought that I wouldn't. They interfered with me there. I don't even like to think about it."

Angelica now knew why Alina had disappeared from the terrace so promptly on the day that Walter Hardy had hooked out the dead dog. It wasn't the sight of the dog itself that had driven her indoors, but the certainty that the police would soon be arriving. Seeing that Alina was upset by the memory, she said, "You don't have to go on," but now Alina was determined to be heard.

"Now you know I've no right to be here," she said, "I want you to know what's waiting for me if ever I get taken back. I only got out of the hospital because of an old unclosed file, and a doctor from the outside who took an interest in my case. They didn't officially let me out — I escaped. Otherwise, I'd still be there. And that's the reason why they want to get me back."

"And how did you reach England?"

"By using somebody," she said, and her voice sounded hollow with guilt.

Angelica, the coffee now standing cold and forgotten in the jug beside her, said, "Go to the authorities, Alina. They wouldn't send you home, not with a story like that."

"You can guarantee it?" If Alina was looking cynical, Angelica could only suppose that it was because she'd earned the right to be. "I don't think that you can. According to the record, I'm a criminal and wherever I am, I'm there illegally. If the authorities get hold of me, it won't matter what I say — I'll be returned, and then I'll be lost."

"But you can't just hide forever."

"I have plans. Please don't worry about me. I don't intend to leave this valley."

There was a determination in her eyes now that was almost frightening; how little Angelica had understood, she now realised, reading only the surface and never suspecting that any of this lay beneath.

Alina added by way of explanation, "Everyone needs to belong somewhere. And this is the place that I've chosen."

"Well," Angelica said, "I want you to remember that you've got friends here. If you should need any help…"

"When the day comes, I'll ask," Alina said. And then she glanced out of the main kitchen window, the one that had a partial view of the terrace; Angelica looked as well, and saw that they had a few customers arriving and looking around uncertainly at the unstaffed deck.

Alina said, "Do I still have a job?"

"Of course you do."

Angelica had already decided that her money could be taken out of the petty cash and then lost in the books somewhere… and if ever they should be caught doing it, she didn't feel that it was a crime she'd be ashamed of.

Alina smiled, with some confidence but also a lot of apprehension still, and she moved around the table toward the door. She took her notepad from the pocket of her apron as she went, and at the doorway she stopped for a moment as if to gather herself.

She took a breath and, in the space of a couple of seconds, seemed to re invent the waitress from the refugee. It was a faintly unsettling transformation for Angelica to witness, an unasked for revelation of a totally private process. One shell was discarded and a new one immediately hardened into its place, but for the brief instant in between there was a glimpse… of what?

Angelica couldn't have said. She reckoned that she could only take on board a limited number of surprises in any given period, and her quota for the year had just been reached. She already had plenty to think about.

Alina, meanwhile, went on out into the daylight.