Page 62 of Deep Blue Lies
“Yes, that’s why we brought you in. Eleni wanted to tell you herself.” Then there’s more rapid Greek, back and forth, between Maria and the old lady. I look to Sophia for help, but she doesn’t translate.
“What’s she saying?” I ask in the end.
“She has something for you,” Sophia says at last. And now the woman finally releases my hands, and – nodding at me the whole time – she leaves the room.
“What’s going on? Where’s she going?”
“She said—” Maria stops, she looks perturbed. So it’s Sophia that translates again.
“She said she has fostered many children, over many years, and all were special. But of all the children she cared for, it was…” She glances at Maria, like she’s not sure she ought to continue. But Maria nods, and Sophia turns back to face me. “It was you that meant the most, because you needed her the most.” She shrugs. “I’m sorry Ava, this must be so difficult.”
Eleni comes back into the room now, and instantly her eyes lock onto me. Then her hand does too, onto mine, only it’s just the one hand this time, the fingers tight against mine. In her other hand she’s holding something. I don’t see what it is at first. There’s more Greek. This time Sophia translates it for me.
“She’s saying that for every child she looks after, she likes to keep a…memento, like something to remember them by,” – Sophia sends me a look – “a bit like a serial killer I guess.” She laughs at her own silly joke, and I see she’s doing it only to stop herself from crying, then she keeps translating as Eleni hasn’t stopped speaking. “OK…In the case of the baby from the murder, she already had one…It seems when the child was born, the mother made a…I don’t know how you say that, alefkoma gennisis?” But then she finds the phrase herself.
“I guess you’d call it abirth memory book– something like that. Like it has an image from the mother’s pregnancy scan, a handprintof the newborn, that kind of thing…” Eleni holds it up to me now. It’s light pink, and on the front it has a name, but I can only make out the first letter, a C. But I hear Eleni say it now. Callie.Callie.
“Callie?”
“Callista,” Maria says. “In Greek it means beautiful…”
I know it. I’ve always known it. Of course I have.
It’s my middle name.
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 ofhair, 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.
