the rest of the search results on the page, reference by reference. They don’t seem to be in any kind of chronological order.
‘Why did they give Carmen the keys to the town of . . . Paradise?’ I wonder, before I realise that I’m talking aloud. ‘Where is that?’
Why do I suddenly feel so . . . uneasy?
‘Would Paradise,’ when I repeat the word, one eyelid begins to jump again, ‘even require keys?’
Ranald shrugs, clicks in and out of a few other sites while I look over his shoulder.
‘I remember that case now,’ he exclaims as he skims a web page he’s just opened. ‘The place where it all happened didn’t look particularly, uh, Paradise-like from the news footage, but I think the town rolled out the red carpet for Carmen because she managed to free two other girls that the guy was keeping prisoner in this dungeon beneath his house.’
‘What were the names of the other girls?’
Ranald closes the page we’re looking at and clicks in and out of a couple more before replying, ‘Jennifer Appleton and Lauren Daley.’
The words are barely out of his mouth when, inexplicably, I see Luc before me. So vividly that he might be standing right here with us, in this room. His beautiful mouth is both cruel and amused, the way he looks when he’s playing a joke on someone, or setting them an impossible task. I grasp at the air with my hands, unable to hold onto the golden vision of my lost love, knowing that I am suffering some sort of waking dream, a hallucination. It’s a message to myself, a reminder. Of what?
Luc, my love, what am I supposed to remember? Help me.
Ranald’s still peering at his screen and hasn’t noticed my strange reaction. ‘Lauren was imprisoned the longest, just over two years. She was the one from Paradise. The whole town — almost two thousand people, it says here — turned out to welcome her home when she was discharged from hospital. They had the ceremony honouring Carmen the same day.’ Ranald’s eyes flick up to me then back to the screen. ‘You wouldn’t believe she could do that, would you? Save herself and two other people. She blinded the guy as well. He’s never going to see again, they say.’
A voice calls out, ‘Lela?’ from the back of the shop; it’s slow, deep, heavily accented, unfamiliar.
I turn, see that it’s Sulaiman the cook speaking. A guy who hasn’t bothered to address me with anything more than a flick of his eyes or a grunt since I got here hours ago. I meet his dark, steady gaze through the serving hatch separating the kitchen from the front counter, raise an eyebrow at the interruption.
‘You are needed in the kitchen,’ he rumbles.
I stare at him. Since when? Why now, when there isn’t another soul in the joint? He stares back unblinkingly.
‘Excuse me,’ I say tightly to Ranald.
He nods, looking down, and takes another sip of his coffee. I can tell he’s disappointed. But after I walk away, he opens up a new window and begins working again, intently.
When I reach the kitchen, Sulaiman says without warmth or preamble, ‘Unload the dishwasher.’ He indicates with one hand a big, stainless-steel machine wedged into a back corner of the room.
There’s so little floor space in here that I have to skirt him carefully to avoid touching him. I hate being touched — it’s something instinctive in me; I’m big on personal space, on the whole live and let live thing. And it’s funny, but it feels as if Sulaiman’s giving me a wide berth, too, almost as if he doesn’t want me around even though he was the one who called me in here.
‘That’s all you want me to do?’ I say, stomping bad-temperedly over to the hulking machine, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘No.’ His reply is curt. ‘I need clean dishes. Without them, it is impossible for me to do my work. Everything has its place, everything in its place, or it is chaos, Lela. You should know that. Reggie jokes that you are the dog’s body around here, but it is no joke, I think?’
I don’t bother to answer, just bend to study the machine’s complicated-looking control panel. I finally work out which button is supposed to pop the front door open, and cough as a cloud of steam shoots straight into my face. The dishwasher’s contents are scalding to the touch but I don’t hesitate, grabbing handfuls of side plates, servers, bowls, trays, pots and pans and slamming them into messy piles on the bench closest to the burners, to his big hands. Let him make sense of them all.
‘Lela . . .’ Sulaiman warns.
I ignore him and continue to layer things quickly and haphazardly on top of each other. I have to catch Ranald before he leaves. There’s so much I need to know. There’s something important that I’m missing about Carmen’s story, a whole bunch of somethings. Some clue as to how I got here must be out there inside his machine. The Neills don’t have anything like it at home — I know, because I combed the entire house this morning before I left: from the dust-covered, unlived-in formal rooms right through to the bomb-just-hit-them kitchen and laundry area. There’s nothing more high tech than a wall phone in the place.
Outside in the dining area, a phone rings loudly and insistently for several minutes before it’s picked up. I’m almost done. The dishwasher is almost empty. There’s just a giant basket of cutlery and cooking utensils left.
‘Green Lantern,’ someone barks finally. From the sound of things, Reggie’s returned and her temper hasn’t improved.
‘You’re kidding,’ she snarls, turning to glare at me through the serving hatch.
I see Cecilia wrestle the phone out of Reggie’s grasp and take over the conversation. She shoots me a worried glance before saying, ‘Yes, I understand, thank you.’
She places the receiver back in its cradle as Reggie exclaims, ‘I’m sick of her not pulling her weight! It’s not fair on any of us. He should sack her, find somebody else. This can’t go on.’
‘Reggie!’ Cecilia rebukes the taller woman, who just replies, ‘Well, he bloody well should,’ before turning her back on me and wielding her charmless hospitality on another sweaty punter who’s just wandered in.
I’m extricating the last pair of tongs from the dishwasher when Cecilia materialises inside the swing doors. She wipes her hands nervously on her black apron.
‘Uh, Lela?’ she says carefully. ‘You’re needed at home. Georgia called. Said it was pretty urgent.’ She looks at me strangely when I don’t move straightaway. ‘Your mother? It looks bad.’
‘Oh?’ I frown, then remember. The woman in the bed. Georgia was the shift worker. Some kind of nurse? From the look on Cecilia’s face, I know that my reaction’s off. I should be upset.
I rearrange Lela’s features hastily, then glance at Sulaiman, at the teetering piles of cookware beached there beside him in no kind of useful order.
He shakes his head and sighs. ‘Go to your mother. Take as much time as you need. Cecilia will help me sort this out. Again.’
Cecilia turns me around as if I am a child and unknots my apron strings, then lifts it over my head and hangs it on a nearby hook.
‘Take the side door,’ she says softly, ushering me through the swing doors and pointing down the dark, narrow corridor with the Toilets this way sign on the wall. ‘Go now, while Reggie’s not looking.’
I can’t help pausing for a moment to scan the dining area. Ranald’s already gone. The clock over the clattering refrigeration units says it’s just gone midday.
When I open the side door cautiously, the heat outside hits me like a sucker punch to the head. The stench coming off the waste bins is eye-watering. I stand in the laneway looking out at the road before me and