The Safekeepers

Chapter Seven

Elodie Rathneau slid the photograph along the table, the image surrounded by a haze of smoke. Her manicured nails pressed a cigarette between her red rouged lips. A little girl with blonde ringlets stared up from the sepia print of the photograph: a lost child, her innocence marred by Elodie’s living presence.

“What about her?” Stefan asked reluctantly, after studying the photo for some time. Some unknown feeling stirred in his stomach and he was conscious of the looks Elodie was receiving from the men in the café. This was his second meeting with her and he uncomfortably knew that she was anything but inconspicuous.

“I want to know where she is.” Elodie’s dark tresses rippled down her shoulders and Stefan felt a sudden urge to run his fingers through them. He looked away.

“I can’t tell you.”

Elodie began to tremble. Almost instantaneously, her voice turned rough and lost its foreign charm. “You have no choice. I will find her. For my own conscience, there are things I need to say.”

Stefan folded his arms across his chest, his mouth upturned as if in the process of becoming a teasing smile. “I’m surprised that someone like you has a conscience to protect.”

“Don’t push me Stefan. I’m dangerous.”

Stefan put a sheath of notes on the table and stood up.

“I take it I won’t be hearing back from you soon.” Elodie stated bitterly, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray.

Turning in response, Stefan bent over to kiss Elodie’s cheek. “Oh I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other Elodie. We at the Company like to keep in touch with our friends.”

Elodie watched him saunter off, her blood boiling. She’d make him pay. She’d make them all pay. She stared down at the photograph on the red and white gingham tablecloth and for a split second she wasn’t the glamorous French model Elodie Rathneau but a poor, frightened English girl harbouring a secret that sucked all the colour and the light from the world. A single tear rolled down her cheek for the girl in the photograph.

*****

Kaylee was sun drunk. The weather was perfect: the sky an intense blue, the wind whipping the white umbrellas round so fast that it felt like they were all aboard a sailing boat. It was Friday and her whole year group was on the second day of an overnight science trip down in Dorset. She looked round at the friends she’d made: Verity and Marshall managing to work while holding dripping ice creams; Emily carefully writing up her experiment with a pink fountain pen;Violet furiously rubbing out her last paragraph; and her science partner, Elliott – if his yellow teeth clashed with his vibrantly ginger hair, his sunburn clashed with it even more.

“Don’t look so smug Rosa,” Emily berated, “Just because you and Elliott finished writing up your research ages ago.”

“I’m not smug.”

“You’re staring.” She sighed, “Why are you so good at everything?”

Kaylee laughed teasingly, “You’re right I guess I am so much better.” She rolled her eyes, tilting back her head so that she was out of the shade of the umbrella. “Who wants to go to the beach?”

Emily stuck her tongue out and Kaylee mocked surprise – after a week of sharing a room with Emily it was becoming apparent that she wasn’t as neat and particular as she first appeared: her corner of the room was so messy that you couldn’t see the carpet through the heap of clothes littering the floor.

“I’ll go with you,” Violet said suddenly, “but on one condition – no swimming.”

Kaylee opened her mouth to answer back but Violet shook her head.