Page 109 of Don't Believe A Word

Deciding not to mention it yet – she wanted to find out first where the story was going next – Cristy smiled a thanks to Evie and glanced at David. He appeared pensive and worried, as if he too was mulling over the veracity of Lukas’s account of giving up Sasha.

‘There’s a turtle,’ Gabe said quietly, pointing down at the water.

Cristy watched the reptilian head bob up and down on the silky surface, its mottled shell glinting silver in the sunlight.

She glanced at Lukas and saw that he probably hadn’t even heard Gabe speak. Maybe he was focusing on how to continue lacing his story with enough truth for the falsehoods to sound more credible.

Evie said quietly, ‘Everything’s OK, Lukey. Just keep going.’

Lukas looked up and seemed to brighten a little as he said, ‘Do you have any questions? You must have some by now. Maybe I’ve left things out … It was more than twenty years ago, you understand.’

Since they were still recording, Cristy said, ‘Tell me more about Sasha and what happened to her. You said Janina didn’t tell you at first, but she did later?’

Lukas nodded and continued to nod as Gabe returned to the table and sat down quietly. In the end he was the first to speak.

GABE: ‘Janina didn’t tell us then. There was no time to. She was taken from me by Albescu.’

Though Cristy couldn’t see his eyes, she heard the emotion in his voice.

LUKAS: ‘We had no way to find out where she was. Sasha was gone, so was Nina. Our world was … empty, shattered, more frightening than ever. None of Albescu’s men would speak to us about it, it was possible they didn’t even know where Nina had been taken. There were no leads, nothing at all to guide us. Our only hope was that she would find a way to contact us.’

GABE: ‘When we heard on the news, a long time later, that Albescu Senior had been killed in a police raid we waited and waited, but she still didn’t come.’

LUKAS: ‘And we still had no idea what she’d done with Sasha. It was a hellish time. We even feared for a while that she’d killed Sasha rather than see her fall into Albescu’s hands. Then one day the police turned up at the farm asking about Janina and Sasha.’

GABE: ‘The vicar had reported them missing.’

Recalling ex-detective Catherine Shilling telling how Gabe – George – had wept when they’d questioned him, Cristy regarded him closely now and wondered if he too was remembering his show of emotion.

LUKAS: ‘Gabe was afraid to tell the police anything in case he made things worse for Janina, so he said she’d gone back to Lithuania and taken Sasha with her. It probably wasn’t the right thing to do, but neither of us knew what was. Then I was stopped one day on the street and taken into custody. After that I was deported without being able to speak to anyone first.

‘I couldn’t get back to the UK until a very long time later, after my country became a part of the EU. That was in 2004, but it took me a while to sort out a passport, having been born in Georgia. So it was in 2005 that I returned. Ihadn’t heard from Janina in all that time, and by then I’d also lost contact with Gabe. What I didn’t know until many, many years later, when I next saw him, was that Janina had managed to make her way back to him in the middle of 2005 and they’d fled the farm soon after. So they’d gone by the time I managed to get there. We worked out later that I missed them by only a few days.’

Cristy watched Lukas look at Gabe as though waiting for him to speak, but Gabe simply nodded, as if to confirm what had been said.

LUKAS: ‘Gabe still finds it difficult to talk about Janina and Sasha, so we’ve agreed that even though this next part of the story is his, I will tell you what happened and if I make any mistakes he will step in to correct me.’

Lukas paused as Evie put a comforting hand on Gabe’s arm and for several moments there was nothing more than the sound of birdsong threading and flaring through the hum of the pool pump. Then Cristy became aware of a beautiful scent, like peonies but sweeter and more pungent, and she glanced around to see where it might be coming from. There was no obvious source, but there never was when she picked up this unexpected drift of fragrance. It came out of nowhere, often when she was thinking about her mother, and it made her feel as though she was close by now. She asked Evie where the scent was coming from and Evie seemed puzzled, as if she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

LUKAS: ‘After I was returned to Lithuania Gabe was left alone at the farm. The traffickers had stopped using it after they took Janina and he had very few visitors …

‘He didn’t answer the door if anyone knocked. He’d look out first to see who it was and if it was someone he didn’t know he stayed quiet until they left. He went out only to buy food and to walk the beach; he read, listened to music and started to paint … He waited and counted the days, themonths and then the years, always believing that Janina would come back to him and then … then … she did.’

Evie’s hand tightened on Gabe’s arm.

LUKAS: ‘For almost five long years Janina had been enslaved to Matis Albescu’s son, a man with the same name as his father and whose depravity was perhaps even worse. She wouldn’t tell Gabe what had been done to her, only that she would have killed herself if it weren’t for the need to see Sasha again. It was what had kept her alive after the many cruel beatings she received for trying to escape. Finally she managed it and made her way to the farm, in spite of knowing that Albescu would expect her to go there. But she had no other way of finding Gabe, the farm was all she knew and when she got there …’

GABE: ‘She was terrified and dirty, so thin that I hardly recognized her …’

Gabe’s voice failed and Cristy saw how pale he’d become.

GABE: ‘She was cold. So cold.’

Lukas waited a moment in case Gabe wanted to say more.

LUKAS: ‘He cleaned her up, bathed and fed her and then he took her to a hotel before Albescu could find them. They kept moving, one small hotel after another, all the time heading to Gloucestershire where Gabe’s parents gave them shelter, but only for a few days. They were ashamed of the kind of person he’d become – they believed he was involved in the trafficking and that he’d fallen in love with one of his victims. They wanted no part of his world, or his crimes, so they made him leave.’

GABE: ‘They are not kind people. There was very little love when I was growing up. I think they despised me for beingthe way I am. Not quick and clever like the rest of my family. I am sometimes slow to understand or to react …’

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