Page 110 of Don't Believe A Word

LUKAS: ‘Gabe’s only happiness in childhood was with his cousin Verity. She always cared for him and he cared for her, but then her parents moved to the States and eventually she married Sylvan …’

GABE: ‘I’m sure she’d have helped me with Janina and Sasha, but I was afraid of bringing her to the attention of the gangs. She would have despised me for that.’

LUKAS: ‘So after being expelled from Gabe’s parents’ home they continued to move from place to place, and it was a month, maybe more, before Janina was finally able to find out where the Winters sisters had gone after they’d left Exmoor. By this time she’d told Gabe all about how she’d left Sasha on the beach below the sisters’ home and had watched from a short distance as one of them had come down from the house and taken Sasha in. She truly believed the sisters would be kind to Sasha. Everything she’d read about them had told her they would be, and when nothing was reported on the news about a missing child she took heart and went to the house early one morning. She didn’t knock, she simply delivered photographs and some of Sasha’s favourite toys. It was her way of letting the sisters know that Sasha had a family who loved her but who couldn’t take care of her right now. She had no idea as she made her way back to the farm that day that Matis Albescu was already there waiting to take her away.’

Gabe started to speak, but his voice was barely audible. Cristy leaned in and gently eased the recorder closer to him.

GABE: ‘I wanted to kill him. I would have. I had a knife, but he had men with guns. They locked me up … There was nothing I could do … I heard Janina screaming for me, and I shouted for her, but then they were gone and I still couldn’t break free.’

LUKAS: ‘She’d had no time to tell him where Sasha was. She was helpless, they both were … I was the one who released Gabe from the cellar a couple of days later when I went to the farm to find out why I hadn’t seen Nina. We were frantic and powerless to act. We knew no one and nothing that could help us. At that point girls were still being brought to the farm, but the men who escorted them only laughed at us or beat us. I am sure it was one of them who tipped off the authorities and that is how I came to be deported.’

Needing to move things along, Cristy gently brought them back to when Janina and Gabe had finally found out where the Winters sisters were.

LUKAS: ‘Yes, they were in Guernsey, so Gabe and Nina went there, not to cause a scene, or to do anything to disrupt Sasha’s life, they simply wanted to find out if she really was there.’

CRISTY: ‘What age would Sasha have been by then?’

GABE: ‘She was seven and beautiful and lively, just like her mother. We watched her being taken to school and driven home again … We could see that she was happy, and healthy, but we wanted her so much. She was our daughter, she belonged to us, but we had no home; we were still running from Albescu …’

LUKAS: ‘It was an impossible situation, they had very little hope, but Janina needed to let the sisters know how grateful she was that they’d taken Sasha in and treated her as their own. She was very eager to explain how desperately she and Gabe wanted to be a part of Sasha’s life, if they would allow it. So they went to the house and left a note in the mailbox addressed to Emilia and Carlotta Winters saying who they were and asking if they would meet them at a café in St Peter Port.’

So that was when the photographs had been taken, Cristyrealized, long after Sadie had gone to live with the sisters, not before. Hadn’t Anna suggested that, and Cristy had just dismissed it? In any event, it seemed that what the photographer had captured wasn’t some sort of transaction in which Sadie was being bought and sold, it was her parents begging to be allowed to see her.

LUKAS: ‘They went to the café at the same time every day for over a week until eventually one of the sisters came. She listened to their story, sympathized with them even and understood how much it would mean to them to be a part of Sasha’s world. At the same time she explained how disruptive that would be for Sasha, and confusing. They were only going to bring sadness and even danger to Sasha and she couldn’t allow that.

‘Janina begged and pleaded with her, saying Sasha didn’t have to know who they were, they’d pretend to be old friends, or new neighbours, anything if they could just have some contact with their child. She became so desperate that she threatened to go to the authorities to report the sisters for abduction. Of course she couldn’t do that, they would all suffer if she did, Sasha most of all if she was removed from the home she’d come to know and love.

‘In the end the sister agreed to think things over and to meet them again in a couple of weeks. She said perhaps something could be worked out, she just couldn’t see what it was yet. She asked where they were staying and promised to be in touch soon. Eventually she did contact them and asked if Janina could meet her at one of the sisters’ other properties, further south on the island. She wanted Janina to come alone while Sasha was at school.’

CRISTY: ‘Why another property, and why alone?’

LUKAS: ‘She said it was because she didn’t want her sister, Mia, to know anything yet, and she didn’t want Gabe there because she was afraid he might try to harm her.’

Cristy glanced at Gabe. He didn’t appear at all intimidatingnow, but she couldn’t deny she’d considered him sinister in the photos she’d seen of him from that era.

LUKAS: ‘So Janina took the little car she and Gabe had bought to get around the island, while he waited at their rented apartment for her to come back with news. When she left he had no idea that was the last time he’d see her.’

Cristy’s heart clenched. This wasn’t what she’d expected to hear, although she had no clear sense of what she’d been thinking, where she’d imagined this would go.

GABE: ‘Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?’

Cristy stared at him helplessly, having no idea whether Gabe believed she could answer that, or if he simply couldn’t let go of what was surely a vain and desperate hope.

CRISTY: ‘You must have gone to the sisters’ house to find out what had happened to her?’

LUKAS: ‘Yes, he did, but Lottie told him she’d waited all day at the other property and Janina hadn’t turned up. He began searching the island, desperate to find her, and in the end Lottie said they should go to the police, as long as he swore not to mention anything about Sadie.

‘The car was found the next day, at the bottom of a ravine not far from the address where Lottie had waited. It was a dangerous stretch of road, there had been accidents there before, people who didn’t know the island … Nina wasn’t in the car, and they never recovered her body.’

Realizing that must be why Gabe was unable to give up hope of finding Janina alive, Cristy allowed several moments to pass before continuing.

CRISTY: ‘Do you think Lottie is responsible for whatever happened to Janina?’

Lukas looked at Gabe and more hushed seconds passed, filled only by the twitter and song of birds and, strangely, another drift of the exquisite, unidentifiable perfume.

GABE: ‘I did think that for a while, I was certain of it, but now I believe that Albescu Junior’s people managed to find us and they … they took her away.’

Cristy thought of the café photographs and wondered again who had taken them. Whoever it was, they’d ended up with Lottie, so did that mean Albescu had not only found Janina, but a way to extract money from the women who had the child?

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