II

Rebecca landed midmorning at Antananarivo’s Ivato Airport, and emerged into the crowded, dingy arrivals hall to find Pierre himself waiting for her. He was easy to spot, standing nearly a head taller than most of the Malagasy thronging around him, and looking like some latter-day pirate, with his bulging goitre of black beard, his vast dark eyes and his gold hoop earring. He saw her at the same time, bulled his way through the crowd to her, took her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks,then reached around her and hugged her, his beard tickling her cheek. She was still holding her luggage, so she had to wriggle her shoulders to make him let go. ‘Any news?’ she asked.

He shook his head as he stepped back, brushed a finger beneath his eye. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘My little Becca.’

‘Please, Pierre. I need to know what’s going on.’

‘Nothing to tell,’ he shrugged. ‘I speak to the police in Tulear earlier; there’s no sign of them.’ And he took her bags from her, led the way towards the terminal doors.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘My car’s outside.’

‘Your car?’

‘If we leave now, we can be in Tulear tonight.’

‘I’m flying,’ she told him. ‘That way I’ll be in Tulear this afternoon. Why don’t you come with me?’

‘I can’t. I have my car.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ she said.

‘You want me to leave it?’

‘I want you to do whatever it takes to find my father and sister,’ she told him. ‘Emilia’s your lover, Pierre. She’s the mother of your child. My father’s been your closest friend for over thirty years. And you’re worried about your damned car?’ She shook her head at him. ‘What the hell are you still doing here? Why aren’t you back home already, leading the search?’

Pierre went a little red. ‘I wanted to be here for you,’ he said. ‘I cannot bear for you to arrive home with no one to greet you, not after all these years, not to news like this. And I think maybe you’ll need someone to drive you.’

‘I told you. I’m flying.’

‘Yes. But I didn’t know that.’

She shook her head at him, still indignant, yet finding it hard to justify. They were close enough to the automatic glass doors that they kept opening and then closing again, offering brief glimpses of bright sunshine. She turned and walked out through them. The newly laid tarmac in the car park was glistening from a recent shower, and the moisture had coaxed out a cocktail of pungent smells: from the brown-grey zebu pats, like amputated elephants’ feet, scattered as fertiliser on the grass verges; from the sweat-stiffened clothes of the porters, labourers and touts; from the choking silver-black exhaust fumes spewed by the ramshackle taxis, buses and trucks. Yet, deep beneath those, she could detect hints of gentler scents, of frangipani, vanilla and hibiscus. She breathed in deep. Smell was the most evocative of the senses, they said. Eleven years! Eleven years! Yet still it seemed instantly like home, oppressive with memory. For a moment she felt eighteen again, insecure and terrified, about to leave behind everything she’d ever known. She shivered as though a ghost had walked through her.

Madagascar: the Great Red Island, the Eighth Continent, land of her birth.