I haven’t shared many excerpts from my third Radwinter book, but here is the part where Thomas meets Sasha; she is a troubled woman who was arrested for supposedly trying to steal a baby, and then making up a story about a friend – who no-one else knows called Jane. She was apparently wasting police time over Jane going missing…
Thomas meets Sasha in a café in town:
We sat down and in a minute Sue brought down our drinks; I had my coffee, and Sasha had a green tea of some sort, with as little colour as her cheeks.
I told her that I really wasn’t sure I’d be able to help her; but I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to find Jane… I was pretty certain about that…
“You believe she exists then?” she asked with a tiny bit of eagerness in her restrained manner. Before I could reply she turned her face away… “No, you don’t think she exists, that’s why you won’t be able to find her.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I thought that, Sasha. I don’t think I can find her because either she doesn’t want to be found or there is some reason which we will never know why she can’t be found.”
“You think something happened to her?” she turned back to me and her eyes seemed to bore into me. Her face was very thin; she looked as if she’d been ill, or bereaved….
“Mr Radwinski.. ” my imaginary associate and alter-ego, “was investigating the disappearance of another young woman; he had to give up in the end because she didn’t want to be found, and in fact it would have been dangerous for him to continue.” I’d given up on a friend’s missing daughter, because I thought my life was in peril, yes, really. “Jane may have disappeared because she wanted to, or something may have happened to her; the police couldn’t find her so I definitely won’t be able to.”
“But you could try! The police didn’t give me a fair hearing… they were so convinced I was making it all up, attention-seeking is what they meant… they weren’t horrible until in the end when I got upset and made a scene and they threatened… but anyway, this isn’t about me…”
I felt totally at sea, I was floundering and had no idea why I was even here… I couldn’t do anything to help… except perhaps listen, except perhaps believe her story.
It all seems very far-fetched, but one thing all this genealogical lark has taught me is always expect the unexpected!
She was staring at me so unblinkingly, as if she wanted to look right into my head… I’m used to the Radwinter stare, the blue piercing eyes boring into my very thoughts and heart, but this intensity was unsettling… if she’d been like this with the police then I could understand why they might think…
But I had to put this aside, my thoughts didn’t matter, I had to listen to Sasha.
© Lois Elsden 2018
If you want to know whether Jane really exists, and the truth about Sasha, then here is a link to my book Raddy and Syl:
Lois Elsden 