Free Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar Page B

remember,” I said and felt my face burn under his gaze.
    “Or do you mean a bus conductor? Or maybe he’s a conductor of traffic? Or an electrical conductor?”
    He laughed, and I thought it best to laugh too.

CHAPTER 16
    The day before I was due to fly out to Montreux for the Christmas holiday, Mr. Galebraith stuck his head round the door and said, “A lady named Mona is on the phone.”
    I shot past him, running down the stairs, taking three steps at a time, not stopping when he shouted, “Slow down!”
    “I can’t wait to see you, my sweet peanut,” she said.
    Longing was a stone in my mouth.
    “I have just checked in. I love this hotel. I will see you at the airport,” she said and hung up.
    The two-hour flight to Geneva seemed to last forever. How impatient I was with the hands of the wristwatch.
    Father was in Zurich, Bern or Geneva; it was never clear. Mona and I had at least one or two or maybe even three days alone ahead of us. That was all I cared about.

    Her cold-blushed cheeks seemed the only color in the gray arrivals lounge. She was not wearing the fur coat. He must have not told her, I thought, that I was the one who picked it out. We sat facing the same way on the train to Montreux. Several times I secretly dug my fingers into my thighs.
    When we arrived at the hotel I had to abandon my luggage with the bellboy by the entrance because Mona was pulling me toward the lift. As soon as the doors drew shut she wrapped her arm in mine, turning her fingers round the part between the elbow and the wrist. I watched our foggy reflection against the polished brass doors. I had been wrong: I was not yet as tall as she was, but nearly.
    There was always lightness to the way Mona held me, as if she were not really there. My mother, on the other hand, would always hold my hand too tightly. Whenever I pointed it out she would apologize and loosen her grip, only to forget and return to squeezing my fingers again as if they were strands of a slippery rope.
    I suggested to Mona that, until Father arrived, we should share their suite. She looked at me as if I had asked her to take off her clothes.
    “To save money,” I explained.
    She laughed. “And since when have you worried about such things?” She kissed me below the jaw, then took me to my room. We both stood on the balcony that looked out onto the luminous blue lake. The surface was a mirror to theblue sky and the passing clouds. It turned the weak winter light a shade darker.
    “Tonight,” she said. “Let’s dine at the Café du Soleil and stay there until they kick us out.”
    When the bellboy walked in with the bags, she let go of my hand and cleared her throat. As soon as he left she let out a wicked laugh.

    It shames me to admit that even the tragedy that followed did not corrupt the memory of those three days spent in Montreux alone with Mona. If anything, and perhaps exactly because of what happened next, it glimmers still in my mind with the vividness of a dark jewel.
    We took long walks by the lake, excursions punctuated by stops at cafés for tea, cake and ice cream. I was always too willing to hold her coat as she slipped her bare arms into the black satin lining. She liked fur coats because they allowed her to continue wearing her favorite sleeveless fitted black blouses underneath.
    “Where is your new coat?”
    “I am saving it for when Kamal is here.”
    My twenty-seven-year-old stepmother looked younger than her years, and I, even then, gave an impression that I was older. Few of the fourteen years that separated us would have been clear to a stranger. Once, in a busy café, aware of the attention of those at the table beside us, I leaned across, found a deviant strand of hair and tucked itbehind her ear. She pulled back. I tried to imagine the questions our intimacy provoked: did they think her a careless adulteress occupying herself with a young lover? And when we left I took pleasure, too, from the envious, congratulatory looks I