Kersti almost shouts yes, realizing it’s exactly what she wants to do, but she stays quiet.
“Hamidou knows who has the ledger,” Noa concludes. “I guarantee it.”
“You think she’d tell me?” Alison says.
“She’ll have nothing left to lose.”
“What if she flees the country?” Raf says. “I would if I was a child molester about to get caught.”
Alison and Kersti look at each other. What if they’ve both come all this way and Hamidou manages to slip away? Hamidou is sly. She may have seen Alison at the ceremony today and already figured out they know.
“You can make a civil claim against the school, you know,” Raf mentions to Alison. “Bueche would love that.”
“I don’t care about the money.”
“There’s been a ton of civil suits against former boarding school teachers,” Noa says. “I read an article that said at least a dozen schools in the UK have had teachers convicted for child abuse.” She finishes her gelato and washes it down with red wine. “The system is broken,” she adds, in a grating, dramatic tone. “I just never imagined it was happening at the Lycée. And Hamidou! She loved us so much—”
“People harm people they love all the time,” Raf mutters. “That’s what families do.”
“The system needs to be fixed,” Noa rants. “And it must start with the class system. These allegations are being reported at the most elite schools.”
Kersti tunes her out and prepares to make her exit. The pregnancy excuse is always universally accepted.
“I just can’t believe Bueche ignored what those girls spray-painted on the statue,” Alison says. “He just scrubbed Helvetia clean and got rid of the girls instead—”
In the middle of Alison talking, it hits Kersti like a bolt. “Holy shit,” she blurts.
“What?”
“The statue,” she says. “Helvetia.”
“What about it?”
When Kersti went to Boston, Cressida tried to say the word statue. It was totally random and out of the blue. Kersti assumed she was just remembering something from her time at the Lycée, but what if she’d been trying to convey something to Kersti about it? Maybe she didn’t even know what, just that there was something. Somewhere in her psyche. What if she remembered?
“I think I know where the ledger is,” Kersti says. “I should have clued in when Alison told me Cressida buried it.”
“She buried it?” Raf says. “Why the hell would she do that?”
“Hamidou used to go through our things,” Alison tells her.
“I bet you anything the ledger is buried by the statue,” Kersti says.
They pile out of the cab with shovels, flashlights, and gardening gloves from the Brico+Loisirs, giggling in spite of themselves. It feels a lot like the old days as they sneak across the school grounds in the dark, heading round back.
“Kersti, you just sit and let us do all the work,” Noa says.
“I’m fine,” Kersti tells them, excited to start digging. “She wouldn’t have buried it too deep or too far from the statue. Remember, she was planning to come right back for it.”
Kersti walks around the statue, trying to get inside Cressida’s head. She would have been in a rush, not a lot of time to make a plan or demarcate her spot. She knew she would need it again in a matter of days. She would have shoved it somewhere she could easily remember.
“I wish we had vodka and smokes,” Raf says, kicking off her shoes. “I’m not quite drunk enough for this to be fun.”
“It’s not supposed to be fun,” Alison mutters, already on her knees, digging ferociously behind Helvetia.
“All right,” Raf concedes. “Then at least bearable.”
Kersti thinks about where Brooke Middlewood and Tatiana Greenberg—the two girls who were expelled—were standing in the photograph Cressida discovered inside the ledger. They were on either side of Helvetia, two sentinels with long hair and broken spirits, valiantly trying to send a message. Kersti kneels down and starts digging to the left of the statue.
“At least it’s a nice night,” Noa says.
“Are we crazy?” Alison asks, looking up from her pile of dirt.
“Batshit,” Kersti says. “If Jay knew I was doing this . . .”
“What are we hoping to find in this ledger anyway?” Raf asks.
“Cressida,” Kersti answers. “We’re trying to find part of Cressida.”
Kersti knows on some level they already have all the evidence they need. She knows the ledger will contain more evidence of some kind and that it’s probably superfluous at this point, unnecessary to make or break an investigation. But it belonged to Cressida. It was the catalyst that propelled her to speak up—for herself and for all the other girls Hamidou abused. She went to each one of them that night and told them she had the ledger and that she was going to put an end to the abuse. Whatever secrets it held, it obviously gave Cressida the courage and the ammunition she’d been waiting for to finally break her silence. Maybe all she ever needed was the support of someone like Amoryn Lashwood, who gave her the reassurance that she wasn’t alone—that it was a horrific legacy that needed to stop. Ledger in hand, Cressida decided she would be the one to do it. She was that brave.
The ledger has become, for Kersti, the symbol of that bravery; the reminder of what she loved so much about Cressida.
“Oh!” A small cry from Alison on the other side of the statue. “There’s something here!”
Kersti crawls over, not giving a shit about her modal sundress, and starts digging right beside Alison. She can feel something hard.
“Move,” Alison says, and yanks it out of the earth like a weed. It’s wrapped in a plastic Migros bag.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Raf says.
“O mijn God,” Noa breathes.
Alison hands it to Kersti. Kersti removes it from the bag and holds it the same way Cressida held it all those years ago, with reverence, incredulity.
The ledger. It’s exactly as Kersti remembered it, only now it has an even more pungent smell of mold and dampness and dirt. She starts to go through it page by page, as Cressida would have done. She imagines Cressida holding it, just like she’s holding it now, reading every line of every page, looking for that secret.
She’s aware of Noa holding a flashlight over her shoulder, Raf’s wine breath behind her. The first thing she finds is the photograph of the statue with the two girls on either side of it. “Those are the girls who got expelled,” she says.
“I can’t read what they spray-painted—”
“Read the back.”
Do with this ledger what you wish. I’ve got no objections whatever you decide, only personal regrets. Amoryn El-Bahz.
The other girls are dead silent as Kersti continues turning the pages, scanning the entries for something noteworthy. September, October, November, December. It all seems fairly innocuous.
December 3, 1973. 23:00. Frei House.
Minutes:
Present:
Amoryn Lashwood, President
Brooke Middlewood, Vice President
Tatiana Greenberg, Secretary
Caris Yaren
Fernanda Manzanares
Karen Kim
Donna Murthy