The Wrong Girl Read Free Page B

rent.
    Hanna knew the afternoon was going to be taken up with Sinterklaas. So, eager to make what money she could, she’d left her daughter with the Santos girl that morning and chanced on a few hours in the nearest free unit she could find.
    Two customers. One Danish, one from London. Quick, easy, casual business. After costs she was seventy euros in pocket. Enough to see Natalya through the afternoon.
    This year, starting with Sinterklaas, she’d know a happy Christmas. That was a promise Hanna had made herself. Natalya was just a baby when the Russians and the Ossetians entered their home city of Gori during the brief South Ossetia war. Her husband, Natalya’s father, died in the fighting. He was a baker from a village near the border. His relatives didn’t want to know his Georgian wife and child when he was dead. Her own family, who’d never liked the idea she’d married an Ossetian, felt the same way. Poverty and desperation finally drove her west, hitching with her daughter across Europe. Finally doing what it took to keep them in food.
    ‘Mum,’ Natalya said, trying on her new jacket. ‘Where’d you get this?’
    Pink. My Little Pony patterns on the fabric. Natalya was growing. Asking questions. Starting to understand things. The Dutch authorities treated them with respect. She was going to a good school, quickly learning the language, English too. But still they lived in a tiny room on the top of a building in the middle of a red-light district while Hanna worked afternoons and nights, six days a week usually.
    ‘I found it. Maybe some rich people didn’t like it.’ A smile. ‘Do you?’
    The little girl beamed back. Blonde hair. Pale, smart face. Children were shaped by the world they experienced. In her eight years Natalya Bublik had lost an adoring father, her home, been rejected by both sides of her family, seen her mother reduced to prostitution on the road.
    She knew a lie when she heard it. Knew when to ignore it too.
    Natalya hugged the jacket, the most expensive piece of clothing she’d ever had. In six months it would be too small for her. Her mother would be wondering how to earn the money to replace the thing.
    There was an easier answer beckoning. Chantal Santos kept pushing it at her. Stop working the cabins alone, as a freelance. Sign up with the Turk who had connections throughout the area. Cem Yilmaz, a big, muscular hulk with a fancy apartment near Dam Square and a route into all the high-class escort services in town. Yilmaz controlled much of the top end of the sex trade. Through the Santos girl he’d promised he could double the amount she earned, for half the time on her back or on her knees.
    ‘Let’s go, Mum,’ Natalya said and took her mother’s hand.
    First winter in Amsterdam. She was a good mother, had done her research. Natalya had to remember this forever. They’d walk out into the busy streets, watch Saint Nicholas ride through the city on horseback. Listen to him address the children from the balcony of the theatre in Leidseplein. Then eat chips and mayonnaise together, giggle like two little girls. And, finally, go back to the gable room in Oude Nieuwstraat where Hanna would tuck Natalya into the little bed then find a free cabin for the night, strip down to her bra and pants, sit on the stool at the window, wait for a customer. Answer the bell. Negotiate the fee. Open the door. Shut the curtains. Close her mind. Get the job done. Wait for the next one.
    Chantal caught them on the stairs. Natalya’s head went down at the sight of her. The two didn’t get on. It was understandable. The Filipina kid didn’t try to hide what she did. She was proud of her dark, alluring looks, boasted of the money they brought in. Sometimes Hanna Bublik had no choice but to leave her daughter alone with this young woman.
    ‘Wait in the hall,’ she said and watched the pink jacket bob down the stairs.
    ‘He’s been on at me again,’ the girl told her when Natalya was