The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney Read Free Book Online

Why does she assume I spend my evenings drinking myself into solitary despair?”
    “Because she’s met you. No . . . You know, she just wants you to . . . keep meeting people.”
    I look at him.
    “I don’t think she’s invited anyone, actually. Come on—just dinner. It’ll be . . . fun.”
    . . .
    The order of the day is simple. We have only one active case on file—Rose Janko, née Wood. Her father was finally persuaded to come up with some concrete facts and a couple of photographs. The first one Leon gave me— the one that shows her birthmark—was taken a couple of years before the wedding. She’s sitting with her mother in a stand at the races. She has a demure, self-contained air about her but is smiling slightly. Her hair is mousy, straight, and long; she has strongly marked eyebrows and a heavy, rather round jaw. Her head is turned slightly away from the camera, and you can clearly see the dark stain on her neck. It looks a bit like a hand, if you half close your eyes: as though someone is reaching around her throat from behind. I wonder if Ivo saw it before the wedding, if any of his family did.
    The second photograph is from the wedding itself. In it, the newly-weds pose in front of a glossy cream trailer, holding hands but standing apart. A dog is a moving blur behind them. Chrome trim winks in the sunlight, and both have their eyes slightly narrowed against the glare. Rose has had her hair done—permed, lightened, and arranged into blond flicks that frame her face. The high neck of her wedding dress hides the birthmark. She smiles nervously. Her new husband, Ivo Janko, wears a black suit; he is blade thin, with longish, slicked-back dark hair, high cheekbones, and large dark eyes. He’s very good-looking, and looks as though he knows it. He does not smile—his expression appears arrogant, even hostile. He seems to be leaning away from her, his body tense, his chin lifted. Studying his face in the photograph—looking for clues—I decide that his expression is due less to arrogance than to nervousness. They are both very young, after all, and are marrying a person they hardly know. Who would look at ease?
    Other facts are few and far between; Leon seemed to struggle to remember his daughter with any clarity. When I asked him what she was like as a person, he said that she was “quiet” and “a good girl.” But the girl at the races doesn’t look like a pushover. Rose was the third child, and the thirdgirl. I imagine her status in the family, with her mousy hair and strange, sinister birthmark, was lowly. Perhaps that was why she ended up marrying the son of a family who seem to exist—from what I have gathered— on the fringes of Gypsy society. Both, in their different ways, ill-favored.
    Apparently, she and Ivo had a son within the year, and then—according to Leon—the next he heard was that there was something wrong with the child, and that Rose had run away with a gorjio , who was never named. Leon was angry that his daughter had deserted her husband and child. The duty of a Gypsy wife lies with her husband and his family—providing him with children and seeing to his domestic comfort. She obeys and puts up with whatever is dished out—including blows. To run away from her marriage—especially with a non-Gypsy—is to put herself beyond the pale. At the end of the day, Rose should have stayed, because her place was by her husband’s side.
    Harsh rules. My dad never explained it, but he didn’t have to. He drove a deep rift between himself and his father when he married Mum. My grandfather never put it into words, either. But my brother and I understood that for him—for Tata—Dad had made himself unclean by choosing her. And even after he relented, and let her into his house and she could sit at his table, she wasn’t allowed near the sink, couldn’t wash up, and he had a special set of cutlery and crockery that he brought out only for us when we came over. He said it was the