CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XII

By Wednesday the following week, Amara was retracing her footsteps once again, re-walking streets she’d already been down. Then she stumbled upon a conversation that gave her the unknowing answer as to why she was still doggedlyhere.

The tour guide looked to be in his forties or perhaps fifties; it was hard to tell with his silver hair and the side profile of his long, gaunt face. He wore an absurdly bright blue jacket and talked animatedly into a small lapel microphone, his hand holding up his collar. It was clear to see he was a spritely man, striding along chatting away to the two sets of couples following him, their hands crushed to their ears as they tried desperately to hear him over the roaring wind. Why anyone would go on a walking tour when winter had barely begun to thaw? Amara had no answer. Then again, here she was wandering the streets, so who was she tojudge?

One couple, the larger pair, had stopped to take photos while the tour guide carried on walking in large strides. Amara caught a whiff of an American accent as the woman demanded her partner take more flattering shots of her against the backdrop of a large block of a building. The simplicity of the tan structure only further made its prominence and prestige more apparent. The simplicity of the woman, not so much. Wearing a bright pink leather jacket, leggings that looked like faded leopard print turned camouflage, and fur boots, the woman appeared to have stepped out of some Paris fashion show that had gone disastrously wrong in the high-street chain stores. Her partner was much more casual in jeans and a blue and white puffer jacket with a red stripe across the chest. Amara noted he wasn’t being asked to pose in any of the photos.

She couldn’t make much out of the other couple with the tour guide, their backs turned towards her. All she could see was a short, blonde woman with a tall, lean man clearly chatting to each other, obviously not all that interested in what the tour guide was saying. Amara was.

“Yes, that right over there is the National Library of Scotland. One of the largest research libraries in Europe! It houses every book published in the United Kingdom and keeps a copy of all printed materials too, from research papers to newspaper articles to birthannouncements.”

Birth announcements. It was a long shot. Amara had been left on a Parisian parish church doorstep, after all. But the visceral feeling in her gut lurched forward at the unexpected words and pulled at her until she found herself walking towards the building the tour guide had pointed out to his companions.

The inside was surprisingly modern given the exterior impression. Amara wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, perhaps more like the train station, but this seemed like any other reception hall she’d come across in the museums, libraries, and other such places in Paris.

Approaching the desk with no one ahead of her in the queue, she was greeted by a tall male with spectacles who looked awfully familiar, though she couldn’t quite place him. His dark hair was long enough to flop just over his forehead and his green eyes were watery enough that they calmed her. His face was also rather gaunt, his body lost underneath the baggy grey jumper he wore, and the white shirt underneath left plenty of room for his neck to breathe. He felt … unintrusive. Perhaps that was why he was the first person she’d felt comfortable enough to talk to since the incident. Perhaps it was because he felt familiar and she couldn’t quite place why, but she instinctively felt like he was not going to harmher.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’d like to look for ... ah ... newspaper clippings and birth announcements from around twenty-five yearsago?”

“Do you have one of our librarycards?”

At Amara’s dismayed look, he continued. “I’m assuming you’re not from aroundhere?”

“No,” Amara said slowly, remembering what he had said about people of her complexion not beingwelcome.

The man paused before offering her a gentle smile that reached his eyes.

“The accent gave it away. Not to worry. I can issue you with a visitor’s pass today. Unless you planned onreturning?”

“No, I think I’ll just have a look today. If that’sok?”

“Of course.”

He drew his attention back to the computer in front of him, tapping away at the keys until Amara heard the whirr of a machine.

“Here you go.” He handed her a piece of laminated plastic.

“Just head up the stairs and the reading room with the archives will be to yourright.”

“Thankyou.”

“Not a problem. You have a nice day now.”

Amara nodded, careful not to smile at the kind man, and headed for the stairs.

After scouring the catalogues, she placed her online requests and waited patiently at the collections desk for them to appear. When the book fetcher − thankfully a woman this time − kindly handed them over, she carefully carried the copies of the papers to a nearby desk and settled in toread.

What felt like hours of fruitless searching later, Amara’s eyes were sore, her head throbbing from information overload. Her body was stiff from sitting in the wooden chair where the cushion under the upholstered brown leather had been squashed over time, leaving little support underneath her. It had been a futile hope she finally acknowledged, placing the last newspaper archive back on the collection desk and heading back out the doors and down the stairs.

Whether it was because she’d been so focused on the archives when she came in or simply because she hadn’t noticed before, when she walked back into the lobby, she saw signs for an exhibition. Checking the time on her phone, she saw it hadn’t slipped by nearly as fast as she had expected through the myriad of newspaper archives, and she still had time to catch the exhibition. It was on one of her favourite topics, constellations. Following the signs for the building where the exhibition was being held, Amara was delighted to find it was a free exhibition to the public.

Stepping into the space, Amara felt her soul sigh. She hadn’t realised her shoulders had been hunched up by her ears until they dropped down, the coil in her neck releasing at the same time. She took a deep breath of air and felt her ribcage expand. It felt like the first time she’d breathed in days.

The exhibition was wonderful. Projections on bare walls detailed all the different constellations, the written panes underneath them depicting their history. Not just their scientific discovery but the myths behind them all. Those were the stories Amara really loved.

She’d been lucky. Despite her penchant for exploring, she’d been given a lovely Parisian foster mother who had been strict but fair. Her one gift to Amara was that she had always told her a story about the stars at bedtime when asked for one. A moment of sadness tinted the exhibition as Amara remembered her. Remembered too the funeral, the feeling that she’d been abandoned once again and didn’t quite belong now that her foster mother was gone. It had only been six short months after the funeral that she’d saved up enough money to leave Paris, after working day and night as a waitress, picking up any and all the extra shifts available.

Her hands skimmed along one of the display cabinets filled with old brown maps that were curling at the edges, depicting how the constellations were plotted, how they had developed over the ages, how one could still get their name on a star to this day.

That would be nice, Amara thought, to be remembered in some way.

As she continued to skim her fingers along the glass cabinets, peering at each piece on display, following the grooves of the panels that depicted all her favourite stories, she followed each twist and turn of the exhibition. Then, when she turned the fifth corner, blood roared through her ears as her heart pounded against her ribcage and gasping for air hurt. She wasn’t alone after all.