stood on the corner of an elegant Georgian terrace a few streets north of St Stan’s, its wide front window and green and white tiled facade revealing its original incarnation as the neighbourhood greengrocers. Now the windows were hung, somewhat incongruously, with ruched, plum-coloured silk curtains.
The doorbell sounded a grating three-chime peal. The elderly lady who answered – aged about seventy, he estimated, maybe seventy-five – wore a ruffled cerise silk blouse, a similar shade to the curtains, and tinkled with gold. He would bet that the artful crown of permed blonde hair was the work of Hair Fantastic, the local salon that doubled as operational HQ for North London’s fearsome Polish matriarchy.
‘Dzien dobry, pani Tosik,’ said Janusz making an old-fashioned bow. He’d made a mental note to watch his manners, uncomfortably aware that the courtesy drummed into him by his parents had become coarsened over the years, first by life on a building site, and more recently by the uncouth behaviour his current line of business sometimes demanded.
‘Come in, darling, come in!’ piped pani Tosik. ‘How lovely to have a man visit! I knew your father in Gdansk, after the war – God rest his soul.’
She reached up to put her hands on his shoulders and examine him, then gave a single decisive nod.
‘Tak. You have his good looks – and his character, too, I think.’
She waved him inside: ‘You will have coffee? And tort. Of course! Who doesn’t like cake?’
Janusz followed pani Tosik, her heels ticking on the lino, to the dimly lit, cinnamon-smelling interior.
The old lady settled Janusz on a velvet-covered banquette in the plushly decorated restaurant, its walls hung with oil paintings of Polish rural scenes. While she made coffee, Janusz retrieved a copy of Gazeta Warszawa from a nearby table. The front-page headline read: ‘“Forget the past and move on”’, Zamorski tells voters’. Beneath it was a photo of a middle-aged man with a thoughtful yet purposeful expression: Edward Zamorski, presidential-hopeful and head of the Renaissance Party.
As pani Tosik returned, Janusz stood to take the tray of coffee and pastries from her. She nodded to the picture: ‘What do you think of our next president?’ she asked, pouring coffee into a hand-painted Opole porcelain cup and saucer.
‘I saw him speak once, at a rally in Gdansk – it was before martial law, so I must have been about seventeen,’ said Janusz, raising the coffee cup to his lips. His fingers felt gigantic, cumbersome, around its fragile handle. ‘I remember at one point he spoke over our heads, directly to the ZOMO. He said, ‘“When you raise a baton to a fellow Pole, the blow lands on your own soul.”’
He remembered something else, too. Zamorski had told the crowd that once they won their freedom, reconciliation and forgiveness – even of the hated riot police – would be more important than revenge if the country were to move forward. As a fiery teenager, Janusz had found himself bewildered, angered even, by these words, but after what happened a couple of years later he found himself revisiting them again and again.
Pani Tosik sighed, waving a hand in a gesture that combined regret and resignation. ‘You young people got rid of the Komunistow,’ she said, ‘And got a country ruled by American multinationals instead. My friend’s daughter is a teacher in Warsaw and what do you think she earns in a year?’
Janusz shook his head.
‘9000 euros!’ hissed pani Tosik. ‘This is why young people have to come to London, although it is not a good place for a young girl.’
This was her cue to embark on the story of the missing waitress, interrupted only by the whines of the tiny Yorkshire terrier sitting beside her on the banquette begging for food.
‘Weronika came to me six months ago, in November. No! Not November, darling, October’ – as though he’d been the one to get it wrong – ‘Such a pretty girl. Beautiful, even,’ she widened her tiny blue eyes for emphasis. ‘Like … Grace Kelly, but with modern outfits, you know. Yes, Tinka, you may have a little bit of Napoleonka because your mama loves you.’
She broke off a piece of the pink-iced millefeuille pastry and gave it to the dog, who wolfed it down, licking every scrap from her fingers. Then, using her still-moist hand, she picked up another slice and put it on Janusz’s plate, appearing not to notice as the big man flinched.
‘Proper Polish pastry,’ she said, ‘Not those things the English call cakes – “Mr Kipper” etcetera.’ Reaching for a pink Sobranie cigarette she leaned forward to Janusz’s lighter flame.
‘Anyway, she was a good Catholic girl, very hard-working, very respectable – not like some of the English girls. With them, always a problem! One is a drunk, always arrives late, another gets a baby.’
Janusz sipped his coffee and nodded.
‘So, now – only Polish girls. And with this girl, I know her mama, and I say to her, your Weronika is safe with me. And then one day: pfouff! She is gone.’
The old lady’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I feel terrible, panie Kiszka. I cannot sleep at night, I can barely eat …’ A sharp glance down. ‘You do not like your Napoleonka?’
Janusz broke off a piece with his fork, but only took another sip of coffee.
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
Pani Tosik’s gripped Janusz’s forearm with surprisingly strong fingers. ‘No! I promised her Mama, no boyfriends. She is too young – only nineteen. She always sleeps here, upstairs, where I can keep her under my eyes. And I make sure she goes to confession every single week.
‘Let me find a photograph for you.’ As pani Tosik jingled off to the rear of the salon, Janusz took the chance to offload his toxic cake on Tinka. The dog took the Napoleonka in one messy gulp, then bit the hand that fed her. He stifled a cry – pani Tosik was returning.
‘Here she is, my beautiful Weronika. She was making a portfolio – her dream was to be a model.’
Janusz examined the professional-looking black and white photograph, which pictured a striking girl with ice-blonde hair wearing a long fur coat, against a white backdrop. She struck a self-consciously model-like pose: legs planted apart, hands on hips, shoulder-length hair blown backwards by a wind machine. Her face was all sharply angled planes – cheekbones that could cut coal – but there was uncertainty in the eyes, and her lips were rounded, almost childlike … like Iza’s – the thought surfaced before he could stop it.
‘Nice coat,’ he said, to cover his expression, waving at the pricey-looking fur. Pani Tosik laughed. ‘Oh, darling! It’s not real! The girls buy these “fun furs” from TK Maxx for pocket money!’
‘Speaking of money, pani …’
‘I cannot afford much,’ she said, pressing a hand to her chest. ‘I am not a wealthy woman. Maybe you want to help this poor girl as a Christian duty?’ She gave him a hopeful smile.
He had to admire the old girl: everyone knew her restaurant was coining it in. London’s Poles were desperate for a taste of home and these days Eastern European food was even getting a following among the English.
‘We all have cash flow problems,’
