As Long As She Lives (full published version!)

Chapter 13

Wemusa couldn't wait twenty-four hours. He finished his shift at 'Fugee and headed straight back to the internet café. The computer in the back corner was occupied, but a glare from a black man stinking of tomatoes, chilli and dishwashing liquid was all it took to scare a white, oily-faced teenager into shutting down his porn and moving.

Wemusa's hands were shaking and he had to enter his password three times before his mail loaded and his chat icon switched to "online". Penda was offline. He scanned the list of emails but could see nothing but spam. He forced himself to calm down and scanned a second time, but still found nothing. No matter, Penda hadn't said he'd email him, he'd said to log on the chat – and the twenty-four hours was still two hours away.

Three hours later he was hungry and getting angry. Reporters were getting news out and locals were sending videos to CNN, so Wemusa knew the internet was still up. It was possible, even probable, that Penda had had to go into hiding with Henri, but he could have sent at least a quick message from any mobile phone; besides, they weren't going to hole up somewhere without internet, Henri would be blind.

Another three hours later and he'd run out of money and nearly run out of patience. Penda wouldn't know that it would be costing Wemusa money to sit and wait for him to come online, but even so, four hours after the appointment was an insult. Movement caught Wemusa's eye; the teenager from the front desk was oozing toward him. Wemusa may have been stinking from work, dressed in rags and have only a pot noodle to go home to, but he wasn't going to be forced to tell this child that he couldn't afford another hour. He logged out, leaped up before the kid could reach him and left the café. Penda would have to send an email.

When Wemusa got back to the flats, the masses still occupied the TV room, but they were no longer wailing so much as snivelling with the occasional Mexican wave of communal lamentation. Still, with everyone playing concerned African brothers and sisters, Wemusa stood in the shower uninterrupted for long enough that he almost felt clean. Not long enough though, to come up with an answer to the question: what the hell was he going to do?

There were plenty of reasons that Penda could have missed the appointment, the most worrying of which was that Henri had told him to. No. Surely that was paranoia. Henri wouldn't give up on finding the woman. It was more important than ever and he had to put his mind to how he could possibly find one woman in a city of five million people, without a name.

Of course, even a name wouldn't make it easy, especially if it turned out to be a common one. He would need more – information on her work, her family, preferably a photo too. He'd hoped that one of the people Henri had managed to leave in administrative positions would come across a file that might have been missed by those who had cleaned up after her. There was little chance of that in the current chaos and even if there was, he couldn't rely on Penda being able to get him the information.

Wemusa dried off as best he could with his too-thin towel, dressed then took a moment to peruse his grand selection of three equally inedible "flavours" of pot noodle.

In the kitchen, adjacent to the TV room, a woman was stirring a big pot of stew that smelled too much like the kitchen at the restaurant. Wemusa emptied the kettle of any water that he wouldn't need for his pot noodle so that he didn't have to wait a moment longer than necessary within scent of the food. The kettle had hardly begun its hissing crescendo when there was a collective shriek from next door, followed by a hurricane of shushing and the first silence, but for the sound of the television, he'd heard in two days.

Wemusa rounded the wall between the kitchen and the TV room and peered through the transfixed, hand-clutching crowd at a white reporter, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his flak jacket smeared with dirt. He was squinting to protect his eyes from smoke and occasionally flinching at the crack of an explosion as the large red-brick building behind him was consumed by flame.

"Yes Lee," the reporter was saying, "it was one of the premier schools in the country, and a special favourite of the previous King, who particularly supported its scholarship program for gifted girls."

"And is the King's patronage the reason that this school particularly has been targeted Mark?" Lee Lin Chin asked.

"Revenge is possibly the reason for the extent of the violence Lee, but the girls who have been taken alive are known to be from wealthier families, including those of at least three government ministers, so the main object is more likely ransom, or to force support for Prince–" he corrected himself "King in Exile Henri."

The blood pounding through Wemusa's ears almost drowned out the fresh eruption of howling and ululation. Stepping over one woman who was beating at the floor Wemusa returned to the kitchen, poured the hot water into his pot noodle and strolled back to his room. Inside, he took a clean fork from his cup of utensils, sat on his bed and began to eat. It was delicious.

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Cheers!
Darcy.