She meets Mo at St Pancras at five thirty
p.m., and at the sight of her, waving laconically, cigarette in hand outside a
café, she realizes she’s almost shamefully relieved at the prospect of two
days away. Two days away from the deathly hush of the Glass House. Two days away from
the telephone, which she has come to view as virtually radioactive: fourteen different
journalists have left messages of varying friendliness on her answer-phone. Two days
away from Paul, whose very existence reminds her of everything she has got wrong.
The previous night she had told Sven her
plan, and he had said immediately, ‘Can you afford it?’
‘I can’t afford anything.
I’ve remortgaged the house.’
Sven’s silence was poignant.
‘I had to. The law firm wanted
guarantees.’
The legal costs are eating everything. The
barrister alone costs five hundred pounds an hour and he hasn’t yet stood up in
court. ‘It’ll be fine once the painting is mine again,’ she says
briskly.
Outside, London is bathed in an evening
mist; the sunset shoots orange flares across the dirty-violet sky. ‘I hope I
didn’t tear you away from anything,’ she says, as they settle into their
seats.
‘Only the Comfort Lodge Monthly
Sing-a-long.’ Mo places a pile of glossy magazines and some chocolate in
front of them. ‘And the chord changes of “We’re
Going To Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line” hold no surprises for me. So
who’s this man we’re going to meet, and how does he relate to your
case?’
Philippe Bessette is the son of
Aurélien Bessette, younger brother of Sophie Lefèvre. It was Aurélien,
Liv explains, who lived in Le Coq Rouge during the years of the occupation. He had been
there when Sophie was taken away, and had stayed in the town for several years
afterwards. ‘He of all people might know how the painting disappeared. I spoke to
the matron of the care home where he lives, and she said he should be up to a
conversation as he’s still quite sharp, but that I had to come in person as
he’s pretty deaf and can’t do it by phone.’
‘Well, glad to help.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But you do know I don’t really
speak French.’
Liv’s head whips round. Mo is pouring
a small bottle of red wine into two plastic glasses. ‘What?’
‘I don’t speak French. I’m
good at understanding general old person’s babble, though. I might be able to get
something.’
Liv slumps in her seat.
‘I’m
joking.
Jesus,
you’re gullible.’ Mo hands her the wine, and takes a long sip. ‘I
worry about you sometimes. I really do.’
Afterwards she remembers little of the
actual train journey. They drink the wine, and two more little bottles, and they talk.
It’s the closest thing she’s had to a night out for weeks. Mo talks about
her alienation from her parents, who cannot understand her lack of ambition or the care
home, which she loves. ‘Oh, I know we’re the lowest
of the low, care assistants, but the olds are good. Some of them are really smart, and
others are funny. I like them more than most people our age.’ Liv waits for
‘present company excepted’ and tries not to take offence when it
doesn’t come.
She tells Mo, finally, about Paul. And Mo is
temporarily silenced. ‘You slept with him without Googling him?’ she says,
when she recovers the power of speech. ‘Oh, my God, when you said you were out of
the dating loop I never thought for a minute … You don’t sleep with
someone without doing
background
. Jesus.’
She sits back and refills her glass. Just
briefly, she looks oddly cheerful. ‘Whoa. I just realized something: you, Liv
Halston, may actually turn out to have had the Most Expensive Shag In
History.’
They spend the night in a budget hotel in a
Paris suburb, where the bathroom is moulded from one piece of yellow plastic and the
shampoo is the exact colour and scent of washing-up liquid. After a stiff, greasy
croissant and a cup of coffee, they call the residential home. Liv packs their stuff,
her stomach already a knot of nervous anticipation.
‘Well, that’s torn it,’
says Mo, when she puts down the phone.
‘What?’
‘He’s not well. He’s not
seeing visitors today.’
Liv, putting on her makeup, stares at her in
shock. ‘Did you tell them we’d come all the way from London?’
‘I told her we’d come from
Sydney. But the woman said he was weak and he’d only be asleep if we came.
I’ve given
her my mobile number and she’s promised to
ring if he picks up.’
‘What if he dies?’
‘It’s a cold, Liv.’
‘But he’s old.’
‘Come on. Let’s go drink in bars
and stare at clothes we can’t afford. If she rings we can be in a taxi before you
can say Gérard Depardieu.’
They spend the morning wandering around the
endless departments at Galeries Lafayette, which are festooned with baubles and packed
with Christmas shoppers. Liv tries to distract herself, to enjoy the change, but she is
acutely conscious of the price of everything. Since when had two hundred pounds become
an acceptable price for a pair of jeans? Did a hundred-pound moisturizer really
eradicate wrinkles? She finds herself dropping hangers as quickly as she picks them
up.
‘Are things really that
bad?’
‘The barrister is five hundred quid an
hour.’
Mo waits a minute for a punchline that
doesn’t come. ‘Ouch. I hope this painting’s worth it.’
‘Henry seems to think we’ve got
a good defence. He says they talk the talk.’
‘Then stop worrying, Liv, for
God’s sake. Enjoy yourself a little. Come on – this is the weekend you’re
going to turn it all around.’
But she can’t enjoy herself.
She’s here to pick the brains of an eighty-year-old man, who may or may not be up
to speaking to her. The court case is due to start on Monday and she needs greater
firepower to go in with than she already has.
‘Mo.’
‘Mm?’ Mo is holding up a black
silk dress. She keeps looking up at the security cameras in a faintly unnerving
manner.
‘Can I suggest somewhere
else?’
‘Sure. Where do you want to go? Palais
Royale? Le Marais? We could probably find a bar for you to dance on, if you’re
doing the whole finding-yourself-again thing.’
She pulls the road map from her handbag and
begins to unfold it. ‘No. I want to go to St Péronne.’
They hire a car and drive north from Paris.
Mo does not drive, so Liv takes the wheel, forcing herself to remember to stay on the
right-hand side of the road. It is years since she drove. She feels the approach of St
Péronne like the beat of a distant drum. The suburbs give way to farmland, huge
industrial estates, and then, finally, almost two hours later, the flatlands of the
north-east. They follow signs, get briefly lost, double back on themselves and then,
shortly before four o’clock, they are driving slowly down the town’s high
street. It is quiet, the few market stalls already packing up and only a few people in
the grey stone square.
‘I’m gasping. Do you know where
the nearest bar is?’
They pull over, glancing up at the hotel on
the square. Liv lowers the window and stares up at the brick frontage.
‘That’s it.’
‘That’s what?’
‘Le Coq Rouge. That’s the hotel
where they all lived.’
She climbs out of the car slowly, squinting
up at the sign. It looks as it might have done back in the early part
of the last century. The windows are brightly painted, the flower boxes full of
Christmas cyclamen. A sign swings from a wrought-iron bracket. Through an archway into a
gravelled courtyard, she sees several expensive cars. Something inside her tightens with
nerves or anticipation, she is not sure which.
‘It’s Michelin-starred.
Excellent.’
Liv stares at her.
‘Duh. Everyone knows Michelin-starred
restaurants have the best-looking staff.’
‘And … Ranic?’
‘Foreign rules. Everyone knows it
doesn’t count if you’re in another country.’
Mo is through the door and standing at the
bar. A young, impossibly handsome man in a starched apron greets her. Liv stands to the
side as Mo chats away to him in French.
Liv breathes in the scents of food cooking,
beeswax, perfumed roses in vases, and gazes at the walls. Her painting lived here.
Almost a hundred years ago
The Girl You Left Behind
lived here, along with its
subject. Some strange part of her half expects the painting to appear on a wall as if it
belongs here.
She turns to Mo. ‘Ask him if the
Bessettes still own this place.’
‘Bessette?
Non
.’
‘No. It belongs to a Latvian,
apparently. He has a chain of hotels.’
She’s disappointed. She pictures this
bar, full of Germans, the red-haired girl busying herself behind the bar, her eyes
flashing resentment.
‘Does he know about the bar’s
history?’ She pulls the photocopied picture from her bag, unrolls it. Mo repeats
this, in rapid French. The barman leans over, shrugs. ‘He’s only worked here
since August. He says he knows nothing about it.’
The barman speaks again, and Mo adds:
‘He says she’s a pretty girl.’ She raises her eyes to heaven.
‘And he says you’re the second
person to ask these questions.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Ask him what the man looked
like?’
He barely needed to say. Late thirties or
so, about six foot tall, sprinkling of early grey in his short hair. ‘
Comme un
gendarme
. He leave his card,’ the waiter says, and hands it to Liv.
Paul McCafferty
Director, TARP
It is as if she has combusted internally.
Again?
You even got
here
before me? She feels as if he is taunting
her. ‘Can I keep this?’ she says.
‘
Mais bien sûr
.’ The
waiter shrugs. ‘Shall I find you a table,
Mesdames
?’
Liv flushes.
We can’t afford
it
.
But Mo nods, studying the menu. ‘Yeah.
It’s Christmas. Let’s have one amazing meal.’
‘But –’
‘My treat. I spend my life serving
food to other people. If I’m going to have one blow-out, I’m going to have
it
here, in a Michelin-starred restaurant, surrounded by good-looking
Jean-Pierres. I’ve earned it. And, come on, I owe you one.’
They eat in the restaurant. Mo is garrulous,
flirts with the waiting staff, exclaims uncharacteristically over each course,
ceremonially burns Paul’s business card in the tall white candle.
Liv struggles to stay engaged. The food is
delicious, yes. The waiters are attentive, knowledgeable. It is food Nirvana, as Mo
keeps saying. But as she sits in the crowded restaurant something strange happens: she
cannot see it as just a dining room. She sees Sophie Lefèvre at the bar, hears the
echoing thump of German boots on the old elm floorboards. She sees the log fire in the
grate, hears the marching troops, the distant boom of guns. She sees the pavement
outside, a woman dragged into an army truck, a weeping sister, her head bent over this
very bar, prostrate with grief.
‘It’s just a painting,’ Mo
says a little impatiently, when Liv turns down the chocolate fondant and confesses.
‘I know,’ Liv says.
When they finally get back to their hotel,
she takes the file of documents into the plastic bathroom and, as Mo sleeps, she reads
and reads by the harsh strip-light, trying to work out what she has missed.
On Sunday morning, when Liv has chewed away
all but one of her nails, the matron calls. She gives them an address in the north-east
of the city, and they drive there in the little hire car, wrestling with the unfamiliar
streets, the clogged Périphérique. Mo, who had drunk almost two
bottles of wine the evening before, is subdued and tetchy. Liv is
silent too, exhausted from lack of sleep, her brain racing with questions.
She had been half expecting something
depressing; some 1970s box in liverish brick with uPVC windows and an orderly car park.
But the building they pull up outside is a four-storey house, its elegant windows framed
with shutters, its frontage covered with ivy. It is surrounded by neatly tended gardens,
with a pair of tall wrought-iron gates and paved paths that lead into separate closeted
areas.
Liv buzzes the door and waits while Mo
reapplies her lipstick – ‘Who are you?’ Liv says, watching her. ‘Anna
Nicole Smith?’ Mo cackles, and the tension clears.
They stand in Reception for several minutes
before anybody pays them any attention. Through glass doors to the left, quavering
voices are raised in song, as a short-haired young woman plays an electric organ. In a
small office, two middle-aged women are working through a chart.
Finally one turns around.
‘
Bonjour
.’
‘
Bonjour
,’ says Mo.
‘Who are we here for again?’
‘Monsieur Bessette.’
Mo speaks to the woman in perfect
French.
She nods. ‘English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please. Sign in. Clean your hands.
Then come this way.’
They write their names in a book, then she
points them towards an antibacterial-liquid dispenser and they make a show of rubbing it
thoroughly over their fingers. ‘Nice place,’ Mo murmurs, with the air of a
connoisseur. Then
they follow the woman’s brisk walk through a
labyrinth of corridors until she reaches a half-open door.
‘
Monsieur? Vous avez des
visiteurs
.’
They wait awkwardly by the door as the woman
walks in and holds a rapid-fire discussion with what looks like the back of a chair. And
then she emerges. ‘You can go in,’ she says. And then: ‘I hope you
have something for him.’
‘The matron said I should bring him
some
macarons
.’
She glances at the expensively wrapped box
Liv pulls from her bag.
‘
Ah, oui
,’ she says,
and gives a small smile. ‘These he likes.’