The Returned (37 page)

Serge gave it some thought, then nodded. ‘I’ll see if I can find another path. Wait here until I get back.’

Toni waited. He was thirsty, and the thought of a stream made him eager to get moving. He stood, hoping Serge wouldn’t be much longer. Then he heard the snap of a branch some distance
away.

He looked. Someone was there, perhaps fifty metres from him, through the trees. He couldn’t see the figure clearly, but . . .

It’s her
, he thought. ‘Mum?’ he called. ‘Mum?’ He turned his head to look for Serge, then turned back to where the figure had been. It was gone.

Léna tried to scrub it all off.

She’d reached home in darkness the night before to find the house empty, her mother and Camille gone. The power in the whole
town
was out, and for a moment she wondered if
they’d gone ahead with the plan to move, and left.

Left without her.

She almost wouldn’t blame them if they had. Exhaustion took her as she sobbed on her bed in the darkness, alone and filled with regret.

When she’d woken at dawn, she’d found herself in borrowed clothes. She thought of Serge and of everything that had happened, and the lust that had taken her by surprise. Now she was
wearing his mother’s dress, a gift from him – her saviour, a man capable of who knew
what
atrocities. She just wanted to forget he even existed.

She stripped and sought the shower, scrubbing at her skin under the flow of tepid water until it was red and raw, staying there even as the water grew cold, then icy.

The same thoughts came to her again and again: the mindless hunger she and Serge had experienced for each other, the revelation of his true nature. And one question foremost: why her?
Why
her?
She curled up on the shower floor, shivering and unable to move.

Then she heard a door closing downstairs. She turned off the shower, wrapped herself in a towel, and tried to stay quiet.

The only image in her mind was of the people she’d seen in the forest. When they’d turned to her, the look in their eyes had been enough for her to think that if she was caught, she
wouldn’t survive the encounter. She had run and not looked back, certain they were always just metres behind her. Lost, she stumbled onto a dirt track, suddenly able to put on some speed even
in the dark.

Soon she was sure she wasn’t being followed. She’d kept running all the same, until her lungs had felt as though they were on fire.

She wondered what the hell they were. She wondered if they’d found her, now . . .

The bathroom door handle turned. She tensed, only now thinking to look for something,
anything
, to use as a weapon.

‘Léna, is that you?’

Her father.

The relief she felt was overwhelming. Suddenly she was a little child again, her father the only thing standing between her and the nightmares. She opened the door and hugged him, the tears
released once more at the relief that she hadn’t been left behind. ‘Dad, I thought you’d abandoned me.’

He wrapped his arms around her; she felt him stroke her hair gently. ‘I would never abandon you,’ he said. ‘You know that.
Never
.’

Jérôme drove towards the Helping Hand. He could see the stunned expression on Léna’s face, driving through a town that looked so deserted in daylight.
Everything seemed shut; rubbish blew across the streets.

‘I’d realized the power was out,’ she said, ‘but I had no idea it was
this
bad.’

‘It’s not just the power,’ said Jérôme. ‘There was a rumour about the dam, and about looters roaming around. It looks like most of the people who could leave
have, and the rest are cowering in their homes.’

He’d spent the night driving around the dead town looking for Léna. Then after dawn, when he’d returned to the house to grab some food, there she was. She hadn’t seen
the note he’d left for her on the kitchen table; the state she’d been in when he found her made him feel horribly guilty at being out when she’d come back.

He didn’t reprimand her for leaving hospital – she didn’t look as if she could handle it at the moment. But she was safe now. That was all that mattered. That was enough.

The power had been out for so long, communication was starting to be a problem. Landlines were down, and the mobile phone masts would all be running out of backup power soon. Although he had a
weak signal on his own phone, he’d been unable to raise Claire overnight to give her the regular updates she’d asked for, or to tell her Léna was OK this morning.

He’d gone to the police station in the night in case they’d had any news, but he’d left quickly enough. They had nothing for him and every face he saw there seemed exhausted,
stretched beyond breaking point. Their communications were so far unaffected, and they were swamped with calls. Stories of looting were surfacing, and it didn’t look to Jérôme as
though they had any capacity left to deal with serious disorder.

He’d also driven to Frédéric’s house to find that his parents didn’t know where he was either. They were just as worried. Unlike Léna he wasn’t prone
to just disappearing without contact, but they all took some hope from the possibility that Frédéric and Léna were in the same place, safer together than they would be apart.
He’d told Frédéric’s parents about the group at the Helping Hand, that if need be they would be welcome there. At least it was warm.

‘You didn’t see Frédéric, then?’ he asked Léna now. She shook her head. ‘So where did you go?’

The look on her face made him pull the car over – she was overwhelmed, sobbing again. He held her, his heart breaking, wondering what she could have been through, knowing that if anyone
had hurt her he wouldn’t be held responsible for his actions.

At last, she pulled away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping her face and trying to stifle her sobs.

He looked at her, cautious about pushing too hard. ‘You want to talk about it?’

She shook her head and looked down.

‘That’s OK,’ said Jérôme. ‘You’re safe now.’

But as he looked out at the desolate streets beyond the car, he wondered if any of them were safe.

When they reached the Helping Hand the tears broke out on all sides. Jérôme and Claire brought Léna into the dormitory, where Camille was reading. Camille
jumped up and ran to her sister and they hugged, the happiest they’d been to see one another since Camille’s return. Claire led Jérôme away, leaving the girls to
themselves.

Claire was holding Jérôme’s hand, he realized, and smiling at him. It was time, he thought, to try to fix some of the damage.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said to her. ‘My attitude to you. My hostility to Pierre. I wanted you back, I wanted to make amends. And instead I was just driving you further
away.’

She squeezed his hand. ‘You brought Léna home, Jérôme. You know how much that means.’

He shrugged, unwilling to take the credit. ‘She found her own way home.’

‘Did she say . . .?’

‘Not yet. In her own time.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s something I need to tell you, Claire. About Léna’s injury.’ He felt her hand slip out of his.
‘I was drunk. I pushed her. She fell, and hurt her back.’

‘You told me that,’ she said.

‘But that wasn’t why she stopped talking to me, or why we never told you about it.’

Her expression became cold, tense. ‘Why, then?’

‘Just before I pushed her away, I said . . . I said that I wished she’d been on the coach, not Camille.’ He watched her face, and saw her absorb the confession. Claire closed
her eyes. He didn’t want forgiveness, not that. This was all there would ever be. An explanation, bare and raw. Something said in anger, something he hadn’t really meant.

But words like that could never be taken back. They had driven a wedge between him and his daughter that he didn’t think would ever be repaired, not fully.

She opened her eyes again. ‘There’s something I need to tell you too, Jérôme,’ said Claire, and she told him about the Koretzkys.

Jérôme shook his head. ‘Accusing her of causing it . . .

It’s obscene.’ Claire nodded, but Jérôme bit his tongue. He would say no more than that, not to Claire. He wouldn’t criticize the Church to her, the Church whose
primary message was exactly what Camille had repeated: you would meet your loved ones again, after death. It was, he reflected, precisely why suicide was regarded as such a terrible sin. For
otherwise, if anyone truly believed, why would they hesitate?

Léna lay snuggled with Camille on the dorm bed. Just being close to her sister – and that was how she thought of her, there was no doubt in her mind now –
made Léna feel safer.

‘Where did you go?’ said Camille. Her voice was tender, the way it used to be when they spoke.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Léna. ‘I was angry. Part of it was seeing you and Frédéric together, laughing. Part of it was the thought that he
didn’t see you for who you were.’

‘He knows now.’

‘What made him accept it?’

‘He came to my room, and we kissed. Then he looked at me. He was crying, but . . .’

Léna knew what she was about to say. For the first time since Camille had come back, she felt they were really connected again. ‘ . . . but he must already have known,’ she
said. ‘Maybe since the first time he saw you. The only thing that made him deny it was that it was impossible.’

‘I kissed him to hurt you,’ said Camille, sitting up. ‘Because you rejected me.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Léna, sitting up too. ‘I understand.’

Camille locked her gaze with her sister’s. ‘Léna?’ she said. ‘I’m frightened. I don’t sleep any more, and it scares me. Maybe I’m different now.
Some of the other people here look at me – not just Sandrine, there are others too – they look at me like they don’t think they can trust me. And I don’t know if I trust
myself. Maybe I’m not safe to be around.’

Léna thought of the people she’d seen in the forest. Whoever they’d been, they were the ones who weren’t safe to be around, not Camille. Her dad had mentioned looters
roaming the area; that was the obvious answer, but there was another possibility in Léna’s head now, something she pushed from her thoughts at once.

‘You’re my sister,’ whispered Léna. ‘And we won’t let anyone say different, OK?’ Then she saw something on Camille’s face: a blemish. She
frowned.

‘What?’ said her sister.

‘You have something here,’ said Léna, reaching out to touch it; a small patch of cracked skin on Camille’s cheek. Camille put her hand up and felt it too, her eyes
growing more scared as she explored the area. The fear was reflected in Léna’s face.

‘What is it?’ said Camille. ‘What does it look like?’

It looked . . .

It looked exactly the way the wound on Léna’s back had looked, at first.

Like infection.

Like decay.

Laure woke to her alarm and started to get herself ready for work as she always did: quickly, no thinking required. Until she got some coffee in her each morning, thinking
wasn’t something she felt up to. Half-dressed, she went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. On her way out she saw Julie, still curled up on the sofa-bed. The boy wasn’t with her.
She could hear him downstairs in the kitchen, the regular crunch of cereal being eaten. It was something she’d learned pretty quickly the night before, how much of an appetite he had.

Laure turned to go back to her bedroom and get her uniform on.

‘Laure?’ said Julie.

Laure stopped and looked at her, smiling. ‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘Come here,’ said Julie, hand outstretched.

Laure approached and took Julie’s hand in hers. Julie pulled her in, closer, closer. Then she kissed her. Tentative, soft. Laure was cautious, but she was swamped with the desire to hold
Julie, and pour kisses over every part of her.

Julie kissed harder, pulled Laure onto the bed, tugged at what little clothing she was wearing, eager. Laure felt something loosen within her, that aching desire held back for so long. She
started to unbutton the shirt Julie was wearing, but a hand stopped her.

‘Wait,’ said Julie, anxiety in her eyes.

Laure put one finger on Julie’s lips. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, and pulled the shirt open.

There it was. All these years, and Laure hadn’t once seen the scars Julie’s attacker had left behind, her stomach a patchwork of skin. She put her hand on them and looked up.

‘I don’t want you to see them,’ Julie whispered. ‘They’re not what I am, do you understand? They’re not what I am.’

‘Then I don’t see them,’ said Laure and she kissed her. She was trying to hold the tears back, but they were coming all the same. So much time, she thought. So much wasted
time.

Julie pulled away, her eyes locked upon something over Laure’s shoulder. Laure turned. Victor was watching them. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she snapped, irritation at the
spoiled moment getting the better of her. ‘Get lost. Don’t you understand privacy?’

The boy looked deflated. He turned and went back downstairs.

Laure sensed it, sensed the chill in the air. She turned to Julie, and realized she’d overstepped the mark. ‘Sorry,’ she said, but the damage was done. Julie sat up, pushed
herself out of bed and started to get dressed, stony-faced.

Laure sighed and went to her bedroom to put on her uniform. Try as she might, she couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable around the boy, after what Julie had told her about him and Viviane
Costa. As she headed for the stairs, she said to Julie: ‘He shouldn’t stay with you. What if he’s dangerous?’

‘Dangerous?’ said Julie, defiant. ‘He’s a child.’

Laure hung her head. There was nothing she could say, nothing that would make Julie see the truth, without making her the enemy. ‘Of course he is.’

‘Laure . . .’ said Julie, suddenly anxious. ‘Don’t go. Don’t go to work. Stay here with me.’

‘I have to,’ Laure said, hoping Julie could see the regret in her eyes. ‘We’re short on staff and things are critical. We’ve no idea if the power will come back any
time soon. We need everyone.’ She saw the fearful look on Julie’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’

For a moment Julie seemed to struggle to say it, her eyes not meeting Laure’s. Then: ‘I think that I’m one, too.’