The Girl You Left Behind

  As he pauses, a member of his legal team crosses the court and hands him a piece of paper. He reads it and takes a breath. His eyes scan the courtroom.

  'German census records we have just obtained show that Sophie Lefevre contracted Spanish influenza shortly after she arrived at the camps at Strohen. She died there shortly afterwards.'

  Liv hears his words through a buzzing in her ears. They vibrate within her, like the aftershock of a physical blow.

  'Your Honour, as we have heard in this court, a great injustice was done to Sophie. And a great injustice has been done to her descendants. Her husband, her dignity, her freedom and ultimately her life were taken from her. Stolen. What remained - her image - was, according to all the evidence, taken from her family by the very man who had done her the greatest wrong.

  'There is only one way to redress this wrong, belated as it might be - the painting must be returned to the Lefevre family.'

  She barely takes in the rest of his words. Paul sits with his forehead in his palms. She looks over at Janey Dickinson, and when the woman meets her eye, she realizes with a faint shock that for some other participants, too, this case is no longer just about a painting.

  Even Henry is downcast when they leave the court. Liv feels as if they have all been run over by a juggernaut.

  Sophie died in the camps. Sick and alone. Never seeing her husband again.

  She looks at the smiling Lefevres across the court, wanting to feel generous towards them. Wanting to feel as if some great wrong is about to be righted. But she recalls Philippe Bessette's words, the fact that the family had banned even the mention of her name. She feels as if, for a second time, Sophie is about to be handed over to the enemy. She feels, weirdly, bereaved.

  'Look, who knows what the judge will decide,' Henry says, as he sees her to the rear security area. 'Try not to dwell on it too much over the weekend. There's nothing more we can do now.'

  She tries to smile at him. 'Thanks, Henry,' she says. 'I'll - call you.'

  It feels strange out here, in the wintry sunlight, as if they have spent much longer than an afternoon in the confines of the court. She feels as if she has come here straight from 1945. Henry hails a taxi for her, then leaves, nodding farewell. It is then that she sees him, standing at the security gate. He looks as if he has been waiting there for her, and walks straight over.

  'I'm sorry,' he says, his face grim.

  'Paul, don't -'

  'I really thought - I'm sorry for everything.'

  His eyes meet hers, one final time, and he walks away, blind to the customers exiting the Seven Stars pub, the legal assistants dragging their trolleys of files. She sees the stoop to his shoulders, the uncharacteristic dip of his head and it is this, on top of everything else that has happened today, that finally settles something for her.

  'Paul!' She has to yell twice to be heard over the sound of the traffic. 'Paul!'

  He turns. She can see the points of his irises even from here.

  'I know.' He stands very still for a minute, a tall man, a little broken, in a good suit. 'I know. Thank you ... for trying.'

  Sometimes life is a series of obstacles, a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, she realizes suddenly, it is simply a matter of blind faith. 'Would you ... would you like to go for that drink some time?' She swallows. 'Now, even?'

  He glances at his shoes, thinking, then up at her again. 'Would you give me one minute?'

  He walks back up the steps of the court. She sees Janey Dickinson deep in conversation with her lawyer. Paul touches her elbow, and there is a brief exchange of words. She feels anxious - a little voice nagging: What is he telling her now? - and she turns away, climbing into the taxi, trying to quell it. When she looks up again through the window, he is walking briskly back down the steps, winding a scarf around his neck. Janey Dickinson is staring at the taxi, her files limp in her arms.

  He opens the door, and climbs in, slamming it shut. 'I quit,' he says. He lets out a breath, reaches over for her hand. 'Right. Where are we going?'

  32

  Greg's face betrays nothing as he answers the door. 'Hello again, Miss Liv,' he says, as if her appearance on the doorstep is entirely to be expected. He steps back into the hallway as Paul peels her coat from her shoulders, shushing the dogs, which rush to greet her. 'I've ruined the risotto, but Jake says it doesn't matter as he doesn't like mushrooms anyway. So we're thinking maybe pizza.'

  'Pizza sounds great. And my treat,' says Paul. 'It may be our last for a while.'

  They had held hands in stunned silence halfway down Fleet Street. 'I lost you your job,' she'd said finally. 'And your big bonus. And your chance to buy a bigger flat for your son.'

  He had gazed straight ahead of him. 'You didn't lose me any of it. I walked.'

  Greg raises an eyebrow. 'A bottle of red has been open in the kitchen since around half past four. This has nothing whatsoever to do with me looking after my nephew for the day. Does it, Jake?'

  'Greg says it's always wine o'clock in this house,' a boy's voice calls from the other room.

  'Tattle-tale,' Greg calls back. And then he says to Liv, 'Oh, no. I can't let you drink. Look what happened last time you got drunk in our company. You turned my sensible big brother into a tragic, mooning adolescent.'

  'And this is where I remind you yet again that mooning means something quite different in this country,' Paul says, steering her towards the kitchen. 'Liv, you'd better acclimatize for a minute. Greg's idea of interior decorating is basically Too Much Is Not Enough. He doesn't do minimalist.'

  'I stamp my personality on my little house, and, no, it is not a tabula rasa.'

  'It's beautiful,' she says, of the colourful walls, the bold prints and tiny photographs that surround her. She feels oddly at ease in this little railwayman's cottage, with its blaring music, incalculable numbers of loved things on every shelf and crammed into every wall-space, and a child who lies on a rug in front of the television.

  'Hey,' says Paul, going into the living room, where the boy flips on to his back like a puppy.

  'Dad.' He glances at her and she fights the urge to drop Paul's hand when he sees him registering it. 'Are you the girl from this morning?' he says, after a minute.

  'I hope so. Unless there was another one.'

  'I don't think so,' says Jake. 'I thought they were going to squash you.'

  'Yes, I sort of did too.'

  He studies her for a minute. 'My dad put on perfume the last time he saw you.'

  'Aftershave,' says Paul, and stoops to kiss him. 'Tattle-tale.'

  So this is Mini Paul, she thinks, and the idea is pleasing.

  'This is Liv. Liv, this is Jake.'

  She lifts a hand. 'I don't know many people your age, so I'll probably say horribly uncool things, but it's very good to meet you.'

  'That's okay. I'm used to it.'

  Greg appears and hands her a glass of red wine. His eyes dart between them. 'So what does this mean? Is there an entente cordiale between our warring factions? Are you two now ... secret collaborators?'

  Liv blinks at his choice of words. She turns to look at Paul.

  'I don't care about the job,' he had said quietly, his hand closing around hers. 'I only know that when I'm not with you I'm mean and mad at everything.'

  'No,' she says, and she finds she's grinning. 'He just realized he was on the wrong side all along.'

  When Andy, Greg's boyfriend, arrives at Elwin Street there are five of them squashed into the little house, but it never feels crowded. Liv, seated around a small tower of pizza slices, thinks of the cold Glass House on top of the warehouse and it seems suddenly so linked to the court case, to her own unhappiness, that she does not want to go home.

  She does not want to look at Sophie's face, knowing what is about to happen. She sits in the midst of these near-strangers, playing games or laughing at their family jokes, and grasps that her sense of constant surprise comes from the discovery that, despite it all, she is
happy; happy in a way that she cannot remember being for years.

  And there is Paul. Paul, who looks physically battered by the day's events, as if he, not her, has lost everything. Whenever he turns to look at her something realigns itself, as if her body has to attune itself to the possibility of being happy again.

  You okay? his look asks.

  Yes, hers says, and she means it.

  'So what happens on Monday?' Greg says, as they sit around the table. He has been showing them swatches of fabric for a new colour scheme in the bar. The table is strewn with crumbs and half-empty glasses of wine. 'You have to hand over the painting? Are you definitely going to lose?'

  Liv looks at Paul. 'I guess so,' she says. 'I just have to get my head around the idea of ... letting her go.' An unexpected lump rises to her throat, and she smiles, willing it to go away.

  Greg reaches out a hand to her. 'Oh, honey, I'm sorry. I didn't want to upset you.'

  She shrugs. 'I'm fine. Really. She's not mine any more. I should have understood that ages ago. I suppose I ... didn't want to see what was in front of my face.'

  'At least you still have your house,' Greg says. 'Paul told me it's amazing.' He catches Paul's warning glance. 'What? She's not meant to know you've been talking about her? What are we? Fifth-graders?'

  Paul looks briefly sheepish.

  'Ah,' she says. 'Not really. No, I don't.'

  'What?'

  'It's under offer.'

  Paul goes very still.

  'I have to sell it to meet the legal fees.'

  'You'll have enough over to buy somewhere else, right?'

  'I don't know yet.'

  'But that house -'

  '- was already mortgaged to the hilt. And needs work, apparently. I haven't done anything to it since David died. Apparently amazing imported glass with thermic qualities doesn't last for ever, even though David thought it would.'

  Paul's jaw tightens. He pushes back his chair abruptly and leaves the table.

  Liv looks at Greg and Andy, then at the door.

  'Garden, probably,' says Greg, raising an eyebrow. 'It's the size of a pocket handkerchief. You won't lose him.' And then, as she stands, he murmurs, 'It's terribly sweet how you keep demolishing my big brother. I wish I'd had your skills when I was fourteen.'

  He is standing on the little patio, which is crammed with terracotta pots of straggly plants, made spindly in the winter frosts. He is turned away from her, his hands rammed into his pockets. He looks crushed.

  'So you did lose everything. Because of me.'

  'Like you said, if it hadn't been you it would have been someone else.'

  'What was I thinking? What the fuck was I thinking?'

  'You were just doing your job.'

  He lifts a hand to his jaw. 'You know what? You really do not have to make me feel better.'

  'I'm fine. Really.'

  'How can you be? I wouldn't be. I'd be mad as ... Ah, Jesus.' His voice explodes with frustration.

  She waits, then takes his hand, pulls him to the little table. The ironwork is chilly, even through her clothes, and she scrapes her chair forward, places her knees between his, waiting until she is sure he is listening.

  'Paul.'

  His face is rigid.

  'Paul. Look at me. You need to understand this. The worst thing that could have happened to me already happened.'

  He looks up.

  She swallows, knowing that these are the words that stall; that may simply refuse to emerge. 'Four years ago David and I went to bed like it was any other night, brushing our teeth, reading our books, chatting about a restaurant we were going to the next day ... and when I woke up the next morning he was there beside me, cold. Blue. I didn't ... I didn't feel him go. I didn't even get to say ... '

  There is a short silence.

  'Can you imagine knowing you slept through the person you love most dying next to you? Knowing that there might have been something you could have done to help him? To save him? Not knowing if he was looking at you, silently begging you to -' The words fail, her breath catches, a familiar tide threatens to wash over her. He reaches out his hands slowly, enfolds hers within them until she can speak again.

  'I thought the world had actually ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again. I thought anything might happen if I wasn't vigilant. I didn't eat. I didn't go out. I didn't want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul. Much to my own surprise, I got through it. And life ... well, life gradually became liveable again.'

  She leans closer to him. 'So this ... the painting, the house ... It hit me when I heard what happened to Sophie. It's just stuff. They could take all of it, frankly. The only thing that matters is people.' She looks down at his hands, and her voice cracks. 'All that really matters is who you love.'

  He doesn't speak, but dips his head so that it comes to rest against hers. They sit there in the wintry garden, breathing in the inky air, listening to the muffled sound of his son's laughter coming from the house. Down the street she can hear the acoustics of early evening in the city, the clatter of pans in distant kitchens, televisions firing up, a car door slamming, a dog barking at some unseen outrage. Life in its messy, vital entirety.

  'I'll make it up to you,' he says quietly.

  'You already have.'

  'No. I will.'

  There are tears on her cheeks. She has no idea how they got there. His blue eyes are suddenly calm. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her, kisses the tears away, his lips soft against her skin, promising a future. He kisses her until they are both smiling and she has lost all feeling in her feet.

  'I should go home. The buyers are coming tomorrow,' she says, reluctantly unwinding from him.

  Across town the Glass House stands empty. The thought of returning to it is still unappealing. She half waits for him to protest. 'Do you ... do you want to come with me? Jake could sleep in the spare room. I could open and shut the roof for him. Might win me a few points.'

  He looks away. 'I can't,' he says baldly. And then: 'I mean I'd love to. But it's ...'

  'Will I see you over the weekend?'

  'I've got Jake, but ... sure. We'll work something out.'

  He seems oddly distracted. She sees the doubt that shadows his face. Will we really be able to forgive what we have cost each other? she thinks, fleetingly, and feels a chill that has nothing to do with the cold.

  'I'll drive you home,' he says. And the moment passes.

  The house is silent when she lets herself in. She locks the door, puts her keys on the side and walks into the kitchen, her footsteps echoing across the limestone floor. She finds it hard to believe she only left here this morning: it feels as if a whole lifetime has passed.

  She presses the button on her answer-phone. A message from the estate agent, puffed with self-importance, announcing that the buyers are to send in their architect the following day. He hopes she is well.

  A feature writer from an obscure arts magazine, wanting an interview about the Lefevre case.

  The bank manager. Reassuringly oblivious to the media frenzy. Please can she call at her earliest convenience to discuss her overdraft situation? This is his third attempt to contact her, he adds pointedly.

  One from her father, sending big kisses. Caroline says fuck the lot of them.

  Liv can just make out a distant thumping bass from the apartment below, the slamming front doors and laughter that are the acoustics of an ordinary Friday night out. It is a reminder that elsewhere the world turns regardless; that there is life beyond this strange hiatus.

  The evening stretches. She puts on the television, but there is nothing she wants to watch, so instead she showers and washes her hair. She lays out clothes for the next day, and eats some crackers and cheese.

  But her emotions do not settle: they jangle, like a rail of empty coat hangers. She is exhausted, but paces the house, unable to sit still. She keeps tasting Paul on her lips, his words in her ears. She considers calling him, briefly, but when she pulls ou
t her phone, her fingers stall on the buttons. What would she say, after all? I just wanted to hear your voice.

  She walks through to the spare room, which is immaculate, empty, as if nobody had ever stayed there. She walks around it, lightly touching the tops of the chair, the chest of drawers as she passes. She no longer feels comforted by silence and emptiness. She pictures Mo, curled up with Ranic in an overcrowded house full of noise, like the one she has just left.

  Finally she makes herself a mug of tea and walks through to her bedroom. She sits in the middle of her bed, leans back against the pillows and studies Sophie in her gilded frame.

  I secretly like the idea that you could have a painting so powerful it could shake up a whole marriage.

  Well, Sophie, she thinks, you shook up a whole lot more than that. She gazes at the painting she has loved for almost a decade and finally she allows herself to think about the day she and David had bought it, the way they had held her aloft in the Spanish sunshine, her colours bouncing in the white light, reflecting the future they believed they had together. She remembers them hanging it in this room on their homecoming; the way she had gazed at The Girl, wondering what David saw in herself that mirrored the image and feeling somehow more beautiful for what he had seen.

  You look like she does when you -

  She remembers a day, in the early weeks after his death, when she had raised her head dully from her damp pillow and Sophie had seemed to be looking straight at her. This, too, is bearable, her expression had said. You may not know it now. But you will survive.

  Except Sophie hadn't.

  Liv fights the sudden lump in her throat. 'I'm so sorry for what happened to you,' she says, into the silent room. 'I wish it could have been different.'

  Suddenly overwhelmed with sadness, she stands, walks over to the painting and turns it round so that she can no longer see it. Perhaps it's a good thing she's leaving this house: the space on the wall would have been a constant reminder of her failure. It already feels oddly symbolic of the way Sophie herself was effectively rubbed out.

  And just as she is about to release it, she stops.

  The study, over these past weeks, has grown messy and chaotic, piles of papers spilling over every surface. She moves around it with new purpose, placing them in neat piles, in folders, securing each with an elastic band. She doesn't know what she will do with them once the case is over. Finally, she seeks out the red folder that Philippe Bessette gave her. She flicks through the delicate sheets of paper until she finds the two pieces she is looking for.