The Girl You Left Behind (45 page)

‘What?’

‘Look, I couldn’t give a
monkey’s who it belongs to, but you’re going to lose, Liv. Everyone else can
see it, even if you can’t.’

Liv stares at her.

‘I read the papers. The evidence is
stacking up against you. If you keep fighting you’re going to lose everything. And
for what? Some old blobs of oil on canvas?’

‘I can’t just hand her
over.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘Those people don’t care about
Sophie. They just see pound signs.’

‘For Chrissakes, Liv, it’s a
painting.’

‘It’s not just a painting! She
was betrayed by everyone around her. She had nobody at the end! And
she’s … she’s all I’ve got left.’

Mo looks at her steadily. ‘Really?
I’d like a whole heap of your nothing then.’

Their eyes lock, and slide away. A rush of
blood prickles around Liv’s neck.

Mo takes a long breath, leans forward.
‘I get that you have trust issues right now because of the whole Paul thing, but
you need to take a step back from it all. And honestly? It’s not like
there’s anyone else around who’s going to say this to you.’

‘Well, thanks. I’ll remember
that the next time I’m opening up the morning bundle of hate mail, or showing
another stranger around my home.’

The look that passes between the two women
is unexpectedly cold. It settles into the silence between them. Mo’s mouth
compresses, holding back a burst dam of words.

‘Right,’ she says finally.
‘Well, then, I might as well tell you, seeing as this probably couldn’t get
any more awkward. I’m moving out.’ She leans down and fiddles with her shoe
so that her voice emerges, muffled, from near the tabletop. ‘I’m going to
stay with Ranic. It’s not the court case. As you said, me staying at yours was
never going to be a long-term thing.’

‘That’s what you
want?’

‘I think it’s best.’

Liv is glued to her chair. Two men sit at the
next table, not breaking off their conversation. One registers the atmosphere: his eyes
slide over and away again.

‘I’m, you know, grateful for
the … that you let me stay so long.’

Liv blinks hard, looks away. Her stomach
hurts. The conversation at the next table dies to an awkward silence.

Mo takes a last swig of coffee and pushes
her cup away. ‘Well. I guess that’s it, then.’

‘Right.’

‘I’ll head off tomorrow, if
that’s okay. I’ve got a late shift tonight.’

‘Fine.’ She tries to keep her
tone even. ‘It’s been … enlightening.’ She doesn’t
mean it to sound as sarcastic as it does.

Mo waits just a moment longer before she
stands, hauls her jacket on and pulls the strap of her rucksack over her shoulder.

‘Just a thought, Liv. And I know
it’s not like I even knew him or anything. But you talked so much about him.
Here’s the thing. I keep wondering: what would David have done?’

His name hits the silence like a small
explosion.

‘Seriously. If your David had still
been alive, and this had all blown up then – all the stuff about the painting’s
history, where it might have come from, what that girl and her family might have
suffered – what do you think he would have done?’

Leaving that thought suspended in the still
air, Mo turns and walks out of the café.

Sven rings as she leaves the café. His
voice is strained. ‘Can you stop by the office?’

‘It’s not a great time,
Sven.’ She rubs at her eyes, gazes up at the Glass House. Her hands are still
trembling.

‘It’s important.’ He puts
down the phone before she can say anything else.

Liv turns away from her home and heads
towards the office. She walks everywhere now, her head down, a hat pulled low over her
ears, avoiding the eyes of strangers. Twice on the way she has to wipe tears
surreptitiously from the corners of her eyes.

There are only a couple of people left in
the offices of Solberg Halston when she arrives: Nisha, a young woman with a geometric
bob, and a man whose name she cannot remember. They look preoccupied so Liv walks
through the gleaming lobby to Sven’s office without saying hello. The door is
open, and as she goes in, he stands to close it behind her. He kisses her cheek but he
doesn’t offer her coffee.

‘How’s the case
going?’

‘Not great,’ she says. She is
irritated by the perfunctory way in which he has summoned her. Her mind still hums with
Mo’s final comment:
what would David have done?

And then she notices how grey Sven looks,
almost hollowed out, and the slightly fixed way in which he is staring at the notepad in
front of him. ‘Is everything okay?’ she says. She has a moment of panic.
Please say that Kristen is okay, that the children are all fine.

‘Liv, I have a problem.’

She sits, her bag on her knee.

‘The Goldstein brothers have pulled
out.’

‘What?’

‘They’ve pulled the contract.
Because of your case. Simon Goldstein rang me this morning. They’ve been following
the newspapers. He says … he says his family lost everything to the Nazis, and
he and his brother can’t be linked to someone who thinks that’s
okay.’

The world stills around them. She looks up
at him. ‘But – but he can’t do that. I’m not – I’m not part of
the company, surely?’

‘You’re still an honorary
director, Liv, and David’s name is very much part of your defence case. Simon is
activating a clause in the small print. By fighting this case against all reasonable
evidence, you are apparently bringing the company name into disrepute. I told him it was
grossly unreasonable, and he says we can contest it, but he has very deep pockets. I
quote: “You can fight me, Sven, but I will win.” They’re going to ask
another team to finish the job.’

She is stunned. The Goldstein building had
been the apotheosis of David’s life’s work: the thing that would commemorate
him.

She stares at Sven’s profile, so
resolutely unmoving. He looks as if he has been carved from stone. ‘He and his
brother … appear to have very strong views on the issue of
restitution.’

‘But – but this isn’t fair. We
don’t even know the whole truth about the painting yet.’

‘That’s not the
point.’

‘But we –’

‘Liv, I’ve been on this all day.
The only way in which they are prepared to continue working with our company
is if …’ he takes a breath ‘… is if the
Halston name is no longer associated with it. That would mean you relinquishing your
honorary directorship. And a change of name for the company.’

She repeats the words silently in her head
before she speaks, trying to make sense of them. ‘You want David’s name
erased from the practice.’

‘Yes.’

She stares at her knees.

‘I’m sorry. I realize this has
come as a shock. But it has to us too.’

A thought occurs to her. ‘And what
would happen to my work with the kids?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m
sorry.’

It is as if the very core of her has frozen.
There is a long silence, and when she speaks she does so slowly, her voice unnaturally
loud in the silent office. ‘So you all decided that because I don’t want to
just hand over our painting, the painting David bought legitimately years ago, we must
be dishonest somehow. And then you want to erase us from his charity and his business.
You erase David’s name from the building he created.’

‘That’s a rather melodramatic
way of putting it.’ For the first time Sven looks awkward. ‘Liv, this is an
incredibly difficult situation. But if I side with your case everyone in this company
stands to lose their jobs. You know how much we have tied up in the Goldstein building.
Solberg Halston cannot survive if they pull out now.’

He leans forward over the desk.
‘Billionaire clients are not exactly thick on the ground. And I have to think
about our people.’

Outside his office someone is saying goodbye.
There is a brief burst of laughter. Inside the office the silence is stifling.

‘So if I handed her over, would they
keep David’s name on the building?’

‘That’s something I
haven’t discussed. Possibly.’

‘Possibly.’ Liv digests this.
‘And if I say no?’

Sven taps his pen on the desk.

‘We will dissolve the company and set
up a new one.’

‘And the Goldsteins would go with
that.’

‘It’s possible, yes.’

‘So it doesn’t actually matter
what I say. This is basically a courtesy call.’

‘I’m sorry, Liv. It’s an
impossible situation. I’m in an impossible situation.’

Liv sits there for a moment longer. Then,
without a word, she gets up and walks out of Sven’s office.

It is one in the morning. Liv stares at the
ceiling, listening to Mo moving around in the spare room, the zipping of a holdall, the
heavy thump as it’s stacked beside a door. She hears a lavatory flushing, the soft
pad of footsteps, then the silence that tells of sleep. She has lain there considering
whether to head across the corridor, to try to persuade Mo not to leave, but the words
that shuffle themselves in her head refuse to fall into any kind of useful order. She
thinks of a half-finished glass building several miles away, the name of whose architect
will be buried as deeply as its foundations.

She reaches over and picks up the mobile
phone by her bed. She stares at the little screen in the half-light.

There are no new messages.

Loneliness hits her with an almost physical
force. The walls around her feel insubstantial, offer no protection against an
unfriendly world beyond. This house is not transparent and pure as David had wished: its
empty spaces are cold and unfeeling, its clean lines knotted with history, its glass
surfaces obscured by the tangled entrails of lives.

She tries to quell the waves of vague panic.
She thinks about Sophie’s papers, about a prisoner loaded on to a train. If she
shows them to the court, she knows, she might still be able to save the painting for
herself.

And if I do, she thinks, Sophie will be on
record for ever as a woman who slept with a German, who betrayed her country as well as
her husband. And I will be no better than the townspeople who hung her out to dry.

Once it is done, it cannot be undone.

1917

I no longer wept for home. I could not say
how long we had been travelling, for the days and nights merged, and sleep had become a
fleeting, sporadic visitor. Some miles outside Mannheim my head had begun to ache,
swiftly followed by a fever that left me alternately shivering and fighting the urge to
shed what few clothes remained. Liliane sat beside me, wiping my forehead with her
skirt, helping me when we stopped. Her face was drawn with tension. ‘I’ll be
better soon,’ I kept telling her, forcing myself to believe that this was just a
passing cold, the inevitable outcome of the past few days, the chill air, the shock.

The truck bucked and wheeled around the
potholes, the canvas billowed, allowing in spatters of ice-cold rain, and the young
soldier’s head bobbed, his eyes opening with the bigger jolts and fixing on us
with a sudden glare as if to warn us to remain where we should be.

I dozed against Liliane, and woke
periodically, watching the little triangle of canvas that exposed briefly the landscape
we had left behind. I watched the bombed and pitted borders give way to more orderly
towns, where whole rows of houses existed without visible damage, their black beams
strident against white render, their gardens filled
with pruned
shrubs and well-tended vegetable patches. We passed vast lakes, bustling towns, wound
our way through deep forests of fir trees, where the vehicle whined and its tyres
struggled for purchase in mud tracks. Liliane and I were given little: cups of water and
hunks of black bread, thrown into the back as one would hurl scraps to pigs.

And then as I grew more feverish I cared
less about the lack of food. The pain in my stomach was smothered by other pains; my
head, my joints, the back of my neck. My appetite disappeared and Liliane had to urge me
to swallow water over my sore throat, reminding me that I must eat while there was food,
that I had to stay strong. Everything she said had an edge, as if she always knew far
more than she chose to let on about what awaited us. With each stop her eyes widened
with anxiety, and even as my thoughts clouded with illness, her fear became
infectious.

When Liliane slept, her face twitched with
nightmares. Sometimes she woke clawing at the air and making indistinguishable sounds of
anguish. If I could, I reached across to touch her arm, trying to bring her back gently
to the land of the waking. Sometimes, staring out at the German landscape, I wondered
why I did.

Since I had discovered we were no longer
heading for Ardennes my own faith had begun to desert me. The
Kommandant
and
his deals now seemed a million miles away; my life at the hotel, with its gleaming
mahogany bar, my sister and the village where I had grown up, had become dreamlike, as
if I had imagined it a long time ago. Our reality was discomfort, cold, pain,
ever-present fear, like a buzzing in my head. I tried to focus, to remember
Édouard’s face, his voice, but even he failed me. I could
conjure little pieces of him: the curl of his soft brown hair on his collar, his strong
hands, but I could no longer bring them together into a comforting whole. I was more
familiar now with Liliane’s broken hand resting in my own. I stared at it, with my
home-made splints on her bruised fingers, and tried to remind myself that there was a
purpose to all this: that the very point of faith was that it must be tested. It became
harder, with every mile, to believe this.

The rain cleared. We stopped in a small
village and the young soldier unfolded his long limbs stiffly and climbed out. The
engine stalled and we heard Germans talking outside. I wondered, briefly, if I might ask
them for some water. My lips were parched, and my limbs feeble.