The Girl You Left Behind

opposite.
     The woman is in her mid-thirties. She has dark hair that falls in corkscrews around her
     face and an intense expression. She is scribbling something on a notepad. The man beside
     her is French and bears the heavy features of a middle-aged Serge Gainsbourg. Liv often
     thought it was possible to tell the faces of different nationalities, even without
     hearing them speak. This man is so Gallic he might as well have been smoking a Gauloise
     and wearing a string of onions.
    And then there is Paul.
    ‘I think it would be a good idea if
     first we made some introductions. My name is Henry Phillips, and I’m acting for
     Mrs Halston. This is Sean Flaherty, acting for TARP, Paul McCafferty and Janey
     Dickinson, its directors. This is Monsieur André Lefèvre, of the Lefèvre
     family, who is making the claim in conjunction with TARP. Mrs Halston, TARP is an
     organization that specializes in the seeking out and recovery of –’
    ‘I know what it is,’ she
     says.
    Oh, but he’s so close to her. Directly
     across the table, she can see the individual veins on his hands, the way his cuffs slide
     from within his sleeves. He is wearing the shirt he wore the night they met. If she
     stretched out her feet under the table, they would touch his. She folds them neatly
     under her chair and reaches for her coffee.
    ‘Paul, perhaps you would like to
     explain to Mrs Halston how this claim has come about.’
    ‘Yes,’ she says, and her voice
     is icy. ‘I’d like to hear.’
    She slowly lifts her face, and Paul is
     looking straight ather. She wonders if he can detect how hard she is
     vibrating. She feels it must be obvious to everyone; her every breath betrays her.
    ‘Well … I’d like to
     start with an apology,’ he says. ‘I am conscious that this will have come as
     a shock. That is unfortunate. The sad fact is that there is no way of going about these
     things nicely.’
    He is looking directly at her. She can feel
     him waiting for her to acknowledge him, some sign. Under the desk, she grips her knees,
     digging her fingernails into the skin to give her something to focus on.
    ‘Nobody wants to take something that
     legitimately belongs to someone else. And that is not what we’re about. But the
     fact exists that, way back during wartime, a wrong was done. A painting,
The Girl
     You Left Behind
, by Édouard Lefèvre, owned and loved by his wife, was
     taken and passed into German possession.’
    ‘You don’t know that,’ she
     says.
    ‘Liv.’ Henry’s voice
     contains a warning.
    ‘We have obtained documentary
     evidence, a diary owned by a neighbour of Madame Lefèvre, that suggests a portrait
     of the artist’s wife was stolen or obtained coercively by a German
Kommandant
living in the area at the time. Now, this case is unusual in
     that most of the work we do is based on losses suffered in the Second World War, and we
     believe the initial theft took place during the First World War. But the Hague
     Convention still applies.’
    ‘So why now?’ she says.
     ‘Nearly a hundred years after you say it was stolen. Convenient that Monsieur
     Lefèvre just happens to be worth a whole lot more money now, wouldn’t you
     say?’
    ‘The value is immaterial.’
    ‘Fine. if the value is immaterial,
     I’ll compensate you. Right now. You want me to give you what we paid for it?
     Because I still have the receipt. Will you take that amount and leave me
     alone?’
    The room falls silent.
    Henry reaches across and touches her arm.
     Her knuckles are white where they clutch her pen. ‘If I may interject,’ he
     says smoothly. ‘The purpose of this meeting is to offer a number of solutions to
     the issue, and see whether any of them may be acceptable.’
    Janey Dickinson exchanges a few whispered
     words with André Lefèvre. She wears the studied calm of the primary-school
     teacher. ‘I have to say here that as far as the Lefèvre family are concerned,
     the only thing that would be acceptable is the return of their painting,’ she
     says.
    ‘Except it’s not their
     painting,’ says Liv.
    ‘Under the Hague Convention it
     is,’ she says calmly.
    ‘That’s bullshit.’
    ‘It’s the law.’
    Liv glances up and Paul is staring at her.
     His expression doesn’t change, but in his eyes there is the hint of an apology.
     For what? This yelling across a varnished mahogany table? A stolen night? A stolen
     painting? She is not sure.
Don’t look at me
, she tells him