The Girl You Left Behind

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 twobottles 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. Thenthey 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.’
    ‘They’ll be in the staffroom
     before five o’clock,’ Mo murmurs, as she leaves.
    Philippe Bessette sits in a wing-backed
     chair, gazing out at a small courtyard with a fountain; an oxygen tank on a trolley is
     linked to a small tube taped to his nostril. His face is grey, crumpled, as if it has
     collapsed in on itself; his skin, translucent in places, reveals the delicate tracings
     of veins underneath. He has a thick shock of white hair, and the movement of his eyes
     suggests something sharper than their surroundings.
    They walk around the chair until they are
     facing him, and Mo stoops, minimizing the height differential. She looks immediately at
     home, Liv thinks. As if these are her people.
    ‘
Bonjour
,’ she says,
     and introduces them. They shake hands and Liv offers the macaroons. He studies them for
     a