The Girl You Left Behind

Mo surreptitiously
     eats a macaroon. When Liv looks up, Philippe Bessette is gazing at her. ‘Thank you
     for seeing us, Monsieur.’ She touches his arm. ‘I find it hard to associate
     the woman you describe with the woman I see. I … have her portrait. I have
     always loved it.’
    He lifts his head a few degrees. He looks at
     her steadily as Mo translates.
    ‘I honestly thought she looked like
     someone who knew she was loved. She seemed to have spirit.’
    The nursing staff appear in the doorway,
     watching. Behind her a woman with a trolley looks in impatiently. The smell of food
     seeps through the doorway.
    She stands to leave. But as she does so,
     Bessette holds up a hand. ‘Wait,’ he says, gesturing towards a bookshelf
     with an index finger. ‘The one with the red cover.’
    Liv runs her fingers along the spines until
     he nods. She pulls a battered folder from the bookshelf.
    ‘These are my aunt Sophie’s
     papers, her correspondence. There is a little about her relationship with Édouard
     Lefèvre, things they discovered hidden around her room. Nothing about your
     painting, as I recall. But it may give you a clearer picture of her. At a time when her
     name was being blackened, it revealed my aunt to me … as human. A wonderful
     human being.’
    Liv opens the folder carefully. Postcards,
     fragile letters, little drawings are tucked within it
.
She sees looping
     handwriting on a brittle piece of paper, the signature
Sophie
. Her breath
     catches in her throat.
    ‘I found it in my father’s
     things after he died. He told Hélène he had burned it, burned everything. She
     went to her grave thinking everything of Sophie was destroyed. That was the kind of man
     he was.’
    She can barely tear her eyes from them.
     ‘I will copy them and send this straight back to you,’ she stammers.
    He gives a dismissive wave of his hand.
     ‘What use do I have for them? I can no longer read.’
    ‘Monsieur – I have to ask. I
     don’t understand. Surely the Lefèvre family would have wanted to see all of
     this.’
    ‘Yes.’
    She and Mo exchange looks. ‘Then why
     did you not give it to them?’
    A veil seems to lower itself over his eyes.
     ‘It was the first time they visited me. What did I know about the painting? Did I
     have anything to help them? Questions, questions …’ He shakes his head, his
     voice lifting. ‘They cared nothing for Sophie before. Why should they profit at
     her expense now? Édouard’s family care for nobody but themselves. It is all
     money, money, money. I would be glad if they lost their case.’
    His expression is mulish. The conversation
     is apparently closed. The nurse hovers at the door, signalling mutely with her watch.
     Liv knows they are on the point of outstaying their welcome, but she has to ask one more
     thing. She reaches for her coat.
    ‘Monsieur – do you know anything about
     what happened to your aunt Sophie after she left the hotel? Did you ever find
     out?’
    He glances down at her picture and rests his
     hand there. His sigh emanates from somewhere deep within him.
    ‘She was arrested and taken by the
     Germans to the reprisal camps. And, like so many others, from the day she left, my
     family never saw or heard of her again.’

23
    1917
    The cattle truck whined and jolted its way
     along roads pocked with holes, occasionally veering on to the grassy verges to avoid
     those that were too large to cross. A fine rain muffled sound, making the wheels spin in
     the loose earth, the engine roaring its protest and sending up clods of mud as the
     wheels struggled for purchase.
    After two years in the quiet confines of our
     little town, I was shocked to see what life – and destruction – lay beyond it. Just a
     few miles from St Péronne, whole villages and towns were unrecognizable, shelled
     into oblivion, the shops and houses just piles of grey stone and rubble. Great craters
     sat in their midst, filled with water, their green algae and plant life hinting at their
     long standing, the townspeople mute as they watched us pass. I went through three towns
     without being able to identify where we were, and slowly I grasped the scale of what had
     been taking place around us.
    I stared out through the swaying tarpaulin
     flap, watching the columns of mounted soldiers pass on skeletal horses, the grey-faced
     men hauling stretchers, their uniforms dark and wet, the swaying trucks from which wary
     faces looked out, with blank,