The Girl You Left Behind

supposed to be her enemy. And then she
     closes the folder and tucks it carefully back under her pile of papers.
    ‘How many today?’
    ‘Four,’ she says, handing over
     the day’s haul of poison-pen letters. Henry has told her not to open anything withhandwriting she does not recognize. His staff will do it, and
     report any that are threatening. She tries to be sanguine about this new development,
     but secretly she flinches every time she sees an unfamiliar letter now; the idea that
     all this unfocused hate is out there, just waiting for a target. She can no longer type
     ‘The Girl You Left Behind’ into a search engine. There were once two
     historical references but now there are web versions of newspaper reports from across
     the globe, reproduced by interest groups, and Internet chat-rooms discussing her and
     Paul’s apparent selfishness, their inherent disregard for what is right. The words
     spring out like blows
: Looted. Stolen. Robbed. Bitch.
    Twice, someone has posted dog excrement
     through the letterbox in the lobby.
    There was only one protester this morning, a
     dishevelled middle-aged woman in a blue mackintosh, who insisted on handing her another
     home-made leaflet about the Holocaust. ‘This is really nothing to do with me or
     this case,’ Liv had said, thrusting it back at her.
    ‘If you do nothing you are
     complicit.’ The woman’s face was hewn by fury.
    Henry had pulled her away.
     ‘There’s no point in engaging,’ he had said. Oddly, that hadn’t
     lessened her vague sense of guilt.
    Those are the overt signs of disapproval.
     There are less obvious outcomes from the ongoing court case. The neighbours no longer
     say a cheery hello, but nod and look at their shoes as they pass. There have been no
     invitations through her door since the case was revealed in the newspapers. Not to
     dinner, a private view, or one of the architectural eventsthat she
     was habitually invited to, even if she usually refused. At first she thought all this
     was coincidence; now she is starting to wonder.
    The newspapers report her outfit each day,
     describing her as ‘sombre’, sometimes ‘understated’ and always
     ‘blonde’. Their appetite for all aspects of the case seems endless. She does
     not know if anyone has tried to reach her for comment: her telephone has been unplugged
     for days.
    She gazes along the packed benches at the
     Lefèvres, their faces closed and seemingly set in expressions of resigned
     belligerence, just as they were on the first day. She wonders what they feel when they
     hear how Sophie was cast out from her family, alone, unloved. Do they feel differently
     about her now? Or do they not register her presence at the heart of this, just seeing
     the pound signs?
    Paul sits each day at the far end of the
     bench. She doesn’t look at him but she feels his presence like an electrical
     pulse.
    Christopher Jenks takes the floor. He will,
     he tells the court, outline the latest piece of evidence that
The Girl You Left
     Behind
is, in fact, looted art. It is an unusual case, he says, in that
     investigations suggest the portrait was obtained by tainted means, not once but twice.
     The word ‘tainted’ never fails to make her wince.
    ‘The current owners of the painting,
     the Halstons, purchased it from the estate of one Louanne Baker. “The Fearless
     Miss Baker”, as she was known, was a war reporter in 1945, one of a select few
     such women. There are newspaper cuttings from the
New York Register
that detail
     her presence at Dachau at the end of the SecondWorld War. They
     provide a vivid record of her presence as Allied troops liberated the camp.’
    Liv watches the male reporters scribbling
     intently. ‘Second World War stuff,’ Henry had murmured, as they sat down.
     ‘The press love a Nazi.’ Two days previously she had sworn two of them were
     playing Hangman.
    ‘One cutting in particular tells how
     Ms Baker spent one day around the time of the liberation at a vast warehouse known as
     the Collection Point, housed in former Nazi offices near Munich in which US troops
     stored displaced works of art.’ He tells the story of another reporter, who was
     given a painting to thank her for helping the Allies at this time. It had been the
     subject of a separate legal challenge, and had since gone back to its original
     owners.
    Henry shakes his head, a tiny gesture.
    ‘M’lord, I will now hand round
     copies of this newspaper article, dated