The Girl You Left Behind

stumbled and glanced behind me. And then I saw the
     guard coming through the mist. In front of him was a tall, stooped man, clutching a
     bundle to his stomach. I squinted, aware there was something familiar about him. But the
     light was behind him and I could not see.
    Sophie.
    I tried to focus, and suddenly the world
     grew still, everything silent around me. The Germans were mute, the engines stopped, the
     trees themselves ceased whispering. And I could see that the prisoner was limping
     towards me, his silhouette strange, his shoulders skin and bone, but his stride
     determined, as if a magnet were pulling him to me. And I began to tremble convulsively,
     as if my body knewbefore I did. ‘Édouard?’ My voice
     emerged as a croak. I could not believe it. I dared not believe it.
    ‘Edouard?’
    And he was shuffling, half running towards
     me now, the guard quickening his stride behind him. And I stood frozen, still afraid
     that this was some terrible trick, that I would wake and find myself in the back of the
     truck, a boot beside my head.
Please, God, You could not be so cruel.
    And he stopped, a few feet from me. So thin,
     his face haggard, his beautiful hair shaven, scars upon his face. But, oh, God, his
     face.
His face
.
My Édouard.
It was too much. My face tilted
     heavenwards, my bag fell from my hands, and I sank towards the ground. And as I did, I
     felt his arms close around me.
    ‘Sophie. My Sophie. What have they
     done to you?’
    Édith Béthune leans back in her
     wheelchair in the silent courtroom. A clerk brings her some water, and she nods her
     thanks. Even the reporters have stopped writing: they sit there, pens stilled, mouths
     half open.
    ‘We knew nothing of what had happened
     to her. I believed her dead. A new information network sprang up several months after my
     mother was taken away, and we received news that she was among a number of people to
     have died in the camps. Hélène cried for a week at the news.
    ‘And then one morning I happened to
     come down in the dawn, ready to start preparing for the day – I helped Hélène
     in the kitchen – and I saw a letter, pushed under the door of Le Coq Rouge. I was about
     to pick it up, but Hélène was behind me and snatched it away first.
    ‘“You didn’t see
     this,” she said, and I was shocked, because she had never been so sharp with me
     before. Her face had gone completely white. “Do you hear me? You didn’t see
     this, Édith. You are not to tell anyone. Not even Aurélien. Especially not
     Aurélien.”
    ‘I nodded, but I refused to move. I
     wanted to know what was in it. Hélène’s hands shook when she opened the
     letter. She stood against the bar, her face illuminated by the morning light, and her
     hands trembled so hard I was not sure how she could possibly read the words. And then
     she drooped, her hand pressed to her mouth, and she began to sob softly. “Oh,
     thank God, oh, thank God.”
    ‘They were in Switzerland. They had
     false identity cards, given in lieu of “services to the German state”, and
     were taken to a forest near the Swiss border. Sophie was so sick by then that
     Édouard had carried her the last fifteen miles to the checkpoint. They were
     informed by the guard who drove them that they were not to contact anybody in France, or
     risk exposure of those who had helped them. The letter was signed “Marie
     Leville”.’
    She looked around her at the court.
    ‘They remained in Switzerland. We knew
     that she could never return to St Péronne, so high was feeling about the German
     occupation. If she had turned up, questions would have been asked. And, of course, by
     then I had grasped who had helped them escape together.’
    ‘Who was this, Madame?’
    She purses her lips, as if even now it costs
     her to say it. ‘Kommandant Friedrich Hencken.’
    ‘Forgive me,’ says the judge.
     ‘It is an extraordinary tale.But I don’t understand how
     this relates to the loss of the painting.’
    Édith Béthune composes herself.
     ‘Hélène did not show me the letter, but I knew it preoccupied her. She
     was jumpy when Aurélien was near, although he spent barely any time at Le Coq Rouge
     after Sophie left. It was as if he could not bear to be there. But then two days later,
     when he had gone out, and as the little ones slept in the next room, she called me into
     her bedroom. “Édith, I need you to do something for me.”
    ‘She was seated on the floor,