Page 82 of The Girl You Left Behind
“Is there any way I can tear you away from Ranic this weekend?” she says, as Mo appears in the doorway, bleary-eyed, her hair a black crow settling on her shoulders. Without the thick black eyeliner her face seems curiously pink and vulnerable.
“I don’t want to go running, thank you. No. Or anything sweaty.”
“You used to speak fluent French, right? Do you want to come to Paris with me?”
Mo makes for the kettle. “Is this your way of telling me you’ve swung to the other side? Because while I love Paris, I’m so not up for lady bits.”
“No. It’s my way of telling you that I need your superior abilities as a French speaker to chat up an eighty-year-old man.”
“My favorite kind of weekend.”
“And I can throw in a crap one-star hotel. And maybe a day’s shopping at Galeries Lafayette. Window-shopping.”
Mo turns and squints at her. “How can I refuse? What time are we leaving?”
22
She meets Mo at St. Pancras at 5:30P.M., and at the sight of her, waving laconically, cigarette in hand outside a café, she realizes she’s almost shamefully relieved at the prospect of two days away. Two days away from the deathly hush of the Glass House. Two days away from the telephone, which she has come to view as virtually radioactive. Two days away from Paul, whose very existence reminds her of everything she has got wrong.
The previous night she had told Sven her plan, and he had said immediately, “Can you afford it?”
“I can’t afford anything. I’ve remortgaged the house.”
Sven’s silence was poignant.
“I had to. The law firm wanted guarantees.”
The legal costs are eating everything. The barrister alone costs five hundred pounds an hour, and he hasn’t yet stood up in court. “It’ll be fine once the painting is mine again,” she had told him briskly.
“So who’s this man we’re going to meet, and how does he relate to your case?” asks Mo when they have boarded the train.
Philippe Bessette is the son of Aurélien Bessette, brother of Sophie Lefèvre. Aurélien, Liv explains, lived in Le Coq Rouge with her during the years of the occupation. He had been there when Sophie was taken away and had stayed in the town for several years afterward. “He of all people might know how the painting disappeared. I spoke to the matron of the care home where he lives, and she said he should be up to a conversation, as he’s still quite sharp, but that I had to come in person, as he’s pretty deaf and can’t do it by phone.”
“Well, glad to help.”
“Thank you.”
“But you do know I don’t really speak French.”
Liv’s head whips round. Mo is pouring a small bottle of red wine into two plastic glasses. “What?”
“I don’t speak French. I’m good at understanding general old person’s babble, though. I might be able to get something.”
Liv slumps in her seat.
“I’mjoking.Jesus, you’re gullible.” Mo hands her the wine, and takes a long sip. “I worry about you sometimes. I really do.”
Afterward she remembers little of the actual train journey. They drink the wine, and two more little bottles, and they talk. It’s the closest thing she’s had to a night out for weeks. Mo talks about her alienation from her parents, who cannot understand her lack of ambition or her work at the care home, which she loves. “Oh, I know we’re the lowest of the low, care assistants, but the olds are good. Some of them are really smart, and others are funny. I like them more than most people our age.” Liv waits for “present company excepted” and tries not to take offense when it doesn’t come.
She tells Mo, finally, about Paul. And Mo is temporarily silenced. “You slept with him without Googling him?” she says, when she recovers the power of speech. “Oh, my God, when you said you were out of the dating loop I never thought for a minute... You don’t sleep with someone without doingbackground.Jesus.”
She sits back and refills her glass. Just briefly, she looks oddly cheerful. “Whoa. I just realized something: You, Liv Halston, may actually turn out to have had the most expensive shag in history.”
•••
They spend the night in a budget hotel in a Paris suburb, where the bathroom is molded from one piece of yellow plastic and the shampoo is the exact color and scent of washing-up liquid. After a stiff, greasy croissant and a cup of coffee, they call the residential home. Liv packs their stuff, her stomach already a knot of nervous anticipation.
“Well, that’s torn it,” says Mo, when she puts down the phone.
