by Kate Riordan
‘Sorry, what?’ I try to soften my abruptness by smiling.
‘The forest fires. They think it might have been arson.’
‘Arson?’ My voice sharpens again.
Quite suddenly, the idea of staying on in the house seems absurd. More than that: foolhardy. The old familiar urge to run washes over me, cold and clammy.
‘What is it?’ says Olivier. ‘You’ve gone pale. Look, don’t be nervous. They’ll get it under control soon. We haven’t had a bad one for years now. Even with the drought in ’eighty-nine we didn’t have one. It’ll just be a couple of stupid kids. Like it was here.’
‘I know. It’s not that.’
But I’m lying. It’s exactly that.
‘Sylvie, are you okay?’
‘It’s just been a strange day. And I don’t like the fires. They’ve always unsettled me.’
‘All the more reason to get away from here tomorrow, then.’
He reaches out and brushes my hair back, letting his hand rest at the nape of my neck. He begins to massage it gently and the warmth of his fingers spreads down my body, my muscles unclenching again. A different kind of nervousness begins to creep through me, a bright, fluttering hum after the dark beat of anxiety. He moves even closer, so that I can feel his breath on my shoulder.
‘You know, I’ve been worrying about you,’ he murmurs, his mouth brushing my ear now. ‘I’ve been thinking about you.’
He tips my face up to his and runs his forefinger slowly along the groove of my collarbone and up to my lips.
‘Olivier,’ I begin, but he’s already kissing me, and no part of me wants to pull away. I twist towards him until we’re pressed against each other, and his hands are on my waist, pulling me into his lap. He smells of summer – hot skin and something like coconut. He twists me round so he’s on top of me and I think about saying we should stop but I can’t think of a good reason why. I like the weight of him on me, his ragged breathing in my ear. I’d almost forgotten what this was like. I let myself go.
‘Mum!’ you shout from the house, I don’t know how much later.
Olivier and I have been kissing and kissing. ‘Like teenagers,’ he’d whispered, smiling into my hair.
Now I scramble up, Olivier moving aside reluctantly, a hand reaching out to stroke my thigh as I hunt beneath the lounger for my sandals.
The last of the daylight has seeped away, the moon blotted out by the smoke drifting across the sky like black chiffon.
‘Mum, come up here a minute!’
‘Hang on, Em,’ I call towards the house.
‘Have another glass of wine,’ I say to Olivier. ‘I won’t be long. She might have lost her inhaler.’
When I get to your room, you’re stationed at the flung-open window. Thankfully you can’t see the lounger from there, the pines obscuring the view. You turn when you hear me and I see again that slightly manic look in your eyes, fear melding with exhilaration.
‘Look.’ You point and your hand has the chemical tremble that’s becoming too familiar. ‘Look out there.’
Beyond the dark smudge of the garden, the unrolled satin of the pool, way off in the distance, but not so far that it doesn’t make my stomach lurch, the hills are ablaze, orange tongues leaping and dancing in the black. I think about what Olivier said before, about kids setting fires for fun, and shudder.
We went on a family camping trip when Élodie was nine. It comes back to me sometimes, often at unexpected moments, and the memory still has the ability to chill my blood. I remembered it when I walked into the souillarde that first day and saw the scorch marks on the wall.
In English, a memory is sparked, a dark and overgrown neural pathway, almost lost for good, lighting up again. Fitting, then, that the spark for this one should be the fires out there in the hills.
1978
The trip is Greg’s idea. I’ve never enjoyed camping so I’m reluctant but end up capitulating, mainly, if I’m honest, to deprive Greg of the point against me if I spoil his plan.
We don’t go far – we don’t need to: the forests are only half an hour by car. We’re soon winding up into the green-swathed hills, leaving behind the stifling heat of the open plain below. The pines flank the road, impossibly tall and straight, the canopy a hundred feet up, throwing us into shade for the first time in the journey. I feel myself relax a little – the air streaming in through the windows is not only cool but wonderfully clean. Perhaps, I think, relenting, this wasn’t such a bad notion after all.
I reach forward to turn up the music. It’s the scratchy compilation tape that Greg put together for me – all my favourites squeezed into ninety minutes. It took him hours, not just the recording but the track names written in such neat, tiny capitals, a peace-offering he couldn’t make in any other way. I’ve insisted on playing it all summer, my own olive branch.
‘California Dreamin’’ comes on with its plaintive refrain, the half-kaput speakers of the old Citroën favouring the backing harmonies over the lead vocals, turning them echoey and ethereal as we drive through the cathedral of silent trees.
The campsite is only small, little more than a clearing with a basic shower block and room for about fifty pitches, most of which haven’t been taken. It isn’t high season yet. The afternoon passes uneventfully, with Greg and Élodie heading into the thick of the forest on bikes, while I stay behind to read at the picnic table outside the tent. Dinner, too, is peaceful. The clean air of the hills is so soporific that we are zipped into our sleeping bags by half past nine.
The first I know of it is the high note of a baby’s cry. It’s not a normal cry, but a bright thread of alarm that pierces the dark. Moving lights answer it as people begin to turn on torches. Greg crawls to the end of the tent to open the flap and the smell of smoke seems to roll inside like a choking wave. He scrabbles for our torch.
‘Shit, where is it?’
‘Here. It’s here,’ I say, turning it on and throwing it to him before grabbing a cotton top to cover my nose and mouth. I fumble for my jeans, which are damp and hard to pull on lying down, my heels slipping on the nylon of the sleeping bag.
‘Sylvie,’ Greg says, voice hoarse with sudden fear. ‘Where’s Élodie?’
He points the torch to where her sleeping bag is thrown open, unzipped to the bottom. Her clothes and shoes are gone. She is gone.
‘Oh, God,’ he says, hand raking through his hair. He ducks outside the mouth of the tent. ‘I’ll find her. You get everything into the car.’
From the back of the little campsite, where the trees grow thickly again, I can hear the fire itself now, a noise apart from the spit and crack of burning wood, a monster beginning to roar. I think I can feel the heat of it on my face, but perhaps it’s just panic and imagination. The smoke, blacker than the night, is starting to billow in earnest.
The car is parked close by and I say a little prayer as I go towards it. Please don’t be lost in the jumble of the tent. Please. And they aren’t: the keys are in the ignition, the metal glinting dully in the glow that’s now turning the sky an apocalyptic orange. Who up here is going to nick a car? I remember Greg saying. It seems like years ago.
I go back to the tent for as much as I can carry, trying not to dwell on where she is, where Greg is. I am desperate to go and look, too, but I know it’s sensible not to change the plan. I can’t possibly sit in the car just waiting, though. A strange combination of fear and fury is already beginning to boil over inside me – at Greg, for thinking we could play happy families for a weekend, and at Élodie, for doing exactly as she likes, for putting herself and her father in serious danger. The anger is easier to reckon with than the fear.
A couple of minutes later, Greg runs into view, Élodie on his back. Relief floods through me, cool and clear. I check them over and they are dirty but unhurt. He tumbles her onto the back seat, throws himself into the front and starts the car.
‘All right?’ he says to me, as he rams the gear-stick into reverse. His face, sickly in the weird
light, is lined with real fear, his eyes wild and unfocused. I nod because I don’t trust myself to speak yet, unsure what will come out if I open my mouth: frightened sobs or a terrible accusation.
I was watching Élodie as Greg ran up with her, and again as he bent to open the back door, the perfect heart of her face clearly visible over his shoulder as she clung to him like a monkey. Her hair was grubby and tangled and one of her cheeks was streaked with soot, but her mouth was curled into a small smile. I know all her smiles and this was one of triumph. I think I’d known in my bones that it was arson, that she had started the fire.
1993
Olivier comes for us just after ten the next morning. You’ve already unwrapped your present, which I’d brought from London: a silver locket in the shape of a heart. Inside, I’d put a tiny picture of you on one side and me on the other, taken when I was about your age. You’d put it on straight away, though without taking off Élodie’s.
‘Won’t the chains get tangled together?’ I said, but you shook your head.
When I asked you last night if you wanted to go to the gorge with Olivier, I thought you looked relieved. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one relishing the idea of putting some distance between us and the house, between each other, even: Olivier’s presence was bound to keep things light. I also felt I needed to widen the gap between past and present. The two tended to overlap at La Rêverie, the boundaries too permeable for comfort.
The roof of Olivier’s sleek car is down and my heart lifts at the thought of the day ahead.
‘Did you see the news?’ he says, after he’s wished Emma a happy birthday, and we’ve turned on to the main road. ‘They say the fires will be out by tomorrow or the next day at the latest.’ He switches to English. ‘Emma, did you understand? There will be no more fires.’
You look at him, surprised out of your thoughts, and lift a shoulder. ‘I wasn’t that bothered.’ You don’t mean it rudely. In fact, you look miles away, fingers worrying at the neon bands circling your wrists.
Olivier glances at me and I shake my head minutely. You’re sitting behind me and I can see your face in the wing mirror, small and very young today, not like you’ve just turned fourteen at all. You love birthdays but you don’t seem yourself, a sharp line marking the smooth skin between your brows and your thumb at your mouth now, teeth nibbling at the cuticle. I haven’t seen you do that in years. My stomach twists when I remember the Polaroid. I’d hidden it in the inside pocket of my suitcase, but could you have found it? You can’t have, surely. If you had, and you’d looked closely enough, there’s no chance you wouldn’t have said something. How can you have this photo, Mum? It doesn’t make any sense.
‘It’ll be lovely to be somewhere new today, fires or not,’ I say brightly, so Olivier doesn’t think we’re ungrateful. ‘The gorge is in the opposite direction, Em, and it’s very beautiful. It’s the most dramatic in France.’
You nod absently.
‘How’s your chest?’
‘Fine, Mum,’ you say wearily. You’d woken up wheezy. I had a bad dream, was all you would say. When I reach back for your hand, between the seat and the door, you squeeze mine only briefly.
The gorge’s dusty car park is almost full when we get there.
‘Ah, the crowds have already descended,’ says Olivier. ‘I thought it would be quieter in the week.’
It occurs to me that I haven’t been to the gorge since my teenage years. Somehow, Greg and I never got round to taking you and Élodie there.
The long absence makes it untainted, which is just what I need today, and what I suspect you do too. The wide river snakes between towering walls of stone, so tall they block out the sun and turn the water a dark turquoise. Picnics are already being spread out where the stone flattens, and a platoon of life-jacketed kids in canoes is paddling towards the arch the gorge is famous for: a curved slab of rock that seems to blot out half the sky. The scents of damp stone and the gaufres au chocolat for sale at a stand, sweet and heady, mingle strangely.
Still, I find myself combing through the crowds for long wavy hair and a certain way of standing. I remind myself this is habit, not intuition, and make myself stop.
Olivier has brought a picnic too, lugging it down from the car park in a red cool-box. When he got it out of the boot, seeming suddenly sheepish that he’d made such an obvious effort, I reached out and squeezed his arm, touched by his thoughtfulness.
He has forgotten to pack any plates or cutlery so lunch is a messy affair. You get the giggles watching him try to spread cold butter with a bendy plastic knife from the gaufre stand, baguette crumbs scattering all over his nicely pressed chinos. He’s remembered a bottle opener, though, and there’s more Pschitt for you and bottles of chilled Pelforth beer for us.
‘Thank you,’ I say, when you go off to find a toilet.
‘What – for this gastronomic splendour?’ he says, gesturing to the debris of crumbs and empty packets around us.
I laugh and lean closer towards him. ‘Not just for lunch. For being something good. You’ve made today feel like a holiday.’
A strand of hair blows across my face and he tucks it behind my ear.
‘It’s just a shame this visit has to come to an end. If there’s any way I can persuade you to reconsider selling …’ He runs a finger around the neckline of my top and my skin immediately responds, goosebumps rising despite the heat. There’s a beat when neither of us says anything, and I think he’s going to kiss me.
‘I can’t,’ I say softly, before he can. ‘But I haven’t booked our ferry back yet. We won’t be leaving for a little while.’ I meet his eyes and I can see the desire in them, which makes something twist inside me. I trail off as he looks away, eyes narrowed at the bright water.
‘I see. I must have misunderstood the other evening.’
Before I lose my nerve, I lean in and kiss him. There’s a suspended moment when he hesitates and I think he’s going to pull away, but then he kisses me back, his mouth hot and urgent. His hand goes to my waist, then begins to move up, fingers easing under my top to make contact with bare skin.
We pull apart at the same moment, smiling and then looking furtively around for you. I spot you in the near-distance, intent on a board with prices for boat hire on it.
‘We’ve turned my poor Emma into a chaperone.’
‘She’s a good girl. She doesn’t really mind.’
‘You’ve bought her off with lemonade.’
‘I think you’re worth it,’ he says, smiling. ‘And now I’m going to bribe her some more, by hiring a pedalo for us all.’
I watch him go, heart beating hard from his touch, the rest of me molten. My mind is already moving towards evening, you upstairs in bed, he and I alone.
At the end of the afternoon, ours is one of the last cars left, the gorge shadowed and silent now, and much more magnificent for it. It’s almost seven by the time Olivier turns off the road and on to La Rêverie’s drive. All three of us are tired and peaceful. I’m not quite ready for the soothing rhythm of the journey to end, my legs heavy with relaxation, Olivier’s hand on one knee. The light is the colour of goldenrod, soft-focused and saturated, like a seventies postcard. Slanting through the scrub oaks on the drive, the lowering sun is the perfect temperature. Behind me on the back seat, you’re asleep, your head lolling gently with the movement of the car, your lips parted. Watching again in the wing mirror, I witness the very instant you wake, your face reanimating, your hand coming up to rub your cheek. Your eyes open slowly, drowsily, but something ahead on the drive makes them snap into sudden focus.
I look round and see a figure at the gate. It turns at our approach.
As the world begins to shudder on its axis, thoughts flicker like lightning through my brain.
There’s someone there.
Can it be?
It’s her.
She’s here.
Élodie.
Élodie.
Part Two
* * *
&n
bsp; 1993
People say that if you tell yourself something for long enough you start to believe it, that it becomes an almost perfect forgery of the truth. But while the rational part of me always knew Élodie wasn’t dead, it’s also true to say that, after a while, she didn’t quite seem alive either. She became someone who was neither here nor there, caught between the layers of existence. She was the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, the movement in the mirror of a dark room, the unease and creeping guilt that for no earthly reason steals over an ordinary day. She haunted me. And when I didn’t want to be tormented by the thought of her any more, I made her into the girl with the amber eye, who didn’t have a bad bone in her body.
It was easier than you might suppose to perpetuate such a huge lie, particularly in the village. Both my parents were gone by then, and of course Greg’s were in England. Your dad was in Paris and you and I had gone to London. And Élodie? She had been spirited away to the other end of France, where the land was flat and the skies leaden.
Not a dead girl after all, then. A girl who grew up, who had just become an adult in the overexposed Polaroid Luc had dropped. A girl who, just a few days after that photograph was taken, would leave the Institut Médico-Éducatif, where she’d spent the previous three and a half years, and disappear without trace.
The knowledge she was out there became a chronic pain I learnt to live with. It grew more acute when the letter about the fire arrived, and cut deeper still when we rolled off the ferry at Calais and began the journey south.
They rang Greg when she vanished six years ago – his phone number in Paris was listed as the emergency contact once I had left La Rêverie with you and settled in London. Paris was so much nearer the Institut.