Little Bird

by Camilla Way

  And still they sped on. By the time they had reached the Elephant and were approaching Waterloo Bridge, Jimmy had given up screaming and was instead sitting ashen faced, his eyes screwed tightly shut, his fingers gripping the dash, silently praying for all his worth that it would soon be over.

  In central London he almost cried with relief when Frank spotted a police van and at last slowed down. The streets were clogged with traffic and Jimmy eyed his friend in amazement as he repeatedly slammed his hand on the steering wheel, yelling, ‘Come on! Come on you fuckers! Move it!’ At last, in Wardour Street, after scaring witless every tourist that dared to try and cross in front of him by maniacally revving his engine and blasting on his horn, Frank turned to Jimmy and said. ‘Right. Fuck this. I’m getting out.’

  ‘What?’ Aghast, Jimmy looked at the double yellow lines and army of traffic wardens on the pavements. ‘You’ve got to be shitting me. You’re not just leaving me here. No way. No way, Frank.’ But Frank had already opened the door, and to the sound of furious shouts and honks, was beginning to run off in the direction of Oxford Street.

  When Frank got to the door of the tall, skinny town house he’d seen Kate disappear into earlier he hit every button on the intercom until at last someone buzzed him in. He hammered at the first internal door he got to until it was opened by a surprised Japanese girl. ‘Sorry,’ said Frank, ‘I’m looking for a friend of mine. He said he lived at flat A, but I must have misheard. He’s blond, stocky a bit shorter than me …’

  ‘Oh! You must mean Steven,’ said the girl, pointing at the ceiling. ‘The guy on the top floor.’ She smiled, ‘Such a sweetie. I –’ but Frank was already pounding up the stairs.

  The door of Flat D was slightly ajar. He hesitated outside for a moment, peering in through the dark crack, waiting for the blood to stop roaring in his ears, his heart to stop banging in his chest. He pushed the door open a little further and listened. Nothing. He went in and stood in the hall for a few seconds, his ears straining in the silence. To his right was an empty bedroom, to his left the half-closed door of a living room. He could see a bathroom ahead and next to it the closed door of what presumably was the kitchen. And still the eerie silence persisted. Was the flat empty? Uneasiness sluiced through him, there was something creepy about the place he couldn’t put his finger on.

  The thought of Kate in danger compelled him to keep moving. Going first to the living room he silently, carefully, peered around the half-closed door. It was empty. He would try the kitchen next. But just as he was leaving his eye caught sight of some photographs scattered over the table and floor. On impulse he went to them and gathered them up.

  The first picture was of a young girl, about ten or eleven, standing outside a large red-bricked building and surrounded by nurses. She had long auburn hair, the strands of red, gold and brown curling past her shoulders. There was something both arresting and disconcerting about her. He stared more closely at the dark blue irises, and his heart dropped to the floor. ‘Kate,’ he whispered. His mouth was dry and he felt strangely light-headed as he picked up first one and then another of the newspaper clippings. He skimmed them quickly and when he dropped the last page, he felt his legs grow weak and sank to the sofa. Elodie Brun. The name rolled around and around his confused mind. Elodie Brun. Little Bird. Nothing made sense. He picked up more of the photos, stared at the girl there and felt the first lurch of loss.

  Just then a noise from somewhere in the flat snapped him from his reverie and he got to his feet. Who was this guy? This stranger who had tried to run her down, who had her here, somewhere, in this godforsaken place? He dropped the photos to the floor and left the room. Within moments he had crossed the hall and was pushing open the kitchen door.

  thirty

  Central London, 12 May 2004

  ‘Why now?’ Kate asks, staring into the barrel of the gun.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why now?’ she repeats. ‘Why didn’t you kill me when you had me here before?’

  He doesn’t answer immediately, and she sees a glimmer of uncertainty flash across his eyes. And something else; something competing with his rage. She is reminded of a summer evening years ago, when, looking out of the schoolroom window she had seen him for the second time, standing alone at the edge of the garden just as dusk had begun to fall.

  The world hesitates, someone else peeps out at her from behind the cold green eyes. But quick as a flash time shifts, the door slams shut, the hatred has returned. ‘Why not?’ he says, with a belligerent shrug. ‘I knew you’d be back.’ His smile is ugly. ‘Why rush these things?’

  But she had seen it, his loneliness.

  ‘Anton,’ she says,

  ‘Shut up!’ he shouts, taking a step closer and once again she’s stunned by his quick-fire change of emotions. ‘Have you any idea what you did?’ he asks. ‘What it was like for me?’

  Her voice when she speaks is very quiet. ‘Tell me,’ she says.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ he says. But there’s doubt there. She sees it, holds on to it.

  They stare at each other in the failing light. Outside on the street a woman laughs, a car door slams. She watches, fascinated, the struggle behind his eyes.

  Finally he looks away.

  ‘Tell me, Anton,’ she persists. ‘Please, tell me.’

  In the long silence that follows she waits to see which part of him will win.

  Click. The ugly clock ticks on.

  And when he finally opens his mouth his voice is just a fraction above silence, so she has to strain to catch the words. ‘I still dream about it,’ he shouts, urgent and desperate. ‘I dream about it every night.’

  She nods, not taking her eyes from him, and scarcely breathing, murmurs, ‘Me too.’

  He stares back at her, his eyes unseeing. The gun wavers a little, moves a fraction of an inch to the side and she sees that he’s not aware of it now, that he’s somewhere else entirely. His gun arm drops another few millimetres. If he were to accidentally pull the trigger now the bullet would miss her. The first tendrils of hope begin to unfurl within her.

  ‘I found her,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispers.

  ‘I’d been driving around all night and in the morning I went home and I went into the kitchen and she was there.’ His eyes are wet with tears now, and he brings the hand holding the gun to his face and in a childlike gesture wipes them away.

  ‘My father,’ he whispers. ‘My father … there was so much blood.’

  But she can bear it no more. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she tells him in a rush. ‘I’m so sorry, Anton. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I swear.’

  And like silt rising to the surface of a river her voice brings him slowly back to the present. Dazedly he looks around him as if returning from a dream. He stares at her for a long time. And then, ‘You’re sorry?’ he says at last, his brow wrinkled in confusion. ‘Sorry?’ In an instant the anger has returned. ‘You ruined everything,’ he tells her. ‘I have nothing.’ His face is red. ‘My father … my father …’ but the words seem to choke in his throat and he looks away. In a matter of seconds, the other Anton is back. A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth and he almost swaggers closer to her. He is in control again. The gun is back where it was, its barrel aimed squarely between her eyes once more. She feels the cold fist re-establish its grip around her heart.

  He shakes his head and laughs. ‘You know, Elodie, you speak well, don’t you?’ He considers her, his head slightly tilted to one side. ‘She did that – my mother. She taught you everything, didn’t she?’

  ‘Anton, I …’

  But her interruption is waved away. ‘All those years she spent on you.’ He takes a step closer. ‘Turning you into a human being.’ He purses his lips, nods philosophically. ‘I’ve read all about it, you know. While I was wondering where the fuck you’d ran off to. And it really is a fascinating subject, isn’t it?’

  He’s enjoying himself now, has seen the shame flare in her eyes and has lea
pt upon it. ‘What was it she called you in one of her books?’ he continues. He furrows his brow, pretending to think. ‘A savage with table manners?’ He shakes his head with a smile. ‘Poor little Elodie,’ he says. ‘Just one step up from a wild animal really, weren’t you, until she came along?’

  She looks away, her fists clenched by her side.

  ‘How fucking ironic.’ His whisper hisses through the silence.

  She turns back to him then, and their eyes hold for a long, cold moment. She gets to her feet.

  The sudden movement makes him flinch. His mouth hangs open in surprise. She moves away from the chair and takes a step towards him.

  He blinks nervously. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks. ‘Sit down.’ Uncertainty flickers in his eye.

  The table is still between them but in six steps she will have cleared it. As she takes the first, the barrel of the gun follows her, but still she sees it tremble. ‘What are you doing?’ he says again, his voice almost pleading. ‘Sit down!’

  She takes another step, and then another. He starts to shout. ‘Get back, Elodie, I mean it.’

  Three more steps and she’s cleared the table. She turns to face him and there is nothing but a couple of metres of air between them now.

  ‘Anton,’ she says, her voice calm, her gaze never leaving his. ‘What time did you get back to High Barn that night?’

  ‘What?’ He stares at her, his face blank with confusion.

  ‘Tell me, it’s important. You said it was morning.’

  ‘Yes, so what?’

  An image returns to her of Robert standing in the kitchen looking down at his wife. She hears again Ingrid’s awful scream of pain.

  ‘Anton,’ she says, ‘when I left, your mother was alive. I pushed her, and she fell. It was an accident. But when your father came home she was still alive. He promised me he would call for help. His phone was in his hands.’

  Suddenly Kate is transported back to that final night at High Barn. She sees Robert standing alone in the kitchen after she had left, doing nothing, calling no one, while his wife begs for help. A cold, awful understanding settles over Kate as she pictures him putting the phone back in his pocket, then taking a seat at the kitchen table, sitting quietly by as Ingrid bleeds to death in front of him. She sees it now, at last, after all those years of arguing and aggression: Robert’s silent protest. His passive revenge.

  Anton’s voice brings her back with a start. ‘No,’ he shouts, shaking his head. ‘No! You’re a liar. My father told me you killed her. You’re a fucking liar.’

  ‘It’s true,’ she tells him quietly. ‘It’s true. It doesn’t change what I did. But I thought that she would live. I thought she’d be OK.’

  The clock clicks. The world shifts on.

  They stare at each other, the gun still pointed at her head, the rage still in his eyes, but she sees it; somewhere, in the depths of him she sees that he believes her. And something else. Somewhere, some buried part of him had already guessed his father’s guilt.

  But the barrel doesn’t flinch. She takes a step towards it. He cocks the trigger and the noise is brutal in the quiet room.

  ‘It’s still your fault,’ he tells her, steadying his arm.

  Another step.

  ‘I’ll shoot you,’ he says. ‘I’m warning you. I’ll shoot.’

  Another step, and then another, and now she’s in front of him, the tip of the gun’s nose digging into her forehead. ‘Do it,’ she says.

  Neither of them speaks. A second and then another drips icily by. She doesn’t drop her gaze from his.

  And then, with a sudden low moan of despair he lowers his arm. Within seconds he is half crouched upon the floor, the gun resting by his side.

  For several moments she watches him, and then at last she goes to him, gently takes the gun from his hand and, after putting it on the table, sits down next to him on the floor. After some time she puts a hand on his shoulder. He is whimpering and gasping now. The clock clicks on. At last she gets to her feet. ‘Goodbye, Anton,’ she says, and there is a question in her voice. She hesitates, looking down at him, waiting for his answer, and after a long time he silently nods his agreement. She walks to the door just as Frank opens it.

  EPILOGUE

  thirty-one

  Paris, 25 February 2005

  Frank always knew he’d end up there. Even as his first flight touched down in Barcelona, a part of him always knew that Normandy was where his journey would finish. It takes him several months. As he wanders through Europe; on foot, by boat, by train and plane; while he hops from one Greek island to the next, sails through Norwegian fjords, skies down the Swiss Alps, strolls through the bazaars of Istanbul, he knows, in his heart, that every footstep is taking him closer to northern France.

  In an internet café near La Gare du Nord he types ‘Elodie Brun’ into Google, and makes a note of the name of a tiny market town in northern France; a town in a region of Normandy where the forests are so vast it’s said you can lose yourself for years beneath their trees.

  London, 10 July 2004

  The anger comes from nowhere. It catches her unawares, a sudden wave of rage snatching her up and carrying her off in its swell. For three weeks she lies prone on her bed. Mathias, Ingrid, Robert, Anton – no one escapes her fury. Only at night does she stir from her inertia to wander the streets, her fists balled and her teeth gritted while she paces the cold black pavements, a pale ghost flitting between the streetlamps. But eventually she can rage and rail no more. Slowly, little by little, the waves of anger begin to subside, growing steadily calmer until finally they retreat altogether, leaving behind only a lingering grief for the mother she never knew, like twisted bones of driftwood on a shore.

  Hidden at the bottom of her suitcase she finds the picture of Thérèse. Unfolding it she stares once again at the image of the face that is so heart-stoppingly like her own. The girl who looks back at her is a year or two younger than Kate is now; her hair is dark auburn, her eyes a deep blue. She smiles at the camera with a shy, lopsided grin. The familiar feeling of bafflement and grief hit Kate.

  After they had left Anton’s flat she had told Frank everything. In the taxi home he had listened in silence to every word, the shock weighing heavier in his eyes with every passing mile. Back at his house in Deptford they had sat together on the living room floor and talked until the sun had come up. She had left nothing out.

  When she had finished he had not said a word for several minutes. His voice was very quiet when he finally spoke. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Kate?’ he’d asked. ‘I would have done anything for you.’

  ‘I was scared,’ she told him, shaking her head, searching for the right words. ‘I didn’t want to be Elodie Brun any longer. I hated her. I didn’t want to be that freak, Little Bird.’

  He had listened, nodded. ‘But you told him – Anton,’ he said. ‘You told him,’ he looked away. ‘And then …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she had picked up his hand and kissed it, her tears falling onto his fingers. ‘I love you.’

  They had gone to bed and made love, woken hours later, still clinging to each other. ‘I love you too,’ he’d told her.

  They had tried, at first, to start again. But they were like survivors of an earthquake, dazedly stumbling around in the wreckage and shooting covert, wary glances at each other for clues of where to go next. When Frank had first tentatively mentioned going away for a while, on the trip he’d always planned to take, she had leapt upon the idea gratefully, some part of her sensing the approaching tsunami, knowing she’d need to weather it alone.

  thirty-two

  Le Ferté-Macé, Normandy, France, 27 February 2005

  The woman in the café on the edge of the square is in her sixties. Her inch-thick make-up stops abruptly at her neck, and as she passes Frank his coffee, her wrist rattles with jewellery. Beneath her apron she wears a tight, low-cut blouse, and as she moves, her cleavage glitters with the many gold chains nestled there. Frank sits and drinks
his espresso while staring across at the tall, twin bell towers of the church that stands on the far side of the square. It’s a pretty town with friendly locals, but the inquiries he’s made so far have been met with apologetic shrugs and the shaking of heads.

  He is the café’s only customer and when the woman approaches with a lipsticked smile and poised cloth she seems eager to talk. ‘Here on holiday, are you?’ she begins, as she sidles closer.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But I’m actually looking for someone. Maybe you know her?’

  ‘Probably,’ she agrees, pausing to light a cigarette with a fancy lighter she pulls from her apron pocket. ‘I know everyone around here.’

  And so he asks her about Thérèse, the local girl whose daughter had been stolen only yards away, twenty years before.

  The waitress sucks deeply on her cigarette, leaving a sticky red ring upon the white filter, before exhaling a long stream of smoke. ‘Sure, I knew Thérèse, poor kid,’ she says. ‘She was from one of the estates out on the road to Flers. Only sixteen when she got knocked up by some guy from out of town.’ She pauses and smiles coquettishly, and, patting her platinum-blonde perm adds, ‘Of course, I was barely out of my teens myself at the time.’

  Frank smiles politely and asks, ‘Do you know what happened to her?’

  She shrugs. ‘After the kid went missing Thérèse just seemed to fall apart. Turned to drink and god knows what else. Used to see her hanging around the square by herself. Last I heard she was living in a squat with some druggies over in Argentan. Haven’t seen her for about fifteen years though.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Frank.

  ‘Shocking about that daughter of hers, that woman dying and her just vanishing like that, just disappearing into thin air. They never found her, did they?’

  Frank finishes his coffee. ‘No. They never did.’ He gets up to pay. At the door he stops and says, ‘The old bakers shop – Preton’s – the one Thérèse was in when the baby was stolen? Is it still here?’