The ticket was trembling between his fingers. He coughed and stared at it while digging in his jacket pocket for his passport.
‘Got everything?’ She bit her tongue for asking such a question. They were both skittishly nervous. Strangers bumping against one another. Strangers who knew everything about each other, every sinkhole, every hairline crack, yet nothing any more.
Kurtiz had accompanied Oliver on the tube to St Pancras, insisted upon it, to give him, she assured herself, a parting hug. Her guts were straining at the prospect of leaving him alone, of leaving him with the responsibility of locating their daughter, who was probably not even living in France. As an afterthought, she scribbled down on the back of an old receipt Alex’s Paris studio number. Oliver stared at it as though it were a curse, then stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans without a word. ‘I’ll call you,’ he said, and stepped away from her, his rucksack bobbing against his spine.
She waited, watching his retreating figure, ready to wave, to give him a thumbs-up, until he was out of sight, but he didn’t look back.
When he was through the barrier gates and out of sight, she wandered away, found a bar and bought herself a glass of wine.
Good luck, Oliver.
Because what if, just suppose … What if Oliver should chance upon that needle in the haystack? She almost choked contemplating such a far-fetched possibility.
To stand face to face with Lizzie, gazing into those troubled hazel eyes again after four interminable years. It was worth the gamble, worth every cent. Just as long as Oliver could hold himself together.
One text message to confirm that he had arrived safely was all the feedback Kurtiz received from him. Frustrated by his silence, towards the end of the first week she rang the pension where she had booked his room.
‘He’s absent at present,’ the receptionist informed her. ‘He spends most of his days out in the city, sightseeing, I suppose, rarely returning before late at night.’
At least he was still there. ‘Is he … keeping well?’
There was a silence, a hesitation. ‘Mais oui, pourquoi pas? Is there a problem?’
‘No, no, of course not. Please ask him to make contact with me when he has a moment. Kurtiz Ross, he has the number.’
Towards the final days of Oliver’s month-long stay in Paris, there had been no sightings of Lizzie, not even a hope less slender than a butterfly’s wing. Lizzie was not in Paris. Or if she was, how were they ever to make contact with her? Kurtiz had spent hours on Twitter and Facebook trying to track down variations of names their daughter might be using, but eventually she gave up: the possibilities were too vast. The net they were casting spread to all seas. The reality was that if Lizzie had managed to get herself to Paris, she could be anywhere by now. The venture was hopeless. It was time to recall Oliver, bring him home before his positive energy curdled and turned against him.
Until, out of the blue, he called her. Late one evening, she was sitting alone in her studio flat, feet up on the sofa, drinking tea after a long day on location. Earlier that evening, before boiling the kettle, Kurtiz had made a provisional booking date for the return half on Oliver’s ticket. She dreaded being the one to call it off. To close the door on their hope.
‘I might have located her.’
‘What? Where? Is Lizzie in Paris?’
‘If she’s in Paris, or even close to the city, I know where I’ll find her.’
Kurtiz paused, stalling her excitement. ‘You mean you haven’t located her. Or you have?’
‘Eagles of Death Metal are playing a gig at the Bataclan concert hall in mid-November. There are still a few seats available.’
Both Oliver and Lizzie were huge fans. Kurtiz knew that. These American rock performers were one of the groups that had bonded father and teenage daughter. They had made pilgrimages to concerts together in the past. The posters were still up on Lizzie’s walls. Of course she might have grown out of the band. But it was possible, just possible, that this was the needle in the haystack they had been digging for.
‘If she’s still in Paris, Oliver.’
‘We have no better options. I’m going online to buy a ticket.’
‘Make it two, Oliver. I want to be there.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean no?’
‘Let me do this, KZ. If she sees two of us there, it will freak her. She knows that style of music is not your thing. Seeing me there wouldn’t make her run. She could believe it’s a coincidence. I can talk to her, gain her confidence –’
‘Then I’ll be nearby, waiting in a bistro for you both after the concert.’
Kurtiz booked Oliver’s ticket to the concert and made a reservation for herself, a weekend train ticket from London to Paris. She checked her diary. She was booked for the whole of that November week. She’d have to travel over early on the Friday evening and back on Sunday night. Maybe – who knows, who knows? – they might all three travel back to London together on the Sunday …
How could she or he have predicted that it would end in bloodshed? That it could cost Oliver his life?
Paris, November 2015
Kurtiz was woken by the sound of a door opening. Oliver’s room. She sat upright, bleary-eyed and woozy. The intern moved towards her and lifted his arm to stay her. ‘There’s no change.’ He spoke softly, adept at causing no alarm.
‘May I go in?’ She rose to her feet.
‘Not just yet. The surgeon will be along to see you as soon as he has an opportunity. It’s been a hellish night.’
‘What time is it?’ Her words were slurred, like those of a stroke victim. Her head was beating as though a sledgehammer were trying to free itself from within.
‘Almost nine.’
‘Morning or evening?’
‘Sunday morning.’ He smiled kindly, his eyes crinkling. ‘It’s been a long night for everyone.’
Kurtiz nodded and stepped backwards, bumping clumsily into the chairs, keen to release the fellow, to allow him to get a break, a few hours’ sleep, if that was possible. She rubbed vigorously at her back. It was aching, screaming at her to lie down, to get some decent sleep. Her head was swimming, giddy, almost incoherent with tiredness, but under no circumstances was she leaving here. Not until she knew what the future held for Oliver.
She was seated at his bedside. The intern had returned and had provided her with a travel pack similar to those handed out on planes. He pointed her to a public shower room so she had, thankfully, been able to clean her teeth and have a brisk wash. Fresh clothes would be a luxury but she wasn’t ready to leave yet. A clock on the wall above the door in the clinically white room read ten minutes to eleven. Oliver’s condition had marginally weakened but not drastically so. The surgeon, a tawny-skinned man in his fifties, had passed by but provided her with scarce new information. ‘We are fighting for him,’ was his consolation. The man looked as wrecked as she was. ‘There are many dead,’ he muttered, moving along. ‘Many to heal.’ She thought he might be a Muslim. Not a good moment to be a Muslim in Paris. The extremists would point the finger against all Muslims, use this as a call for border control, clampdown …
The door was ajar. The surgeon had left it so, whether on purpose or out of forgetfulness she did not know. But it was open when the shadow of a figure crossed the tiled floor, lit by the bleak sunlight that shone in from the wintry morning beyond the window. Church bells were ringing somewhere in the distance in a sombre, muted way. An appeal to God against all the vileness that had befallen the city overnight. She expected the arrival at the door to be the nurse, who had provided her with several cups of sweet tea, back to adjust the machines or generally make gestures of support and healing. But it was a woman in civvies. A young woman, sandy-hair cropped short, in jeans, pale blue Converse sneakers and navy duffel coat. She hovered by the door frame, neither in nor out. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her nose a ball of pink, reindeer-like.
Kurtiz lifted her head and stared at her, coltish, pretty
. Her innards sank, seeming to implode. This wasn’t a dream, was it? A delirium seeded by sleep deprivation? She choked on her breath. No words would form, except ‘You’ve cut your hair …’
The girl raised a hand to her head as though to remind herself of the fact. She remained by the door.
‘Lizzie? Lizzie.’ Kurtiz staggered clumsily to her feet, almost disconnecting a pair of transparent plastic tubes bubbling with liquids, slung low from a machine about the size of a fridge. She balanced herself against the bed, trying not to disturb Oliver.
Lizzie took one step into the room, holding onto the door frame. ‘I saw your tweet. I went to the Bataclan this morning,’ she said. ‘Dad’s name was on a list. I’ve been to three other hospitals. I was beginning to fear he was dead.’
Kurtiz swung back towards the figure lying unconscious in the bed, as though to confirm that there was someone there. That ‘Dad’ was here with her. With them. Disbelieving, incredulous, stunned, she was at a loss. She wanted to run across the room and hug the almost unrecognizable and yet completely recognizable pretty young woman who had just crept back into their lives. This was her Lizzie, yet not her at all. Someone more formed, with features well defined, less plump, not that she had been plump. Never plump, but adolescent. Yes, adolescent. Freckles? Yes, still freckles all across her nose like fallen petals. Oh, Lizzie … She must not weep. Her daughter might leave, might run in horror at any expressions of emotion. Lizzie always hated the way she and Oliver had argued. ‘Out-loud emotions’, she had called them.
Kurtiz had now reached the foot of the bed. The iron bedstead at the base was her security, her support. She was overwhelmed, inadequate. The moment she had played in her mind over and over and over was here and she had no idea how to be, to behave, to respond. ‘Lizzie,’ she repeated. ‘Thank God.’
Lizzie stepped into the room and moved towards her mother, who was now sobbing, unable to control herself. Overtired, a pathetic sight, she was wrung out. ‘I’m just tired,’ she bumbled. ‘It’s been a long …’
A long four years.
Lizzie lifted her arms and hooked them round her mother’s neck.
The smell of her daughter. A floral scent. Fresh. Shampoo or cologne, or perhaps soap. Yes, it might be soap. Floris, perhaps. Mint? Lily? What did it matter? Was she beginning to hallucinate? Was there no Lizzie? A mirage born of exhaustion, trauma. But yes, yes. The strength, reality of those arms about her, of that soft flesh. The strap of a watch that scuffed her ear. Was it the elegant little Marc Jacobs Oliver had given to her for her thirteenth birthday, the one she had so loved that Kurtiz had to fight with her to take it off when she climbed into the bath? I have celebrated every birthday since you left. Celebrated and mourned. The wool of the duffel coat rubbed against her cheeks.
Kurtiz, whose arms had been hanging, dangling like becalmed flags, reached for Lizzie’s waist with her fingertips, her hands, rediscovering the reality of her. Gingerly, she slid her arms round Lizzie’s midriff. So slender. And they held one another, squeezing tight, tighter, tighter still, locked about one another, sinking into one another, faces hidden, bodies gently swaying, like twin trees in the breeze. Or Christmas baubles when Oliver had tapped gently at the tip of a needled branch with his finger, causing the golden glass balls to swing in little circles and the child Lizzie had pointed and chortled with glee. Remember? Remember, Lizzie, all those pine-scented Christmases? Remember us, Mum and Dad?
They held each other for a sustained, unbroken amount of time, a perfect amount of time. Drinking in the heat of the other. The heartbeat. Kurtiz felt warmth and then dampness on her neck. The tear-stained snout of Lizzie pressed into the curvature of her neck. And the cold fear within her that, over time, had frozen solid and closed down her heart began to dissolve, to dissipate. Some inner part of herself that had lived on the outer limit for four years – four years and five months and twelve days – was unfolding, uncoiling. An iceberg melting. A part of her that had stood rooted at the brink, wavering at the edge of the cliff, staring outwards towards a vast blank horizon, seeking, seeking, waiting, was being released. Never knowing where you were, whether you were in pain. That knife’s edge, serrated uncertainty. The desperation and the impotence. The calling into an empty void with never a response. Lizzie, are you alive or dead?
And here you are, alive and in my arms.
‘Lizzie,’ she whispered, saliva bubbling about her lips. ‘Sweet, sweet Lizzie.’
Kurtiz hauled a second chair to the right side of the bed where she had been seated and they settled together, holding hands.
‘How bad is he?’
Kurtiz glanced towards her husband’s immobile form and shook her head.
Lizzie rose from the chair frequently, restlessly, placing the back of her fingers against Oliver’s forehead as though anointing him. He was so pale, his flesh so cool. It was the machines more than the man that confirmed to them he was still living. Staff came and went. Lizzie popped out to a bakery and returned with ham and cheese baguettes and steaming paper cups of milky coffee with oodles of sugar. The bread tasted like old socks in Kurtiz’s mouth but the hot drink did her a power of good, restoring some lost energy. Her phone was out of battery again, but it hardly mattered. They were here together, the three of them. She asked no questions of her daughter. All that could, would, come later. It was Oliver who needed them now. They took turns to sit up close to him and talk to him, sing or hum to him – he had always proclaimed so proudly, his chest puffed out, what a fine singing voice Lizzie had – reminding him of their voices, the timbre, the cadence, attempting to penetrate the black depths of his coma.
They took it in turns to stretch their legs, to pace the sickly green lino-tiled corridors, eavesdropping, without wanting to, on the tears and distress of others: their shocked gasps, their paralysed silences. The hours of expectancy, hospital clocks ticking, sweet papers unfurling, noses being blown. The wheeling of gurneys. Rubber against lino. Footsteps against lino. Walking sticks against lino.
One of them stayed put while the other popped out for a pee, a breather, fresh cold air inhaled through an upstairs corridor window. One woman always at Oliver’s side, stroking his arm, caressing his face, whispering to him in the hope that the words were connecting with him, deep and lost to them, wherever he was.
Lizzie disappeared around nine on the Sunday evening, promising to be back as soon as she had ‘sorted out a couple of matters’.
‘Where are you going?’ It was the first question Kurtiz had asked her. ‘Can’t you stay?’ The second. ‘It won’t be long now, I fear.’ They both knew he was slipping away. The bank of ICU machines had been giving off bleeps and high-pitched warning signals since some time after the delivery rounds of the hospital dinners. An infection had set in. The visits of staff had become more frequent. An extra pipe and two cables were bled into his arm. A ventilator to assist his breathing was wheeled in and switched on. The surgeon had popped his head round the door, his thoughts clearly occupied with those whose lives he could save. ‘These are critical hours,’ he explained. ‘If he can keep fighting on through the night … His liver is a little weak.’
Lizzie kissed her father on the upper bridge of his nose above the mask he had now been fitted with and hovered at his elbow for some time. She was battling tears, torn in different directions. ‘I have to go,’ she murmured, to her mother, eventually. ‘I’ll be back.’
Kurtiz clung to her hand. ‘Promise me,’ she begged. ‘Don’t disappear on me, Lizzie. I need you.’ Lizzie nodded, stuffing her purse and car keys into her duffel-coat pocket. Lizzie, driving. Does she have her own car? Kurtiz was asking herself, as she watched her grown-up daughter disappear beyond the room. What could be so urgent that she must leave at this critical hour? She lifted her feet and rested them on the chair Lizzie had been sitting in. She was so tired there were no words left to describe her exhaustion.
She was desperately in need of a wash, to lie down, eat something warm and nourishing, al
though the thought of food made her queasy. Her bones were aching, her head sounding a relentless rhythm. This was her third all-nighter.
In spite of the discomfort, she eventually fell asleep. She was ‘flumped’, as Lizzie used to say.
A high-pitched unremitting warning bell woke her, but it was the arrest of the heart monitor that was the cold slap in the face. It had gone quiet. The machine had stopped. The incessant beep-beep-beep that had been present and continuous ever since and before her arrival was silent. She shot to her feet, brutally awake. ‘Oliver!’ Should she call someone? She took his limp hand. Oh, God, no. She made for the door but before she had reached it a nurse, a short podgy female in white, a member of the night staff she had not encountered before, was in the room. She shoved past Kurtiz and was at the bedside, flicking and monitoring, twisting and flicking. Until she let her arms fall to her sides and everything – this hive of mechanical activity – became inactive. All in one fell swoop, it seemed, although in reality probably not. The nurse was Polish. She spoke in ill-fitting French. The syllables, consonants, meaning a jumble, not quite as they should be. Lumpish. Clumsy. Kurtiz was considering her words and did not fully register the content of the sentence. ‘I have to up bring the doctor. Is dead somehow your spouse.’
Is dead somehow?
Really dead? Or only partially gone, still in a coma with all external signs of one who is dead? The hardware, all appliances, had been closed down. Two further members of staff were sweeping through the doorway. The bed would need to be vacated, one explained to her, in a matter-of-fact fashion. It was urgently required. The capital was in a state of emergency. All of which Kurtiz had forgotten while cocooned here in the midst of a life-and-death scenario. Theirs was one couple’s story among dozens and dozens. All across the City of Light, now shrouded in a flying grey cloak of mourning and grief and maximum-security issues, other couples, parents, lovers, brothers, sisters, best friends, single mothers, such as the woman she had bumped into outside the Bataclan who had been waiting for her only son who had saved hard to pay for his ticket, all were in the same boat. Praying for a miracle: a loved one’s life.
The Lost Girl Page 31