What was the latest toll on the shootings and massacres?
She flopped back against the wall at the foot of the room, watching as an empty trolley was wheeled in. Bedding was peeled back. Hands slid beneath Oliver’s legs and back and her husband was lifted, poised above it.
‘Wait,’ she called.
Three heads turned towards her.
‘Could I have … Please, give me just a few moments with him before you take him away.’
His body was repositioned on the mattress. ‘Of course.’ The staff disappeared. A marching crocodile well trained in discretion. Kurtiz walked to Oliver’s side. His eyes were closed, though his mouth was still open and slack. Already his flesh appeared to be yellowing, or was it the light? Already his cheeks were growing cold. So swiftly life turns its back. Nothing more to be done here. Move on. She stared at the body that had already begun to lose all traces of the stunningly handsome young Oliver, Oliver the Romantic. Instead, she looked upon a sad and haggard middle-aged man, a disappointed actor. Mid-forties. The man whose heart had broken and never repaired when he lost his only daughter. ‘Lizzie’s back, Oliver.’
What a waste. What a fucking waste. And what timing!
‘I’m sorry for everything,’ she said to him, confident that he was hearing her. ‘You know you found her, don’t you? You led our Lizzie back to us. You were spot on about coming here to Paris. And you were brave. In spite of everything, we loved one another and we had many good times together, didn’t we? I’ll always cherish them.’ She bent and kissed his head. Cold as stone. ‘“Goodnight, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” Goodnight, Oliver, until we meet again.’
The trio of staff were standing in the corridor chatting softly, heads lowered, when she left the white room. She nodded her gratitude and made her way through the sliding doors. It could have been a lifetime ago she had first stepped that way, now moving in the opposite direction.
She took the lift down to Reception. There was nothing more to be done here. A receptionist, not the lady with the bird’s-nest hair, another looking business-like with a rather grim expression, informed her that she would be required at some point later the following day, in fact today, Monday, to present herself at the mortuary to officially identify Oliver.
‘Which one? Can you give me the address?’
‘We will notify you later in the morning. There are so few vacancies at present.’
A queue for the mortuaries.
‘Do we have your phone number?’
She nodded and signed a form, and after a short wait was handed a large envelope. Oliver’s few possessions: his watch, telephone, wallet, driver’s licence, passport. Did she want Mr Ross’s clothes? She shook her head.
Could this be true, the reality? She was leaving here with an envelope, and that was it?
Now what?
She had still not checked into her hotel way across town in the eighth arrondissement but in any case the booking was two days old.
Was it too early for the Métro? No Métro. Although now that it was Monday the trains would be running again. As would the taxis.
The British press would be all over the story once Oliver’s name was made public. Somehow she had to contact Lizzie but she had no idea where her daughter had slipped away to. It was as though her appearance had been of a phantom, which was nonsense, of course. Lizzie was here in Paris somewhere. Should she hang out here in the reception area and wait for her? She simply couldn’t face it. No more hours waiting on an unrelenting bench. Or might … ? She swung back to the desk, clutching the brown envelope.
‘Was there something else, Madame Ross?’
‘My daughter. She came to visit her father before he – he passed away.’
‘Yes?’
‘Might she have shown you some identification? Given you an address, or … ?’
‘Because she wasn’t Mr Ross’s next of kin, she would have been obliged to sign in, yes, and, due to the high alert, she would have been obliged to furnish identification. Yes.’
‘Did she give you an address? Her name is Lizzie. Lizzie Ross.’
The woman drew a ledger towards her and turned back the pages. The number of visitors over the last twenty-four hours was staggering. ‘Can you remember approximately what time it was when she arrived?’
Kurtiz puzzled. She wasn’t entirely sure she could even identify the day of the week, let alone … ‘Wait. I glanced at the clock. It was close to midday yesterday.’ The doctor had been in. ‘It could have been a few hours later, of course.’
The woman ran a finger down lists and lists of signatures. She was shaking her head. ‘No one by that name presented herself here.’
‘Might she have signed in elsewhere, at another entrance?’
‘There is no other way through. Look there. We have rigged up emergency security machines, a directive from the Presidency yesterday.’ Kurtiz glanced to her right where a scanner and two armed, beefy security men had appeared at some point since she and Marguerite had first turned up.
‘She would have been obliged to pass by screening.’
‘May I have a quick look myself?’
The woman lifted her arms, shocked, affronted. ‘It’s rather irregular.’
‘I’ll recognize her handwriting.’ Would she?
The ledger was pushed towards her and Kurtiz riffled back and forth, attempting to find approximately the hour at which to begin her search. There was no one whose initials tallied with Lizzie’s. At 2:21 p.m., she came across L. Dubois. There was a certain similarity in the handwriting, the squiggle of the ‘L’. At a stretch. She traced a horizontal line to the address and read 32b, avenue Haute Seine in the sixteenth. Some distance across town in a very elegant suburb. Could this be Lizzie, living under a different name? Quick as she could before the receptionist lost patience, begging a sheet of paper, she jotted L. Dubois’ details down. Then, before reluctantly handing back the ledger, she skipped back and forth one more time. And it caught her eye, the last name on a page that had curled over – someone perhaps had leaned on the paper and partially hidden this entrant: 3:44 p.m., Lizzie Ross, inhabiting a far less salubrious district on the edge of town. She turned her sheet of paper over and briskly copied down Lizzie’s address. ‘Merci. Merci.’ And she was at the door, then swinging full circle back to the desk for the last time. ‘If my daughter returns, tell her, please, that I have gone to her home and will wait for her there.’
The flat was on the fourth floor. The lift was out of order. Kurtiz began to climb an echoing stairwell in a hastily constructed modern block situated beyond the city limits in a banlieu, the outer suburbs, which skirted Paris’s southlands. The fabric of the building was scruffy but moderately clean. She passed a woman descending as she was going up. The young woman was negotiating a pram, clunking one wheel onto a concrete step followed by another. Empty shopping baskets hung from the handles. Behind her, gripping her overcoat, was a second child, a small girl.
‘Bonjour.’
‘Bonjour.’
The premises lacked all adornment, were functional, little else. Coming at her from various directions as she huffed her way up the winding, solid flights was the echoing ring of raised voices and infants bawling. Was this really where her Lizzie lived? Was she unemployed, down on her luck? Desperate? It stung Kurtiz to think of her in dire straits. Three doors leading to separate apartments on the fourth-floor landing. The surroundings smelt of tomcat. Or nappies. Urine. Strong bitter coffee, ripe cheese and spices. Checking her sheet of paper, she pressed the bell that married with the address she had for Lizzie. There was no name. It sounded a high-pitched growl. No response. She rang again, tapping her booted foot. It was Monday. Was her daughter out at work? Or at a place of study? University? Should she leave a message? Tear off the scruffy edge of her sheet of paper?
Just as she was about to do that, having lowered herself to her haunches to dig through her bag, placed on the floor, for a pen, a neighbouring
door opened. A woman put her head out. She was North African, holding a small child in her arms, a lighter-skinned child, who was possibly three or four. ‘Bonjour. Are you looking for Lizzie?’ From behind her, the yelling and squabbling of a pack of infants. A dog elsewhere began to bark. Kurtiz winced. Tiredness made her nerves raw, on edge. She nodded. ‘Does she live here?’
‘She’s gone to the hospital. Her father was caught up in that appalling attack at the Bataclan. I’m minding Laurence for her till she gets back.’
Kurtiz stared in incredulity. ‘Is this Laurence?’
The woman nodded. ‘Cute, eh? Very bright.’
‘Shall I take him?’
The woman glared at her with dark suspicious eyes.
‘I’m L-Lizzie’s mother.’
It made no impact. If anything, the woman marginally retreated into her own nest, back beyond danger, clutching and protecting the light-haired boy, who was pulling and twisting at his carer’s dark hair. He had the same smudge of freckles, like a miniature cluster of fallen leaves, across his nose and cheekbones, the same as Lizzie had displayed when she was small. The likeness, now Kurtiz focused on the child’s features, was quite remarkable. Who was the father? Was he still present in their lives? Considering this address, Kurtiz guessed not. Her daughter must be surviving as a single parent. Unless she and Laurence’s father were both struggling students. Had Lizzie run away because she was pregnant? Terrified of confronting her mother and father? How old was little Laurence? She recalled her own mother’s reaction when she was carrying Lizzie. She wanted to be understanding, embracing.
‘I’d like to wait, if I may. Unless you have a telephone number for her?’ And then she cursed, remembering that her wretched phone had still not been charged.
Laurence’s keeper lifted a dark hand, displaying elegant fingers with many slender silver rings set beneath pale, manicured nails. She made a gesture, common in Arab countries, which Kurtiz remembered from her travels with Alex: fingers upright, pushing the palm of her hand repeatedly at the air as if to say, ‘Patience. Wait one moment.’ She disappeared with Laurence and returned moments later without him, brandishing a key. ‘Do you want to wait for her in her own flat?’ She offered it to Kurtiz, who was confused as to whether Lizzie would object to this intrusion.
Tentatively, she stepped forward and accepted it. ‘Shall I take Laurence too? Sit with him for a while?’
The neighbour seemed less concerned about the handing over of a key than the release of the child. ‘I was about to prepare him a snack. He eats like a horse.’ She grinned. ‘Let yourself in, and when he’s cleaned up, I’ll knock. I’m Fatima, by the way.’
Lizzie’s flat was a large studio, offering a sofa as pull-out bed. It smelt, surprisingly, of exotic plants like an aromatherapy clinic. The kitchen and bathroom were both off the main room. The plain cream walls were decorated with dozens of sketches of ‘Mummy’ with exceedingly large hands, cheesy smile and keyboard teeth. Lower down the cupboard a few others of a long-haired ‘Daddy’. To her surprise, there were also several newspaper clippings of her own work. Most were from French newspapers such as Le Monde, but one or two were from British press. A method of staying in touch? Had Lizzie kept track of her parents from a distance? Had she missed them both? There were so many questions she was dying to ask. Kurtiz folded herself onto the sofa bed, shrugged off her boots and was overwhelmed by tiredness, by depression and, yet, here she was in Lizzie’s little home. A part of her was being pieced back together. Atoms that had been split apart four years ago were reconnecting. Oliver lost, but Lizzie gained. Lizzie and Laurence. She would take them home, gather them up like a hen. Sweep them into her embrace. Care for them. Make sure the boy was given a decent education. Everything would be resolved …
And then she was asleep, twisted by sadness and grief and yet, in some curious fashion, safely berthed. A lonely odyssey reaching its final act. Or she prayed so.
When the key was slipped into the lock and the front door opened, the movements of people approaching did not rouse her. It was the plump hand with small fingers on her shoulder, shaking her rather too energetically that roused her.
‘Hey, missus woman.’
Her eyes opened. Bleary. A headache as though she had been slugged. Grief washed through her, like a sharp-edged knife filleting her flesh. Something had been taken away from her. Where was she? Who was this pulling at her, chivvying her to get to her feet?
‘What?’
A face beamed into hers. Lizzie. Little Lizzie. Big eyes, like a bumble bee’s, penetrating hers. Their baby girl. Oliver must be in the kitchen making coffee. Yes, she could smell that comforting aroma. She lifted her head and faced the boy glaring at her. ‘Mummy says you’re her mummy.’
‘What?’ Kurtiz struggled to a sitting position. Where was Lizzie?
‘I’m making coffee.’ The response came as though her question had been telepathically received.
‘Can I help?’
‘No, sit still and make yourself acquainted with Laurence. Clever of you to track us down.’
Well, it has taken close to five years, thought Kurtiz, wryly, but she didn’t say a word.
After the coffee, which was very necessary and very delicious, Lizzie pulled the sofa out into a bed and the three of them boarded it, making themselves intimate and comfortable. An island sanctuary for a trio of Ross family survivors.
‘We’re on a ship, we’re sailing far away.’ Laurence should have gone to playschool several hours ago but it was fine that he would give it a miss today. His grandfather had gone to Heaven and he had the right to stay at home and be with his mummy, Lizzie explained to him, to look after her and his grand-mummy because they were sad. The boy looked from one woman to the other and nodded gravely, awed by such responsibility. He was a good-natured child and easy of manner, even if Kurtiz could not quite take in that he was her own flesh and blood.
She was bursting with questions, with reproaches too, which she was biting back. They needed time. Time to get the feel of one another. Time for her to comprehend that Lizzie was a fully-functioning mother in her own right. A woman, even if twenty years old and Kurtiz would have preferred to relegate her to the character of little Lizzie, to give herself the opportunity to catch up on the lost years. She wept then for Oliver, who would never know the answers, would never journey with them into that lost past through the narrated tales from Lizzie’s recent history. The gaps. For the first time in years, she longed for the touch of him, his gentleness. He, whom she had once loved so unconditionally.
‘Who is Laurence’s father?’ Kurtiz allowed herself that one question.
Lizzie pouted, considering. ‘His name’s Pascal.’ She pulled her legs out from under her and slid from the sofa, walking away from their mattress retreat and a potential inquisition.
‘Pascal who? What does he do?’ Kurtiz drilled into her daughter’s back, rising, stalking as she quizzed.
‘A French guy I met back in England.’ They were in the cabin kitchen now, squashed alongside one another, bumping arms, treading on toes, an awkward jig, about to prepare a pasta lunch for the three of them. ‘That boy has such an appetite.’ Lizzie grinned, bright face full of pride and maternal affection.
Kurtiz remembered then the empty container for the Dutch cap she had discovered among the chaos in Lizzie’s room. Sixteen years old. She bit her tongue, reining in the accusations. Had there been many lovers?
Lizzie opened the fridge and drew out a plastic container of shiny vegetables. ‘There’s wine, if you fancy a glass?’
Kurtiz shook her head. ‘I’d keel over.’ She was exploding with a hunger to understand, to fill in the harrowing years. She knew the moment was inappropriate – they were not yet ready to plumb the deep and murky waters: they needed to take it gently, coast, get to know one another again. Or so Oliver would have advised, but Oliver was gone, gone, and she could no longer contain herself. A tsunami was rising within her and she was too tired, too fraught a
nd full of pain to contain it. Even if she knew as she opened her mouth that she was digging a wall.
‘Why did you go, Lizzie? Why did you leave us?’
Lizzie was reaching for a pan. She paused a moment, then ran it under a tap. ‘Mum …’
Kurtiz hovered expectantly. ‘Why, Lizzie?’
‘These are big questions, Mum. Can we just take it a step at a time, please?’
She rubbed at her head, scratched. ‘What about Pascal? Is he from a good family? How did he manage to smuggle you out of England?’
Lizzie diced steadfastly: spring onions and roundish red onions, readying them for gently heating in a pan of olive oil and herbs. If there were tears, blame the onions.
‘There was no trace of you anywhere. The police dragged the Thames. Did you know that? While the press camped outside our front door, they searched the parks. Areas of Hampstead Heath were cordoned off. They notified all the borders, gave orders to report your attempted exit if you were identified.’
Lizzie reached for a sprig of parsley sitting upright in a glass on the window ledge, beyond which was a grey skyline, brushing Kurtiz’s shoulder as she did so. She returned to the small wooden board and began to chop fast, leaving a film of damp green on her fingertips. ‘I didn’t know all that. We didn’t look at the news. I was too … I met Pascal at a rock concert.’
The Lost Girl Page 32