‘Offices. A bar. Storage.’
‘If it’s so interesting, why don’t you just wander in there?’
She says nothing and for a long moment all I hear is a jangling sound. It could be the wind stirring the silvery leaves above our heads and the flutter of flags along the top of the brick building. Or it could be her thoughts. Crashing into each other. A spindly old aeroplane takes off with a roar. It seems to bring Romaine back to me. She turns her head and frowns at me.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asks again.
‘I told you. Looking for you.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I am good at looking.’
I move close to her. I catch a faint hint of perfume on her, so faint it is barely there, but I recognise it because I use it myself. It is Joy by Jean Patou. It doesn’t make sense. Who has she been with who wears such expensive perfume?
‘Roland told me,’ I say, ‘that you came to our apartment looking for me the other day, but then you disappeared. I came to the airfield to find you because you weren’t at your house.’
Her muddy eyes seek mine, and maybe it is because I have caught her unawares, but the barriers are down. Her eyes are naked and defenceless. And full of pain.
‘What is it, Romaine? What has happened? Why are you out here among the trees, spying on what is going on at DeFosse airfield?’
‘I’m searching for someone.’
‘Who?’
I think she is not going to reply. She shudders and I wrap my hand tight around hers.
‘Léo Martel,’ she whispers. And then louder, ‘Léo Martel.’
‘Come then. Let’s go and find him.’
I stride forward to cross the airfield, drawing my sister with me. Reluctantly she emerges from the shadows.
She leads me from building to building, from office to office. She knocks on doors, she asks questions.
‘Have you seen Léo Martel today?’
‘Have other people been asking after him?’
The answers are always the same. ‘No, sorry, Romy. If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re chasing him.’
What I notice is the way these people – the pilots and mechanics and airfield officials – all seem so fond of Romy. Their eyes brighten around her. I don’t think of her that way. With me she is always morose and silent, or sometimes just acutely sad, unless Chloé is with us. With Chloé she smiles.
I follow her through another door and it leads into a long, impressively stocked bar with glossy mahogany shelves and bevelled mirrors that reflect rows of bottles. Romaine goes through the questions with the barman and lingers a while, but she refrains from buying a drink. I am relieved. When I see her glance at the bottles and lick her lips, I say quickly, ‘Where next, Romaine?’
She leaves the bar without complaint. We go over to the hangars, which I find to be odd heartless spaces with various planes, tyres and overalls set out in rows. My sister seeks out a tiny weasel of a man whom she introduces as Jules Roget. It seems he is Léo Martel’s mechanic but hasn’t seen him for days. We are about to walk out of the hangar when I spot a young dark-haired boy of about thirteen or so in denim overalls too big for him. He is wielding a broom.
‘You,’ I call out to him. ‘Come here.’
I only intend to enquire if he has seen this Léo Martel, but he turns his back on me. I cannot tolerate rudeness. It always flips a switch in me. I march over to him and tap his shoulder smartly.
‘Boy! Answer me.’
He turns. But he does not look at me. He looks over my shoulder at my sister who is several steps behind me.
‘Have you seen someone called Léo Mart—?’
‘Florence!’
My name comes out as a stifled scream from my sister’s mouth. I am bewildered. She hurries to my side and stares at the boy as if he is a ghost.
‘What?’ I demand. ‘What?’
She touches my hand with her fingers and curls them around mine.
‘It is Samir,’ she says softly. ‘Samir Abed.’
Samir Abed?
For a moment the name means nothing to me. And then it dawns. Karim’s son. Of course he is. He has his father’s long narrow face, his swarthy skin, his soft polite mouth, but not his father’s docile eyes. This boy’s dark eyes burn in his head.
‘What are you doing here, Samir?’ Romaine asks without releasing my fingers.
His eyes flit from my sister’s face to mine to his broom. They remain on the broom, hiding from us.
‘Why here, Samir? Of all places. You must have followed me.’
She speaks in a reasonable tone, but I can sense through her fingers that she is feeling anything but reasonable. I start to fear for her. For us.
‘You should be at school,’ she tells him.
‘I need money. I have to work.’
‘I know your mother is sick.’
What? What? How does my sister know that?
‘She needs an operation,’ the boy says. ‘It costs many thousands of francs.’
‘You must go to school, Samir. I will get the money for you.’
‘How?’ His eyes rise from the broom and they are angry. ‘How will you get the money? You who drink and gamble your money away, you live in a slum and dress like a vagabonde. How will you get it? By whoring your way across Paris?’
She takes it. She just stands there and takes it.
But I don’t. My hand darts out and strikes him. It catches him a stinging blow on the ear, so full of rage that it must have made his head ring. Romaine ignores my outburst.
‘I will get the money for you, Samir, whatever it takes,’ she says. ‘I will not let you throw away your chance of an education and a future that would have made your father proud of you.’
At the mention of his father something changes in the boy. The edges blur. ‘At least give him the respect of a name,’ he whispers.
‘Karim Abed.’
He nods. They look at each other and I realise that they know things about each other. Alarm bells start jangling in my head. She cannot hide the truth from this gardener’s son. I see that now. She is in danger. My sister, with her wild unpredictable habits and her inability to lie to Samir, she will get us executed.
I drive Romaine back into the centre of Paris in my Delage D6-70 roadster. Even in her obvious distress I see her admire the car as she slides in – it is two-tone blue and cream with an elegant Chapron body and a six-cylinder engine. I let her settle. I don’t rush her. There are things I need to know, but I leave her in silence until I can feel her untangle some of the knots that make her screw her hands into the limp black cotton of her dress. She drops her canvas shoulder bag at her feet and we motor along tree-lined boulevards in silence, the wind tousling stray strands of our hair.
‘What do you know about the boy?’ I ask eventually. I don’t want to say his name.
She looks at me, dragging her thoughts together. Wherever they were, they weren’t on the boy.
‘For the last eight years I have watched him grow up. Once a month I go to the Arab quarter where they live and I put money in an envelope for them. But it seems Samir has retaliated and followed me around Paris.’ She shakes her head, bemused. ‘How could I not have noticed? This is the first time I have ever spoken to him.’
I am glad I am driving, otherwise I might have seized her shoulders and shaken my twin.
‘Fool,’ I shout. Because I am angry. ‘You stupid fool. You must stay away from him.’
‘Lend me the money for the operation, Florence.’
‘No.’
‘Please, Florence.’
‘No.’
She places a hand on my thigh. I almost crash into the van in front.
‘I will pay you back, I promise.’
‘It is not the money, Romaine. It is too dangerous for you to be in touch with Karim’s family.’
‘What if I promise to stay away from them in future? Will you lend me the money then?’ Her fingers squeeze my thigh.
She slumps back in her seat and withdraws her hand. She knows what my husband will say as well as I do. I take a bend so sharply that it throws her against the door. Her amber eyes are dark and dull as she looks at me quizzically.
‘What, Florence? What has got you so worked up?’
‘Have you ever thought about this possibility, Romaine, during all your guilt-ridden breast-beating? That perhaps Karim, our Algerian gardener, did actually kill Papa?’
‘Don’t be absurd. He was in the garden.’
‘How do we know he didn’t at some point enter the house and have an argument over pay? Karim was wanting a raise, we know that. Who’s to say you didn’t walk in on them and get caught up in it and Karim hit you with the brass pyramid in a fit of temper? Knowing he would go to jail for it, he stuck the paperknife in Papa’s throat and rushed back to his work in the garden with his innocent face on.’
She stares at me, open-mouthed.
‘It’s possible,’ I say. ‘He was the only other one there that day.’
I manoeuvre the Delage into a spot between two trucks outside the fine clock tower of the Gare de Lyon, which is where she asked to be dropped. It is mid-afternoon and the sun is hot on our shoulders in the open car, but not hot enough to explain why my sister’s cheeks are suddenly a fierce scarlet.
‘Don’t pretend to me, Florence.’
‘I’m not pretending.’ I say it gently. It upsets me to see her upset and I feel my own cheeks burn in sympathy. ‘I am pointing out that maybe justice was done. Maybe Karim did murder our father. So no need to wear sackcloth and ashes for the rest of your days.’
I pull on the handbrake and swivel in my seat to face her. To my horror I see her eyes fill with tears. I haven’t seen Romaine cry since our cat died when she was seven. I reach for her and am surprised when she rests her forehead on my shoulder. I realise she is exhausted.
‘Calm down, Romaine, and forget about the boy. You don’t need to be responsible for him or his sick mother.’
But the moment is brief. She withdraws abruptly and I feel the loss of her.
‘Go to hell,’ she says but mildly. ‘You just want an excuse not to lend the money.’
I shake my head, but she turns to climb out of the car. I hold her arm. ‘Wait, please. Tell me who this Léo Martel is, the man you’re searching for.
Her arm starts to shake. ‘I told you, he is my boss.’
‘I get the feeling he’s much more than your boss.’
‘No. Nothing like that.’
Liar. But I keep the word locked up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Romy entered Gare de Lyon at a run. It was a long shot to come to the station. A very long shot. But it was all she had left. Plumes of smoke from the massive steam trains hung in the air, turning it grey and leaving smuts of soot on the skin like speckles on a bird’s egg. The station quais were crowded with travellers and suitcases that knocked against shins, porters shouting and women adjusting their summer hats. There was a sense of purpose in the station that matched Romy’s own, but she was blind to it all.
Her eyes raked the huddles of travellers, every broad back or black shirt or tall dark head. None of them matched the one she searched for. A long shot. That came to nothing. A train belched a cloud of smoke that seemed to settle inside her head, smudging the edges of her thoughts.
Martel? Have you forgotten me?
Did you leave the Blue Train here in Paris and disappear into the city’s backstreets without a backward glance?
Or are you in an interrogation room somewhere? Is Müller battering you with questions? Or with something worse?
‘Martel.’
She murmured his name aloud as if it could conjure him up, but it didn’t rid her of the ache in her heart. She hurried over to the point in the station where Le Train Bleu restaurant was situated on an upper floor above the hustle and bustle below. It was the peak of dining luxury for wealthy travellers, approached by an elegant staircase with an elaborate curve of wrought-iron balustrading.
But it was not the restaurant itself or its glitzy chandeliers that caught her eye. It was a black figure. In a shadowy corner beneath the staircase.
She started to run.
He saw her coming. He threw down his cigarette and opened his long arms and she flew into them. Not with any grace or decorum but at breakneck speed. She launched herself at Martel’s broad chest with a cry of joy and the force of her leap almost knocked him off his heels.
She found herself lifted off her feet and crushed against his ribs until she thought her own would break. Her arms fixed in a death grip around his neck and she could only breathe in disjointed gasps.
‘You were gone. I couldn’t find you. I don’t know where you live, so I went to the airfield. I checked for police first. You weren’t there.’ She pressed her hot cheek tight to his. ‘So I came here.’
‘I’ve been waiting. And waiting. Meeting every shit-bucket train from the south.’ He rubbed his face against hers, his stubble rough and reassuring. ‘Waiting and cursing.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ she breathed against his skin.
They were in a basement. Martel had brought her to another safe house. It was a basement apartment near the banks of the Seine and smelled of the river, as if the grey water swirled just beneath their feet. He was seated in an armchair and didn’t take his eyes off her as she prowled the room.
‘Don’t go anywhere near Horst Baumeister,’ he said.
‘But Horst can be useful to us. It might save lives.’
‘Please, Romaine.’ Martel was insistent. ‘Stay away from him. Do you want to get your face slapped by another German?’
‘Horst is not like Müller.’
‘He is still a danger. I am frightened for you if you get too friendly with him.’
Too friendly. They both knew what that meant.
‘Horst has access to all kinds of secret information,’ she pointed out.
‘It might save the lives of others, but what good is that to me if it takes yours?’
His words stopped her mid-stride. They left her stranded in the middle of the room, unable to move, listening to them pulse in her ears.
‘Don’t, Martel,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Don’t. You don’t really know me.’
‘Of course I know you.’ He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his grey eyes intent on hers. ‘I know you are a pain in the arse, hell-bent on destroying yourself. The best damn flier I know, with enough courage for a whole squadron of fliers. With a generous heart and a frantic determination to drown yourself in a bottle. I don’t know what the hell happened to you in the past, Romaine, or what makes you push people away to stop anyone getting close. But I do know it’s time you let go of it. Anyway,’ he threw back his head with a deep-chested laugh, ‘Romaine, I’m not swapping you for some top-secret documents, thank you.’
It was the laugh that broke her. It came crashing through her defences. She heard them shatter, felt their sharp edges slice through her. He had brought her here and she had told him about the interrogation by Müller, but neither had mentioned that naked moment at the station. When they had been fused together.
She could not talk of documents and German secrets. Not now. She walked over to his chair and sat on the arm of it. She took his startled face between her hands and studied it intimately, her gaze lingering on the sweep of his thick eyelashes, the broad solid bones of his cheeks, the strong wedge of his chin. And the way his nose arched, too fine for his face, with the scar on the side like the coil of a seashell. They were all so familiar but she had never touched them before, or let her thumb caress his cheek as it did now. But it was his mouth that did the damage to any shred of defence she had left. Full, warm, sculpted. She bent her head forward and kissed it.
His lips tasted
of honey and summer wine and strong Turkish cigarettes. Desire tore through her like a hot wire and her hand slid down to the taut tendons of his throat but . . . His lips did not respond. Under hers they were lifeless and indifferent.
She jerked back her head. Confused.
‘Don’t you want this?’
‘No, Romaine, I don’t.’
She shot off the arm of the chair like a scalded cat.
‘I apologise,’ Romy said. ‘I got it wrong.’
‘Yes, you did.’
Even her ears were burning. She was standing with her back to him, staring up at the window set high in the wall of the basement room. All she could see outside were feet hurrying past, because the outside world didn’t stop, however much her inside one had juddered to a halt. She felt hurt and ashamed.
And yet. In the station, Léo Martel had crushed her to his chest as though he would weld her to his heart. She remembered the pressure of his lips on her hair. Romy knew men, knew more men than she cared to remember, and she knew beyond doubt that at that raw moment in the Gare de Lyon, this man had wanted to eat her alive.
She spun around. To her surprise he was standing right behind her, tall and watchful.
‘I didn’t get it wrong, did I?’ she asked.
‘No, Romaine, you were not wrong. You are rarely wrong about me.’
‘Martel,’ she whispered, ‘what is it? What’s wrong?’
‘Look at you, Romaine. You are an amazing young woman, as courageous and as capable as you are beautiful. Now look at me. I am ten years older than you, I have a leg so messed up that it takes me ten minutes to climb into the cockpit of a plane and, in the war that’s coming – make no mistake, it is coming – I will most likely die, because even though they won’t pass me fit for service in the air force, I’ll be fighting with the Resistance when the Germans invade. So you see, Romaine,’ he spread his large hands in surrender, ‘that’s what is wrong. All wrong.’
Romy stepped forward and this time gave him no chance to escape. She hooked a finger around one of his shirt buttons.
‘It’s not your walking abilities that I’m interested in, Martel.’
He laughed and again it was her undoing. She let her finger slide into the opening of his shirt and touch his skin. It felt warm. She drew him closer.
The Betrayal Page 17