by A. E. Radley
“So, are you… I mean.. are we… related? Or…?” Holly looked uncertain.
“We… worked together,” Victoria said. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to give away just yet. She knew Holly needed the information, but she wanted to wait a little while longer before the inevitable distance was thrown up between them again.
Holly slowly nodded. “Where do… did we work?”
“Arrival, an international fashion magazine. I am the New York editor-in-chief and you… were… my second assistant.”
Holly couldn’t have looked more surprised if Victoria had told her that she was an astronaut. As the information sunk in, she let out a small giggle.
“So… I’m a fashion person?”
Victoria chuckled lightly at the very thought.
“No, you were most definitely not a fashion person, Holly. You came to work for me because you were interested in writing, editorials and journalism. You were a temp who became a permanent member of staff after my previous second assistant left. I believe you were hoping to move to the writing staff in the future, or to one of our sister publications.”
Holly smiled. “Phew, I thought I’d lost more than my memory for a moment. I mean, I can tell you’re into all that fashion stuff, but I don’t think that’s me.”
Victoria allowed the phrase fashion stuff to go by with merely a tiny wince.
Holly suddenly slapped her hand across her mouth. Her eyes were wide, realisation dawning.
“You’re my boss!”
Victoria nodded.
“Yes, I am… well…” She hesitated for a moment, debated whether she should mention Holly’s vanishing act. It occurred to her that this new information could explain Holly’s sudden departure. Maybe the girl hadn’t up and quit her job after all.
“Yes, I’m your boss.”
“And you have two assistants?” Holly questioned.
“Yes.” Victoria nodded.
“So, you’re kind of a big deal?” Holly asked.
Victoria dismissed the question with a small flick of her wrist. “Never mind that now, Holly. We need to focus on you, not me.”
Holly slowly nodded. Victoria could see the cogs of her mind working overtime.
“Do I have any family? Am I married? Do I have kids? What about my mom and dad?”
Victoria blinked at the onslaught of questions. She swallowed, realising again that she was probably the worst person in the world to be doing this.
“You’re not married, as far as I’m aware. And no children. I’m afraid I don’t know about your parents, we never really spoke of…” She paused. She wanted to say that they had never spoken of anything personal. She wanted to clarify their relationship. Wanted to advise Holly that she had had the misfortune of coming across the least helpful person possible.
“I suppose I always knew that I didn’t have anyone,” Holly said. “I mean, no one ever came looking for me. And the guy from the embassy said that no one had reported me missing.”
Victoria had no idea how to respond to that. It seemed so wrong that Holly had been left to fend for herself in a foreign country. Recovering in a hospital with the knowledge that no one had missed her presence.
“So, do I live in New York?”
Victoria felt relief at the arrival of a question she could answer with certainty.
“Yes, you live in the city.”
“Wow…” Holly smiled, her head tilted as she took that piece of information in. “I wonder if I still have a place there. I wonder where my stuff is? I must have had stuff?”
“Yes, you must have had ‘stuff’,” Victoria agreed.
Samuel approached the table. “Hello, Clémence.”
Holly jumped up and hugged the man. “Sam! Oh, Sam, did you do this? Did you find Victoria?”
“Oui.” He stepped back, a wide smile on his face as he clutched Holly’s hands in his. “I had nearly given up. And suddenly I saw you on television.”
Holly’s eyes shone with surprise. “Me? On television?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “You and Victoria. I only saw you for a second, but I knew it was you. It was a news article about Fashion Week. They were showing some footage from the previous year, and there you were. Beside this wonderful lady here.”
Victoria felt herself blush as he nodded in her direction.
Holly threw her arms around him again. “I cannot thank you enough!”
Victoria felt uncomfortable and used the opportunity to make her escape. She stood up. “Excuse me, I need to speak with Dr Fontaine.”
Holly took a step back from Samuel and looked at Victoria, her eyes flashing with fear.
“I will be right back, I just need to speak with your doctor,” she reassured. “I won’t be leaving.”
Holly nodded, a fearful look remaining on her face. Samuel put his arm around her and gestured to the book on the table.
“Moby Dick, again?” he asked.
Holly and Samuel sat down at the table and spoke with each other.
Victoria made eye contact with Charlotte. The doctor nodded her head and indicated a corridor off of the recreation room where they could speak privately.
Once they were away from prying ears, Victoria spoke. “I’m not a medical expert, but twelve months is a very long time for someone to still be in the hospital. She doesn’t appear to be ill, aside from the memory loss. I’m surprised that she is still here.”
Charlotte leaned against the wall, her arms folded across her chest. “Yes, when she first arrived, she was in emergency care for a month while she recovered from the accident. For the next six months, she was here for therapy to recover her motor skills—”
“Motor skills?” Victoria questioned.
“It’s not unusual for brain trauma patients to need to relearn basic motor functions. Walking, eating, drinking, writing. Luckily Clémence—apologies, Holly—recovered these skills quickly. For other skills, she is still receiving therapy. This, coupled with the fact that the system here is very slow, means that Holly has remained here while our board decided where she would go and who would care for her.”
“Care for her?”
“Yes, she’s unable to care for herself. Her motor functions are still not one hundred percent. She had no knowledge of the French language other than basic phrases. Part of her treatment has been to immerse her in her native language. The American authorities could not identify her and therefore would not pay for her treatment. The French authorities wanted the Americans to take responsibility for her wellbeing. Holly has been stuck in a very long game of political Ping-Pong. She has remained here while the legal issues are outstanding.”
Victoria could well believe the scenario Charlotte described. She’d dipped her toe into the political world on occasion, only to be horrified at the amount of red tape that greeted her.
“How do I resolve this? How can I get her home?”
Charlotte let out a long breath. “Well, that would be very difficult. You would need to prove who she is. That way she can be released from the care of the French medical system. Then there would need to be a decision made regarding her ability to travel, we would need to be sure that someone would care for her on-going medical needs. We cannot simply let her go without knowing she will be cared for. If something were to happen, we could be held responsible.”
Victoria leaned her back against the opposite wall and stared down at the floor. She was starting to realise the enormity of the situation.
“And, we must not forget,” Charlotte continued, “that it is of course up to her, as well.”
Victoria looked up.
“We cannot allow someone to take responsibility for her without her permission. She is mentally able to have a say. There are few people in the world she knows, never mind trusts,” Charlotte said.
Victoria nodded. She turned to look into the recreation room where Samuel and Holly were deep in conversation. She started to have a small inkling of how lost and helpless Holly must have felt soon after the accident. E
verything had changed, and everything was going to continue to change for a while longer yet.
She couldn’t leave the girl behind again. She felt she was suffocating with guilt already. There was no way that she would be leaving Paris without her former second assistant.
7
“Just think of the peace and quiet you’ll have,” Gideon said, watching Louise with no great concern. She sat on an uncomfortable airport terminal chair, head between her legs, breathing into a brown paper bag.
“You can take Victoria’s seat in first class… actually, scratch that, that would put you next to me. You can keep your own seat in premium, relaxed in the knowledge that—”
“Relaxed?!” Louise crumpled the paper bag and glared up at him. “Relaxed? Are you insane? Victoria is gone. She will miss her flight, and who will she blame for that? Me. That’s who. She will blame me for missing her flight and throwing her entire schedule off. Gideon, this is a complete disaster.”
“Victoria is a grown woman. If she’s gone off somewhere, then she knows she’ll miss her flight,” Gideon reasoned.
“Oh, come on.” Louise stood up and started to pace. “Remember the time we were in London and she demanded that the plane leave twenty minutes early so she’d be able to get an earlier connection to take Hugo to a concert?”
Gideon laughed. That did sound familiar, but he was so used to Victoria’s behaviour by now that it all blended into the background. Of course, he didn’t have to deal with her whims on a daily basis either.
Louise’s phone rang in the distinctive tune that was assigned to Victoria. And Lord Vader. She ran for her bag and tipped the contents onto the chair. She grabbed the phone and swiped at the screen.
“Hello? Victoria?”
Louise’s face contorted in confusion.
“What? Um. You… Yes, I-I’ll see what I can do. Yes, yes, right away. What about your flight—” She pulled her phone away from her ear and looked at the screen. “She hung up.”
“What did she say?” Gideon asked.
Louise looked at him. “You won’t believe this, but she wants me to get a copy of Holly Carter’s passport.”
Gideon blinked. “Holly’s passport?” It had been a long time since that name had been uttered.
“Yep. She didn’t say why. Just that she wants it emailed to her immediately.” Louise stood rooted to the spot in confusion. “Why on earth does she want that traitor’s passport? What’s going on?”
Gideon got his own phone out of his inner jacket pocket and scrolled to Victoria’s number.
“Who knows? Just do what she says. Call human resources and ask them to get a copy out of the file,” he told her. “And tell them to hurry up. Whatever it is, she won’t want to be kept waiting.”
Louise snapped out of her daze and started to swipe through her contact list.
Gideon walked away from where they had been sitting and dialled Victoria. A few moments went by before the call was answered.
“Victoria? What’s going on?” he asked.
“Gideon, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said through a sigh.
“You just asked Louise to get a copy of Holly’s passport?”
“Don’t tell the masses, and certainly don’t tell Louise, I want to keep this quiet for now,” Victoria said. “Holly is here, in France.”
Gideon couldn’t quite work out the connection. “And… she’s lost her passport?”
“She’s lost everything. She’s in a hospital,” Victoria whispered.
Gideon turned away from the crowds of the terminal and faced a nearby wall in an attempt to hide his shock.
“In a hospital? Is she okay?”
“She has severe memory loss, she doesn’t know who she is,” Victoria explained.
“How on earth did you find her?”
“That’s a long story, for another day. Suffice to say, I’m staying here with her until I can get this mess sorted out. I need a copy of her passport in order to prove her identity and get the wheels in motion to bring her home.”
Gideon leaned his arm against the wall. “Yes, yes, I see. Is there anything I can do?”
“Actually, there is. You used to speak to Holly, didn’t you? I saw you two whispering to each other often. Do you know much about Holly’s family? Parents? Siblings? Does she have a boyfriend? I really don’t know what to tell her. I knew so little about her.”
He stood up straight and started to walk. He felt so cut off and useless that movement was the only thing keeping him from going insane.
“Well, her parents died in a car crash about six years ago. No brothers or sisters that she’s ever spoken about. No boyfriend, but she broke up with her long-term girlfriend just before she left for Paris. They were having difficulties and Holly made the break. I think she intended to return from Paris and get her life back on track.” He snorted a bitter laugh. “She had a couple of friends she spoke about fairly regularly, but she had a big falling out with them when she left her girlfriend.”
He heard a deep sigh from Victoria. “Don’t you have anything… positive? Something I can tell her that doesn’t sound so dire?”
Gideon searched his memory for the last few weeks of conversations he’d had with Holly.
“Nothing that springs to mind,” he admitted. “She was at a crossroads in her life. Making a lot of changes. She loved her job and was looking forward to starting a career in writing. Everything else was falling away as she focused on her career.”
“I see,” Victoria replied. “Well, at least I have something to tell her, I suppose. Please keep this between us, but tell Louise to hurry up with that passport.”
8
Victoria disconnected the call. She summoned a deep and calming breath. This day certainly wasn’t working out in the way she had planned.
Worst of all, she couldn’t tell Louise what was happening. If she did, the entire Arrival staff, worldwide, would know. They’d know that Victoria hadn’t followed up on Holly’s departure and had instead abandoned the girl. The story would quickly grow into Victoria having somehow caused the brain trauma personally. She could see it now, secretaries taking bets on how it was done, like a winning guess in Clue: Victoria with the hole punch at the Vuitton preview.
She was dealing with quite enough without having to endure the gossip pool as well. Telling Louise was out of the question. Which meant she was effectively without an assistant and would have to deal with all of Holly’s paperwork herself.
She left the room where she had been making calls and returned to the recreation room. She crossed back towards the table where Holly and Samuel continued their conversation.
As she approached, Holly looked up at her and smiled. Victoria found herself uncharacteristically returning the smile. She could see some of the brightness returning to Holly’s eyes. A sliver of her former self seemed to be returning.
Samuel stood up and held out a card. Victoria took it, it looked like a business card that had been printed at home.
“Merci,” he said, “for speaking to me earlier today. And for everything. Please let me know that she is okay.”
“I will keep you updated,” Victoria said as she pocketed the business card.
Holly stood up and hugged him farewell. He said a final goodbye to Victoria and walked away.
Holly watched him leave. “I wonder what would have happened without him,” she wondered.
“He certainly is persistent,” Victoria said.
Holly looked at Victoria nervously. “So, what happens now?”
Victoria gestured for Holly to sit down as she did the same. She straightened her spine and looked Holly in the eye. This was a serious discussion, one that had to go perfectly. There could be no doubts, no misunderstandings, and no concerns. In short, Victoria had to do things that she wasn’t particularly good at. Mainly, explain herself and be sympathetic to someone else’s thoughts and feelings.
“What happens next is somewhat up to you,” Victoria admitted. �
��I am getting a copy of your passport sent over to me. That will allow us to prove who you are and that you’re an American citizen. Once that happens, the French authorities will release you into the care of the American authorities—”
“I don’t want to go back to the American Embassy,” Holly interrupted. “They weren’t very nice, and they didn’t help me at all.”
“The hospital won’t discharge you unless you are legally under someone’s care, at least for the immediate future,” Victoria explained gently. “That won’t be the embassy. In fact, I’d like to take on that role in order to get you home to New York. So that you can get settled again. I understand that may be a little difficult as we’ve only just met…”
Holly looked around the room as she slowly nodded. “I’d like to leave here. And maybe I’ll remember something when I see New York?”
“Maybe you will,” Victoria said, trying to keep things light without providing the girl with any false hope. “Would you like to be discharged into my care?”
Holly looked to Victoria and opened her mouth to speak.
“Apologies for eavesdropping,” Charlotte said as she appeared by their table and sat down.
“Understandable,” Victoria commented. She gestured for the doctor to continue.
“Clémence, are you comfortable with this? Once you leave the hospital you will not be able to return to us.”
“Holly,” Victoria muttered.
Holly ignored Victoria, focusing her attention on Charlotte. “I want to go back to New York. I might remember who I am. Or at least recognise something. I’ve been here forever, and everything still seems alien to me.”
“Going back to New York may help your memories to return, but, as we discussed before, there is a real possibility that those memories are gone forever.”
“I know,” Holly said softly. “But I want to try.”
“I understand,” Charlotte said. “Are you comfortable with Victoria having power of attorney for you and your affairs?”
Victoria picked up her phone from the table top and started to check her email messages. She didn’t want Holly to feel pressured, even though she desperately wanted – no, needed – the girl to say yes.