Little Bird

by Camilla Way

  ‘Yes, love. Well, the shop is, anyway. Old Preton’s long retired of course, grumpy old sod. Come to think of it, if anyone knows what happened to Thérèse, Georges would.’ She points over to the far side of the square. ‘It’s over there, handsome. Just there, on the corner. You go and ask the new owners where Georges lives now, they bought the shop off him a few years back.’

  When Frank knocks on the door of the tiny house in the hamlet of Magny-le-Desert, it’s opened by a small hunched man in his late seventies.

  ‘Monsieur Preton?’ asks Frank.

  ‘Who’s asking?’ he replies, his small eyes peering, his lip-less mouth pursed in a thin, suspicious line.

  ‘My name is Frank Auvrey. I wanted to talk to you about Thérèse Brun.’

  Two seconds later he finds himself staring at red peeling paint, the door having been sharply slammed in his face. Frank sighs and hammers on it again. ‘Monsieur Preton,’ he calls. ‘Please, sir. This is important.’

  The door opens a crack. The small wrinkled face is pinched with anger. ‘Can’t you people leave her alone?’ he shouts. ‘Nearly twenty years ago it was.’ His beady, yellowing eyes fix Frank with contempt. ‘Filling your newspapers with lies and gossip.’ He coughs heartily, and shuts the door again.

  ‘Monsieur Preton,’ calls Frank patiently. ‘You don’t understand. I’m a friend of Elodie’s. Elodie Brun.’

  Very slowly, the door opens a jar, two turtle eyes peer out.

  His voice is sharp. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m trying to find Thérèse, I’m a friend of her daughter Elodie.’

  There’s a long, silent pause, and then the door reopens and Frank follows the shuffling, stooped old man inside.

  The ground floor of the small stone house consists of one large room with a tiny kitchen leading off it. In the centre is a table, with an elderly ginger dog snoring softly beneath it. The walls are bare apart from a couple of pictures of the Virgin Mary and some snapshots of the sleeping dog as a puppy. In one corner a pot-bellied stove sits next to a grandfather clock, in the other, a TV set blares. Slowly, Preton shuffles over to it and switches it off. The place smells of coffee and damp fur.

  ‘This better not be a trick, boy.’ His French is so thick with the regional accent that Frank struggles for a few seconds to decipher it. ‘Because if it is I’ll set Fidel on you.’ His old finger points shakily at the geriatric mutt lying prone beneath the table, who raises his eyebrows a fraction, shifts arthritically on his haunches, glances at Frank and thumps his tail, then falls back to sleep with a contented sigh.

  ‘It’s not a trick, sir,’ says Frank. ‘I really do know Elodie. And I’m trying to trace her mother.’

  Georges Preton stares hard at Frank, then with a grunt, gestures for him to sit, before disappearing into the kitchen. When he returns he carries a tray laden with coffee cups, a steaming pot, and a bottle of Calvados. ‘Is it true, then?’ he says with abrupt gruffness as he pours them both a cup of thick black coffee. ‘Is it true what I read in the papers. That she ran off and left that Klein woman for dead?’

  ‘No,’ says Frank quietly. ‘No. That’s not true at all.’ And, taking a cup from Georges, he begins to tell him everything that had happened to Kate after she was stolen from outside his shop all those years ago.

  When he reaches the part where Ingrid told Elodie her mother no longer cared about her, the old man bangs his fist on the table. ‘That bitch!’ And when Frank tells him about her last night at High Barn, Georges’ jaw sets in a hard, angry line. ‘The poor kid,’ he mutters. Otherwise he listens in absolute, unblinking silence until Frank has finished.

  ‘Where is she?’ He asks eagerly then, refilling their cups with Calvados. ‘Is she in France? Is she here?’

  Frank hesitates, and not looking Georges in the eye, replies, ‘No, Monsieur Preton. No, I’m afraid she isn’t.’

  The old baker considers Frank silently for a moment. ‘Why not?’ he asks.

  And then, to his surprise, Frank finds himself telling the old man everything. The French words seem to come to him like the lyrics of a song he’d thought he’d long forgotten. He tells Preton how they had tried to make things work for a while but in the end it had all just fallen apart. ‘She never told me who she was, and what had happened to her, she told that maniac instead. She didn’t trust me. She lied to me.’ He shakes his head and drains his Calvados. ‘And then they – he and she, they …’

  The old man continues to stare at him for a while and his voice when he speaks is gruff. ‘Do you love her?’

  Frank stares into his empty cup for a while. ‘Yes. More than I can say.’

  A long silence follows. The grandfather clock ticks on, the dog snores by his feet, and Frank feels, if not exactly happier, then lighter than he has for some time. Georges says nothing for a while, but at last he looks up, and fixing him in his beady gaze, says, ‘Then don’t be such a bloody fool, son.’

  He gets to his feet. As he passes Frank he puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m going to bed now. Make sure you’re back here at nine sharp in the morning.’ He shuffles over to the kitchen and switches off the lights. ‘Oh, and Frank? Take Fidel out for a piss before you go, there’s a good lad.’

  When he arrives at the house a little before nine the next day, Preton is already waiting for him outside in his ancient Citroën. He leans over and unlocks the passenger door. ‘Get in,’ he says, turning the key in the ignition.

  Frank goes over and peers doubtfully through the window. Inside it’s more or less the same size as a can of beans. Fidel is squashed into the open truck part. ‘Where are we going?’ he asks, getting in.

  Preton steps on the accelerator and they lurch forward with a loud splutter from the engine. ‘Hang on to your breakfast this time, Fidel,’ he yells over his shoulder. ‘Where are we going?’ he asks Frank in surprise. ‘We’re going to see Thérèse, of course.’

  It’s on the forty-minute drive over to Argentan that Frank, still reeling from Preton’s revelation, learns the sad story of Thérèse’s life. ‘She fell apart after the child disappeared,’ Georges tells him. ‘It was like watching someone die in slow motion. She got in with a bad lot – junkies, no hopers. They gave her drugs and booze, took advantage of her.’ He shakes his head. ‘I tried my best to help her, but she was hell-bent on losing herself. She wouldn’t listen to me – it was as though she were punishing herself for what had happened. By the time Elodie turned up again, she was a bloody mess. Out of her mind on God knows what.’ He snorts angrily, ‘And then that Ingrid person turned up.’

  Preton drives on in silence for a while, but when he speaks again, his voice is still furious. ‘She just wouldn’t let up. Convincing Thérèse she was unfit to care for Elodie, that the child would be better off without her. Hounding her, bullying her. Promising her that Elodie would be back in a year, that she’d be able to visit her in the States – that it was all in Elodie’s best interests. Thérèse is half-English, speaks it fluently, Klein was at the top of her field and it seemed to her like it would be Elodie’s best chance to rebuild her life.’

  As Frank listens to Georges talk, an image of Kate on the journey back from Anton’s flat flashes into his mind; how she’d looked when she’d told him about the mother she’d never known. An intense pity twists in his guts. ‘Go on,’ he prompts.

  ‘Well, for a while, after Thérèse had signed the papers, it looked like she was going to pull herself together at last. She got clean, kicked the booze and drugs, even got herself a little cleaning job so she could provide a home for Elodie when she returned. It was all she talked about. I was amazed at the change in her.’

  ‘So what happened?’ asks Frank.

  ‘What happened is that bitch, Klein, kept putting her off. Saying that it would ruin the kid’s progress if she were to return to France, that she just needed a little longer. This went on for months. In the end, she told Thérèse that the kid didn’t want to see her. Wanted nothing to do with her. Fed
her a load of nonsense about Elodie being happier where she was, that Thérèse was nothing to her now.

  ‘I tried to persuade her to put up a fight, but instead she hit the drugs and booze harder than before. She had always blamed herself for Elodie’s disappearance, I guess that’s why it was so easy for her to believe Ingrid’s lies. When news came through that Klein was dead and Elodie had disappeared, she took to her bed. She’s barely left her flat since. It’s like she’s just given up on life. She blames herself for it all.’

  There’s a long silence. Finally Frank turns to the little old man, whose eyes are fixed determinedly on the road ahead. ‘She’s lucky to have you,’ he remarks.

  Preton shrugs. ‘When it happened outside my shop I felt responsible somehow. She was so young. It destroyed her so completely.’ He glances at Frank with a grim smile. ‘But now she’s got a second chance, hasn’t she, thanks to you? To put things right.’ He turns back to the road. ‘And everyone deserves that, don’t you think?’

  Soon they approach the suburbs of a large town. As the traffic grows thicker around them, Frank’s thoughts return once again to Kate. He closes his eyes as he recalls how wounded he’d been at her betrayal, how self-righteously hurt. Her face returns to him now; her smile, and he remembers all the times he’d sensed a darkness there; something secretive and painful beneath the surface that he’d been determined not to confront. As they finally pull up outside a tall apartment block in a dirty, dead-end street, he is gripped by such an intense longing for Kate he can barely get out of the car.

  The woman who answers the door to them is in her early forties, her auburn hair is flecked with grey, her eyes dull, vacant, and rimmed with shadows. But still Frank can see the girl he loves glimmering behind those dark blue irises. The resemblance to Kate is unmistakable.

  ‘Georges,’ Thérèse says faintly. ‘This is a nice surprise.’ Glancing curiously at Frank she stands aside to let them in.

  When the three of them are seated in her tiny living room Preton takes her hand and begins to talk. ‘Thérèse,’ he says gently, ‘this is Frank, my dear.’ He leans forward. ‘Thérèse, he knows Elodie,’ he says. ‘He knows where she is. Do you understand? We’ve found her.’

  And Frank, for the rest of his life, will not forget the expression in her eyes, like a flock of birds returning at last, after a long, cold winter.

  thirty-three

  London, 1 March, 2005

  Summer drifts into autumn. The decision to leave Frank’s house comes to her out of the blue one morning and the second she has thought of it she realises she cannot bear to remain in his home without him any longer. She finds a flat to rent in Borough; a tiny, pretty place not far from the river, and leaving her new address with Jimmy, she moves in.

  A week later she signs on to a new employment agency and accepts a placement in a small accountancy firm in Waterloo. The days, the weeks pass. Her new job is simple but diverting, her colleagues pleasant and unobtrusive. Occasionally one or two of the other secretaries will ask her to lunch or to the pub for a drink after work and she always accepts. She is content; finding peace in the uncomplicated rituals of these days. She misses Frank with a constant, dull ache. At some point she stops dyeing and cutting her hair, allowing the new growth of red and brown to unfurl to the bottom of her neck. ‘Elodie,’ she whispers to her reflection. ‘Elodie Brun’. At night she dreams of Frank, and it is his face she sees, when she wakes.

  One evening, when Frank has been gone for nearly eight months, she walks home from work along the river, stopping at the South Bank for a while to watch some street performers dance. It’s a mild March night, with just a hint of winter remaining in the air. The lights from the embankment cast a yellow glow across the black water. The trees are strewn with hundreds of coloured bulbs. Above her, behind the glass façade of the Festival Hall she can see crowds of people on the brink of their nights out, clutching tickets and talking excitedly to one another.

  Along the walkway by the river the booksellers have begun to pack up their stalls and she lingers amongst them, leafing through first one paperback, and then another. Just as she’s about to move off, her gaze lands on one in particular that makes the breath catch in her throat. Wild Children, by Martin Chambers, she reads. After a long moment she picks it up and searches through it until she finds the old familiar photograph of herself. She stares at it for a long time, waiting for the usual feelings of panic and revulsion to return. They never come. After some minutes, she puts the book down and, hugging her coat around her against a sudden gust of wind, goes to stand at the edge of the walkway, looking down at the black swirling water below. She becomes entirely lost in thought.

  ‘Nice night.’ The man standing a few feet away is tall and young.

  ‘Yes,’ she agrees.

  ‘Tom,’ he says, after a pause, raising a hand in shy salute.

  ‘Elodie,’ she tells him with a smile. ‘I’m Elodie.’

  ‘I saw you walking past earlier, and –’ he pauses and gives a short embarrassed laugh – ‘I’m sorry to be so forward but you’re absolutely gorgeous. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t ask for your number.’ He stands there, looking back at her.

  She takes in his broad shoulders, his hopeful, attractive face. ‘No,’ she tells him gently. ‘No, but thanks anyway.’

  She walks home through Waterloo, past the station’s sweeping steps, the floodlit theatre, the pubs flickering beneath a sudden rain. She wraps her arms around her chest as though to contain the happiness that is beginning to grow new roots, new buds there. When she reaches Borough’s twisting little streets a gust of wind sends scraps of litter scuttling around her feet and ivy creeps across some blackened bricks. Above her someone slams a window shut, a streetlamp casts a yellow net. At first, she doesn’t see the figure sitting on her step, his rucksack propped against the door; doesn’t spot him until she’s at her gate and sees his eyes and smile that seems to fill the sky, and reaching for his hand she helps him to his feet. ‘Frank,’ she says.

  If you enjoyed Little Bird, check out this other great Camilla Way title.

  Buy the ebook here

  Author's Note

  My thanks to Dave Holloway, Rachel Pask, Claire Paterson, Alex Pierce, Justin Quirk, Susan Watt and the team at HarperCollins, Anna Way.

  Further reading: First Language Acquisition: The Complete Readings. Edited by Lust and Foley: Blackwell Publishing.

  About the Author

  CAMILLA WAY lives in London, and, when not writing fiction, works as a journalist. This is her second novel.

  About the Publisher

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