The Lost Girl

by Carol Drinkwater

  ‘Here it is. Goodness, what a scruffy dog-eared souvenir it’s become. I ought to have framed it, but I never did. A sense of respect for Henri, I suppose. Charlie and I were together for such a short time in the greater scheme of things that those brief, treasured years went into a separate box. Henri and I grew together over the decades. He was a good-hearted, patient chap, who worshipped me and gave me everything, and accepted with sanguinity that Charlie had been, for me, irreplaceable. Dear Charlie. What would he say if he could see me, an old lady, sitting here recounting our love story? Perhaps he can. And do you know, this photograph, taken on the day we were married in 1948, is the only one I ever possessed of him? He hated having his face in front of a camera. In fact, he was almost paranoid about it. I teased him sometimes, asking him if he had something to hide. I wondered from time to time whether there had been a dark secret in his past, but he always fobbed me off, ragged me for talking foolish nonsense. Lola! Lola! Oh, dear. Give me a moment, the dog is scratching at the cupboard doors again. It must be almost time for her breakfast. She’s destroyed that kitchen. I seem unable to train her to stop. Just a moment, dear.’ Marguerite placed the photograph on the sideboard and hurried into the kitchen, cooing and fussing.

  Kurtiz stood, stretched her back and massaged her head. She glanced at her phone for the hundredth time, pleading with it to produce news from Lizzie. She shook her legs, kick-starting her circulation. Moving with no real purpose, she crossed the compact room to a well-polished walnut sideboard, displaying a cut-glass fruit bowl holding half a dozen apples, and picked up the snapshot, which had been placed face down. The landline in the sitting room began to ring. Kurtiz froze. It had to be the hospital or the police. She placed the photograph back on the sideboard without looking at it and stepped towards the phone.

  Marguerite was picking up the receiver. ‘Allô? … Give me a moment to jot it down, please.

  ‘They have traced your husband. He is in the intensive care unit at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. It’s in the thirteenth. Come along, I’ll drive you there.’

  Back on the deserted streets in the Mercedes tank, dawn was breaking, a raw grey winter gauze unfolding. Violet lights were still flashing up and down the boulevards, giving the cityscape a burned-out, other-worldly aspect. Dying embers. A stillness. Everybody holed up in their homes. Locked in. Kurtiz peered up at the windows of passing blocks. Even at this hour, the blink and wink of television screens could be seen in dozens of darkened rooms. Had anybody slept? Had there been further attacks, or was Paris safe now?

  She lifted her phone and typed a message: Dear Alex, I am safe. Oliver has been hit. We haven’t found Lizzie.

  He answered instantly. So, he, like every French citizen, must be watching the news. The dawn patrol. Sorry to hear about Oliver. I am in Boston but could take a flight out tomorrow night if you need me. I will call you Monday. Don’t leave town without talking. If there’s anything I can do … A x

  She smiled to herself at his authoritarian tone. I am coping. Thx for yr concern. Pls don’t change plans for me. K.

  And his response. Stubborn as always. I won’t wait for u forever.

  She read his words, knowing them to be true. Decided not to reply, and then another message pinged. Or perhaps I will. Be safe. A.x

  In the ring of streets that surrounded the hospital there was nowhere to park, every slot taken, vehicles clustered together bumper to bumper. They drove for a while in ever-widening circles until they found a space some half a kilometre distant and were obliged to walk. Kurtiz tried to persuade Marguerite to go home and get some sleep but the old woman, whose skin had grown translucent with fatigue, stubbornly refused. ‘I am coming with you,’ she insisted. ‘At some point you will need a lift back. It’s too far to walk and, as you know, there’s no public transport.’

  When they reached the hospital grounds, they found queues of residents and foreigners outside in the cold, patiently waiting to approach the main doors. Would they also have to stand in line? Kurtiz wasn’t sure she could remain upright for any length of time.

  One queue, which tailed beyond the hospital grounds to the street, was made up of men and women volunteering to give blood, to replenish the stocks used during the course of the night. Men, women, teenagers denying themselves sleep to make this gesture, to help save lives. Turn the destruction on its head. Give back to the city and its citizens its dignity. Paris for Paris.

  Others, like Kurtiz, stricken-faced, were there for news. She and Marguerite made their way to Reception, and were greeted by a woman, ginger hair bunched on top of her head, like a scruffy nest, who looked as if she’d been there all her life.

  ‘We received a call to come directly.’ Marguerite was taking charge.

  Oliver was in intensive care. Two bullet wounds; bullets fired from a Kalashnikov AK-47.

  ‘May I see him?’

  ‘You will need to enquire of the staff on duty. Take the lift to the second floor, on the left beyond the swing doors.’

  The receptionist, who admitted she hadn’t left her post since eight the previous evening, glanced at a screen, then scribbled down the ward and directions to Oliver’s room, tore the page from a notebook and handed it across the desk.

  ‘One quick question,’ begged Kurtiz.

  The woman wiped her nose and scratched at her bouffant with a biro.

  ‘My daughter was also at the Bataclan. Lizzie Ross. Has she been admitted?’ Obligingly, the member of staff ran through dozens of pages of files on the screen, lists in brilliant green lettering. She shook her head. ‘No one here by that name. You’ll have to telephone the central information number. They will have more up-to-date details.’

  ‘We have. Several times. It’s always engaged or there is no trace of her. Someone must have word of her.’

  The receptionist let out a sigh. She was evidently at her wits’ end, suffering the sharp end of every stranger’s grief and anxiety.

  ‘Merci for your efforts,’ said Marguerite, covering for Kurtiz’s visible disappointment.

  The woman shrugged. ‘Sorry, but I cannot assist you further. Désolé. Next.’

  A Tunisian, or perhaps he was Algerian, Maghrebian for sure, wearing a small white taqiyah cap and black bomber jacket with sleeves too long, shuffled forward. He was carrying a plastic bag. ‘Washing things and clean clothing for my daughter,’ he muttered. ‘She was injured at the concert.’

  Kurtiz and Marguerite watched him while they waited for the lift, which they rode to the third floor. There, beyond sliding doors, they waited again, until an orderly, dressed from head to foot in Robin Hood green, appeared. He was carrying a clipboard. ‘Ross?’

  Kurtiz gave a cursory nod.

  He looked from one woman to the other. ‘Which of you is next of kin?’

  Kurtiz raised her hand, barely capable of speech. The corridor reeked of cleaning liquids or vinegar and pickles. Disinfectant. Formaldehyde or a similar chemical. The aromas were unpleasant, almost asphyxiating. She feared that if she took a deep breath her lungs would be seared.

  The medic pointed to a bank of connecting wooden seats where two men and a woman wearing a headscarf were in attendance, hunched over their knees, hands cupping faces. The female, about Kurtiz’s age, early forties, glanced upwards. Her eyes were ringed dark and deep, and she was weeping. The orderly promised with little certainty that a doctor would be along shortly. Oliver was in the operating theatre. ‘Please wait.’

  Marguerite and Kurtiz joined the others. Kurtiz was feeling nauseous. She closed her eyes. How long before a doctor turned up? Did Oliver, with his battered liver, have the physical resources to pull through this? Later, as the minutes ticked by, one damn second after another, Marguerite left for home at Kurtiz’s insistence. ‘No sense in both of us falling apart.’

  Kurtiz had been alone for almost two hours now, limbs aching, churning over her past, recollecting. Lives in fragments. Might Lizzie have found out about her father and Angela’s mum? Had that
been the trigger? Did any of it matter now?

  A door opened and a male nurse, an African, appeared. He looked shattered, eyes bloodshot, barely able to keep upright. ‘Mrs Ross?’

  Kurtiz staggered to her feet.

  Oliver had been returned to the ward. He had undergone an operation. This first procedure was to stem internal haemorrhaging. ‘We still need to remove two bullets from his solar plexus.’ His condition was stable but critical. The practice, she learned, in modern medicine is to take it in stages. Treat the most precarious issues first, allow the patient to gain strength, then return to pick up less threatening problems with further operations. Minimize the invasive aspect. Lessen the trauma.

  It was too soon to give any prognosis. ‘In theory, a patient could survive gunshot wounds such as Mr Ross has suffered …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘… but it will depend on the fighting strength of his organs and his heart. We need to make sure he loses no more blood and that no infections set in.’

  ‘May I see him?’ The nurse led her to a window, a great glass partition through which she saw one bed in the middle of a private room in which lay a man with his eyes closed. Oliver. He was connected to a dazzlingly complex array of drips, hoses and a catheter, each attached to a machine, flicking, flashing, digitally signalling information or recording numbers. His pallor was bleached, etiolated, whiter than the bedding in which he lay. She watched for his breath, which was slow, erratic, barely discernible.

  ‘Is he unconscious or sleeping?’

  ‘A bit of both. He was anaesthetized for the operation and now is being fed painkillers and a lighter sedation to keep him comfortable.’

  ‘Is he going to live?’

  ‘It’s too soon to make any predictions but you can be assured we are doing all we can.’

  She felt a tear the size of a golf ball heave up from within her, locking her throat, coasting treacherously down her cheek. How she had loved this man. How she had sometimes despised him for his weaknesses, his drinking. How they had allowed the loss of Lizzie to tear apart the skeletal bones that had remained of their marriage.

  And for so much of it she blamed herself. If she had not been with Alex on that fateful night …

  ‘You should try to get some sleep. He’ll need your strength and confidence later when … at the next stages.’

  ‘Has he regained consciousness at all, said anything?’

  The nurse shook his head. A small bleeper the shape of a pen or thermometer began to sound and flash orange. He raised a hand to shut it off.

  Kurtiz took a step, clearing distance between them. ‘Please, don’t –’

  He was speaking over her: ‘– as soon as I can. Go home for a few hours. If anything changes we’ll call you immediately. Leave your number at Reception. They’ll organize a ride home for you. The city’s on lock-down.’

  She had no desire to leave and she had nowhere to go. What were her choices? The room she had booked? It was too late. Nor could she presume further on Marguerite’s hospitality although it had been generously offered. Before she left Paris she would return to rue de Charonne to thank her. In fact, it now occurred to her, her bags were still there. She returned to the bank of chairs and settled herself uncomfortably across two, legs curled up under her buttocks. A creature battling the elements. She was safer, better off, here. She lifted her phone, tapped in her code, scrolled through the messages, looking for Lizzie. She found Alex: Thinking of you. A.

  She glanced at the time this message had been sent. Friday evening at 7:14. She would have been disembarking the Eurostar, queuing for a taxi. Before the massacres and the night when her life had changed. She wondered what had caused its delay in reception. Further along, beyond dozens of #porteouverte messages brimming with support and offers of assistance, she found another, a two-liner, also from Alex: Are you safe? Send me a message, some reassurance, for God’s sake. Allow me to come to you, let me know where I can reach you. You’re in my thoughts. A.

  Had network overload caused their delayed delivery? Might there be others from Lizzie waiting arrival? Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie.

  Alex. My God, she craved his warmth, his level-headedness but Alex was in Boston and Oliver was here, fighting for his life … Oliver who had dedicated every day to searching for Lizzie.

  London, September 2015

  Alex had arrived ahead of her. He was at the table, sitting alone towards the rear wall of the Italian restaurant. It was an old-style establishment in the heart of Soho, which was filling up with lunchtime diners, many of whom worked in Wardour or Old Compton Street, diehards of the film industry. He was scribbling, taking notes in one of his carnets. Head bent in concentration, he had not yet spotted her. She paused momentarily by the door, shoulders brushed by others as they passed her stationary figure. She was using the activity of shrugging off her raincoat to catch her breath, calm her heart. It had been four years. Four difficult, lonely years since she had said goodbye to Alex at Tel Aviv airport.

  Take the time you need, bring your daughter home and then come back to work. You hear me? I need you on the team.

  Weeks later, after ignoring every one of his calls, texts, emails, she had written:

  Dear Alex, I have so much to thank you for. A whole new world has opened up for me. I am working from London now, accepting only the commissions that allow me to stay home so that I am here for Lizzie, if she returns. When she returns. I won’t be joining you all in Libya, or anywhere. Please, don’t leave the post open for me. Please go ahead and find yourself another photographer. Thank you for so many moments. Yours, Kurtiz

  Alex had bombarded her with refusals to accept her resignation, reasoned out in writing why the decision she was making was a foolish one:

  You are under stress, hurt by the loss of Lizzie. I saw her picture in the papers, a very lovely-looking kid, like her mother. Let me know when you’re ready, Kurtiz. There will always be an opening for you. I WILL wait.

  She had not replied, not to any of these missives. It was easier for her to cut him out, to put that episode of her history behind her. If she had never taken the work … if she had switched on her phone … It had gone clean out of her mind to call home because she had been with Alex, numbed by the death of a stranger, the Palestinian adolescent, while her own child was lost somewhere and possibly in trouble. She blamed herself, and the reasons for her guilt could not be shared, could not be offloaded.

  Don’t go, Mum, please.

  Lizzie. The pain had never dulled, never stopped gnawing at her. The guilt was like a lead jacket but worse, far worse, was the aching loss. A part of her had been amputated. And the not knowing. The not comprehending … Where had she disappeared to? Into thin air.

  ‘Signora! Signora?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you need a glass of water? May I help you find your table?’

  Jolted back to the present, to Alex who had spotted her and had risen from his seat. His hair was tinged with grey but still that healthy strong physique, that open enquiring face, smiling now as he held out his arms across the crowded restaurant. She made her way slowly, a little unsteadily. For a woman of her age, forty-two, she had lost her spring. Her bounce. Living alone, living for her work. Visiting Oliver, cooking for him so he had a decent meal, caring for him in his despair.

  ‘Good to see you.’ Alex smiled, eyes roving over her, drinking in her lips, the crow’s feet gathering round her eyes, the sadness embedded there. She took the seat opposite him, lightly gripping the table, an insurance against an accident, a wrong foot. She tended to be clumsier these days, less assured.

  Once she was settled and he reinstated in his seat, he closed his Moleskine jotter, placed his pen on its black surface and lightly slid both to one side of the table. He leaned in. She dropped her gaze, partially lowering her head. Before she knew it, his hands were enveloping hers.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said, commanded.

  He always had given the orders. She smiled to hers
elf, then lifted her gaze towards him.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said.

  ‘So, you’re working in Paris?’

  He slid his hands to the table and entwined his fingers, like a pastor. It was then she noticed that the slender band of gold was absent. The bond to the woman he had never spoken of. ‘Editing there, yes.’ The waiter was approaching. ‘You want what? Wine, whisky?’

  ‘Water, please.’

  ‘Two large whiskies. Something decent, single malts, please, and bring some ice on the side. And a bottle of San Pel. Thanks.’ His attention back to Kurtiz. ‘I’m thinking of moving to Europe, setting up a post-production unit over here.’

  She frowned, drew a breath, wondering where this might be leading. Was it connected to the missing wedding ring? She bit back a moment of elation at such a prospect. Alex free. Liberated. Available. But it was too late. Her life had careered off in another direction. There was Oliver to include in all equations. Oliver, more a child than a partner. Separated, in any case.

  ‘My French is not a hundred per cent. This film has a semi-French subject. It makes sense.’

  She must stay on track. She would not have agreed to meet Alex except that his email had intrigued her. ‘You said there was something you wanted to show me.’

  His eyes bored into hers and there was a pain in his regard, a hesitation.

  ‘My film. We have a first assembly. It’s still pretty rough and needs work, but that’s not the point. I think you should see it.’

  Her face was creased, puzzled. She attempted a laugh. ‘You’ve never needed my approval, my input before,’ she joshed, a little edgily.

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘We’ll grab a bite of lunch and then we can watch the film. I’ve hired an editing suite just up the street. How long have you got?’