A Heart Bent Out of Shape (15 page)

sixteen

Hadley woke to a grey morning, with
the sky hanging
like sheet metal and half-hearted drops of rain spitting at her window. She had forgotten to pull the blinds again, and she lay flattened by the weighty covers.
Oh, Kristina
, she thought. Her hand went to her face and she felt the delicate grazing on her chin. She knew that if she looked in the mirror there would be a reddened patch, a minor irritation that prickled as she touched it. It was the only lasting proof of the night before. No one had ever kissed her like that, and she had never kissed anyone back with that half-cut desperation, needing to be swallowed up so completely. All she wanted to do was to knock on Kristina’s door. They would have stood facing one another in their pyjamas and she’d have pointed to her chin.
You’ll never guess what happened
. Perhaps they would have giggled, and the kiss would have seemed funny, or exciting, or both. But without Kristina it was a different sort of kiss. If everything had been ordinary, beautifully perfectly ordinary, it would never even have happened.

They had driven the rest of the way back to Lausanne in near silence; not a pleasant, companionable quiet but an atmosphere thickened with words not spoken. After Joel had kissed her he’d muttered
I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking
, then hastily put the car in gear and roared back to the
autoroute
. She had turned her face to the window, pretending not to hear.

‘Hadley?’ he’d said.

‘It’s okay,’ she’d replied. ‘I’m sorry too.’

‘Maybe we both need some distance, maybe that’s it.’

She had knotted her hands in her lap and watched the window, wishing he had said something different, or maybe even nothing at all.

Joel had pulled into the pavement just past the turning for Les Ormes, and sat with the engine running.

‘Okay from here?’

‘Okay from here,’ she’d said. She’d climbed out, turning back to say ‘Thanks for tonight.’

‘See you in the week,’ he had replied, tight as a clam.

She had slammed the door, and he drove away, on up the hill. Hadley held up her hand to wave. There was no possible way of telling whether he’d seen it or not.

Hadley showered, and afterwards she watched herself in the mirror, her chin tipped with defiance. Things would be different now, she knew that for certain. She wasn’t due on campus until the afternoon, and an idea came to her as sharply as a pain in her side; she would go back to Rue des Mirages
.
She’d lay new flowers. Last night, for the first time since Kristina had died, she’d enjoyed herself and no matter how fleeting a sensation it had been, it had felt wrong.

Rue des Mirages was grey and silent. Her bouquet of roses was still at the foot of the lamppost and when she lifted it the browned petals fell to the ground like tarnished snowflakes. Hadley laid a new bouquet in its place, exotic-looking sprays of colour, island-flowers, marooned in a cold Swiss street.

‘Kristina,’ Hadley began, ‘something happened last night.’

‘
Elle ne peut pas vous entendre
.’

Hadley spun round. A woman was standing on the other side of the road, watching her. Her hair hung in two girlish, tangled plaits. Her jogging bottoms were ripped at the knee and sodden at the ankle.

‘
Excusez-moi?
’

‘
Anglaise?
I speak English. She can’t hear you, the girl who died.
Elle n’est pas là. Elle est partie
.’

‘I know she’s not there.’

Hadley stared at the woman. It was ten o’clock in the morning and she had a can of beer in her hand. An unlit cigarette fluttered between her lips. Hadley turned away again. She bent and straightened the new bouquet, busying herself, ignoring the sound of the woman’s shuffling footsteps coming closer.

‘I told you,
elle n’est
pas là
. She’s not there. They took her.’

She spoke English with a zigzagging French accent, but it was entirely comprehensible. Hadley stood up straight and faced her. She could have been anywhere between twenty and forty. Her cheeks were pale and sunken, and a scarred track of worry lines ran along her brow. Her eyes were grey and sharp, and staring directly at Hadley.

‘Were you here when the police came?’ said Hadley. ‘
Avez-vous vu la police?
’

‘
Il neigeait
. It was snowing. It never stopped snowing.’

‘Did you see Kristina? Did you see my friend?
Mon amie, la fille qui a été tuée?
’

‘Your friend?’

‘She was my friend.’

‘She was running in the snow.’

‘You mean you saw her before? Did you . . . Did she . . . You saw her fall?’

‘
Je veux une cigarette
.’

‘You’ve got a cigarette,’ said Hadley, nodding to her. ‘Do you mean a light?’

‘
Je veux une cigarette
.’

‘You’ve already got one,’ said Hadley, and pointed to her lip. ‘Please, tell me,
dîtes-moi
, what did you see?
Qu’avez-vous vu
?’

The woman reached her hand to her mouth and pulled out the cigarette. She held it between two fingers, and started laughing hoarsely.

‘I haven’t got a light,’ said Hadley, ‘I’m sorry. Look, please go on. C
ontinuez, s’il vous plaît
. Tell me what you saw. She was my best friend.
Ma meilleure amie
. I just want to know that she didn’t suffer. At least that.’

The woman tucked the cigarette behind her ear and a grin split her lips.

‘You think it’s funny?’ said Hadley. ‘Forget it. I can’t talk to you.’ She started to walk away.

‘You’re the only one who came,’ the woman called after her.

Hadley kept walking.

She spoke again, louder still. ‘Nobody brings flowers.’

‘Yeah well, they’re pretty pointless, aren’t they?’ said Hadley, over her shoulder.

‘
L’autre n’est jamais venu
.’

Hadley didn’t turn.

‘
J’ai dit
, the other person didn’t come.’

Hadley froze. She spun on her heel. ‘What other person?
Qui
?’

‘With the car.’

She thought of Jacques, driving from Geneva. Kneeling a moment in the street, placing the flat of his hand on the hard ground.

‘What car?’ she said. ‘Did you see a car?
Qu’avez-vous vu?
’

The woman flapped her hands in front of her face with sudden animation.

‘
Personne n’a rien vu. Il neigeait
.’

‘I know it was snowing, I know. But . . .’

‘Nobody saw anything. I didn’t see the car. The car didn’t see the girl. The girl didn’t see the car. Nobody saw anything.’

Hadley’s mouth dropped. ‘What? You mean the night it happened? Oh God, how do I say that in French? There was a car?
Y at-il une voiture
?’

‘It didn’t stop. It disappeared. In the snow, everything disappears.’

Hadley willed her breath to come evenly. She placed a hand gently on the woman’s arm.

‘
S’il vous plaît
.
Il est vraiment important.
Please, tell me what you saw.
Dîtes-moi
.’

‘Nobody saw anything.’

‘But you did, didn’t you? You saw a car.
Une voiture
. It was snowing,
il neigeait
, but you still saw a car.
Qu’est-il arrivé?
What did it do? Did it . . .’ She stopped. Collected herself, breathing deeply. ‘Please. Just think.
Cette voiture que vous avez vu . . . qu’est-il arrivé?
’

‘
La voiture ne s’arrête pas. Elle a disparu.’

‘Wait, hang on, did you say “
disparu
”? It disappeared?’

‘Yes.’

‘It didn’t stop?’

‘
Non
.’

‘Why didn’t it stop? Did they see her? See that she’d fallen?’

‘She was running, and then the car came, and then she fell.’

‘They hit her?’

‘
Catastrophe
. Bang. After . . . gone.’

Hadley covered her mouth with both hands. She felt physical shock for the second time in a week. She staggered with it, and a cry escaped her lips. The woman started to turn away but Hadley reached out and grabbed her shoulder.

‘Please. Wait. Don’t go.’

The woman shrugged her off. ‘
Ne me touchez pas
.’

‘Sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t touch you.
Une question . . . La police?
Avez-vous leur dit . . . ?
’

‘
Salauds
.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘No police. I don’t talk to anyone.’

‘You talked to me,’ said Hadley. ‘You told me. You wanted me to know the truth,
la vérité
.’

‘I just want to smoke a cigarette,’ said the woman.

‘Then smoke it! Or don’t smoke it! I don’t give a shit, just stop
talking
about it. You can’t say something like this and just carry on like it’s nothing. Or like you don’t understand what you saw, because I know that you do. I know you know exactly what you saw and that’s why you started talking to me. Because you wanted to tell someone. Because you knew that what you saw was wrong.’

The woman looked dazed, her face shutting down.

‘Please, just please.
S’il vous plaît
. You’re the only one who knows anything. The police think it was an accident, just a careless fall on a slippery street. They don’t know about the car. They don’t know it was a hit and run. Nobody knows that Kristina was killed except you. And now me. We can go to them together.
Nous pouvons aller ensemble, okay?
’

‘
Non
.’

‘
Oui.
I’m going to the police. I’m going now. Please come, please. And then they’ll be able to trace the car, and . . . What’s your name? I’m sorry, I’m rude, I’m so rude. What’s your name?
Comment vous appelez-vous?
’

‘Lisette.’

‘
Lisette,
je m’appelle Hadley
.
Je suis désolée, vraiment
. But you don’t understand,
vous ne comprenez pas
, what you’ve just told me, what you saw, it changes everything.’

‘I didn’t see anything.’

‘You did, you saw the car.
La voiture
.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘But you know what colour it was? Maybe you saw a number plate? Even just part of a number plate?’

‘
Ad-lee?
I don’t remember anything. I never remember anything. Not now. Not any more.’

‘But you remembered my name! And it’s a weird name, people hardly ever get it right. And you remember how to speak English. Did you learn it in school? See, it stuck. Maybe if you think back . . .’

Lisette tapped the side of her head, and her plaits twitched. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. How do I say in English? There’s nothing left.’

With that, she ambled away. Hadley watched her all the way down Rue des Mirages, until she was out of sight, and all that she was left with was a half-told story about a car that hit a girl and didn’t stop.

Hadley pushed through the revolving doors of the central police station. She sat on a creaky plastic chair, and tried to avoid looking at the small child who was crying into the neck of his string-thin mother. The same police officer who had spoken to her before, the one with sandy hair and apologetic eyes, took her into a room and sat her down. He listened to what she had to say, his hands folded on the table before him.

‘Thank you,
mademoiselle
,’ he said when she’d finished, ‘and we’re already aware of the development. If you had been on Rue des Mirages a day earlier, you would have seen our officers.’

‘Thank you?
Thank you?
Is that all you can say?’ Tears popped at her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘I don’t understand how you could have thought it was an accident! How long have you known that it wasn’t?’

‘The results of the autopsy were not immediate.’

‘But how come it wasn’t obvious? I mean, just from looking at her?’

He explained that close inspection had revealed the dark stain of a bruise on Kristina’s thigh. No broken bones, but evidence of a blow that wasn’t from the hard surface of the road, or the edge of the pavement, or any other part of the city.

‘Kristina was not killed by the impact of the car,’ he said, ‘that much we do know. She died because her head struck the pavement. She was very unlucky. The same accident, on another day . . .’

‘But of course the car killed her. If there hadn’t been a car she wouldn’t have fallen. How can you say that?’

‘A hit and run case such as this is extremely difficult,
mademoiselle
. We have very little evidence. And it wasn’t a powerful impact.’

‘But there must be evidence. The woman I told you about, Lisette, if she saw it then maybe someone else did too.’

‘Lisette Colombe is, sadly, of very little use. A clean and sober witness, who actually heard and saw something other than a bang and a blur . . . now that would be helpful,
n’est-ce pas?
The fact is, the snow was falling so quickly that any tracks or footprints were completely obscured. It’s possible the driver got out, but we cannot be sure of that. We’re pursuing all lines of inquiry but I’m afraid,
mademoiselle
, you should prepare for the possibility that we might never know exactly what happened to your friend.’

‘Unless you catch the driver.’

‘Yes.’

‘You are trying to catch them?’

‘We’ve appealed for witnesses. We’ve gone door to door. But it was a bad night, the weather was severe. There was no one outside who didn’t have to be.’

‘Lisette was outside.’

‘Yes, she was. Lausanne has its problems like everywhere else.’

‘But it was the middle of the city, there must be someone else who saw.’

‘It was a back street,
mademoiselle
.’

‘So, what, that’s it?’

‘We’ll find Lisette and question her again; unfortunately, we know her well. But it’s just as you said, she told you everything she knew, Hadley. She even spoke English to you. She wanted to help you, but she couldn’t. When she said that nobody saw anything, I do believe that, for once, she was telling the truth.’