“Jesus,” said Lily. She thought her family was bad, but no one in her family ever set out deliberately to harm her. As she had the thought, she realised she’d never looked at it that way before. “I’m sorry. You poor thing.”
“Olivier says he will marry me. My marriage to Bruno is not in my name. I will be safe as the wife of a politician in France.”
“So, maybe they found your flat. And Fiona was there.”
“No. They cannot find me this quickly. They do not know my name, where I am living.”
“They found Bruno’s house.”
“My flat in Rue Pigalle is in a different name.”
“They went to Amsterdam. They found a woman called Dee pretty quickly.”
“How do you know they were in Amsterdam?”
“We met Dee. She was beaten up by a bloke who was showing a photograph of you around.”
“Who is this Dee?”
“A friend of Greta’s.”
“They’re never going to leave me alone,” Brigitte appeared to be talking to herself. Lily could see her brain working through all the information. “I need to leave.”
“I’m more interested in what’s happened to Fiona,” said Lily.
Brigitte stared at Lily. “They haven’t done anything to Fiona, trust me. If they did find her ten days ago, why are they not here now? Fiona is the only person, apart from Olivier, who knows where I am. They would be here by now.”
“Unless they’ve kidnapped her. Perhaps they’re trying to make her talk.”
“Believe me, by now she would be talking. She is for sure in Cannes.”
“On her own?”
“She want to travel, before she goes to University in September. It will be easy for her to get a job in the tourist industry.”
“So, why didn’t she take her diary?”
“She leave her diary?” Brigitte sat down next to Jo on the edge of the bed and dropped her head into her hands. “Where?”
“Under the mattress.”
“She must have forgot about it. She was upset.”
“She left her jacket too,” said Lily.
“We have given notice on the flat,” said Brigitte. “She cannot leave anything there. The landlord throw it all away.”
“There’s two cardboard boxes full of stuff,” said Jo.
Brigitte jumped up. “This is why I can’t find it!”
“What?”
“Fiona was supposed to take those, to put them into a storage place. She tell me she has booked it already. I remember, I need something from the box, so I am ringing all the storage places in Paris, but no one has the things.”
“So, why didn’t she take the boxes to the storage, like she promised?”
Brigitte paced round the room. “She was freaking out. She was upset about Philippe. I think she want him to beg her not to leave, but he didn’t. I told her, married men always are sticking with the status quo. You don’t think she’d, you know?”
“What?”
Brigitte paused, looked from Lily to Jo and then back to Lily again. “Kill herself?”
“Kill herself?” repeated Lily. “Don’t be stupid.”
“She doesn’t want to go back to England, but she feel bad all the time about her dad. Her mother has left her. She has no one.”
Olivier Billiet re-entered the room. He had a tray with four shot glasses and a bottle of clear liquid on it. Lily prayed it wasn’t that revolting aniseed thing again, at the same time as knowing she’d drink anything. “She has me,” said Lily, her voice louder than normal. She cursed herself again for not being a better sister. Why had she assumed that Fiona was living the life of Riley, too happy and too busy to write much?
“What happened to her rucksack?” asked Jo. “When she left England she had a giant rucksack.”
“Yes, she take it with her to Cannes. She was packing it, Thursday evening.”
“The rucksack isn’t there. But the boxes are. In the wardrobe.”
“Maybe she just pissed off with me. She leaves my things to teach me a lesson. The notice on the flat is for tomorrow. Four weeks. The lease runs out tomorrow. We disconnect the phone. Everything is finished.”
“Shit, what are we going to do now?” asked Lily.
“We need to move the boxes, or the landlord will throw them away,” said Brigitte. “All my things are in there.”
“That seems like the least of our problems,” said Jo.
“Everything I have is in those boxes,” said Brigitte.
“We can’t move them on a moped.”
“I need the things in that box,” said Brigitte, her voice urgent. “Please. You could take them to Bruno’s. He’s only just around the corner.”
“We’d better get our own stuff out too,” said Jo. “I mean if the landlord’s going in tomorrow.”
“This is all I have in the world,” said Brigitte. “You must please help me. Before the landlord change the locks.”
Lily turned to Jo and shrugged. Her brain was struggling to keep up with the disappointing turn of events. She thought they’d got close to finding Fiona, now it felt like they were further away than ever. And she hated knowing that wherever her sister was, she was on her own. “Ok, look we’ll see what we can do.”
Lily and Jo left Brigitte shortly after, and walked back out down the street to the motorbike. “What now?” asked Lily, her heart somewhere near her knees.
“Brigitte’s right. We better get all the stuff out of the flat.”
“You don’t think, what she said about Fiona, I mean there’s no way.”
Jo didn’t answer.
“Do you think we should go to Cannes?”
“I think we should get some sleep. We’re both knackered. I can’t think straight. Let’s see how we feel in the morning.”
They went back to the dark flat. The electricity meter had run out again and neither of them had any change. Lily repacked Fiona’s things in the box as best she could by candlelight, while Jo carried the smaller box from the broom cupboard. “What about the rest of the stuff?”
“Dunno. We’ll just have to leave it.”
“Do you think we’ll get all this on the bike?”
“Let’s carry the big one round, then come back for the smaller one.”
Lily didn’t like the way people eyed them up as the walked round the corner to Bruno’s. It was getting late, late enough for people to consider the night over. Those who hadn’t got lucky were beginning to realise, and the streets were full of men on the prowl. “Bruno had better bloody be in.”
“If he’s not, there’ll be somewhere we can stash it.”
Bruno wasn’t in, but a mate of his was at the flat and buzzed them in. They left him with the first box then went back for the second. Jo drove them round the second time, Lily balanced on the back of the moped trying to grip with her knees as she held the cardboard box. She felt bad handing over her sister’s possessions to a complete stranger but their options were limited. At least the diaries and the photos she’d stashed in her rucksack.
It was almost two am as they made their way back to the flat. “I’m so knackered, I could sleep standing up,” said Lily.
“We’ll have to find somewhere else tomorrow,” said Jo.
“Or go to Cannes. What’s it like there?”
“It’s by the sea,” said Jo. “Bloody expensive though.”
The street lamps lit up the small car park at the rear of Brigitte’s flat and as they pulled into it, Lily saw a figure, dressed in dark clothes, hovering suspiciously. She nudged Jo, and Jo saw him too, because she suddenly accelerated and tried to turn, almost careering them into the low wall. The man approached as Jo tried frantically to turn the bike around. Lily got ready to kick out, before she realised it was Stuart.
“Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me.” Lily took off her helmet and tried to shake her dreads out a bit. She grinned at him, grateful that he’d not left Paris - that he wanted to mend things with her before he left. “What are you doing here?”
It was at that moment that Lily noticed the uniformed police officer standing at the bottom of the steps.
Stuart met her eyes. She saw that his were red-rimmed, like he’d been crying. He screwed up his face, pressed his lips together. When he spoke his voice was croaky. “I’m so sorry, Lil.”
Lily’s head was still coming to terms with not being encased in its helmet. She still felt detached from the world, like a goldfish without its tank. She had the strange sensation she was looking down on this scene from above. Light-headed.
Stuart had his coat on. Even in the dark, she could see that the police officer was wearing what looked like a bulletproof vest. For a moment the bizarre thought crossed her mind that Stuart had got the police involved over their fight. Was he having her arrested? She frowned at him. “What?”
If she could ever in her whole life find a way of freezing time, that would be the moment she’d choose. To stop life there. Everything before that moment, she could live with, accept. Come to terms with.
But time didn’t freeze on that warm Paris evening. She waited, helpless, as life rolled on. She saw Stuart’s lips move, say something and from somewhere, although it didn’t sound like Stuart’s voice, (it sounded more like one of those voiceovers on TV), came two words, “A body.”
When her eyes and her ears next caught up to each other, Stuart was still speaking. She caught him in mid-sentence, “-you to go to the morgue-”
“What?”
The only indication to Lily that she was falling, was the look of concern on Stuart’s face and the way he threw himself towards her, to catch her.
The morgue was cold, grey, dismal. Stuart clutched her hand and it was the only sensation she had that she was alive, the warmth of his skin through the palm of her hand. They walked into the room at the back where a man in a green apron nodded at them, but didn’t make eye contact. Two police officers, a man and a woman accompanied them.
Lily hadn’t seen her sister for over a year. Had only spent a few months of her whole life in contact with her, but there was no moment when she thought that maybe the body on the cold, concrete slab wasn’t Fiona. The man pulled back the sheet, and her sister’s face appeared, eyes closed, fast asleep, looking about twelve years old. Her skin was grey-white, her long hair swept back from her face, her hands folded on the top of her stomach. She was wearing a long sleeved T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts and Lily was struck by the thought that Fiona must be cold.
A noise came from somewhere, where Lily didn’t know, but it sounded inhuman, like an animal, and the next thing she knew Stuart was pulling her in against his chest and Lily was longing for unconsciousness, to not be aware, to be switched off. To be in the same place Fiona was, unaware, free.
She stayed that way for ages, rigid in Stuart’s arms. Whether he was comforting her or she was comforting him she wasn’t sure. As she rested there she realised she’d known this moment was coming. Ever since she’d heard Fiona’s message on the answermachine. She’d known, somewhere she didn’t want to acknowledge, that this wasn’t going to end well.
“This is your sister?” said the male police officer.
Lily wasn’t sure whether he was asking a question or making a statement. She pressed herself harder into Stuart’s chest and hoped that if she ignored him long enough, he’d go away.
“Is this your sister?” he asked again.
She turned and scowled at him. “Do you want to fuck off?”
The policeman brindled. “You don’t speak to the police-”
The female police officer put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Lily, we have to get a formal identification. He’s asking you to confirm for the record that this is your sister, Fiona Winterbottom.” She turned to the policeman. “I think it’s obvious it is.”
Stuart said, “It is.”
“It has to be a family member, I’m afraid.”
“She’s my sister,” said Lily.
“I’m sorry to put you through this,” said the policewoman.
“It is necessary,” said the male officer. “All relatives must do this.”
His colleague turned to him. “Can you get her a coffee? A strong coffee.”
He looked like he might protest, but the man from the morgue, the man in the pale green overalls, interrupted. “I’ll show you where the kitchen is.”
“I’d like a moment with Lily, on her own, please.” The female officer said to Stuart. She led Lily into a small interview room, an office at the back of the morgue. It was full of filing cabinets, documents of death. Lily’s hands trembled. She felt a million miles away. Another dimension. None of this was real..
“I’m sorry, most of the men in the French police force are insensitive. You get used to it after a while.”
Lily looked up from her fingernail picking. The policewoman smiled at her. She was attractive, though Lily barely noticed her short blonde hair, blue eyes. “We’re going to need to ask you some questions.”
“I know.”
“When did you last see your sister?”
“I haven’t seen her for ages, not since she came to France. Over a year. She rang me, over a week ago. Thursday night. She left a message. That was the last time I heard from her.”
The policewoman consulted a calendar. “Thursday 3rd May?”
Lily nodded and looked back down at her fingers.
“Where are you from?”
“Leeds.”
“Your sister too?”
“No, she’s from Skipton.”
“That’s in Yorkshire, right?”
“Your English is brilliant.”
The policewoman smiled at her, like a mother might smile at a small child. “I studied at Manchester University.”
“I don’t know if I can do this now,” said Lily.
“Were you close?”
“Not close enough to save her. She was in tears when she rang.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said it was all fucked up, that’s what she said.”
Jo stood up as soon as Lily and the policewoman walked out of the morgue. She’d been waiting for them in the front office. Stuart was with her, holding a small cup and saucer and Lily could smell the dark bitter aroma of French coffee. It made her stomach retch. Jo approached her, nervous, unsure. She held up her arms like she might hug her, hesitated, put them back at her sides. “I’m so sorry, Lil.”
Lily didn’t say anything. Stuart handed her the coffee and she took it from him, sipped at it. It scalded her mouth, ripping a layer of skin off the roof of her mouth, but it didn’t seem to hurt. She could hear Stuart talking in hushed whispers to the police officers, saying something about coming back the next day. It all passed over Lily’s head. Her sister was dead. Her little sister, aggravating, self-assured, the sister who had it all, now had nothing.