The Lost Girl Read online

  Carol Drinkwater

  * * *

  THE LOST GIRL

  Contents

  Prologue

  Paris, November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, Paris, March 1947

  Paris, November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, Paris, March 1947

  Paris, November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, Paris, March 1947

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, Jerusalem, July 2011

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, West Bank, July 2011

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, West Bank, July 2011

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, London, July 2011

  Paris, November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, March 1947

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, London, July 2011

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, London, July 1994

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, London, 1995

  Paris, November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, 1947

  Paris, November 2015

  Kurtiz, London, 2000

  Paris, 14 November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, 1947

  Kurtiz, London, Summer 2012

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, 1947

  Early morning, Paris, 14 November 2015

  Kurtiz, London, December 2012

  Marguerite and Charlie, Late September 1947, La Côte d’Azur

  Dawn, Paris, 14 November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, May 1953

  Paris, November 2015

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, May 1953

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, June 1953

  Dawn, 14 November 2015, Paris

  Marguerite and Charlie, La Côte d’Azur, late June 1953

  Dawn, Paris, 14 November 2015

  London, September 2015

  Paris, November 2015

  La Côte d’Azur, Spring 2016

  Paris, May 2016

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  By the same author

  NON-FICTION

  The Olive Farm

  The Olive Season

  The Olive Harvest

  Return to the Olive Farm

  The Illustrated Olive Farm

  Crossing the Line: Young Women and the Law

  TRAVEL

  The Olive Route

  The Olive Tree

  FICTION

  An Abundance of Rain

  Akin to Love

  Mapping the Heart

  Because You’re Mine

  The Forgotten Summer

  FICTION FOR YA

  The Haunted School

  Molly

  Molly on the Run

  The Hunger

  Twentieth-Century Girl

  Suffragette

  Nowhere to Run

  The Only Girl in the World

  KINDLE SINGLES (E-BOOK NOVELLAS FOR AMAZON)

  The Girl in Room Fourteen

  Hotel Paradise

  A Simple Act of Kindness

  In loving memory of Phyllis Drinkwater, my wonderful mother, best friend and guardian angel.

  I miss you so.

  1924–2016

  Each man in his darkness grapples towards his light

  Les Contemplations, Victor Hugo

  Prologue

  Charlie, Paris, March 1947

  Charles Gilliard was whistling as he strolled the Parisian avenue, heading in an easterly direction. Glancing to and fro, enjoying all that was going on around him on that fine spring morning, he was relishing the day that lay ahead of him to do with as he pleased. He was suffering no headache; he had risen early after sleeping soundly, which was to say relatively peacefully and without his recurrent nightmares. No reason, then, not to be in an optimistic frame of mind. The city was pulsing with life: the boulevards were busy; the chestnuts were coming into bud; a merry-go-round of automobiles was tooting and turning as though the engines themselves were in song. Although he was grateful for what had come out of the war – he had done well for himself during those years of silence, of wartime emptiness and repression – it lifted his spirits to witness the capital’s renaissance. Paris reawakening. Peace time. The jazz clubs, the gaiety, the night life. Dancing be-bop at the Caveau de la Huchette over on the Left Bank; drinking with the Americans who had brought a light-heartedness and latitude to the liberated city. The pretty girls, the free and easy lifestyle. Life was becoming cool. An excellent description, thought Charlie, who had sweated it out for too long now.

  He was marvelling, too, at the continuance of his own good fortune, even beyond those years of occupation. Surely, though, such luck could not continue for ever. His opportunities for making money were slowing down. The black-market possibilities for income had been drying up in his field since the end of the war. In any case, he had long ago grown tired of such a fly-by-night existence. And, more to the point, the money he had stashed away could not be eked out for more than another year or two. It was unwise of him to fritter it away on all-night boogying. He should invest in some fresh clothes, give some serious thought to his future, find gainful employment. The grey suit he was wearing was beginning to look shabby, threadbare about the cuffs. It would not serve him for much longer. Fortunately, he still had access to the apartment he had installed himself in and made his home. Its owner was a woman – that much he had gleaned – a Jewess, Madame Friedlander. Where she had fled to, he had failed to discover. There were no clues, or none that he had found left lying about in the high-ceilinged dusty rooms. Or, most importantly, any information about when she might return to reclaim her home and pick up the threads of her life. Of course, there was always the possibility that she was dead, killed in a raid as she fled the city, or from natural causes, or had been arrested and imprisoned in one of those atrocious camps everyone was reading and talking about. Judging by the photographs hanging on her walls, she was well into middle age. Might there be offspring, relatives with an interest in her estate? He must remain alert, and look to the future.

  It had been chance, another stroke of good fortune, that had led Charlie to the Friedlander address in the first place. Early 1943. He had been sipping a late-morning coffee at a zinc, a bar in the vicinity close to Trinité Church when he had overheard a trio of old biddies prattling. Grouped together, clustered round one of the small round tables, a forest of elbows tight up against one another, smoking, grouching, deploring the demise of their neighbourhood, missing their fellow citizens who had fled before Hitler and his cronies had marched into their beloved city. During the course of their conversation, Madame Friedlander was mentioned several times as one of the earliest to escape. On the day the Germans were marching towards the capital, as the tanks were approaching but had not yet passed through the city gates, she had disappeared. ‘While all our own men were retreating.’

  ‘No one left to look after that beautiful apartment of hers. Sitting empty all this time.’

  ‘The fifteenth of June 1940, it was. I was buying bread. When I stepped back outside the bakery with my baguettes under my arm, a guard had been posted at the door, a gun slung over his shoulders. Frightened the life out of me.’ The grey-haired Parisian who had been carrying her sticks of bread was now gesticulating wildly, eyes popping, acting out her surprise at the sight of an armed soldier. ‘Yes, I remember it as though it were yesterday. Barely a soul about even before Madame Friedlander hot-footed it with little more than her purse clutched in her hand. Left everything behind her. Scared witless.’

  Charlie had shuffled closer.

&n
bsp; ‘Where has she fled to?’ one asked of the others, leaning closer, conspiratorially. ‘Has anyone heard?’

  The women shook their heads.

  Charlie had overheard this conversation in March 1943. Madame Friedlander’s apartment had been empty for almost three years by that date, if all that he had eavesdropped was accurate.

  ‘I was crossing la Place de l’Opéra. All the shops were boarded up.’ Heads nodded as they all recalled the fateful day. ‘Not a soul in sight. It was eerie, spooky. There, in the middle of the square, was just one parked car. A Citroën, if my memory serves me, and on its front window was a white card with À Vendre, for sale, in big letters. I felt as though the bottom had just dropped out of my world. Everyone scarpering, leaving Paris to the Germans. Three years on and they’re still bloody well here.’

  ‘It’s the waiting that drives you round the bend. Since the tanks rolled in, those stinking Germans aboard them, our lives have been about waiting. Waiting in line for bread …’

  ‘For a half-stale baguette, more like …’

  ‘… that is costing eight francs …’

  ‘Swastikas decorating l’Opéra. How much humiliation must we be forced to endure?’

  ‘We swallow our anger, spit on the streets as they pass by and wait for this war to end, for the Allies to liberate the capital, for those bastards to get their comeuppance.’

  ‘“Work, family, fatherland”, my arse.’ One old girl banged her fist on the table. Spoons on saucers rattled.

  ‘And for our fellow citizens to return.’

  ‘Or to learn of their fate.’

  Sighs all round as the women fell into silence. And then, ‘We’re living in a semi-inhabited city. No caretakers to look out for the buildings. It feels half dead sometimes, doesn’t it?’

  Talk of the end of the war had been on the lips of all Parisians during the fifty months of occupation. Every day was counted, ticked off, prayed over. Charlie had been in hiding for more than six months and growing a little desperate when he had overheard that first conversation. He was doing well enough, earning more than sufficient to keep the wolf from the door, saving his francs, squirrelling them away, but living from day to day behind a false identity and with no permanent base.

  A fine empty apartment would suit him down to the ground. Fully furnished, no expenses.

  After that, he had made it his business to hang about in that particular café, keep his ears and eyes open, engage in conversation those inhabitants who remained, until he had finally pinpointed the precise address of Madame Friedlander’s quarters.

  The bâtiment in question was situated at number nine rue de Lagrange. A handsome example of Hausmannian architecture. His ‘landlady’ – she who had disappeared, leaving the place empty for him to settle into – was a well-to-do widow, who had been living alone in style, it transpired.

  The concierge’s widower had also done a runner, although no one could explain for what reason. He wasn’t Jewish, a pervert or a gypsy. A Communist, then, or a thief, perhaps. He’d always had the dustbins out on time. Might he have raided a few of the flats, helped himself to what he’d fancied, then buggered off? No one could fathom why or to where he had disappeared. The bâtiment needed someone to be responsible for it, pay attention to the comings and goings of strangers, of deliveries, the cleaning of the common parts … Charlie soon cottoned on to the fact that no one was keeping a watchful eye. It fell to the remaining occupants to take it in turns to keep the stairways and hallways clean. The lift was out of order and there was no handyman to call on for its repair. The men had gone to war, and no one knew when they’d be back.

  Charlie had listened to the endless chatter, calculating the odds.

  Who would know of his presence? This was an ideal opportunity. He’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.

  And with next to no effort, no damage, arriving by night after a daytime recce, he had ascended by the back stairs, the service entrance situated twenty metres towards the rear of a side alleyway, and slipped inside the building with his one small bag, installing himself through a sashed window in Madame Friedlander’s very comfortable fifth-floor home.

  A woollen jacket hung from a chair back; black rubber wellingtons with an umbrella poking out of one on the tiled floor inside the front door; a toothpaste tube lacking its cap, browning at the edges. A cursory scout about the rooms gave him the impression that she had just popped out to buy provisions, to meet a companion for an hour’s conversation over un grand crème, except for the cobwebs, the thick layer of gathering dust and the smell of mothballs and damp that hung, like mildewed sheets, over the rooms. A life abruptly evacuated. And from that day on, time within these walls had stood still, sealed in, left to the insects and natural erosion. He ran his fingers through the powdery particles, and autographed his name across the mahogany dining table. Taking possession. Not Charlie Gilliard, no, the other name. His real name. The dead man’s name. Robert Lord. ‘Lordy’ to his mates, to his colleagues in the war, his fellow fighters. ‘Our Bob’ to his dear old mum. Our Bob, who had been killed in action. An illustrious finale.

  His mother must have been broken when she’d received the news, the dreaded envelope with the telegram inside, but she would have found solace, appeasement in her pride. ‘So proud of my boy who gave his life for his king and country.’ She would have taken consolation from that knowledge, and Charlie took consolation from the thought.

  And then, with the sleeve of his newly purchased overcoat, he had brushed away his identity. Gone for ever, floating away with the spores. Robert Lord was no more. He was lifeless on a beach along the coast of Dieppe, growing cold, food for the rats, face burned to a cinder, unrecognizable, unidentifiable. Robert Lord, wireless operator and gunner. His best friend, Peter Lyndon, pilot of their plane, was on that beach too. A heap of body parts. Both men had been twenty-two years old, the pair of them airborne out of Northolt in England to take part in the raid on Dieppe, Operation Jubilee, on 19 August 1942. The largest single-day air-battle of the war, it had proved to be. But it was a catastrophe, a bloodbath swimming in all that was foul. The RAF had lost 106 aircraft, at least thirty-two to flak or accidents. He and Pete had been shot down, nose-diving as though in slow motion out of the sky, wrestling to keep control. The shouting, cursing within the plane still echoed through Robert Lord/Charlie Gilliard’s sleepless nights.

  An abashedly ill-prepared shambles, during which his fellow crew members had lost their lives. Pete Lyndon had been not only his closest pal, but also his strength. He had kept Lordy sane when he was sure he’d lose his mind. When his courage was failing him, Pete had always bolstered him.

  Beyond his mate’s death, through searing pain and crazed grief, with his grimy cupped hands, he’d shovelled up bits of the bones, sinews and ragged lumps of his friend, fumbling frenziedly with the fragments of lost life, shaking, sweating, vomiting, blubbing over his pal’s charred remains. Tears burning his scorched flesh. All his comrades – good, decent men – had died screaming around him. He was alone, the only one still breathing, still in one piece, weeping for his lost friends, weeping out of fear, shock, terror, weeping because he was so frightened and hated this shitty war and wanted to go home.

  Since when was murdering people an honourable Christian act?

  Pete had given him mettle, balls, forced him onwards when he’d wavered. Together they were a team, enjoyed a beer in one another’s company, talked of the future and their girls, and now Pete was no more.

  Like a jigsaw, he’d married the pieces of flesh together, assembling, reassembling all that he could gather up, strewn across the pebbled beach, to recreate some semblance of a human form, but the pieces didn’t come together. They’d been blown to smithereens. They could have been the parts of not one but two bodies. Couldn’t they? And in that moment, in the rag-picking and harvesting of another’s exterior identity, he had decided to shed his own. He’d looked about him at the cliffs, the towers controlled by Germans, the end
less machine-gun fire. He’d known then that he couldn’t stomach another minute of it. Not without Pete. He had to get out. No more! No more of this filthy, ugly war, of the bowel-emptying terror, the senseless raids. Pete Lyndon’s shredded brevet, his identity badge, Robert had snatched up and pocketed as a souvenir of all that remained of a cherished friend. In return he’d left his own, tossing it among the ensanguined stones.

  And then he’d fled, scuttling and scrabbling like a crab, beach stones rolling underfoot. A fucking miracle – bloodied, shot up, shivering and pissing with shock and distress – he had scrambled on all fours from the scene, found refuge outside the town of Dieppe and hidden himself for days on end in a foxhole, which he had enlarged with his filthy fingers. Inland of the French coast, he’d stared blindly out, out at the dripping, misty coastline, birds dead and rotting, shot into particles … burned, smashed trees fallen like broken lampposts, himself howling like a wild beast, until he had almost starved. God knew how – even today his memory was a snarl of disconnected circuits, of falling burnished early-autumn leaves, the thunderous roll of wagon wheels, sounding like guns discharging, the baying of nearby livestock – but he had survived and eventually, after months on the run, he had made it to Paris.

  1943. The year after Dieppe, his first full summer on the run, installed in comfort in place of the invisible Madame Friedlander, he had slept by day, worked by night. Stealthy in his comings and goings, rarely crossing paths with any of the other residents. On the infrequent occasions when he did so, no one had questioned his presence, assuming him to be a tradesman, perhaps. A nod was the most he’d exchanged. Every inhabitant had been too taken up with their own concerns, too lost in their interior worlds – rationing, survival, loss, fear, national humiliation – to pay him more than glancing attention.

  March 1947. Charlie closed his eyes now as he strode onwards, summoning up the sounds and perfumes of his recent past: the sweetly scented blossoms in the urban parks; stone figures in the squares, the songs of those wartime nights; the comfort of Radio Londres; the heat and sweated bodies of whores, whose faces he tried never to engage with. He had remained indoors all day, every day, hiding his face, his guilt, descending to the streets at twilight. And never had twilight felt so sweet, so enticing. Paris was his. He existed in its shadows, but he danced in the penumbrae. He owned those shaded corners, drank in the darkness as though it were a narcotic. He was king in his own underground world. Of course, he was far from a king, not even a prince or a knight, but striding the deserted boulevards, the chestnut trees in full spring flower, the birds in full throat, pausing to take in the architecture, the façades of the impressive buildings, the echoing sighs of the vacant city, he had come to an unlikely pact within himself. He would survive. Not as Bomber Robert Lord, of course not, but as the man he was today, answering to the name of Charles Gilliard. Charlie.