‘The full story is unimportant.’ Angela Silver screws up her sandwich box and throws it neatly into the wastepaper bin. ‘Look, Mrs Halston, if you can prove that she and the Kommandant had an affair it will wholly improve your chances of retaining the painting. As long as the other side can suggest the painting was stolen, or obtained coercively, it weakens your case.’ She wipes her hands, and replaces the wig on her head. ‘This is hardball. And you can bet the other side are playing that way. Ultimately, it’s about this: how badly do you want to keep this painting?’

Liv sits at the table, her own sandwich untouched as the two lawyers get up to leave. She stares at the notes in front of her. She cannot tarnish Sophie’s memory. But she cannot let her painting go. More importantly, she cannot let Paul win. ‘I’ll take another look,’ she says.

26

I am not afraid, although it is strange to have them here, eating and talking, under our very roof. They are largely polite, solicitous almost. And I do believe Herr Kommandant will not tolerate any misdemeanors on the men’s part. So our uneasy truce has begun …

The odd thing is that Herr Kommandant is a cultured man. He knows of Matisse! Of Weber and Purrmann! Can you imagine how strange it is to discuss the finer points of your brushwork with a German?

We have eaten well tonight. Herr Kommandant came into the kitchen and instructed us to eat the leftover fish. Little Jean cried when it was finished. I pray that you have food enough, wherever you are …

Liv reads and re-reads these fragments, trying to fill in the spaces between her words. It is hard to find a chronology – Sophie’s writings are on stray scraps of paper, and in places the ink has faded – but there is a definite thawing in her relationship with Friedrich Hencken. She hints at long discussions, random kindnesses, that he keeps giving them food. Surely Sophie would not have discussed art or accepted meals from someone she considered a beast.

The more she reads, the closer she feels to the author of these scraps. She reads the tale of the pig-baby, translating it twice to make sure she has read it right, and wants to cheer at its outcome. She refers back to her court copies, Madame Louvier’s sniffy descriptions of the girl’s disobedience, her courage, her good heart. Her spirit seems to leap from the page. She wishes, briefly, she could talk to Paul about it.

She closes the folder carefully. And then she looks guiltily to the side of her desk, where she keeps the papers she did not show Henry.

The Kommandant’s eyes are intense, shrewd, and yet somehow veiled, as if designed to hide his true feelings. I was afraid that he might be able to see my own crumbling composure.

The rest of the paper is missing, ripped away, or perhaps broken off with age.

‘I will dance with you, Herr Kommandant,’ I said. ‘But only in the kitchen.’

And then there is the scrap of paper, in handwriting that is not Sophie’s. ‘Once it is done,’ it reads, simply, ‘it cannot be undone.’ The first time she read it, Liv’s heart had dropped somewhere to her feet.

She reads and re-reads the words, pictures a woman locked in a secretive embrace with a man supposed to be her enemy. And then she closes the folder and tucks it carefully back under her pile of papers.

‘How many today?’

‘Four,’ she says, handing over the day’s haul of poison-pen letters. Henry has told her not to open anything with handwriting she does not recognize. His staff will do it, and report any that are threatening. She tries to be sanguine about this new development, but secretly she flinches every time she sees an unfamiliar letter now; the idea that all this unfocused hate is out there, just waiting for a target. She can no longer type ‘The Girl You Left Behind’ into a search engine. There were once two historical references but now there are web versions of newspaper reports from across the globe, reproduced by interest groups, and Internet chat-rooms discussing her and Paul’s apparent selfishness, their inherent disregard for what is right. The words spring out like blows: Looted. Stolen. Robbed. Bitch.

Twice, someone has posted dog excrement through the letterbox in the lobby.

There was only one protester this morning, a dishevelled middle-aged woman in a blue mackintosh, who insisted on handing her another home-made leaflet about the Holocaust. ‘This is really nothing to do with me or this case,’ Liv had said, thrusting it back at her.

‘If you do nothing you are complicit.’ The woman’s face was hewn by fury.

Henry had pulled her away. ‘There’s no point in engaging,’ he had said. Oddly, that hadn’t lessened her vague sense of guilt.

Those are the overt signs of disapproval. There are less obvious outcomes from the ongoing court case. The neighbours no longer say a cheery hello, but nod and look at their shoes as they pass. There have been no invitations through her door since the case was revealed in the newspapers. Not to dinner, a private view, or one of the architectural events that she was habitually invited to, even if she usually refused. At first she thought all this was coincidence; now she is starting to wonder.

The newspapers report her outfit each day, describing her as ‘sombre’, sometimes ‘understated’ and always ‘blonde’. Their appetite for all aspects of the case seems endless. She does not know if anyone has tried to reach her for comment: her telephone has been unplugged for days.

She gazes along the packed benches at the Lefèvres, their faces closed and seemingly set in expressions of resigned belligerence, just as they were on the first day. She wonders what they feel when they hear how Sophie was cast out from her family, alone, unloved. Do they feel differently about her now? Or do they not register her presence at the heart of this, just seeing the pound signs?