36

Liv hears the noise rise up, like a cloud of birds, around her. She sees the journalists crowding round the old lady, their pens waving like antennae, the judge talking urgently with the lawyers, banging his gavel in vain. She stares up at the public gallery, at the animated faces, and hears the strange trickle of applause that might be for the old woman or for the truth: she isn’t sure.

Paul is fighting his way through the crowd. When he gets to her he pulls her to him, his head dipped against hers, his voice in her ear. ‘She’s yours, Liv,’ he says, and his voice is thick with relief. ‘She’s yours.’

‘She lived,’ she says, and she is laughing and crying at the same time. ‘They found each other.’ From his arms, she gazes around her at the chaos, and she is no longer afraid of the crowd. People are smiling, as if this has been a good result; as if she is no longer the enemy. She sees the Lefèvre brothers stand to leave, their faces as sombre as coffin-bearers, and is flooded with relief that Sophie will not be returning to France with them. She sees Janey, gathering her things slowly, her face frozen, as if she cannot believe what has just taken place.

‘How about that?’ Henry claps a hand on her shoulder, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘How about that? No one’s even listening to poor old Berger’s verdict.’

‘C’mon,’ says Paul, placing a protective arm around her shoulders. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’

The clerk appears, pushing his way through the sea of people. He stands in front of her, blocking her path, slightly breathless with the effort of his short journey. ‘Here, madam,’ he says, and hands her the painting. ‘I believe this is yours.’

Liv’s fingers close around the gilded frame. She glances down at Sophie, her hair vibrant in the dull light of the court, her smile as inscrutable as ever. ‘I think it would be best if we took you out the back way,’ the clerk adds, and a security guard appears beside him, propelling them towards the door, already speaking into his walkie-talkie.

Paul makes as if to step forward, but she puts a hand on his arm, stopping him. ‘No,’ says Liv. She takes a breath and straightens her shoulders, so that she seems just a little bit taller. ‘Not this time. We’re going out through the front.’

Epilogue

Between 1917 and 1922 Anton and Marie Leville lived in a small house close to the edge of a lake in the Swiss town of Montreux. They were a quiet couple, not fond of entertaining, but apparently most content in each other’s company. Madame Leville worked as a waitress in a local restaurant. She is remembered as efficient and friendly but as someone who did not volunteer conversation (‘A rare quality in a woman,’ the proprietor would remark, with a sideways look at his wife).

Every evening at a quarter past nine, Anton Leville, a tall, dark-haired man with an oddly shambolic gait, could be seen walking the fifteen minutes to the restaurant, where he would tip his hat through the open door to the manager, then wait outside until his wife emerged. He would hold out his arm, she would take it, and they would walk back together, slowing occasionally to admire the sunset on the lake or a particularly decorative shop window. This, according to their neighbours, was the routine for their every working day and they rarely deviated from it. Occasionally Madame Leville would post parcels, little gifts, to an address in northern France, but apart from that they seemed to have little interest in the wider world.

At weekends the couple tended to remain at home, emerging occasionally to go to a local café where, if it were sunny enough, they would spend several hours playing cards or sitting beside each other in companionable silence, his large hand over her smaller one.

‘My father would joke to Monsieur Leville that Madame would not blow away on the breeze if he were to release her just for a minute,’ said Anna Baertschi, who had grown up next door. ‘My father used to tell my mother that he thought it was a little improper, to be hanging on to your wife in public so.’

Little was known of Monsieur Leville’s own affairs, other than that he appeared to suffer from poor health. He was assumed to have some kind of private income. He once offered to paint portraits of two of the neighbours’ children, but given his strange choice of colours and unconventional brushwork, they were not terribly well received.

Most townspeople agreed privately that they preferred the neater brushwork and more lifelike images of Monsieur Blum down by the watchmaker’s.

The email arrives on Christmas Eve.

Okay. So I officially suck at predictions. And possibly friendship. But I would really like to see you, if you haven’t been using my handed-down skills to build voodoo dolls of me (this is entirely possible, I have had some serious headaches lately. If it was you, I offer my grudging admiration).

The thing with Ranic isn’t really working out. Turns out sharing a two-bedroom flat with fifteen male Eastern European hotel workers isn’t such a blast. Who knew? I got a new place through Gumtree with an accountant who has a vampire thing going on and seems to think that living with someone like me will give him street cred. I think he’s a little disappointed that I haven’t filled his fridge with roadkill and offered him a home-grown tattoo. But it’s okay. He has satellite telly and it’s two minutes’ walk from the care home so I no longer have an excuse to miss Mrs Vincent’s bag change (don’t ask).

Anyway. I’m really glad you got to keep your picture. Truly. And I’m sorry I don’t have a diplomacy button. I miss you.