She stands there a moment longer and then she leaves. He can hear her talking in French with Lefèvre as they head out of the office.

Paul sits and stares ahead of him. ‘Hey, Miriam?’

She reappears, holding a piece of sandwich.

‘Sorry. That was –’

‘It’s fine.’ She smiles, pops a bit of escaping bread back into her mouth, and adds something he cannot decipher. It is not clear whether she heard anything of the previous conversation.

‘Any calls?’

She swallows noisily. ‘Only the head of the Museums Association, like I said before. Do you want me to call him back for you?’

His smile is small and doesn’t stretch as far as his eyes. ‘No, don’t worry.’ He lets her close the door and his sigh, although soft and low, fills the silence.

Liv takes the painting off the wall. She runs her fingers lightly over the oil surface, feeling the graduated whorls and strokes, wondering at the fact that they were placed there by the artist’s own hand, and gazes at the woman on the canvas. The gilded frame is chipped in places, but she has always found it charming; has enjoyed the contrast between what was old and shabbily ornate, and the crisp, clean lines around her. She has liked the fact that The Girl You Left Behind is the only colourful thing in the room, antique and precious, glowing like a little jewel at the end of her bed.

Except now she is not just The Girl, a shared piece of history, an intimate joke between husband and wife. She is now the wife of a famous artist, missing, possibly murdered. She is the last link to a husband in a concentration camp. She is a missing painting, the subject of a lawsuit, the future focus of investigations. She does not know how to feel about this new version: she only knows that she has lost some part of her already.

The painting … was taken and passed into German possession.

André Lefèvre, his face blankly belligerent, barely even bothering to glance at Sophie’s image. And McCafferty. Every time she remembers Paul McCafferty in that meeting room her brain hums with anger. Sometimes she feels as if she is burning with it, as if she is permanently overheating. How can she just hand over Sophie?

Liv pulls out her running shoes from the box under the bed, changes into sweatpants and, shoving her key and phone into her pocket, sets off at a run.

She passes Fran, sitting on her upturned crate, watching silently as she heads off along the river, and lifts a hand in greeting. She doesn’t want to talk.

It is early afternoon, and the edges of the Thames are mottled with stray meandering office workers going back after long lunches, groups of schoolchildren, bossed and herded by harassed teachers, bored young mothers with ignored babies, texting distractedly as they push buggies. She runs, ducking in and out of them, slowed only by her own tight lungs and the occasional stitch, running until she is just another body in the crowd, invisible, indistinguishable. She pushes through it. She runs until her shins burn, until sweat forms a dark T across her back, until her face glistens. She runs until it hurts, until she can think of nothing but the simple, physical pain.

She is finally walking back alongside Somerset House when her phone signals a text message. She stops and pulls it from her pocket, wiping away the sweat that stings her eyes.

Liv. Call me.

Liv half walks, half runs to the edge of the water, and then, before she can think about it, she swings her arm in a fluid motion and hurls her phone into the Thames. It is gone without sound, without anybody even noticing, into the slate-grey swirling waters that rush towards the centre.

20

February 1917

Dearest sister

It is three weeks and four days since you left. I don’t know if this letter will find you or, indeed, if the others did; the mayor has set up a new line of communication and promises he will send this on once he gets word that it is secure. So I wait, and I pray.

It has rained for fourteen days, turning what remained of the roads to mud that sucks at our legs and pulls the horses’ shoes from their hoofs. We have rarely ventured out beyond the square: it is too cold and too difficult, and in truth I no longer wish to leave the children, even if just for a few minutes. Édith sat by the window for three days after you left, refusing to move, until I feared she would be ill and physically forced her to come to the table and, later, to bed. She no longer speaks, her face set in hollow-eyed watchfulness, her hands permanently attached to my skirts as if she is fully expecting someone to come and snatch me away too. I’m afraid I have barely had time to comfort her. There are fewer Germans coming in the evenings now, but enough that I have to work every night until midnight just to feed and clear up after them.

Aurélien disappeared. He left shortly after you did. I hear from Madame Louvier that he is still in St Péronne, staying with Jacques Arriège above the tabac, but in truth I have no appetite to see him. He is no better than Kommandant Hencken in his betrayal of you. For all your faith in people’s goodness, I cannot believe that if Herr Kommandant genuinely wished you well he would have torn you from our embrace in such a manner, so that the whole town might become aware of your alleged sins. I cannot see any evidence of humanity in either of their actions. I simply cannot.

I pray for you, Sophie. I see your face when I wake in the morning, and when I turn over some part of me startles that you are not there on the other pillow, your hair tied in a fat plait, making me laugh and conjuring food from your imagination. I turn to call for you at the bar and there is just a silence where you should be. Mimi climbs up to your bedroom and peers in as if she, too, expects to find you, seated before your bureau, writing or gazing into the middle distance, your head full of dreams. Do you remember when we used to stand at that window and imagine what lay beyond it? When we dreamed of fairies and princesses and those noblemen who might come to rescue us? I wonder what our childish selves would have made of this place now, with its pocked roads, its men like wraiths in rags, and its starving children.