‘I don’t know what made me lie,’ Alice told me. ‘Whether it was some instinct of self-preservation, some idea of what I might discover … I’m not certain. I was glad that I hadn’t told the truth, when it came to it.
‘So you see, I had a rather bad time of it in London, in the end.’ She said it lightly, but I could only imagine how eviscerating it would have been, to discover that the man you loved had given himself to someone else.
Should I tell her that he had come looking for her? I wasn’t sure. Before I could decide she had continued, and the opportunity was lost.
‘My next visit,’ she said, ‘was to the address in Hampstead that Sophie had given me for her friends. When I arrived there, I discovered that the De Rosiers had never arrived. I’d spent the war imagining them safe in England, but they had never left France.
‘With hindsight, it is easy to see that they were cutting it too fine. They hadn’t the right papers, which would always have caused problems, but they were unlucky, too. The last telegram that Sophie’s cousin had from them said that they’d stopped at a hotel in Montoire overnight. As they slept, all of the fuel was stolen from the tank of their car, so they would have to continue on foot.
‘That telegram was the last anyone heard from them.’
‘That’s awful.’ Even as I spoke the words, I was hopelessly aware of how inadequate they sounded. ‘What happened to the children?’
‘They had got to England, thank goodness, thanks to Sophie’s foresight in sending them on ahead. I was so happy to see them that I wept. Marguerite has told me since that they didn’t recognize me at first – emaciated and altered as I was – so it must have made an alarming sight.’
‘Marguerite?’
‘Ah, but you’ve met Marguerite – I forget. She’s Sophie’s daughter. She resembles her mother so closely that at times I find it hard to believe it isn’t Sophie I’m looking at, even though she’s older now than her mother was when I knew her.
‘When Aunt Margaret died, not long after the war, she left me rather a sum. I didn’t want to take it at first, you understand. I had been happiest in my life when I had been at my poorest. I didn’t see how money could improve my lot in any way. But then I realized what I could do with it. I could afford to support Marguerite and her brother Antoine – and so I became their guardian. I already loved them almost as my own.
‘So we returned to Paris, the three of us. We didn’t know anywhere else to be – it was our home. Besides, we had to go back: because otherwise it would have been as though they had taken that from us, too.’
Alice smiled, and I could see how tired she was, though undoubtedly unwitting to admit it. I began to make my excuses.
‘You will come to the gallery tomorrow?’
‘Yes, I’d like that.’
‘Good.’ She seemed very pleased by this.
On my way back to the subway, I couldn’t stop thinking about that ill-fated trip she had made to Islington, only to find out that the man she loved was lost to her for good. And then to Hampstead … I felt – it’s difficult to explain – infected by her grief, as though it had got right underneath my skin. I wanted to call Oliver, to talk to him about it. I hesitated outside a payphone, doing the calculations. It would be the small hours of the morning in France, I realized, so I carried on my way.
Back in my hotel room, I thought about Oliver, realizing that I hadn’t heard anything more from him since that last short message. Was he, now that we were apart, realizing that it was too soon for him after all? Was he beginning to have doubts? I don’t, I said to myself, twisting the pillow in my hands. I don’t have any doubt. But is that enough?