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Beth used self check-in and coasted Jody’s tungsten Golf Mk7 to the allocation lanes. She’d stayed on the inside lane for the whole journey there, so it had been a long crawl. Driving made her feel jittery, and negotiating the busy traffic through the wipers and pelting rain to Folkestone had been exhausting.
It was the first time she’d been back behind the wheel of a car since the collision, and the tendons in her neck were rigid. But with the memory of the accident itself still deeply buried, turning the key in the ignition hadn’t been quite as traumatic as she’d thought. She’d also had a legitimate destination, and that at least had given her a vague sense of motivation she’d not felt since waking.
She was going to attempt contact with a girl named Maryse Plourde. She lived in a small farming village called Neuf-Marché built on the banks of the river Epte in the Pays de Bray.
The village was about twenty miles from the Forêt Domaniale de Lyons. Whether she found the girl or not, Beth knew she wouldn’t be able to return home without visiting the place where her old life had halted so violently.
She had to take it in, walk around the site. Perhaps not seeing the roadside through lenses of rage would alter her perception of it or jolt something loose. Maybe Beth would find the part of herself she felt had been lost there. But would standing in the backdrop of an accident long cleared of its debris do anything but amplify her acute sense of being left behind?
She’d told Jody she was visiting Luc’s mother in Quincampoix for the day, but had no intention of going there. She couldn’t even contemplate the idea of being in the same room as the urn. Jody had happily offered up his car keys. He’d been shut in his little recording studio, and she was glad to give him some space for a while.
Beth had been on the Eurotunnel to Calais less than three months earlier, and she thought about the different woman she’d been such a short time ago. Happily married and juggling what she thought were Herculean pressures. Now she wished for the stresses of work and moving home with Luc, instead of them being as written off as the car they’d driven onto the shuttle.
She’d thought little of the vehicle that had been transported from the crash site in the forest and scrapped soon after. The silver Nissan Pathfinder had been virtually brand new, and Beth had mocked Luc’s reverence and insistence on keeping the front mats pristine.
She manoeuvred up the ramp, and as the sound of the rain on the windscreen abruptly stopped, she felt claustrophobia crawling over her. Beth had never suffered from the condition in her life, but a host of new anxieties had taken up residence as soon as she’d opened her eyes in hospital.
Jody’s vanilla-scented ice-cream cone air freshener was suddenly cloying. She wanted to put the car in reverse, but there was another vehicle tight behind her. Beth had no choice but to slot into her space and sit the journey out. She was directed by an attendant to a bay and turned off her engine as soon as she was in position.
She hadn’t found a trace of Rae Salomon via employment sites, but had located her dead Twitter account. Even minus the dreadlocks, the black-and-white photo of her as a child was unmistakable, but there were no details in her profile and she hadn’t logged in for over two years. Beth found one follower – Maryse Plourde. She was significantly more loquacious than Rae and had over four hundred followers of her own. In Maryse’s tweets, there were many references to the demands of the customers in her place of work. She was a popular waitress in a brasserie called l’Auberge du pont.
Beth had considered contacting her via the account, but the idea of escaping the UK to locate her had been too tempting. No member of Blood Legend had bothered to contact her, but she supposed it was because they were still reeling from the murder of Trip Stillman.
Neuf-Marché was a small place. Even if Beth didn’t encounter her at the restaurant, she felt sure she’d be able to find her with a few enquiries. She wondered if Rae Salomon lived in the immediate vicinity. Beth guessed she had to be nearby if she was part of the response team for the crash in the forest.
Even if she found her, Beth was preparing for inevitable disappointment. How many similar scenes had she attended? And would she remember anything that had been said to her by Luc, when she dealt with the dead and the dying on a daily basis?
But why was she no longer working for the emergency services? Perhaps she’d relocated. Maybe this whole trip would prove fruitless after all.
A female attendant in a day-glo jacket gestured to her, half smiling. Beth realised she’d left her wipers going.
As Beth’s car wound its way through the tall hedges that bordered the familiar patchwork fields, it felt as if she were an interloper in a location for happy memories she could no longer lay claim to. With Luc gone, every moment they’d shared there seemed null and void. The pewter skies heightened the sensation, and as she swerved to avoid an oncoming tractor and pulled over to let it pass, the ruddy-faced driver glowered at her.
This was a silly mistake and she realised she was only there because she didn’t have anywhere to run. No home and nowhere to find comfort in familiarity. Being here, in the last place she’d been the person she thought she’d be forever, seemed like her only recourse, but it was a destructive pilgrimage. If she ever wanted her life to find its balance again, she knew she had to focus on the road ahead and not the one behind her.
But if she didn’t try to find Rae, she would always wonder what had been uttered to her as she’d gripped Luc’s hands. A large part of her hoped the paramedic would have nothing to offer. If Rae just shrugged her shoulders and told her she had no recollection of Luc or anything he’d said, then she’d know for sure she’d reached a dead end. Her real fear, however, was being told something more significant.
