The young woman seemed less frightened now and far less cold. No doubt the fire blazing in the hearth helped: it always works its magic on fear as on cold, and Mathias had made a good blaze. But after that, he didn’t know what to say. He squeezed his hands together as if to crush the silence.
‘Which is it?’ asked Marc. ‘I mean the child, girl or boy?’
‘Boy,’ said the young woman. ‘He’s five.’
Marc and Lucien both nodded gravely.
The young woman undid the scarf from her head, shook out her hair, put the wet scarf on a chair and looked around her. Everyone was taking stock. But in no time the evangelists registered the fact that the face of the refugee was subtle enough to tempt a saint. Not a regular beauty at first sight, she must have been about thirty. A luminous face, with a childlike mouth, a clear jaw-line, thick dark hair cut in a bob. Marc wanted immediately to take that face in his hands. He loved people who were thin and almost too delicate. He couldn’t work out whether the expression on her face was defiant, adventurous and darting, or whether it was fleeting, quivering, shadowy and timid.
The woman remained tense, glancing now and again at her son who was sleeping. She smiled a little. She didn’t know where to begin. Names perhaps. Should we say our names? Marc introduced everyone, and added that his uncle was on the top floor-an unnecessary detail perhaps, but useful. The young woman seemed more reassured on hearing this. She even stood up and warmed herself by the fire. She was wearing narrow cotton trousers that clung to her slender hips and thighs, and a shirt that was too big for her. Quite the opposite of Juliette with her feminine off-the-shoulder dresses. But above the shirt was the beautiful little face.
‘Don’t tell us your name if you don’t feel like it,’ said Marc. ‘It was just that it was raining, and with the little one, we thought, that is, we thought…’
‘Thank you,’ said the young woman. ‘It was kind of you to think, I didn’t know what to do. But I can tell you my name: Alexandra Haufman.’
‘Are you German?’ Lucien asked her abruptly.
‘Half German,’ she replied, looking surprised. ‘My father’s German, but my mother is Greek. I’m mostly called Lex.’
Lucien gave a little grunt of satisfaction.
‘Greek?’ said Marc. ‘Your mother’s Greek?’
‘Yes,’ said Alexandra. ‘But what’s so odd about that? Our family moves around a lot. I was born in France. We live in Lyon.’
There was no floor dedicated to antiquity, Greek or Roman, in the house of history. But inevitably everyone thought at once of Sophia Simeonidis. A young woman, half Greek, who had been sitting for hours opposite Sophia’s house. A woman with very dark hair and dark eyes like Sophia. A woman with a deep musical voice like hers, with fine wrists, and long slender hands, like hers. Except that Alexandra had very short fingernails, possibly because they had been bitten.
‘You were waiting for Sophia Simeonidis?’ asked Marc.
‘How did you guess?’ asked Alexandra. ‘Do you know her?’
‘We’re her neighbours,’ Mathias pointed out.
‘Of course, how silly of me. But Aunt Sophia has never mentioned you in her letters to my mother. She doesn’t write all that often, it’s true.’
‘We’re new to the neighbourhood,’ Marc explained.
The young woman seemed to understand. She looked around.
‘Ah, you must have moved into the empty house, the one they called “the disgrace” is that it?’
‘Spot on,’ said Marc.
‘It doesn’t look like a disgrace now. A bit bare perhaps. Almost like a monastery.’
‘We’ve done a lot of work on it,’ Marc said. ‘But that’s not very interesting. So you really are Sophia’s niece?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Alexandra. ‘She’s my mother’s sister. But you don’t look pleased about it. Don’t you like Aunt Sophia?’
‘Yes, actually, we like her a lot,’ said Marc.
‘Oh good. I called her when I decided to come to Paris, and she said she would put me up with my little boy while I was looking for a new job.’
‘You didn’t have a job in Lyon?’
‘Yes, but I walked out.’
‘You didn’t like it?’
‘No, that wasn’t it. It was a good job.’
‘You didn’t like Lyon?’
‘No, I liked Lyon.’
‘So,’ Lucien interrupted. ‘Why come to Paris?’
The young woman was silent for a moment, pursing her lips and trying to restrain herself. She folded her arms tightly.
‘The situation had got a bit sad down there,’ she said at last.
Mathias started cutting more slices of bread. After all, bread is always a good thing. He offered Alexandra a slice with jam on. She smiled, accepted and put out her hand. She had to look up to do so. Unquestionably, there were tears in her eyes. She managed with an effort to hold the tears in, not letting them spill down her cheeks. But her lips were trembling. It’s one or the other.
‘I don’t understand,’ Alexandra continued, eating her bread. ‘Aunt Sophia had arranged it all two months ago. She had enrolled my son at the local school. Everything was ready. She was expecting me today, and she was supposed to come and meet me at the station to help me with the little one and the luggage. I waited for ages, then I thought maybe after ten years she hadn’t recognised me, and perhaps we had missed each other on the platform. So I came to the house. But there’s nobody here. I don’t understand. I went on waiting. Perhaps they’ve gone to the cinema or something, but that would be odd. Aunt Sophia would surely not have forgotten.’
Alexandra wiped her eyes quickly and looked at Mathias. Mathias prepared another slice of bread and jam. She had not had anything to eat that evening.
‘Where’s your luggage?’ asked Marc.
‘I left it behind the wall there. No, don’t go and fetch it. I’ll call a taxi and go to a hotel, and I’ll ring Aunt Sophia in the morning. There must be some misunderstanding.’
‘I don’t think that’s the best solution,’ said Marc.
He looked at the other two. Mathias was looking down at the breadboard. Lucien was walking round the room.
‘Look,’ said Marc. ‘It’s like this. Sophia has been missing for twelve days. She disappeared on Wednesday, May 19.’
The young woman stiffened and stared at the three of them. ‘Missing?’ she murmured. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
The tears returned to those darting, timid, almond-shaped eyes. She had said she was sad. Maybe. But Marc was pretty sure there was more to it than that. She must have been counting on her aunt to help her to run away from Lyon, to run away from some disaster. He recognised the reflex. And she had travelled all this way, only to find that Sophia wasn’t there.
Marc sat down beside her. He tried to find the right words to tell her how Sophia had disappeared, how there had been a message with a star on it, and how she was thought to have gone away with Stelios. Lucien came round behind him and slowly took back his tie without Marc seeming to notice. Alexandra said nothing as she listened to Marc’s story. Lucien put his tie back on and tried to be helpful by remarking that Pierre Relivaux was not the greatest person in the world. Mathias lumbered round the room, putting more wood on the fire, adjusting the duvet over the child. He was a beautiful child with dark hair like his mother’s, except that it was curly. And so were his eyelashes. But all children look beautiful when they are asleep. They would have to wait for the morning to see what he was really like. That is, if his mother consented to stay.
Alexandra pursed her lips and shook her head, looking hostile.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Aunt Sophia would never have done that. She would have got in touch with me.’
‘Same story,’ thought Lucien. ‘She’s like Juliette. Why do people think they can’t possibly be forgotten?’
