And there, of course, there, three months ago, the post I was looking for.
OMG so excited starting treatments today!!!
From that post onwards, the acronyms declined, as did the photos of her being silly. More and more she became what the treatments wanted her to be — beautiful, confident, unobtainable, untouchable, perfect.
Going to Marie Lefevre’s exclusive party tonight, she wrote, the day of the attack. Very excited to hear her speak — so inspiring, so truthful and giving.
That evening, I went to my sister’s room — you’re new here, aren’t you? — said the receptionist as I signed my name, and I kissed Gracie on the forehead and said I had to go, I’d be back soon, and she tutted and replied,
“You must keep your promises.”
“I promise,” I murmured. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I sat in silence on the train to Manchester.
Chapter 80
Plane Manchester — Paris, train Paris — Nîmes.
TGV, sleek and grey, winter in France, the snow falling silent outside the window, low valleys in the north, flat plains in the south at the foot of the Alps, the mountains distant against the gathering darkness.
I ate a croque-monsieur, hugely overpriced, and resurrected my rusty French reading Le Monde and listening to the radio on a set of headphones. I hadn’t had time to prepare, so stole a couple of wallets in the Gare de Lyon, keeping the cash and discarding the rest; stole a mobile phone, bought a new SIM from the tabac at Nîmes station.
This is not unworthy.
I am a woman with a cause, to struggle righteously, great struggles, worker struggles, racial struggles, gender struggles, rights and battles and marches and
this is not unworthy.
I steal to live, I live for a cause.
I am a sublime thief.
Impressions of Nîmes:
Unflashy but pretty, a little Paris for the south without the burden of being Paris. Medieval heritage prized over its Roman one. Fantastic chocolate shops, hugely overpriced. The smell of perfume, the sizzle of meat on the grill, children demanding the latest toy, the newest pretty fluffy thing, their gloves sewn together on long strings, a cold winter coming.
The University Hospital, a megalith, a city within a city, bow down before the French medical system all ye who enter here, a monument to 1960s brutality, you had better be very ill indeed when you step within.
This is the place where survivors of the attack at Lefevre’s book launch would have been taken. I tie back my hair, pull my coat tight around my chest, and head inside.
Easy to find the room of Louise Dundas; it’s the only room with a police guard outside. I steal scrubs, ID badge — hospitals like this are big enough that there’s always something that fits the bill — smile at the policeman, he asks me what I’m doing, I say, “Checking fluids,” and he hears something medical, so waves me through.
Louise Dundas lies, as Meredith did, handcuffed to the bed, asleep. Her heart rate is 72 BMP, her BP is 118/79, she is as fit and healthy as you would expect of any woman who had Perfection, who could afford her own personal trainer and to-your-door delivery algorithmically constructed vegan diet plan. A girl, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five, who simply went insane at a poetry reading and attacked seven other guests before she was restrained, as Byron watched.
No sign of Byron now, of course, but that is to be expected. No sign, alas, of Dundas’ phone or personal belongings, blood-splattered as they would be. Taken away by the police. I gently try to wake the girl, but she’s fast out. I wonder if any drugs will be of use, but the door is opened before I can go far in my quest, and in come a man and a woman, she someone unknown, he…
… a face I know very well indeed.
“Good evening, ma’am,” his French is perfect, of course, newsreader-flat, “how is Mme Dundas?”
A moment in which I stumble on my lines, but it’s all right, it’s okay, he’s a stranger in a police-guarded room, though curiously the cop is gone from his chair outside; I’m allowed a moment to count quickly backwards from five and say,
“Sedated, but her stats are good. You are…?”
“My name is Mr Blanc,” he replied, offering me his hand, which of course, I shook, for why wouldn’t I, I’m a nurse, he’s a polite stranger enquiring after a patient’s health, of course I shook it, hygienically iffy though it is.
“You are not a relative?”
“No — we work for the insurance company.”
He doesn’t say which insurance company, and doesn’t offer ID. The woman is already moving round the bed, examining the girl’s face, her nails, her hands, her fingers. I nod and smile, making quickly for the exit, then hesitate by the door. And why not? I stop, I turn, I smile at Mr Blanc and say, “Is it Perfection?”
The woman looks up fast, an answer far more expressive than Mr Blanc’s slow smile, half turn of his head, gentle shuffle of his feet to bring his body, a little bit at a time, into full alignment that he might look at me. “Why would you say that, Mme…?”
“Jouda. Mme Jouda.”
“What about Perfection, Mme Jouda?”
“Do you work for it? I know Mme Dundas used it,” I said with a shrug, a slight tilt of my head, nothing to be concerned about. “I know she received treatments.”
“And how do you know that?”
“She said as much, before she was sedated.”
“Did she? Did she say so?”
The woman, frozen like a wading bird, uncertain if death circles above, or food swims below. Do you feed and die, your back exposed to the enemy, or stand still and starve?
The man who calls himself Mr Blanc has gone by a few other names before: mugurski71, Matisse, Gauguin, a fixit man for Rafe Pereyra-Conroy, ex-spy, sometime lover of Byron14, of course it makes sense for him to come here. He would be looking for Byron too.
He watches me, and I watch back. I don’t mind making an impression.
Does he remember me?
No, but like Byron perhaps he has words filed away in the back of his mind, mantras, repeated actions and hazy concepts which declare, there is a woman you cannot remember, these are her qualities…
If this were a hospital in Iceland, or rural Russia, he would absolutely be asking those questions now, wondering how a woman of my description came to be in this place. But this is Nîmes, and the French have a colonial history as long and ignoble as the British, and the south is full exiles who crossed the waters from Algeria in the 1960s, of travellers from the west coast of Africa, of women with my hair and my skin who are French to their very bones.
So he watches, and I watch back, and at last he smiles and says, “Has she had an MRI?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“A psychiatrist…”
“Is scheduled to see her.”
“I would like my own psychiatrist to attend.” He hands me a business card, M Blanc, no company listed but a telephone number.
“You have your paperwork?” I suggest. “The P77, your proof of policy; you’ll need to take it to reception.”
No idea if these bits of paper are real, but he has no idea either. “Of course,” he replies. “The hospital is aware of my visit. Mme Dundas is being moved, at the family’s request, to a different facility.”
“I wasn’t informed.”
“You’ll find all the paperwork ready.”
“She’s still in a…”
“All the paperwork,” he repeated, the smile still fixed to his face. “The ambulance will be here soon.”