The Returned (3 page)

But nothing that Léna would notice. Never that. Never again.

Claire heard the front door shut. ‘Léna?’ Had to be a problem with Frédéric, Claire thought, readying herself for a long night of comforting. The irony of
motherhood, that you feel least useful when your child is happy, and most useful when she’s in turmoil.

She went down the stairs, and stopped. The fridge door was open, a girl’s hand on it. Claire’s view was obscured as the girl raided the fridge’s contents, plastic tubs of
leftovers being taken out and put on the breakfast bar; flashes of tied-back red hair.

‘Léna?’ said Claire.

The fridge door swung closed. A young girl stood there. Long red hair, and a face Claire knew better than her own.

Claire stared. She was dreaming. She had to be.

There, opening the tubs and taking what she wanted, acting as though everything was completely normal, was Camille.

The girl saw her. ‘I know it’s late. You must have been worried. But it’s not my fault. Something really weird happened.’

Claire stood there in breathless silence, not daring to speak. Saying something would break it, she thought, make the moment fracture and crash down around her. Reveal it for the hallucination
it was. All she could do was stare.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ said Camille, making herself a sandwich. ‘It sounds funny, but I woke up in the mountains, above the dam. It took me ages to get home.
Honest. I’m not making it up.’ She topped her sandwich and started to eat. ‘I’m
so
hungry.’

Claire managed to take a step towards her, silent. She had to keep everything slow, or risk panic.

‘Are you OK, Mum?’

‘Yes,’ said Claire, on autopilot. ‘I’m OK.’ And the terrible fear in her heart was joined by something else: a terrible hope, just as sharp. She wanted to reach out
and touch whatever it was that stood before her. Reach out and grab
hold
, and never let go.

‘Is Léna home?’

‘No,’ said Claire. The shock of seeing Camille was overpowering; every word she spoke took considerable effort. ‘She’s . . . at a friend’s house.’

‘Is she better then?’ asked Camille.

Claire had no idea what she meant. ‘Better?’

‘She was sick, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ said Claire.
As if it’s the same day
, she thought. ‘Yes, she was. She’s better now.’

Camille reached over the tubs and picked up a frosted glass Claire had bought the year before. She considered it. ‘Wow, this is ugly,’ said Camille, before setting it down and
heading for the stairs. ‘I’ll clean up later.’

Claire stood where she was as Camille went out of sight. In the silence, she could hear her rapid pulse loud in her own ears. Surely she was alone in the house.
None of that happened
,
she thought.
None of it is real. No matter how much I want it to be.

And then she heard water running in the bathroom, and bounded up the stairs, down the corridor, her hand moving towards the handle on the bathroom door.

The door opened wide, startling her. Camille stood there, a towel wrapped around her, the bathwater running. ‘Can you get me my dressing gown, please?’ she said.

Claire nodded; Camille closed the door again.

Claire turned, hardly able to breathe, then rushed to Camille’s room. She blew out the candles, and took them and the photographs, everything that didn’t belong there, and bundled it
all into the top of a wardrobe. In the chest of drawers were the things that had been there before, the day of the accident; Claire put them all back in their original places.

Everything
had to go back. She thought of Camille’s dislike of the frosted glass, and she mentally tallied the changes that had happened in the house over the last four years.
Everything had to go back to how it had been.

She gathered Camille’s dressing gown, then composed herself. She knocked on the bathroom door, holding it out.

‘Thanks,’ said Camille carelessly, taking the dressing gown and shutting the door again.

Claire walked down the stairs, every movement slow and considered, as if she was walking on glass. She paused, then took her phone and dialled the number of the man who would know what to do. It
rang through to voicemail.

‘Hello, this is Pierre. Please leave a message.’

‘Pierre, it’s Claire. Could you come over, please?’

She hung up.

She thought for a moment, then called Jérôme.

The rain was coming down hard by the time Jérôme got home – and ‘home’ was still how he thought of it. The house where he and Claire had brought
up the girls, where they’d experienced so much joy and sorrow – not the bare apartment in town he slept in now.

Claire opened the door, dazed and red-eyed, and Jérôme braced himself for some kind of impact. She looked just as lost as she’d sounded on the phone.

‘Come in,’ said Claire. The words came out as if they were escaping from her.

In the year after Camille’s death, he’d watched Claire come apart piece by piece as he’d withdrawn into the solace of alcohol. He’d ignored every sign, perfecting his
denial until Léna had stepped in and brought him to some kind of sense, and he had truly seen the look in Claire’s eyes. A look that had been growing in plain view but which he’d
managed not to notice.

The same look was there again. Raw, fragile, close to breaking.
Oh Jesus
, he thought, and felt an almost physical pain at the sight. He loved her, and she was suffering.

‘Why did you ask me here?’ He was almost scared to find out.

‘You should come inside,’ she said. Jérôme hesitated. Claire dropped her voice, secretive and fierce: ‘Camille is here.’

‘Claire . . .’ he said, despairing. This was how it had been on the worst days. Claire would see Camille in town, walking around a corner; she would see Camille in the shot of a
crowd on television. And on the worst days of all, Claire would call Léna by her dead sister’s name, and insist Léna was playing games with her if she denied it. It
wouldn’t last; disoriented, panicked, Claire would finally go to sleep and when she woke she would have recovered her bearings, and sob.

The passing of four years had brought just enough change in Léna’s face, altered it from precise match to close resemblance, enough for that confusion to subside. It was a relief to
Jérôme, too, not to see the face of Camille every day on her living sister, because he’d suffered from the same kind of momentary error more than once; certain, just for an
instant, that it was the other twin standing there.

He’d often wondered if Léna had experienced the same thing, catching her own reflection and finding Camille’s name dying in her throat.

Claire took a breath; her words tumbled out. ‘She’s in the bathroom. Do you want to see her?’ She was nodding on his behalf, agitated:
of course you want to.

He said nothing and came inside the house, following her up the stairs, walking as quietly as possible. He could hear someone in the bathroom. Léna, of course. He hoped Claire
hadn’t given Léna any indication of her state of mind. Then he could manage this, he could deal with it. Spare Léna the trauma somehow.

Claire guided him to the door. ‘Listen,’ she said, looking like a bemused child.

He took a breath. ‘Léna?’ he called. She would answer, and he would lead Claire back downstairs and they would sit and talk and . . .

‘No, it’s me,’ said Camille’s voice. Jérôme turned and looked at Claire. She looked back at him with a desperate smile, and Jérôme opened the
bathroom door.

She was there in the bath. Camille, arms suddenly across her chest, angry and embarrassed. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

Jérôme paused.

‘Get out!’ said Camille.

Jérôme shut the door. The look that he’d seen on his wife’s face, a mixture of fear and hope, suddenly made sense to him, because he could feel it on his own face
now.

He headed straight outside to the patio, and couldn’t get his shaking hands to light his cigarette fast enough.

‘She doesn’t remember the accident,’ said Claire, her voice clipped. There was a hint of madness in her eyes that Jérôme empathized with. ‘Only that she was
on a school trip this morning.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘This isn’t possible.’ He shook his head, feeling as if he was trying to shake the sight of his dead daughter out.
We buried her
, he wanted
to say.
She’s in the town graveyard, deep and cold and silent.

‘I know it’s not possible,’ said Claire. ‘But she’s here.’

‘There has to be an explanation,’ he said, and took a long drag on his cigarette.

‘Like what? I’m going mad? That means you’re mad, too.’

Jérôme didn’t answer. He knew that the possibility of some kind of breakdown was exactly what had been going through Claire’s mind when he’d arrived at the door.
The relief that he’d shared in her vision was making her almost giddy.

‘You saw her,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you?’

His back was to the house; Claire’s eyes caught something behind him.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look at her.’

He couldn’t turn. Insanity was the only explanation he could think of, and he wanted nothing of it. Then the door behind him slid open.

‘Is something wrong?’ asked Camille. ‘What are you doing?’

He turned around. His dead daughter was standing there in her dressing gown. Her hair wet. Completely normal. Completely alive.

Her eyes went to his hand. ‘Dad, are you smoking?’

His hand dropped by his side. He couldn’t stop staring at her. Camille carried on talking, oblivious to the behaviour of her parents. ‘Did Mum tell you? Weird, isn’t it? I must
have had a blackout or something, right? Shouldn’t I see a doctor?’

Jérôme wondered exactly how
that
would play out. ‘Do you feel OK now?’

‘Yeah . . . but I’m a little freaked out. So where’s Léna?’

‘I told you,’ said Claire, sounding uneasy. ‘At a friend’s.’

‘Which friend?’

‘I don’t remember.’

Camille shrugged and went back inside, heading for the kitchen phone. Claire and Jérôme followed, exchanging looks.

‘Who are you calling?’ asked Claire.

‘Frédéric,’ said Camille. She dialled.

Claire shot a look of panic at Jérôme. ‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘You’ll wake him.’ They watched, fearful, just able to hear the sound of the phone
ringing, ringing, expecting it to be picked up at any second.

Then Camille hung up. ‘Not answering,’ she muttered. ‘Well, I’m exhausted. I’m off to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be a little less weird.’

Claire and Jérôme wished her goodnight and watched her go; watched her all the way up the stairs, step by step. Only when they heard her bedroom door shut did they realize
they’d both been holding their breaths. They looked at each other apprehensively.

Maybe tomorrow will be a little less weird.

Jérôme didn’t think the chances were good.

Julie Meyer sat on her sofa with her legs curled under her, working through the huge amounts of paperwork that came with the job. Three metres away, people were being torn to
pieces.

Somebody screamed. She looked up at the television, unable to remember what the film was or how long it had been on. The faces on screen contorted in pain as undead teeth sank into skin. Julie
glanced casually at the horror in front of her, feeling nothing.

She got back to the paperwork. It had been a long day, her busiest of the week. Seven clients visited, two of them borderline dementia; one whose daughter was there to supervise, suspicious that
the work wasn’t being done well. Julie had been suspicious, too; she wasn’t the usual nurse for the patient, and she wondered if her employers had somehow caught wind of the
daughter’s suspicions and sent her to avoid trouble. Julie had done her job; the daughter had been satisfied.

‘I’m sorry I doubted,’ the daughter had told her as she left.

‘I’m not her usual nurse,’ Julie had said. ‘Keep doubting.’

It depressed her, sometimes, the things that people tried to get away with when nobody was watching – especially with those who had no way of defending themselves.

At last, she came to the end of her write-ups and set her folder down. Tired, she wondered if she should eat something. She wasn’t hungry, but she couldn’t remember having eaten much
all day. She sat and watched the people die on screen, bored of it but immobile. Eat or not, it didn’t seem to matter to her. Watch a film or not, she didn’t seem to care. Get to bed,
then? Maybe. Or maybe she would just fall asleep where she sat, and wake in the night and wonder why she was continuing to live at all.

It wasn’t a
life
she was living. Everyone had the drudgery of work, the tedium of all the regular hoops you had to jump through just to survive, a long series of the same things
over and over like breath or pulse. That was what food had become to her, and sleep; something that just had to be done, and no end in sight.

But everyone else had the moments between the drudgery: the moments that counted, the moments that made it worthwhile.

That was what life was, she thought. The moments between.

And she had none. She was paralysed by the inertia of it all. Sometimes she wondered if she’d died in that tunnel seven years ago, because
this
was not life.

The phone rang. She switched the television off.

‘Hello? Monsieur Costa, calm down . . .’ The man was agitated. She liked Michel Costa: he was old but still sharp, a teacher at the local school until he’d been pushed into
late retirement. On every heart medication known to science, it sometimes seemed, but his mind was still bright. ‘OK, I’m listening.’

Chest pain; palpitations. Not unusual for him. She questioned him long enough to be sure it wasn’t more serious, but she promised she would get out to him as soon as she could manage.

‘It’s urgent,’ he said.

‘I can only go so fast, Monsieur Costa. I’ll be as quick as I can. Meanwhile, you should lie down. Try and stay calm, OK?’

‘I’ll be waiting, Julie.’

‘I’ll see you soon, and don’t worry, you’ll be fine.’