Peter May - Extraordinary People

Now the road rose steeply through the wood-cladded hillside, twisting and turning, headlights picking out creepers dangling from overhanging oaks. An owl swooped through their lights, intent on some invisible prey, and shrieked with alarm before veering off sharply and disappearing into the forest.

Suddenly they emerged from the claustrophobia of the trees, on to an open ridge. The moon had risen, and cast its colourless light across the valley below. They could see distant twinkling pockets of streetlights, a church floodlit on the far horizon, the river Cère a thin, meandering band of silver far below. The land rose and fell dramatically all around them, smeared black with trees, and punctuated by shimmering silver-green pasture. The road curled up, then, through a tiny stone village with a huge, crumbling church, and began its descent on the other side. A white ironwork cross at the side of the road reflected the lights of the car, and Charlotte told Enzo to turn left into a tiny metalled road which took them down a steep incline. They passed a holiday home, all closed up behind high hedges, and carried on to the treeline and beyond. The road reached an unexpected dead end, and Charlotte told him to take another left, down a rough, cobbled path. Enzo nursed his car gently down the track, wondering where on earth Charlotte was taking them.

‘You can stop here,’ she said suddenly.

Enzo jerked to a halt and looked around. They were surrounded by trees, and tangling briar amongst thick undergrowth. ‘Here?’ He was incredulous. ‘Where on earth are we?’

‘You’ll see.’ She reached into the back to retrieve her overnight bag and her laptop, and she got out of the car.

Enzo cut the engine and the lights and followed her out into the night. It took several moments for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness, and for the world to take shape again in the moonlight that filtered down through the trees. She plunged off into what seemed like thickly wooded hillside, and he scrambled along behind her, afraid of losing her in the dark. But in just a few short steps, they emerged again into bright moonshine, a clearing cut into the slope, and Enzo could see, about four meters below them, the dark shape of an old house nestling in a natural fold of rock. Primitive steps had been cut into the hill and reinforced by old railway ties. Charlotte followed them down to a covered patio at the front of the house, and snapped on her penlight to track down the lock on the door. She fumbled with a set of huge old keys, and in a moment pushed the heavy front door inwards into the house.

‘Wait here a minute,’ she said, and disappeared inside. Enzo turned to take in the moonlit view that dropped away almost sheer below the house. The air was shimmering in the night heat. He could still see occasional snatches of the silvered Cère through the trees. And then it was all wiped out, the terrasse washed with sudden light as Charlotte switched on the electrics somewhere inside the house.

He turned to see her through the doorway standing at the far side of an old farmhouse kitchen with tiled floors and pointed stone walls. She was pale, and tired, and still shocked by their brush with death, but he remembered again, in that moment, how beautiful he’d thought her that first time he’d seen her. Then she had been defiant and self-confident. Now she seemed vulnerable, defeated. He walked into the kitchen, and immediately felt the chill contained within its thick stone walls. A stark contrast with the warm air outside. He put his bag on the table and took her in his arms, and held her tightly. One way or another, he knew, she was going to have a huge impact on his life. And he didn’t want to let her go. Ever.

‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered.

‘The only thing we can do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Find them before they find us.’

There was a renewed urgency now about the need to make sense of the clues found at Hautvillers. In the barn adjoining the house, Charlotte dug out the white cardboard wrapping from a dishwasher installed the previous summer, and Enzo opened it out and taped it to a wall in the kitchen. A makeshift whiteboard. In the huge open fireplace, the flames of a log fire licked up blackened stone, dry oak crackling in the grate, taking the chill off air undisturbed since the house was closed up for the winter at Christmas. The comforting smell of woodsmoke filled the kitchen.

Charlotte heated soup on the stove while Enzo set up her laptop at one end of the kitchen table, connected it to a printer she kept at the house, and downloaded the photographs he had taken at the dog cemetery above Château Hautvillers. One by one he printed them out and stuck them up around the edges of his whiteboard. Beneath the salamander and the sports trophy he marked up the dates that were engraved on them. He wrote 19/3 below the referee’s whistle.

Then he sat down at the long wooden table and tried to clear his mind. At first he closed his eyes, and then he opened them again and let them wander around the kitchen. It was a large room. For living in, as well as cooking and eating. It was the centre of the house. Great blackened beams supported the floorboards of an attic room above. Pots and pans and keys and rusted chains hung from ancient nails hammered into them long ago. Behind a curtain next to the fireplace, an old staircase led up to the attic. Crooked wooden doors opposite led to a bathroom and a double bedroom. The original stone souillarde , set in an arched alcove, was still used as a sink. There were bookcases and an old walnut buffet, an antique grandfather clock whose pendulum hung still and silent. Every surface was covered with dust, and framed family photographs.

Enzo got up to take a look. Most of them were old. Cheap prints, garish colours. There were several taken on the patio outside. A middle-aged couple with a skinny young girl posing coyly between them. Long, curling black hair. A summer dress, a dark tan. Charlotte aged ten, or twelve. Enzo let his eyes linger on her for a moment, and he smiled fondly. There were several black and white photographs, faded and discoloured with age. Memories of another era, another generation. A young couple on a beach, in strangely dated swim wear, grinning gauchely at the camera. He had a moustache curling around either cheek and wore heavy-rimmed, round glasses. Her hair was a nest of flyaway curls. They both had bad teeth.

‘My grandparents,’ Charlotte said, glancing across from the stove.

Enzo picked up one of the photographs taken on the patio. ‘Your parents?’

‘Yes. I think I was about eleven when that was taken.’

‘Are they still alive?’

She nodded. ‘They live in Angoulême.’

Enzo looked at them. Oddly unremarkable people. He was losing his hair. She was overweight. Enzo could not see Charlotte in either of them. He said, ‘Hard to tell which of them you take after.’

‘Neither,’ Charlotte said. Enzo looked across, but she was focused on her soup. ‘I was adopted.’

‘That explains it, then.’

‘But I couldn’t have loved them more if they’d been my real parents,’ she said unnecessarily, as if in response to some unspoken criticism. ‘They’d have done anything for me.’ She was lost for a moment in some other world. ‘And still would.’ She started ladling soup out into deep bowls. ‘I used to love coming here when I was a kid. Playing in the woods, making up my own games. I’m glad I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I liked being on my own.’ She hesitated. ‘Still do.’

Enzo wondered if that was her way of telling him not to get too close. Yet more mixed messages?

‘They were devastated when I tried to track down my blood parents.’