NIGHTINGALE
Marina Kemp
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2020
Copyright © Marina Kemp 2020
Cover design by Anna Morrison
Cover image © Alamy/Pierre Bonnard, The Garden 1935
Marina Kemp asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008326463
Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008326487
Version: 2019-12-16
For Lalu
‘I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain’
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI,
‘When I Am Dead, My Dearest’
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
I
Chapter 4
II
III
IV
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
She dreamt of nothing. She woke to the shuddering of train doors, catching only a glimpse of the stark platform and pale white sky before realising this was her stop. As she hurried from the seat, clutching her bags, she had to pull on a strap that had become caught on a rung of the luggage rack. She reached the doors as they were already closing, with a hiss like a punctured tyre. She had to tug her body through them, through their insistence as they clamped around her.
There was no one on the platform except for a woman in a florid skirt and long brown coat, the waxed coat of a farmer. She squinted at Marguerite. She stared for some time at Marguerite’s trainers, and then looked back down the platform as if for someone else.
Marguerite dropped her bags and knelt down to take a jacket out of her hold-all. The air was bitter, no warmer than it had been in Paris at seven o’clock that morning, in spite of how much further south she had come. When she stood up to put her jacket on, the woman was standing closer. She squinted again.
‘Mademoiselle Demers?’
‘Yes, that’s me,’ said Marguerite. The woman raised her eyebrows, not reaching out her hand.
‘I’m Brigitte Brochon, Monsieur Lanvier’s gardienne. We spoke on the phone.’
‘That’s right.’ Both arms through her jacket sleeves, Marguerite reached to