Left Behind 2 - Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

Author:Jojo Moyes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780718157845
Published: 2012-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

TARP

Suite 6, 115 Grantham Street

London W1

15 October 2006

Dear Mrs Halston

We act for an organization called the Trace and Return Partnership, created to return works of art to those who suffered losses due to looting or the forced sale of personal artefacts during wartime.

We understand that you are the owner of a painting by the French artist Édouard Lefèvre, entitled The Girl You Left Behind. We have received written confirmation from descendants of Mr Lefèvre that this was a work in the personal possession of the artist’s wife and the subject of a forced or coercive sale. The claimants, who are also of French nationality, wish to have the work returned to the artist’s family, and under the Geneva Convention and the terms of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, we wish to inform you that we will be pursuing such a claim on their behalf.

In many cases such works can be restored to their rightful owners with the minimum legal intervention. We therefore invite you to contact us to arrange a meeting between yourselves and representatives of the Lefèvre family in order that we may commence this process.

We appreciate that such notice may come as something of a shock. But we would remind you that there is a strong legal precedent for the return of works of art obtained as the result of wartime transgressions, and I would add that there may also be some discretionary funding to compensate for your loss.

We hope very much that, as with other works of this nature, the satisfaction of knowing a work is finally being returned to its rightful owners will grant those affected some additional satisfaction.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to discuss this further.

Paul McCafferty

Janey Dickinson

Directors, TARP

She stares at the name at the bottom of the page and the room recedes. She re-reads the words, thinking this must be a joke. No, this is another Paul McCafferty, an entirely different Paul McCafferty. There must be hundreds of them. It’s a common enough name. And then she remembers the peculiar way he had looked at the painting three days earlier, the way he had been unable to meet her eye afterwards. She sits down heavily in her chair.

‘Is this some kind of a joke?’

‘I wish it was.’

‘What the hell is TARP?’

‘We trace missing works of art and oversee their restoration to their original owners.’

‘We?’ She stares at the letter. ‘What … what does this have to do with me?’

‘The Girl You Left Behind is the subject of a restitution request. The painting is by an artist called Édouard Lefèvre. His family want it back.’

‘But … this is ridiculous. I’ve had it for years. Years. The best part of a decade.’

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out another letter, with a photocopied image. ‘This came to the office a couple of weeks ago. It was sitting in my in-tray. I was busy with other stuff so I didn’t put the two things together.

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