97

  September 2017

  The soundtrack to the start of our Wednesday session was the beep-parp . . . beep-parp of the sirens of a succession of emergency vehicles, six floors below, racing along Widenmayerstrasse. Although it was chilly outside, it was stuffily warm in Dr Eberstark’s consulting room, and the window was open a few inches, to let some air in – but it came with the traffic noise.

  ‘Are you intending to tell him you are actually alive?’ he asked.

  I was feeling very distracted today. He keeps coming with the questions. I answer them as best I can. To this one, a no.

  ‘So you are a dead person?’

  Er, no. ‘Sandy Grace is a dead person. That doesn’t make me a dead person.’

  ‘Legally you are.’

  No again! ‘Legally I am Frau Lohmann.’

  ‘You told me that you got your German citizenship by paying someone. Was that lawful?’

  ‘No one died in the process.’ My tone was sharp, I was annoyed by his sudden prurience. And I was annoyed that the estate agent had not yet come back to me on my raised offer on Monday. I mean, surely that was a knock-out offer, a slam-dunk?

  We talk about right and wrong, about what my disappearance might have done to Roy, but really what choice did I have? Yes, I did think about Roy and what it would do to him, but I was being chased down by madman Albazi, who no doubt still wants to kill me, and it really was better for Roy and me that I left.

  ‘It was the best of a bad set of options. In my view,’ I say.

  ‘And that is still your view, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve made a mess of my life. I guess that’s why I’m here. People don’t come to a shrink because they’re happy, do they? Do you have patients who are happy?’

  ‘Let’s just focus on you.’

  ‘I’m a train wreck, aren’t I?’

  ‘I would not say that, not just yet. But you are heading towards becoming one, in my opinion, if you go ahead and buy that house.’

  I looked at him. And had the sense of staring into Nietzsche’s abyss. That thing about the abyss staring back at you.

  98

  September 2017

  I waited, after leaving Dr Eberstark’s office, until I had crossed Widenmayerstrasse and found an empty bench along the riverbank. It was cold and the sky was an angry grey. A few drops of rain were falling. Then, watching the beautiful crystal-clear water flowing past from the waterfall, I called the estate agent.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Lohmann, congratulations, you’ve seen my message?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘You must be delighted, and frankly even at nine hundred and fifty thousand, you are getting this beautiful home at a good price, it will be worth over a million by the end of this year, no question.’ He was gushing. This was him but rebooted. He didn’t even sound like he had gum in his mouth.

  ‘Right,’ I said, aware I probably sounded like the least enthusiastic person he’d ever delivered good news to.

  ‘Are you back in Germany at the moment?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘OK, what I’ll do is email you a draft sale agreement memorandum for you to fill in. If you can put in the name of the solicitors you will be using for the conveyance, I can start the ball rolling this end. I imagine this will be subject to survey?’

  Subject to survey. I liked that. The house was over eighty years old and there had been plenty of minor things wrong with it, including damp patches and a roof that wasn’t in the best shape. It was a get-out if I needed it.

  ‘Yes, subject to survey.’

  There was a brief pause then he asked, more tenderly than I would have given him credit for, ‘Is everything all right, Mrs Lohmann?’

  ‘It’s fine, why?’

  ‘Just checking you are happy to have secured the property. You sound a little – flat?’

  ‘I’ve just offered nearly a hundred grand over the asking price. Do you think I’m not happy maybe because of that?’ Then I ended the call.

  Shit.

  I stood up and walked along the towpath, barely noticing just how cold it was. All around people were wrapped up well; even some of the dogs being walked had coats on. It seemed it was already growing dark, or perhaps that was just the darkness of the abyss in my heart.

  Had I just blown it with the house deal?

  Maybe it would be a good thing if I had.

  But half an hour later, just as I was about to drive out of the car park at the rear of my apartment building, to go and collect Bruno from school, an email pinged on my phone. It was from the estate agent.

  My heart sank.

  It was full of platitudes. Delighted for you, Mrs Lohmann! Such a good decision! I’m sure you and your son will be so happy in your fabulous new home. You’ve made a great choice.

  The sale memorandum was attached.

  I had to open it and read it, right now. It all seemed so surreal.

  Was I really buying a house I already owned?

  99

  October 2017

  My little man sat in the Golf beside me, looking very self-important, as ever. He was neatly dressed, in his herringbone tweed overcoat, with not a hair out of place, giving the impression more of someone who had just stepped out of an important board meeting than a nine-year-old boy who’d just finished school for the day.

  He gave me a very serious look as I drove then said, ‘England, warum England?’

  I tried to speak to him in English as much as possible, in the hope I would bring him up to be bilingual. It was working, if it got a little confusing for both of us, switching between the languages at times.

  ‘You were born in England, darling, and I’m English. Wouldn’t you like to go and live there? To give it a try?’

  ‘Warum?’

  ‘Because . . .’ I was struggling. ‘Because it’s beautiful. It’s my homeland.’

  ‘Germany is now our home, Mama. Germany is beautiful. And anyhow, Erik would not be in England, would he?’

  ‘You could make other friends – new friends.’

  ‘Erik is my friend, I don’t need other friends. I don’t need new friends. I’m happy with the friend I have.’

  That was one of my worries about Bruno. His lack of interest in making friends. At least he had one in Erik – but they were very different personalities. Erik always seemed to be smiling and looking relaxed, whereas Bruno carried a sense of responsibility and sadness.

  I drove on in silence as he looked out the window. I was thinking about the results of the DNA paternity test that I’d had through from a firm in Berlin.

  So now I know Roy is the father.

  What now?

  The danger from Albazi felt like it was subsiding a little after all these years but I couldn’t stop myself being wary, on my guard, jumping at my shadow, seeing his double haunting me. I wonder if that will ever stop. Could I find a way to pay him back to clear my debt and we could all move on? That might help. Go ahead and buy the house, lure Roy back and tell him he is Bruno’s father?

  Then what?

  At another of my appointments with Dr Eberstark he’d asked me two things and I’d misled him about them both. Firstly, did I know who the father of my child was? It had annoyed me, to be honest, all these questions I really didn’t want to answer, so I just said stuff to delay it. I know it’s his job to try to understand, but I am just getting so tired of it all. I told him I thought I was paying him to help me, not interrogate me, and asked that we change the subject!

  That’s when he asked me if I had bought the house in Hove. To which I didn’t answer, I couldn’t tell him, he’d think I was truly crazy. I wanted these questions to stop. I just sat and stared, almost through him, in another world. A bit like I feel now.

  Suddenly, Bruno asked, ‘Mama, are we having bratwurst for supper?’

  I smiled. Sometimes the sheer simplicity of my child’s life brought me back to earth with a pleasantly soft landing. OK, bratwurst really wasn’t the healthiest food to give a growing lad, but it was his once-a-week treat. I subjected him to my on-and-off vegetarian and vegan diet on most of the other days.

  ‘Ja!’

  ‘Hast du daran gedacht, Senf zu kaufen?’ He said it as if it was the most important thing in the world. And, casting my mind back to my own childhood, I remembered that such seemingly trivial things as this really were important.

  ‘I have, darling,’ I replied in English. ‘I bought more mustard when I went shopping this morning.’

  As soon as we got home, Bruno headed off to the privacy of his room, and I reminded him to do his homework before playing any more online games with Erik, knowing Erik’s parents, Ingo and Anette, who were much stricter than I was, would have told him the same.

  I sat down at my rather grand desk, with a great view of the park and the Isar, and checked my emails, wondering yet again what I should do about responding to the sales memorandum I had been sent.

  There was a Google alert and I clicked on it.

  And immediately wished I hadn’t.

  100

  October 2017

  Having me declared dead had shocked me to the core, but the Google alert I was reading now rocked me in a way that nothing before ever had. It was a piece in the Argus online, under NOTICES.

  TOP COPPER TO WED ON SATURDAY

  The wedding of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, of Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, and Cleo Morey, Senior Anatomical Pathology Technician at Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, will take place at St Margaret’s Church in Rottingdean at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday, 2 November. Many senior police officers, including Chief Constable Tom Martinson, are expected to attend. The marriage will bring to a close the detective’s years of sadness following the unexplained disappearance of his former wife, Sandra (Sandy) Christina Grace, over ten years ago, who was formally declared dead in August of this year.

  God knows how long I sat there, staring ahead. It was Bruno’s voice that finally snapped me out of the kind of trance I was in.

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘Ja, mein Liebe?’

  He was hungry.

  ‘I’ll cook your bratwurst in a few minutes, OK? I just need to finish something I’m doing.’

  He padded off, disgruntled, to carry on with his homework, or, more likely, to try to kill more futuristic warriors than Erik on an intergalactic battlefield, or whatever.

  I logged on to the Lufthansa website, then British Airways. After that I went on to expedia.com. It was good timing, a holiday for German schools next week, so it would be no problem to take Bruno with me. I booked flights to London and a well-reviewed bed-and-breakfast hotel in Brighton called Strawberry Fields for the two of us.

  How very convenient to have me declared dead. Getting married, are you, Roy Grace?

  I don’t think so.

  101

  November 2017

  I wore a veil and felt every inch the black widow. Which just shows how messed up the inside of my head is. The only person here who’s dead is me, and this isn’t a funeral; it’s a wedding.

  But it was sure going to feel like a funeral to me.

  It’s quite a pretty church, I’ll give Roy credit for that, the kind of olde England Norman and Saxon mishmash that looks great in photos in Hello! And on the mantelpiece. Not as pretty as ours – the one we got married in – but a good second best, for a second marriage.

  There’s a long queue of people waiting to go in, a few of them in smart police tunics, the rest in suits and dresses, many of them wrapped up against the biting wind.

  ‘Bride or groom?’ says a male voice and my heart stops. For a moment, all I want to do is turn and flee. Shit, shit, shit.

  It’s Roy’s best friend, Dick Pope. We were due to go out to dinner with Dick and his wife, Leslie, to celebrate Roy’s birthday that night. That day I disappeared.

  Why the hell hadn’t I thought that he’d be here? An usher, of course.

  But he was pretty distracted and clearly had not recognized me through my very dark veil and with my short hair. And why would he? Sandy is dead.

  ‘Bride,’ I said, to obfuscate. He handed us each an order-of-service sheet and indicated the left side of the church.

  Every pew was full, but that suited me fine. We made our way to the back of the church and stood. Bruno had a clear view down the aisle and I could see over the tops of the sea of heads in front of me.

  I’d been rehearsing my lines rigorously. Well, I say lines, but, to be honest, it’s not much more than one line, really.

  Then, suddenly, I was stricken with panic. This was crazy, I had to get out. I grabbed Bruno’s arm and half pulled the confused boy out of a side door at the rear. No one noticed. I stood, gulping down air, while Bruno asked me what was wrong, why I was so upset. I shook my head. I had to go back inside. We hadn’t come this far to just walk away.

  I just had to calm down enough to be able to say that line, that one line. I said it silently now.

  ‘Mama, why are you whispering?’

  We slipped back inside. I said that line to myself again. Then again. Finally, I sort of felt ready. Sort of.

  When the vicar, quite a jolly figure with a white beard, queries if anyone knows of any legal impediment to the marriage, I will listen like everyone else. To the same words most of the congregation will have heard so many times.

  And I guarantee that not one of these people in this packed church will ever before in their lives have heard someone speak up who is actually not prepared to forever hold their peace.

  Boy, were they in for a treat today.

  I was shaking, feeling as if I was on some alien planet, in someone else’s world where I totally did not belong. It wasn’t a massive church and I could see Roy, his hair short, cutting an elegant figure in his grey tails standing by the front right-hand pew chatting nervously to a tall black man, also in tails, who was smiling. He put a reassuring arm around Roy’s shoulder. His best man, presumably, but who was he? He looked like a cop. Of course he would be a cop.

  Suddenly the organ struck up loudly. Pachelbel’s Canon.

  No, really? How cheesy.

  Roy and his best man sat down. Roy, on the end of the pew, turned and stared up the aisle. Smiling, all soppy.

  The bride appeared, on the arm of a silver-haired man who looked a total toff. Here was Barbie. About to wed Ken.

  Moments later, Ken and Barbie were standing, facing the vicar.

  This was just nuts. Too nuts. Like one of those panic dreams where you try desperately to stop something and you can’t.

  ‘Are those people getting married, Mama?’ whispered Bruno.

  I barely heard him. All I could think was: My husband is getting married to another woman, right in front of me! My husband with a best man I’ve never met. My husband getting married in a church full of many people I have never met.

  I felt the anger swirling through me, like the first gust of a brewing storm.

  ‘Mama, are they?’ he whispered again. ‘Are they getting married?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I whispered back.

  But maybe not. I can stop it.

  ‘Only maybe?’ whispering still, but a little louder. ‘Why are they standing there if they are not going to get married, Mama?’

  The vicar, blocked from my view now by Ken and Barbie, boomed through the speakers, ‘The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.’

  His name, according to the service sheet, was Father Martin.

  There was a typically murmured, self-conscious response from the congregation. ‘And also with you.’

  Everything became a blur. I felt in total turmoil. Roy looked so confident, so handsome, so mature now. Such a different person from a decade ago.

  He had had his faults, I was thinking, but in the eight years we were together I was certain of one thing, from the deep love he had always shown me, that he had never been unfaithful. Thinking back, I’d never, in all that time, even seen him eye another woman. He had told me, many times, that he loved me to bits, that I was his soulmate, that something incredibly powerful had drawn us together. And I had agreed with him each time then. In those early days, I had truly believed we would be together for ever.

  Until.

  I shuddered.

  ‘God is love, and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them,’ Father Martin intoned.

  In just a few minutes, Roy would be gone for ever. Married to another woman.

  I felt a tear trickle down my cheek.

  ‘Why are you sad, Mama?’

  Almost the entire congregation read aloud the words printed on their order of service sheets. I clutched Bruno’s left hand tightly and held my sheet, which I’d not yet looked at, with my free hand. On the front was printed Roy, Cleo, with the date and a dinky drawing of church bells between them.

  I was starting to hyperventilate. Tears were flooding down my face now, stinging my eyes and blurring my vision. I only had moments left. I had to stop this. Had to. Stop this lie. This sham. Bigamy was about to happen. I had to stop it. I was duty-bound, surely, to stop it?

  Wouldn’t I be breaking the law if I forever held my peace?

  And I wanted him back so desperately at this moment. So damned desperately. I didn’t care what anyone would think when I blurted out – shouted out – those words, I was damned well going to do it.

  I had to do it.

  Yes, me! I can show just cause. He’s already married – to me!

  ‘God of wonder and joy: grace comes from you, and you alone are the source of life and love. Without you, we cannot please you; without your love, our deeds are worth nothing. Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, that we may worship you now with thankful hearts and serve you always with willing minds; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

  Grace. The word kept coming up in the service. Grace. The word – name – seared my heart. The sight of the man I had once loved so much, and still loved, standing with his bride-to-be.