I have the power to stop it.

  I have come here to stop it.

  I am going to stop it.

  102

  November 2017

  I will be an accomplice to a criminal act if I do nothing – despite the fact that I have been declared legally dead. No one has actually told me I’ve been declared dead. Shouldn’t someone have to notify you if you were dead?

  I held that thought for a moment. Then realized how absurd it was.

  I still wasn’t thinking completely straight.

  The organ struck up again, the strains of ‘Jerusalem’. The congregation began to sing, loudly, lustily; everyone knew and loved this hymn. Their voices rose to the vaulted roof of the building and echoed off its walls.

  ‘And did those feet, in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the Holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen?’

  And my anger, which had been simmering close to boiling point, turned to near blind fury.

  This was the same damned hymn everyone had sung at our wedding.

  For God’s sake.

  It was Roy’s favourite, because it was the English rugby anthem. I remembered so very clearly, all those years ago, standing at the altar at All Saints Church, Patcham, with Roy on my right, on the happiest day of my life. About to be married to the man I loved, and with whom I wanted, without any question, to spend the rest of my life.

  Was Barbie, standing beside him now, as happy as I had felt?

  I blinked away tears but more replaced them. Bruno squeezed my hand for a moment. He didn’t understand what was going on but he knew I was upset. I fumbled in my handbag for a tissue, lifted my veil a little and dabbed my eyes.

  ‘Mama?’

  I silenced him with a raised finger, then stood still, shaking, listening.

  ‘I will not cease, from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, ’til we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.’

  Hans-Jürgen was always spouting quotations at me. There was one, his favourite, that was resonating now. It went something like, For all of us, life is a series of journeys, and at the end of each journey, we arrive back at the place we started from, and know it for the first time.

  That was me, now. Here in the church. Listening to the fading sound of the organ and the echo of our wedding hymn. Realizing just how much I loved this man standing at the altar, and had always loved him.

  And knowing it so deep inside.

  Time was running out.

  I had to stop this.

  I took a deep breath.

  Roy looked so calm, standing so upright, so confident. Was this how the congregation had seen him on our own wedding day?

  Father Martin began speaking. ‘In the presence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we have come together to witness the marriage of Roy and Cleo, to pray for God’s blessing on them, to share their joy and to celebrate their love.’

  ‘Mama, who are they?’

  He said it so loudly an elderly woman in front of us turned round, glaring.

  I raised a silencing finger again. ‘Sssshhh!’ I said.

  ‘Marriage is a gift of God in creation through which husband and wife may know the grace of God. It is given that as man and woman grow together in love and trust, they shall be united with one another in heart, body and mind, as Christ is united with his bride, the Church.’

  I had to stop this. Somehow, I had to find the strength to do it. This was what I had come to do.

  ‘The gift of marriage brings husband and wife together in the delight and tenderness of sexual union.’

  I couldn’t help it. I let out a stifled cry.

  ‘Mama?’ Bruno looked at me, alarmed, squeezing my hand again tightly with his own tiny one.

  ‘And joyful commitment to the end of their lives. It is given as a foundation of family life in which children are born and nurtured.’

  More words went over my head as I thought more and more how I had never before considered Roy making love to another woman. About him doing the same things to her that he had done to me. He’d been an incredible lover. Always considerate, always determined to satiate me fully before himself. None of the other sexual relationships I’d ever had came close. And now, tonight, he would be going to a bedroom somewhere, and would make love as a new husband to his new bride, and no doubt do all the things to her we had done. And he’d be telling her they were soulmates. And not think for one damned second about me. About all we had once been and once had.

  If I didn’t intervene.

  The moment was getting closer. Less than a minute or so away, now. Father Martin continued towards the point of no return.

  ‘Roy and Cleo are now to enter this way of life. They will each give their consent to the other and make solemn vows, and in token of this they will each give and receive a ring.’

  I realized I was twisting the ring Roy had put on my finger nearly two decades ago.

  ‘We pray with Roy and Cleo that the Holy Spirit will guide and strengthen them, that they may fulfil God’s purposes for the whole of their earthly life together.’

  I took a deep breath. Another. Then another.

  NOW!

  This was my moment. The chance to change my life. To go back to how it all had once been. I took yet another long, deep breath. Ran through the words again in my head.

  YES, I KNOW A REASON! HE’S ALREADY MARRIED. TO ME!

  Father Martin said, loudly, but with a smile, ‘First, I am required to ask anyone present who knows a reason these persons may not lawfully marry to declare it now.’

  And suddenly, without warning, Roy turned and looked half comically back down the aisle, staring straight at me, it seemed. Staring straight through the veil into my eyes.

  I froze.

  He turned back to face the altar.

  My legs had become unsteady and I had to hold on to the back of the pew in front of me for some moments. I thought I was going to throw up.

  Had he seen me? Could he somehow know I was here? How?

  It wasn’t possible.

  But, I realized, what I wanted to do now wasn’t possible.

  I had made this long journey to stop the wedding, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the strength. I didn’t have . . .

  A tornado of confusion was raging in my mind.

  I have to do it.

  Have to.

  Have to.

  NOW!

  But I just stood, frozen. Terrified suddenly.

  ‘The vows you are about to take are made in the presence of God, who is judge of all and knows all the secrets of our hearts.’

  I gripped Bruno’s hand so hard. Then, ignoring the sea of faces, I dragged him, half running, out of the church and out into the sunlit afternoon.

  ‘Mama!’ he protested.

  Behind us I heard Father Martin’s voice. ‘Therefore if either of you knows a reason you may not lawfully marry, you must declare it now.’

  I stood still, listening hard. Hoping. Half hoping.

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘Ssshhhh!’

  ‘Roy, will you take Cleo to be your wife? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?’

  The silence seemed eternal. Then I heard the words I dreaded. Faint, but distinct enough. Like the whisper of a ghost.

  ‘I will.’

  Dragging Bruno by his hand again, I ran, stumbling, blinded by my tears, down the church path to the road, and back up the hill towards where I had parked the rental car.

  103

  November 2017

  Two men, one very tall, one very short, stood in protective oversuits and face masks, inside the lock-up garage in Munich. They looked a bit like a pair of rather shabby CSIs. This garage was shabby too, the kind you could rent cheaply pretty much the world over. Plasterboard inside a corrugated iron shell and a roller-shutter door. Big enough to fit a large car and to be able to work on it without bashing your elbows on the beat-up walls.

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to have bought a used one?’ the short guy asked. ‘There must be ones for sale all the time.’

  ‘The boss said no,’ the tall guy responded. He was adjusting the nozzle on the gas cylinder with which he would, in a few moments, begin spray-painting the stolen five-year-old Mercedes E-Class estate a specific shade of cream. The car was sitting up on jacks, minus its wheels, with its bumpers, mirror and chrome grille covered in protective tape.

  ‘You know your problem?’ the short one said. ‘You’re halfway up the boss’s backside.’

  ‘And you know yours?’ the tall one replied. ‘When you were born they threw the best part away.’

  Both of them pulled their masks down over their faces as the tall one fired up the spray gun and set to work.

  When he had finished, the short one set to work on the electrics, checking everything was in working order. And, most important of all, the yellow and black roof light.

  104

  November 2017

  ‘Tell me, how did you feel in the church, Sandy?’ Dr Eberstark asks.

  Bruno and I had flown back yesterday, just managing to get the last two seats on the only afternoon flight to Munich. With my head all over the place, I hadn’t thought to book any return tickets to Munich. Why? What had I thought was going to happen if I stood up and halted the ceremony?

  I was still trying to process it all. What I had done – or rather oh so nearly done – scared me, because I realized I still wasn’t right in the head.

  ‘I felt like an alien. I realized I didn’t know his world any more. And I kept thinking what a mistake I’d made.’

  Dr Eberstark said nothing, as if giving me space to continue. After some moments, I did, but my voice was faltering, and I was close to tears again.

  Eventually I had to stop and sobbed, feeling so sad. I just couldn’t help thinking, why did I let it all get so far? Why didn’t I tell him I was alive much sooner? I might have had a chance of getting him back. It was going around my head in a loop.

  Then, sniffing, trying to keep it together, I said to Eberstark, ‘Such a big bloody mistake. When I realized that, I wanted him back so much, I wanted to be there, I wanted to be that woman.’

  ‘Yet you left him,’ he said unhelpfully.

  ‘Yes. I left him. I guess I didn’t know then what I know now. I wanted him back so badly. Really, at that moment when the priest guy – the vicar – asked if anyone knew any reason they should not be joined together in holy matrimony, I nearly shouted out that I did. Really, I so nearly did. That’s what I had gone there intending to do.’

  The psychiatrist waited silently.

  I was gathering my thoughts. I know I’ve made a total mess of everything. I wouldn’t do it the same way again. I have learned and matured. But I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t care. I told him I feel I’ve screwed up my life. How every day I wake up in the morning and I lie to my son. He asks me about his father and I don’t tell him the truth. I’m scared I’m going to screw him up. That some days I think I should kill myself. He replies by asking me if I’ve thought about the consequences of that on Bruno. Like I haven’t thought about that! Of course I have. But these things are all in my thoughts. Some days are more positive, some not so much. Some days I just feel desperate and want someone to come along, give me a hug, take over and tell me everything is OK again.

  I talk for a few minutes before Dr Eberstark glances at the clock on the wall.

  ‘We’ll have to leave it there,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you on Thursday. Is that OK with you?’

  Always.

  After I closed the front door of Dr Eberstark’s building, wrapped up in my coat, scarf and gloves, I walked out onto the pavement alongside the four lanes of heavy traffic on Widenmayerstrasse, and stopped, staring at the wide grass bank of the Isar river across the street.

  How many sessions with strange – and expensive – Dr Eberstark had I now had? Were they getting me anywhere? Sometimes I left his consulting room feeling strong, but other times, like now, I left feeling more confused than ever.

  As the traffic thundered past, I wondered if now was the time, finally, to tell Roy – newly married Roy – about Bruno. Surely he needed to know, in case anything happened to me?

  That would sure as hell throw a spanner into his newly wed bliss.

  How would Cleo take the news?

  How would Roy?

  Roy was a kind man at heart. He would take responsibility, because he would have no option. But how much did he care for Cleo, really? He’d kept telling me, during our life together, that he could not live without me. Well, he seemed to be doing pretty well, so far. But maybe she was just a poor substitute. Maybe he was still burning a candle for me?

  It was cold, bitterly cold. I felt cold through to my bones and thought for a moment about abandoning my usual constitutional along the riverbank, after my sessions with Eberstark, and just heading for the warmth of home. But I decided the air would do me some good, clear my head.

  My sodding confused head.

  I looked right then left. For an instant I was back in Brighton, in England. Where the traffic drove on the opposite side. I looked to the right, and the road was clear. Then some kind of clarity returned. I was in Germany, they drive on the right here. Then I stepped out. Look left, then right then—

  The roar of an engine.

  I fleetingly saw the front of the cream Mercedes, with the yellow and black roof light. It said TAXI.

  Then it felt like a brick wall had hit me broadside.

  105

  December 2017

  Murmured voices intermittently intruded into the constant loop of weird movies playing inside my head.

  I repeatedly heard the kind-sounding voice of a man who told me he was Dr Stockerl. I was under his care.

  I wasn’t able to open my eyes or move anything, but I could hear them, and piece together, bit by bit, what had happened. I was in a coma, I heard them say. Apparently no one had told them that people in comas could hear everything that was going on. Well, I could.

  The narrative went that I had stepped out in front of a taxi. It had hurled me 10 metres along the road. As I lay there, some bastard on a motorbike had stopped, grabbed my handbag and ridden off.

  Another time, I heard them talking about a small boy.

  I wanted to open my eyes and tell them. This was my boy, my son. But they wouldn’t open. My mouth wouldn’t work. Nothing worked. I was like a corpse but still alive inside my dead body. I had the sensation of being underwater, in a swimming pool, and there were people on the surface totally disconnected to me. But I could hear them. Every word.

  They were saying a small boy, upset that his mother had not turned up to collect him from football, had gone to stay the night with a friend.

  That would be Erik.

  Erik’s mother had come to the hospital the next day and identified me as her friend. Frau Lohmann.

  Then I heard them talking about the police. That Frau Lohmann was not my real name. That I seemed to have several names and was connected to a missing Greek drug dealer who had lived in Jersey. Gossip was I might have been involved in his disappearance.

  I so much wanted to wake – and see Bruno – and tell them the truth.

  One nice lady, who told me she was a nurse, talked to me every time she was on shift. I had the sense she knew I could hear her. She told me I was in the Intensive Care Unit of the Klinikum München Schwabing.

  At some point when she was talking I did open my eyes, blinking against the light, and saw a woman in hospital scrubs looking down at me. The badge on her chest read, Stationsschwester Frau Koti Fekete.

  But my eyes closed again almost immediately.

  ‘Come back to us,’ she said, quietly. ‘Wake up! Your son needs you!’

  My son. Bruno. Roy’s son.

  I needed her to tell Roy. Desperately needed her to do that. To tell him so much. But it took all my strength to say just one thing.

  ‘Tell him I forgive him,’ I murmured.

  ‘Tell who?’ she replied.

  106

  March 2018

  It was four months since my accident, Stationsschwester Frau Fekete told me – as I had no sense of time at all – when I re-entered Planet Earth in some small capacity as a sentient human being. Almost every part of my body hurt and I had only limited mobility without excruciating pain – despite being attached by a cannula to a morphine drip, among other drip lines plumbed into me.

  There’s a word in German that I particularly like. I like the way it sounds and I like what it means. Gemütlich.

  It translates as ‘pleasant’, but actually it means so much more than that. I don’t think there’s a word in the English language that adequately conveys the feelgood factor of the word.

  That’s what it felt as I stared up at a man in scrubs, with warm brown eyes that seemed almost to be dancing. The badge on his lapel read Dr Stockerl.

  ‘I think you are back with us now, Sandy,’ he said in English with a strong accent. ‘Would you prefer I speak in English or German?’

  ‘Either. Maybe English, bitte?’

  I was on a bit of a morphine high at the moment and I smiled at him and wanted so much to tell him just how gemütlich he was. But then he talked me through all the injuries I had sustained in the accident, and suddenly he seemed so serious. He delivered a litany of bad news about my condition.

  And suddenly he wasn’t at all gemütlich any more.

  When he had finished dispensing all the gloom and doom I thought it was possible to hear, he added further to it. ‘Munich Police are very anxious to speak to you about your accident. Do you feel up to talking to them?’

  I didn’t feel at all up to speaking to anyone after the information dump I’d just had. But I was curious. My memory had returned – at least some of it – and I was thinking back to the last time I’d spoken to Munich Police – soon after I had arrived at the schloss. How many years ago? Six, seven?