I hear low voices and stop, puzzled. I’m wondering whether she’s on the phone when she suddenly appears before me. I quickly slip the key into my trouser pocket. She notices, but astonishingly enough says nothing.
What’s she up to?
Sarah
My assumption that the stranger will instinctively follow me into the kitchen proves right. Now is not the time to get annoyed that he has found my—admittedly very badly concealed—spare key, which I’m afraid I didn’t think of in time. I can see to that later.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, I sit back down on my chair while Miriam and Mrs Theis peer expectantly towards the door. Only Constanze continues to sip her tea calmly.
The stranger enters the room and stops in stunned shock when he realises we’re not alone. He immediately covers up his surprise, conjuring that look on his face again—that mixture of charm, strength and exhaustion that was so irresistible to the journalists—and Barbara Petry, too. He smiles at Mrs Theis. He smiles at Miriam. Then Constanze turns in her chair to face him. I watch him closely. The stranger is put off his stride for a moment—his expression slips. Maybe he knows or can guess who she is. It shouldn’t be that hard to put two and two together. He gives her a strange look—bewilderment? suspicion?—then collects himself and readjusts his mask. Before he can say anything, before he can come up with a strategy, before Miriam or even Mrs Theis can get up and introduce themselves, I rush in.
‘Constanze?’ I say, getting up. ‘I have a surprise for you. Philip’s here. Your son.’
She stares at the stranger. He can’t withstand her gaze even a second, and guiltily averts his eyes.
‘Constanze,’ I say, ‘aren’t you pleased to see him?’
Miriam frowns. Is it because of my chilly manner? Or because there’s a certain tension in the air? Mrs Theis seems to catch her breath too. Constanze still hasn’t spoken.
The stranger hesitates a moment longer, then seems to come to a decision. He raises his arms and takes a step towards Constanze, who sits there as if turned to stone. As he reaches out to hug her, she shrinks back, waving an indignant hand at him, then leans on the table, frail arms shaking, and pushes herself up. The table jerks beneath her hands, knocking over the milk jug, and the chair she was sitting on only a moment before falls over sideways with a clatter. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Miriam leap to her feet.
‘That’s not my son!’ Constanze says, her voice faltering. ‘That’s not my son! I’ve never seen that man in my life!’ She gasps for breath, as if these words have cost her all her strength.
Miriam is the first to react: frowning at me, she goes round the table to the old woman, steadies her, speaks soothingly to her. She’s wondering how I could inflict a shock like this on such a fragile soul.
The stranger hasn’t moved. As if in slow motion, he lets his arms sink back to his sides.
I triumph secretly. Good that Miriam and Mrs Theis heard that. Good that they’ve been talking to Constanze all afternoon and can testify that she was lucid and compos mentis when she spoke those words.
Miriam helps Constanze to sit down, and I’m just about to tell the stranger that he’s upsetting Constanze and had better leave, so that I can explain everything to Mrs Theis and Miriam, when Constanze starts to speak again.
‘My son is dead,’ she says. ‘My greedy, deceitful daughter-in-law killed him. Everyone in Hamburg knows that. Everyone.’
I feel all the colour drain from my face.
Mrs Theis and Miriam look at the floor in embarrassment.
Constanze gives a bitter laugh. ‘My son’s probably at the bottom of the Elbe.’
The milk from the overturned jug drips onto the wooden floorboards. I grip the back of a chair and watch, transfixed, as the milk forms a little white pool. Bigger and bigger it grows—plink, plink. I block out everything else until I see only its smooth white surface. I can feel my mouth hanging open, but I can’t close it. I am paralysed—and I’m not the only one. The entire room is frozen. No movement, no sound, no word. Horror and a hint of vanilla hang in the air.
Then Miriam breaks the spell. She makes reassuring noises, soft murmuring sounds, until gradually Constanze calms down. When the old woman begins to ask for her long-dead husband, I feel suddenly dizzy and drop into a chair.
Mrs Theis gets up then and excuses herself. ‘I think it’s time I was on my way,’ she says. ‘Got ever so much to do today.’ Within seconds she has vanished. I hadn’t realised she could be so nimble.
Miriam offers to take Constanze home, but I wave the offer aside. I can do that myself.
‘Are you sure?’ she asks.
I nod.
Miriam throws me a glance I can’t interpret.
‘We’ll wait outside,’ she says and begins to steer my mother-inlaw out, stopping by the door to tell the spurious Philip that she’s delighted to have met him at last and is sure they’ll see each other under more auspicious circumstances next time.
He goes to shake her hand, the perfect gentleman, then lingers at the door, blocking my way as I try to get past.
‘What was all that about?’ he snaps.
‘Your mother wasn’t exactly overjoyed to have you back,’ I say.
‘Do you want to talk about your mother, perhaps?’
That winds me, like a physical blow.
‘You’ll regret this,’ he whispers.
The stranger
Over the past years, I’ve learnt to cope with extreme stress—pain, hunger, fear. I was permanently exposed to the elements—to the wet, to the cold, to unbearable heat and humidity. Then there were all those creatures. My habit of shaking out my shoes and boots before putting them on, the way my fellow prisoners in camp taught me, will probably stay with me all my life. I remember sitting on my plank bed one morning and pulling my boots over to me, shaking the left one, shaking the right one—and then looking on in horror as an enormous bird-eating spider fell out and scuttled away.
Here in Hamburg there are no dangerous creatures. Only dangerous people.
But I know how to deal with those too.
I open the fridge and take out ham and cheese. I eat both straight from the packet. Once again, I run over the scene she staged. What was it all about? What did she hope to achieve?
I put the food back in the fridge, pour myself a glass of water and drain it in one draught.
Then I remember. I am suddenly wide awake. How could I forget? That is just the kind of negligence that could be my undoing.
I set to work at once.
Sarah
The sun is beating down. It’s the kind of day when children are taken to hospital with sunstroke and the elderly die of dehydration. The scene in the kitchen runs round and round in my head as I speed over the hot shimmering asphalt, Constanze beside me in the passenger seat. She is humming quietly to herself and seems positively cheerful. Spraying her poison has given her a kick, as it always does.
I flick on the right indicator, let a cyclist past and turn onto the main road. The street ahead is unusually empty. Anyone who can has left town, gone to the pool or at least stayed inside out of the sun. I glance at Constanze and see that she has closed her eyes and is smiling.
‘Everything all right?’ I ask.
‘Yes, thank you, Monika,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’
I have no idea who Monika is—one of the nursing-home staff, perhaps, or somebody from the past. It occurs to me how little I know about my husband’s mother.
Once out of my quiet area, the traffic is slow-moving. Constanze and I sit in silence for a while. When I’ve had enough of that, I put the radio on. Summery pop comes from the speakers, and I turn it off again.
‘I dreamt of my Green today,’ Constanze says. ‘My Philip.’
At once my heart begins to beat faster.
Her eyes are still closed, as if she can recall the dream images better that way.
‘Really?’ I ask, cautiously.
‘Yes.’
I shift into gear, then come to a standstill again at the next set of lights. I’m beginning to think that Constanze isn’t going to say any more when suddenly she goes on.
‘We were in a kitchen. Everything—the people, the place—seemed so familiar to me, and at the same time not at all, as so often in dreams. It was strange. We were eating cake, I think, and drinking tea. My son was there, my Philip, and my daughter-inlaw too. Then I was somewhere quite different, back in my room, I think. Do you have dreams like that, Monika, when you change place from one moment to the next and just carry on dreaming about somewhere quite different?’
Constanze opens her eyes and looks at me. Only she doesn’t see me—she sees Monika.
I nod. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I do.’
‘I have far too many dreams about my room,’ Constanze says. ‘If I had my say, I’d never dream about my room—it seems such a waste. Who knows how many dreams I have left? If I could choose, I’d dream I was flying a helicopter or going for a walk on the beach with my husband or playing with my little boy again, the way I used to.’
She relapses into silence.
The low sun is dazzling me. I don’t have my sunglasses with me and have to squint, concentrating on the road to make sure I don’t overlook any cyclists—but I’m still wondering how I can find out why Constanze said earlier that I killed her son. She can’t seriously think that.
‘You dreamt about your daughter-in-law?’ I prompt.
Constanze sniffs.
‘What did you dream?’
She doesn’t reply.
‘Constanze?’
No reply.
No sooner have we set foot in the reception area than Mrs Kawatzki comes hurrying to greet us. ‘The two Mrs Petersens,’ she says. ‘There you are again.’
In businesslike fashion she sets Constanze in a wheelchair. My mother-in-law suffers it without protest and Kawatzki accompanies us to Constanze’s room, perhaps hoping for some exciting snippets about Philip. As she manoeuvres the wheelchair into the lift, she comments on the sweltering heat and tells Constanze what’s for supper. ‘Have a nice afternoon did you, Mrs Petersen?’ she asks eventually.
Her tone gets me down—she always sounds as if she’s talking to a child. Constanze doesn’t reply and I’m glad. The lift doors close and an awkward silence descends. Mrs Kawatzki and I stare at the illuminated buttons telling us which floor we’re on. Constanze stares into space.
When we’ve dropped Constanze off in her room, I heave a sigh of relief, ready to say a quick goodbye and get away as fast as I can—away from this depressing place, and away from this woman, too, who was forever trying to poison my marriage, and whose venom is still deadly now, though she has grown so old and decrepit. I give Mrs Kawatzki my hand, thank her and turn to leave.
‘I had a strange dream,’ Constanze suddenly says. ‘About my daughter-in-law.’
I let go of the doorhandle and turn round.
Mrs Kawatzki smiles mildly. ‘What nice things did you dream about your daughter-in-law then?’ she asks.
‘I remember the first time my son brought her to see me—such a mousy little thing,’ says Constanze. ‘She was a student teacher—a dull-witted girl, no family, no ambitions, thoroughly common. And there was something in her look…’ She pauses to reflect on it. ‘Deceitful is probably nearest the mark,’ she says. ‘It was a mystery to me what Philip saw in her.’
Mrs Kawatzki looks awkwardly at the floor, but I’m sure she’s enjoying herself.
‘She looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but she didn’t take me in for a second. I can sense it when somebody’s hiding something. My mother always said I had it from my father, and he was a judge, you know.’
‘Your father was a judge?’ Mrs Kawatzki asks, evidently embarrassed after all and keen to change the subject.
Constanze nods. ‘I’ve been hearing my mother’s voice a lot lately,’ she goes on. ‘All kinds of things she used to say when I was a child have been coming back to me—it’s strange. So many things, all flying back to me—who knows where they’ve been all this time. Funny words we used when I was a child, for example. Tea was made in a treckpott, and the woman next door who helped bring little babies into the world was called the stork auntie. And do you know those big buzzing May bugs that come in the spring? We used to collect them, because they were lucky, but our word for them was eckelteev. I had such a happy childhood, you know. My mother was a beautiful woman. And my father was a fine man, only…’
Her voice trails off. I look across at her and see that she is frowning.
‘Where was I?’ She makes it sound more like a statement than a question.
‘The mousy little thing,’ I say. ‘Your daughter-in-law.’
Mrs Kawatzki clears her throat loudly, but doesn’t intervene. She is not, however, discreet enough to leave the room.
I don’t care.
‘Oh, her,’ says Constanze. ‘The first time he brought her to see me I had a good look at her, of course. I asked her things any mother would have asked, although Philip claimed it was more like an interrogation.’
I swallow heavily. I remember that meeting with a painful clarity.
‘When Philip told me he wanted to marry her—this was much later, I don’t know exactly when—I was flabbergasted. Horrified. I did what my husband would have done if he’d still been with us. I hired someone to make enquiries about her. And my gut instinct proved right. That drab little mouse wasn’t right in the head. I collected all the evidence and then presented it to Philip—the report about her spell in a psychiatric hospital, for example.’
Oh my God.
‘And all the rest.’
She knows.
‘He could see then what kind of a woman he was thinking of marrying. Or rather, he didn’t see. He wouldn’t listen to me. He swept the papers off the table and said he didn’t want to hear it, that he was a grown man, he trusted the woman and I’d have to get used to the idea. He didn’t even want to draw up a prenuptial agreement, the stupid boy. Then one day I got a card from abroad. Sarah and Philip Petersen. That wedding was a disgrace. They didn’t even have the decency…’
She lets the sentence fizzle out.
‘Did you have enough to drink this afternoon? You dehydrate so fast in this heat,’ says Mrs Kawatzki, but I interrupt before she can go on.
‘You said earlier that your daughter-in-law murdered your son.’ I try to strike a chatty tone, but Constanze doesn’t reply, apparently more interested in her knitting, which she tries, unsuccessfully, to fish off the table.
Mrs Kawatzki hands it to her and turns to me. ‘Maybe you’d like to come back some other time,’ she says. ‘Your mother-in-law obviously isn’t in a good way.’
‘I always warned Philip about falling for women who were only out for his money,’ Constanze says. ‘And then he went and did just that, the stupid boy.’
Mrs Kawatzki inhales sharply.
‘How do you know your daughter-in-law was only after the money?’ I ask.
‘Because I put her to the test,’ says Constanze. ‘I offered her money to leave Philip.’
What is she on about?
‘A great deal of money,’ says Constanze.
That isn’t true.
‘And how did she react?’ I ask.
‘It wasn’t enough for her,’ says Constanze. ‘She wanted more. She haggled.’
I shake my head. ‘Constanze?’ I say.
She turns her head and looks me in the eye.
‘That’s a lie,’ I say. ‘You’ve made that up. Maybe because you had such a grim marriage yourself and begrudged your son his happiness. Maybe because you didn’t know any better. Maybe because you’re just a bad person.’
Constanze blinks a few times.
‘Good Lord,’ she says eventually, her voice friendly. ‘None of that matters anymore anyway.’
I don’t know what to say.
‘Now for a cup of tea,’ says Constanze.
/> I leave the room without looking back, but her words are still with me when I’m in the car again and the nursing home is growing smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror.
The stranger
The pain in my head is so intense it’s almost blinding. I’m having trouble reining in my anger. I’ve searched all over the house but found nothing, and it’s gnawing at me. Grimm still hasn’t been in touch. But I’m okay. I’ll soon have a grip on myself.
Time for a change of tactics: I take a walk around the house, making a conscious effort not to look for hiding places, but to see everything with the eyes of a first-time visitor. I start upstairs, in the guestroom, already so familiar that it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes. The next room has Star Wars posters on the wall, a half-built Lego castle on the floor, a book of fairytales and a few comics in the bookcase. I try to imagine the life of the boy who lives here, but it eludes me. I take a comic from the bookcase and sit down on the bed with it, careful to avoid the blue checked shirt lying there. I leaf through the comic without really looking at it. I put it back, leave the room, resume my search.
I soon find myself in the main bedroom. Bed and wardrobe, bedside table, chest of drawers. Pink bed linen, cream carpet. A reading lamp on the bedside table, hand cream, a packet of tissues, a pair of earplugs, a pack of aspirin, a book, a phone charger. I turn the book over—Dostoevsky—then pop an aspirin out of the blister pack and swallow it without water.
I open the wardrobe. It is tidy and scrupulously organised. On the inside of the door, where no one can see it, an ancient poster announces a Radiohead concert.
I close the wardrobe and open the chest of drawers, which I have so far rejected as too obvious a hiding place. I rummage around a bit, but, as expected, find nothing. No old letters, no diary, nothing like that.
I feel a brief pang of guilt. Yes, you could feel sympathy for the woman who lives here, bringing up a small boy on her own. You might even mistake her for a perfectly normal person—respect her, maybe even admire her.
But she is not a good person—not the nice, rather reserved teacher and mother she makes herself out to be. I can’t let myself forget that. I’m probably the only person alive who knows what she is capable of.
The Stranger Upstairs Page 13
