A Twist of Fate

by Joanna Rees

  And later, as they’d trudged through the frozen snow towards the dim, distant lights of the hotel, she’d known that the time had finally come for her to do the same.

  ‘Michael, there’s something I want you to know,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ His voice sounded buoyant, maybe as a result of the beers they’d drunk with the meal, or maybe because of everything he’d just got off his chest. Because it had been good, he’d told her, to talk about it all like that, after all this time.

  She almost said nothing then, hating the fact that she was about to bring him down. But still she pressed on. Now or never. Say nothing to him now and you know you never will.

  ‘That day,’ she said. ‘That day Brett fired me. It wasn’t just Scolari that made me go,’ she said.

  Michael’s eyes grew dark. Every time she’d mentioned Brett it was the same. Thea knew he was still furious with her for not letting him go and confront Brett himself.

  She took a breath, bracing herself. ‘He has a film of me and . . . well . . . a colleague.’

  She squeezed her lips together, remembering those shaming images of her and Reicke. Reicke, who’d avoided talking to her ever since, who’d hurt her feelings and who, she realized now, had probably been blackmailed by Brett into trapping her.

  ‘It was something I never should have done, but Brett had our encounter, our . . . ’ she swallowed hard ‘. . . our sexual encounter recorded somehow. He told me he was going to send a copy – to you and the board – unless I went, straight away.’

  Michael stopped under a lamp-post. ‘He threatened you with that?’

  Thea nodded. Her chin trembled. This was the one secret she’d held on to. It was the one thing left that Brett had on her, which he could use against her. And now that it was out, she had no idea how Michael might react.

  ‘You promised me. You promised me that you’d tell me if he hurt you again.’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ she said, tears suddenly choking her. ‘I was too ashamed. And too terrified about what you’d think, if Brett sent you the film.’

  Michael let out a growl of frustration and put his head in his hands.

  ‘I’ve been so scared. So scared he’d do it anyway. So scared he’d try and destroy us. You and me.’

  ‘So you walked away from everything, because of that?’ Michael said. ‘Because of what you thought I might think?’

  She nodded, tears tumbling from her eyes.

  ‘Do you think I’d let him come between us?’ Michael asked her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thea said. ‘All I know is that I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you.’ The words came then. She couldn’t stop them. They came from the deepest place inside her, where she’d refused to look, where she’d kept them buried for so long – not understanding them, refusing to accept them, because she’d always been too busy focusing outwards on the rest of her life. ‘Because I love you, Michael. Because I think I always have.’

  ‘Oh, Thea,’ he said, stepping towards her and folding her into his arms.

  Then his lips were on hers. His kiss felt so right, so powerful, like a charge running right through her. They stayed there together, as the cold snow swirled around them, locked tight and kissing more passionately, until she thought that she might faint.

  The next morning Thea couldn’t stop smiling as they left the small hotel and stepped into the sunshine. The snow had frozen overnight into twinkling crystals and the sky was a clear, endless blue.

  Michael joined Thea on the steps and put his hand in hers, taking a deep breath of fresh air. It felt as if they were honeymooners. They’d certainly behaved like honeymooners. The sex last night had been incredible, and although neither of them had slept, Thea felt bright and wide awake.

  ‘Why don’t we stay?’ she asked, smiling across at him.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Why not? Oh, Michael. I think this is the first time I’ve felt’ – she grinned like a little girl – ‘well, happy, for as long as I can remember.’

  He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. And as she stared into his eyes, all the other terrible things that had happened to her lately, and all the frightening revelations she’d undergone, seemed to loosen their grip and their power over her. She and Michael had each other. And they had a future together, she just knew it; but right now she had this moment and she knew she didn’t need anything else.

  ‘Me too,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘But come on. Let’s go and check out the bakery.’

  The bell above the door chimed as Thea and Michael walked in, and Thea felt the rush of hot air and the smell of freshly baked bread. Shiny brown plaits of strudel were laid out neatly behind the counter. Loaves were stacked high on shelves behind the old-fashioned till.

  ‘We are looking for a man called Sebastian Trost,’ Michael explained in German to the burly man dressed in a white apron who was standing there waiting to serve them.

  The man looked immediately suspicious. He glanced towards an old woman who was standing over by a heater in the corner of the shop. Thea noticed how she pulled the knitted shawl around her shoulders, clearly wary of strangers.

  But Michael was charm itself, and soon Thea and Michael were ushered upstairs, where the woman – Thea’s heart was pounding, she could hardly believe their luck – Martina Trost, lit the small gas fire in the cramped apartment. Embroidered headrests covered the brown utilitarian furniture. Michael chatted the whole time, offering compliments and encouragement, some of which Thea picked up in her rudimentary German, but all of which seemed to soften Martina.

  An old man sat in a chair in the corner. His eyes had an opaque kind of look, but they turned towards Thea and Michael as Martina showed them in.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked gruffly in German.

  Martina answered, equally irritably, walking briskly over to him. She whispered something harshly in his ear, which made him sit up straight. She then began neatening him up. She brushed biscuit crumbs from the grey stubble on his beard and took off the bib he was wearing. Underneath was a neat shirt and jacket. These people may be poor, Thea thought, but they certainly didn’t lack pride.

  ‘This is Sebastian Trost, my husband,’ the woman said. ‘So what is this news you have brought for us from America?’ she asked.

  From the look on her face, and the sudden look of concentration on her husband’s brow, Michael had done more than suggest they were bringing news, Thea deduced. He’d clearly implied there might be something – such as money – in it for them too.

  ‘We are looking for information,’ Michael explained, leaning close to Sebastian now. He delivered the bullet then. ‘We know you were Volkmar’s driver.’

  Martina hovered. ‘Volkmar?’ Her voice was shrill. Thea noticed her backing into the corner, scared now of Michael, eyeing the door, no doubt thinking of her own son downstairs. Sebastian said nothing. But Thea noticed his grip tightening on the brown wooden arm of his chair.

  ‘We want to know about a baby that Volkmar once came into possession of somehow. In 1971. A baby he gave to a man called Walchez. A baby he probably sold.’ Michael let the word echo through the air like a curse. ‘Were you there?’ he then asked. ‘Do you remember?’

  Martina’s shrill voice interrupted again. She talked quickly and urgently to her husband. She was scared, Thea could tell that much. She might have even decided they must be the police.

  Sebastian held up his hand. ‘Nein,’ he told her.

  It was the first time Thea had heard him speak and his voice was surprisingly strong.

  He rolled his hand for Michael to continue talking. Martina stayed frozen in shock.

  Michael nodded at Thea. It was her turn to speak.

  ‘I think I might have been that baby,’ she said, nodding to Michael to translate as she pulled the yellow blanket from her shoulder bag.

  Martina gasped. In two steps she crossed the room and snatched the blanket away from Thea, her voice rising as she
started gabbling at her husband, inspecting the blanket, turning it over in her hands. She shouted at Sebastian.

  Alarmed, Thea tried to follow what she was saying, but Sebastian’s hands were reaching for Thea. He leant forward in his chair, grabbing her desperately.

  ‘You . . .’ he whispered, in English. ‘You’re alive . . . You’re here?’

  Martina started talking again, but suddenly she was stopped dead in her tracks by Sebastian, whose bony hand stretched out and touched Thea’s cheek.

  ‘You know me?’ Thea asked.

  ‘You were going to America, with Walchez. I thought . . . I thought . . .’ Sebastian said. He let out a long sigh and sat back in his chair.

  ‘Do you know where I came from?’ Thea asked.

  Sebastian shook his head, turning it towards her voice. ‘Volkmar.’

  Michael spoke to him rapidly – forcefully – again.

  Thea listened as the old man began to speak in German once more. This time his eyes welled up with tears. Thea could only follow some of it, but she sensed the emotion he was describing as he recalled a night in the forest long ago. And the men there. Volkmar. Solya. Udo. Their names clear in his description. And his fear of them.

  Michael frowned at Thea.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s saying . . . “But what about the other one?” He’s adamant there was another one.’

  ‘What does he mean? Another what?’ Thea asked, confused.

  Michael turned to Thea as Sebastian continued to talk. ‘Another baby,’ Michael said. ‘There was another baby there that night with you. In a green blanket. Your sister.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  November 2009

  A feeling of dread rose up inside Romy Scolari as she gripped the steering wheel of Lars’s camper van and turned north onto the potholed road towards Schwedt.

  She remembered her childhood as being cold and grim. But the bright sunlight today made the snow dusting the high pine trees on either side of the road sparkle and glare. Romy snatched her sunglasses from the dashboard, feeling a fleeting sense of relief and security from the anonymity they gave her as she hurriedly put them on.

  A beeping sound jolted her. She delved through the wreckage of fast-food containers and Coke cans on the passenger seat for the little yellow mobile phone that had been her lifeline since she’d left Amsterdam. But there were no new texts, she saw. Just a message informing her that she’d run out of credit.

  It was hardly surprising. She and Lars had talked on it so much since she’d left, even though he’d said it was only for emergencies. But the further she’d driven from him and the closer she’d got to here, the more her confidence that she’d been doing the right thing had wavered, and the more she’d needed to hear the reassuring sound of his voice.

  She hadn’t used her own phone since she’d fled from Villa Gasperi. Or indeed any of her credit cards since she’d withdrawn a large amount of cash before leaving Milan. She’d been worried – correctly, Lars had confirmed – that through one of them her whereabouts could easily have been traced by the police, or even the media.

  And Romy was still determined to control her own destiny for as long as she could. Which meant handing herself in. Here, in Schwedt. As her ‘first declarative statement of innocence’ – a phrase that Tegen Londrom, Lars’s lawyer friend, had used when she’d spoken to Romy and had agreed to take on her case, as well as agreeing to fly to Germany to be with Romy when she gave herself up.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Romy said, watching the shadow of the van flickering anarchically over the utilitarian grey buildings that she passed.

  It was Lars who’d suggested that she talk out loud to his camper van. He’d said that he’d gone on a road trip when his wife had left him, running off with his best friend. He’d meandered through Europe as he’d tried to come to terms with it all, talking to himself, first to relieve the boredom and the loneliness he’d felt, but then because he’d known it was helping him too. He was now convinced that it had been the safe haven of the van that had helped him deal with his despair and his feelings of resentment and rejection.

  Romy liked the fact that this crazy vehicle, with its bright-yellow flower in a vase on its dashboard, and its collection of old Eighties record sleeves pinned to its tiny dining area’s walls, held a special place in Lars’s heart. And that in spite of this – or perhaps even because of it, she hoped – he’d become fond enough of her now to let her use it too.

  She thought back, by no means for the first time, to that kiss they’d shared in his kitchen, before they’d both remembered themselves and had broken apart. She thought, If this all ends well—

  ‘When this all ends well,’ she told herself, knowing that she had to truly believe that it would end well, or she might as well turn back now.

  Once this had all ended well – what she was doing now, putting her faith in justice and the law, setting out to clear her name of any guilt, once and for all – once that was all done with, she would see Lars again.

  She would see him, and the first thing she would do was kiss him. And not just on the cheek as a friend. But on the lips. As more than a friend. As a man she wanted to be with. To be happy with. One day perhaps even to build a life with. As someone with whom she could move on.

  She wished so much that all the difficulties – the police, the lawyers – were already behind her. And that this road trip had a different purpose. She added another flourish to the fantasy that had developed and sustained her over the last few days. She pictured herself on holiday in the van, with Lars and Gretchen and Alfie. The four of them together, watching the sun rise over the ocean somewhere. She wondered whether Alfie would fall in love with the van’s furry green seats and 1970s appliances as much as she had. She wondered whether he’d still like Lars.

  She prayed that one day she’d know.

  She turned on the radio, fiddling with the dial. She’d listened to a brilliant station all the way to Berlin, singing along to their ‘golden oldies’ hour, amazed that she still remembered all the words to the Bowie, Queen and Eurythmics songs. But then it had switched into modern dance music and she’d turned it off.

  Now, apart from a news channel, there was only static on the radio. She remembered the old guy in the laundry who’d taught her to read. Karl, wasn’t that it? He’d had a small battery-operated radio, but could never pick up any stations. Romy had thought it had been because Lemcke had somehow blocked the airwaves to stop them from hearing about the outside world, but perhaps the poor reception had just been a matter of geography after all.

  Only another mile to go. Another road sign flashed by.

  SCHWEDT.

  Even seeing the name instilled fear in her. It made it impossible to pretend, as she’d tried so often, that this place had never really existed, that she’d never really been here.

  She fumbled for a cigarette and lit it, remembering as she did so sitting with Lars on the balcony, but remembering the fire in the orphanage too.

  This is your past. And this is why you’ve come back, she told herself. To confront it. To admit it. To stop running from it and pretending it never happened. To become yourself. For the first time in your life.

  Such sights as the road sign – the memories they induced – Romy had already begun facing up to them throughout her journey here. Outside Berlin she’d stopped by the high wire fence surrounding the airport and had leant against the side of the van as she’d looked at the undercarriages of all the aeroplanes, remembering how she’d once been a stowaway taking off from this very runway.

  In the city centre she’d parked the van and had walked through the Brandenburg Gate, remembering Ursula and how they’d used to ride their bikes there on Sunday mornings. She remembered, too, the clothing factory, and playing poker with the guards, and the bag full of Lemcke’s cash that she’d kept hidden in her mattress.

  She now started reclaiming her earliest memories too, letting them live and breathe
again inside her mind. She’d shut them away for so long, buried them so deep, but now she pictured herself playing make-believe games in the yard with Marieke and Tomas, and how little Tara and the other small kids in the dormitory had snuggled up to her at night, pressing their cold feet against her back and her legs.

  As she drove through the swathe of forest on the outskirts of Schwedt, more memories sprang to life. The enormous height and shape of the trees left her feeling dwarfed. And the sky – that same vast grey expanse that she’d gazed at from the orphanage roof, which had seemed so solid, so much a part of her imprisonment, so ready to fall and crush her if she’d ever tried to escape – made her feel now as if she’d just travelled back in time. That she was a child again. That she was in danger. Every cell in her body screamed at her to turn back.

  She shook her head. She was a grown-up. An adult. A mother. With so much to live for that she would not allow herself to give up.

  As she entered the town’s outskirts and the forest diminished to nothing but a blur in the rear-view mirror, she felt the power of the past relinquishing its grip on her. Streets and houses blurred by.

  Schwedt. A town she’d heard plenty of – with its church bells and traffic – but had never actually seen.

  Anger rose up inside her as she drove along the main street, past a bakery where two people chatted in the sun. That this had always been so close. All these people. Their shops and their school. Hadn’t they ever wondered about the orphanage and the abandoned children imprisoned there?

  Even now, twenty-six years after she’d left, the fact that they hadn’t done anything – had turned a blind eye and carried on their lives as if nothing sinister were happening on their very doorstep – made her want to spit.

  She followed the signs to the municipal car park in the town square. She drove the van into an empty bay and sat for a long time with her forehead on the steering wheel. She waited until she felt calm enough to get out.