Postcards From Berlin

by Margaret Leroy

  I go back to our room. Daisy is stirring, saying something incomprehensible, with her eyes still closed. I stroke her back and she drifts down deeper into unconsciousness.

  I get into bed and don’t expect to sleep. I lie there a while, staring at the light reflecting on the ceiling. But the noise through the window soothes me, like the massive breathing of some great resting animal, and I go to sleep and dream.

  This is the dream.

  It’s winter, in a wide white empty landscape, like a scene from a Russian epic. There are no people here or roads or houses, and it’s high and far and bitter in the cold. The shadows lengthen and snow lies over everything, and yet more snow is falling on the wind. A woman walks alone through the empty land. Her head is bent against the driving sleet. And in the dream I see this is my mother. She’s wearing a flimsy coat and lots of gilded bracelets, and her gloves are pastel cotton with ruched wrists, and her boots have high slender heels, so she stumbles in the snowdrifts. I think how typical this is — that she goes on even this unguessable journey in such unsuitable shoes. Night presses in: The cold light thickens so she can scarcely see. She moves on through the bitter drizzle of sleet; there’s somewhere she has to get to. The journey is long, but she just keeps walking, one foot in front of the other.

  At last she comes to a house set deep in a shadowed valley. The house is tall, substantial, built of stone, but looking shut-up, empty; Nails have been driven into the shutters to seal them against the storm. In the dream I seem to feel her dread. It’s a place to make you afraid, a place of desolation. She puts out a hand and pushes against the door. And it yields to her touch and she steps inside and it’s not as she expected: She sees what she could not see from the other side of the door. For there is light and warmth here, the lamps are lit, a stove glows on the hearth, heat wraps itself around her. Someone was here before her; she is expected, welcome. A pot of food is simmering on the hob: A good smell wafts toward her. The door in the front of the stove has been pulled open, to let the air flow in. Inside, there’s a red blaze of coals. She takes off her sodden gloves and flings them to the floor. The snowflakes melt, run off them. She kneels on the floor in front of the stove and holds out her hands to the blaze.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank everyone I have worked with at Little, Brown — in particular, my editor, Judy Gain, for her wisdom and empathy; Claire Smith, for her warmth and clarity in dealing with all the detail; and Betsy Uhrig, for her marvelously precise copyediting. I am also deeply grateful to my U.S. agent, Kathleen Anderson; and my U.K. agent, Jonathan Lloyd. Lucy Floyd has been a constant source of support and guidance, and Mick, Becky, and Isabel sustained me with their love and encouragement as always.

  I am indebted to the National Children’s Bureau, U.K., for permission to quote from Trust Betrayed, edited by Jan Horwath and Brian Lawson. Among the other books I read, there were two that I found particularly valuable: Hurting for hove, by Herbert A. Schreier and Judith A. Libow, and The Pindown Experience and the Protection of Children, the moving and disturbing report of the Staffordshire Child Care Inquiry conducted by Allan Levy, Q.C., and Barbara Kahan.

  About the Author

  Margaret Leroy studied music at Oxford and has worked as a music therapist, play leader, and social worker. Her previous books have been published in nine languages, and she has written widely for newspapers and magazines. She is married with two daughters and lives in London.

  A haunting, page-turning novel about a woman’s life unraveling when the past she is trying to escape comes back to haunt her—and her love for her daughter is turned against her

  It is the first day after Christmas break, and Catriona Lydgate’s daughter, Daisy, has been ill for weeks with a mysterious flu. Cat takes Daisy through a series of examinations, but the doctors can’t find anything wrong. Perhaps it is something in her daughter’s head, they suggest. Perhaps Cat is being manipulated?

  Cat finally finds a doctor who takes her seriously, and she trusts him with Daisy’s life—until she realizes that he suspects her of deliberately making her child ill.

  Cat’s life descends into parallel hells: she fears for her daughter’s life, and yet her concern is turned against her as her doctors and even her husband scrutinize her every act. Cat begins to lie about her past, afraid that events from her childhood could seal the case against her. For months, she has concealed postcards from Europe that threaten to blow her life wide open. For it is Cat’s past that has the power to save or destroy her—and there is nothing she won’t do to protect the thing she loves most.

  With almost unbearable suspense, Postcards front Berlin takes readers into a nightmare in which love is suspect and concern turns into harm. With dazzling psychological insight, Margaret Leroy has crafted an unforgettable novel that touches the deepest core of human experience.

  Margaret Leroy studied music at Oxford, and has worked as a music therapist, play leader, shop assistant, and social worker. She lives in London.

  “Margaret Leroy writes like a dream. Postcards from Berlin is a thriller, a reflection on the nature of parenting, and a love story that is all the more moving because it is about the love between a mother and her child. Gripping, disturbing, and moving, Postcards from Berlin goes straight to the heart.”

  —Tony Parsons, author of Man and Boy

  “What a storyteller Leroy is, and what an eye she has for contemporary life, not just the horror of it, but the beauty as well.”

  —Fay Weldon, author of Wicked Women and The Bulgari Connection

  “Margaret Leroy writes with candor and intelligence, capturing the menace of suddenly finding that the world may not be at all as you’ve thought it”

  —Helen Dunmore, author of A Spell of Winter and The Siege