‘They’re both from the DDR. The one with the red wall on it is from 1961; the other’s from a couple of years ago. A colleague brought them back as souvenirs from a conference his less conservative school turned a blind eye to. Look, there it is – Stalinallee.’
She pointed to a wide road marked on the East side of the older map.
‘Let me see the postcard. Yes, I thought so. This street is famous, or at least it is over there. “Exemplary homes for exemplary workers” was how it was described to my colleague.’ She pulled the newer map across. ‘You were right to think it would be renamed after Stalin died. There: Karl Marx Allee – can you see it?’
Karen nodded.
The teacher picked up the postcard.
‘Why is tracking this man down so important, Karen? Don’t say work – the message on this card is very personal. Is it to do with your mother?’
The question was so unexpected it left Karen groping for a chair, unable to answer.
Mrs Dennison, a title Karen knew she would take a while to get used to, kept talking.
‘We all knew what happened, of course. It was on your records. But your father didn’t want anyone discussing it. He was so broken, so desperate for you to make a fresh start. And you were such a spiky little thing, a proper little porcupine. Things would be done differently now, but then…’
‘Least said, soonest mended?’
Mrs Dennison nodded and passed Karen a tissue. Karen wiped her eyes and traced a finger round the blank space on the newer map.
‘It’s awful now to admit it, but it never dawned on me, when she died, that my father was damaged. He was so, I don’t know, stoic. I barely knew him then. I thought I hated him; I certainly acted like I did. And now he’s very sick and I’m full of questions, and even if he was well enough for me to ask them, neither of us know how to deal with the other.’
She held out her hand for the card and turned it over to look at the signature.
‘I don’t know why my mother did what she did, and everything I’ve learned about her since just adds to the mess. So when I found this postcard, it felt like a sign. This Michael matters – I’m sure of it. I think he was in love with her, although I’ve nothing but a look in a picture and a cryptic message to base that on. He was at her wedding and still worrying about her years later, so I know he must have been an important person in her life. What I don’t know is why. So I’m going to write to him, see if he’s still there in Berlin. It might come to nothing, but at least I’ll have tried. I’ve spent long enough not doing that.’
‘Will you tell your father?’
Karen tucked the card into her bag.
‘That I’m going to try and track down Michael? No, I don’t think so. Afterwards, maybe, if there’s anything to tell.’
She couldn’t admit she was afraid that, if she did, Andrew would try his hardest to stop her.
She shouldn’t have come. She knew that before the nurse chased her away. She hadn’t meant to upset him. Now that she had received an answer from Berlin, all she had wanted to do was share her excitement and show him the letter. How was she supposed to know her father would panic when she produced it? She knew he couldn’t talk yet, that his throat was still damaged and swollen from all the tubes they had used. She didn’t think he would try so hard to shout, because that was what his twisted face told her he was trying to do, or that his blood pressure would spike so high the crash team would come running. She felt terrible, she really did, but no one would believe her.
‘Your father has been seriously ill, he is not yet recovered and you, despite every warning, have thoroughly upset him.’
The Mountbank’s warden was clearly struggling to restrain his temper. Karen could barely look at him.
‘We had such hopes. He had transitioned well from hospital to here. We were on course to move him from our higher-level care into his own apartment in a month or so; the more independent way of living he quite rightly craves. Well, I’m afraid to say that you could have set his recovery back weeks. We cannot allow this, Miss Cartwright. If your visits are going to upset him so badly, perhaps you should consider curtailing them.’
Karen found herself out in the grounds before she could defend herself, still clutching the letter that had caused all the trouble, that Andrew had recoiled from as if it was poisoned as soon as she had told him who it was from.
‘What have you done this time?’
Mrs Hubbard came bowling up between the flower beds like a bad-tempered ram, dragging a thin-haired girl Karen recognised as a taller version of one of the granddaughters who used to torment her when she was young.
‘He’s in a right state apparently. I had to call Sandra off her lunch break to get me here.’
‘Why would they send for you?’
Karen had already endured one telling-off – she was in no mood for another. But she stopped bristling and stepped back when Mrs Hubbard’s face contracted.
‘Because he’s in distress and I’m his “first-line contact”, as he always likes to call it. As good as next of kin. What? Did you think the person he chose to rely on would be you?’
Before Karen could react, Mrs Hubbard roared into life like an over-revved car.
‘You really haven’t a clue. As if he would turn to you after the way you’ve treated him – neglected him if I’m going to be honest, which it’s high time I was. You always were a little madam, looking down your nose. Nothing was ever good enough. You were so cruel to your father, I could have cheerfully slapped you. I had hoped his illness might have brought out a nicer side, but oh no. It’s all about you, isn’t it? Don’t tell me, I can guess: you’ve been up to your old tricks. Disturbing things, never letting anything lie.’
She was red-faced with exertion, a sheen of sweat coating her upper lip despite the stiff February wind. Her granddaughter’s narrow gaze shot daggers.
Karen knew she should have kept her dignity and walked away, but the ferocity of this attack, combined with the warden’s anger, boiled up her blood.
‘How dare you speak to me like this! You’re always sticking your nose in, interfering. You always were. In our house all the time, in our business. It wasn’t exactly fun for me either after my mother died, stuck alone with him. And I had to go disturbing things, as you call it, because no one would tell me anything. Well, here’s a thought. Why don’t you do something useful for a change and actually tell me something real about my mother, instead of hoarding secrets like he does.’
Mrs Hubbard drew herself up into a square.
‘Tell you something real? What kind of agony-aunt nonsense is that? Always in your business? Well, thanks be to God that someone was. So you want something real? How about this: that I looked after you every time she couldn’t, which was a lot. Or how about that I helped run your house as well as my own when your poor father was desperate. That was very real – that drove my Bob demented. But what choice did I have, with your poor father trying to look after you, and look after her, and hold down a job, and almost breaking under the weight of it all? It was an impossible task for any man.’
She sucked in a breath; Karen jumped into the pause.
‘But why did you need to? Why couldn’t my mother do it herself?’