Andrew took a step back; ran his hand through his hair.
Karen didn’t know what else to do but keep going.
‘I thought you were trying to control her. I know now you were trying to protect her. I should have trusted you more.’
There was a carved wooden bench a few feet away. He sat down heavily on it. To Karen’s relief, he left space for her to join him.
‘You found Michael then?’
She nodded.
‘You know about Lottie?’
When she nodded again, he sank back against the slats and closed his eyes. Karen started to panic.
‘Are you all right. Oh no! Is it your heart again?’
‘I just need a moment.’
Karen was half off the seat to get help when she felt his hand on her arm. He straightened up but didn’t move it. Karen sat as still as if a butterfly had found her.
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘Not much. He said you found Mother at a train station on her way back from the concentration camp. That you took her to hospital. That you… Michael said you developed a crush on her.’
Her father smiled. ‘That makes us sound like teenagers. I suppose, in a way, we were. Six years of war took our youth away. I was what in 1945 – twenty-nine? It sounds old enough to have had plenty of girlfriends, but I hadn’t. I certainly had never met anyone as lovely as your mother. And I was a romantic, casting myself as a knight in shining armour. Not that she ever asked me to. I think, if I’m honest, which I was less inclined to be then, she hated that I saw her that way, as someone who needed rescuing. It certainly wasn’t how she saw herself. Sometimes, I pushed her too far and her eyes would flare. I liked that sparky side of her.’
His cheeks were wet. Karen forced herself not to look at him.
‘But she had suffered terribly. She wouldn’t tell me much herself, but she had experienced things that went beyond my comprehension. I knew of the camps – we all did by then – but I’d never been in one. And what happened to her daughter…’
He sighed and shook his head in a way that reminded Karen of Michael restructuring himself.
‘I should have told you about Lottie, when you were old enough not to be frightened. I’m sorry. At least now you know why she did what she did. You know the whole story.’
‘But I don’t, do I?’
His hand withdrew.
Karen inched forward as cautiously as if she was sliding over newly set ice.
‘There are gaps; I can feel them.’
‘I don’t know what Michael’s been telling you, but this was all a long time ago. His memories are no doubt hazy.’
He had shifted away; she could feel him poised to get up.
‘He didn’t tell me: that’s the point. Michael was really careful. He didn’t want to talk about you and her – he said it wasn’t his place. But he let one thing slip: he said when he came to the hospital, Mother was angry. Not with him – he said she felt nothing for him – but with you. He wouldn’t explain why, or how that changed and how you ended up getting married.’
‘Because there was nothing to explain.’
When Andrew did scramble up, Karen was ready for him.
‘Don’t, Dad; please.’
Her unexpected softness and the use of a term she’d barely even used as an infant pulled him back down faster than her hand.
‘I swear I don’t want to hurt you. I’ve done enough of that. If you tell me I’ve got this wrong, that Mother’s suicide was solely because of Lottie and the agony from that she understandably couldn’t shake, that she married you for love and there are no more secrets, I’ll believe you, I promise.’
Karen let her hand drop; stopped talking; gave him the moment to leave. When he didn’t take it, when he sat still again, she took the cuttings out of her bag.
‘Would you look at these for me? Michael kept them. We – his son Markus and I – thought they might be important. He’s a good man, Michael’s son. He’s trying very hard to help all of us through this.’
Andrew nodded, although Karen could see he was reluctant. She handed him the piece about Suhren’s escape first and waited while he read it.
‘We wondered, Markus and I, if you were trying to find Suhren and get justice for Mother.’
He passed it back with a shrug and a look Karen could only read as relief.
‘I was never that fanciful. Michael may have considered it – he had a network of connections I wasn’t privy to – but he never mentioned it to me. Anyway, the French got Suhren in the end, hanged him in 1950. I’ve no idea about Michael’s motives, but this means nothing to me. I avoided the trial and tried to keep any mention of it away from your mother. Revisiting what happened there would have done her no good. I’m sorry but whatever this is, I can’t help you with it.’
His response was disappointing, but Karen had had enough experience of her father evading her to know when he was telling the truth.
‘Fair enough, but what about this one?’
When Andrew read the second article, the change was immediate. There was no relief. His tight edges dissolved as if he could no longer hold himself together. He shoved the cutting back at her as if the words were written in acid.
‘Why on earth would he have kept this? Karen, please. I can’t…’
Pain furrowed his face. It twisted Karen’s stomach to see him so haunted, but the crack she had been searching for had finally appeared and she had no choice except to force it wide open.
‘Did you think the body was Mother? Had she read about the trial and run away and you were afraid that someone had hurt her? Were the camp survivors in some kind of danger? Was that why Michael had this?’
‘Christ no! It was nothing like that.’
He was shivering.
I could make him ill again; I should stop.
She knew that she couldn’t.
‘Then what was it? Why was some drowned woman important? Was it a friend of Mother’s? Someone she was in the camp with? Were you scared what she might do if she found out? Michael said more than once that you were desperate to protect her.’
‘A friend?’ He made a noise that could have been a laugh or a sob. ‘You’re not going to give up, are you? Then yes, I was desperate to protect her; we both were. And yes, it was someone from the camp. Oh, Karen, my darling, you don’t get it – how could you? Ravensbrück was a women’s camp. All the guards there were female.’
Her father, the soldier playing the knight in shining armour; Michael, with Heaven only knows what training behind him.
Karen stared at her father as if she had never seen him before.
‘It was the guard, in the river. The one who murdered Lottie. You and Michael killed her.’
Andrew raised his head and stared back at his daughter. His face was as white as a corpse.
Fifteen
Liese
Berlin, November 1946–April 1947
The shop was quiet.
The frost-laced November wind had pushed the pedestrians back to their firesides, ready for a tucked-in Friday night. Herr and Frau Herber had already left, gone to visit their daughter in the countryside to stock up on the butter and cheese that kept them both round.