Liese stirred her coffee round and round, waiting for Andrew to speak. She presumed they would have divided the story between them.
‘The body got caught in a reed bed and came up with the January thaw.’
Andrew kept his eye on the waitress wandering between the half-empty tables as he spoke.
‘It was simple bad luck. Another mile down the river and we would have been clear.’
Simple bad luck: it felt more like a judgement.
‘All this time, she was so close. Barely ten miles away.’
Liese caught the glance that ran between the two men, saw them steel themselves in case she collapsed. She felt instead strangely calm, relieved in fact that the waiting was over. Eight weeks and one day. Fifty-seven mornings, fifty-six nights. So much willpower harnessed to move herself through them. She could feel her head lolling. She knew that tonight, as crazy as it sounded, she would sleep.
‘They will trace her back to me, won’t they? In the end?’
Michael looked away; Andrew nodded.
‘It’s not certain, but I think the odds against it have shrunk. There’s been so much reported at the trial about the guards’ cruelty; about the brutality they used so easily against the prisoners. There’s a lot of anger at how many of those women got away. Even in a place as dreadful as Ravensbrück, Lottie’s murder must have stood out. And you said there was a noticeable scar on the guard’s hand. She will be identified from it. However her husband tries to downplay what she was, someone will remember her; someone will step forward.’
Michael slammed his cup down and swore as coffee splashed across the table.
‘They should give you a medal.’
The waitress looked up but clearly thought better of coming over.
Liese reached out and slipped her hand round his. His fingers were stiff and cold. When he spoke, his voice choked and turned him back to the boy she used to tease in the salon.
‘It should have been us, Liese. Marrying, building a future. Giving Lottie brothers and sisters, the way that we planned. All of this, every cruel twist of this, is my fault.’
He was wrong, but the time for arguing over it had long passed.
She squeezed his hand as hard as she could. She couldn’t stay and risk the danger that would put him in. She couldn’t watch him suffer anymore; she knew he would never leave her or stop trying to protect her, not unless she forced his hand. So, despite the pain she knew it would cost, she had to make him go.
‘If they come for me, they’ll find you two. What you did will come out. I cannot bear to see either of you punished. That is all that has kept me going. That is what has stopped me doing anything else that would bring attention, from the police, from a coroner.’ She held on as Michael flinched. ‘I don’t care that much about me anymore – you know that. But I can’t let anything happen to either of you.’
‘Then choose me.’
She heard Andrew’s strangled gasp but she couldn’t think about that; she couldn’t be distracted or let Andrew’s voice in. She focused instead on Michael’s face. The distress in his eyes took her breath away, but she forced herself to stay steady.
‘I’m good at hiding, Liese – you know that. Or maybe we don’t need to hide. We could go to Russia with the connections I have, start again there. I can keep you safe. I love you. I can look after you, I promise.’
I promise. The two words that were all Liese needed to push him safely away.
She kept hold of his hand and she lied, for all three of them.
‘I don’t love you, Michael. I can’t. There are too many broken promises already between us. There are too many shadows.’
It worked. Michael got up and stormed away; Liese let him. She stayed upright; she stayed dry-eyed – she couldn’t allow herself to feel. She took what comfort she could in the knowledge that this would keep Michael away from prison and the shadow of a noose; it would keep him safe and free to start a new life.
She slipped her shaking hands under the table and turned to Andrew. He was watching her, his body so still it was as if he had frozen. If he understood the truth of what had just happened, of the sacrifice she had just made, he gave no sign.
‘How long will the arrangements for the wedding and our leaving take?’
‘A month at the outside. It will need a minimum of two weeks to organise your travel permit and passport. We have the permissions in place, which speeds everything up. I’m due to leave Germany shortly; I can request that moves up quicker. And I’ve found a church for the wedding that’s suitable. If that’s all right? I can change it, if that was presumptuous.’
He suddenly sounded as hesitant as a schoolboy.
Liese dug deep and found him a smile. ‘I’m sure it will be fine. Put it all in motion. There’s no sense in delaying. I’ll hand in my notice tomorrow. I’ll be ready.’
The relief in his sigh almost unfroze her. That and the brightness in his eyes he hid by busying himself with the bill. He was happy. He was too sensitive to the danger that still threatened – and to her – to show it, but Andrew was happy.
Liese waited while he fussed with the change and the correct amount for the tip and forced herself to breathe, calmly and slowly. She wouldn’t insult him by faltering.
The risks these men had taken. She hadn’t asked them to; she hadn’t wanted them to. All she had wanted was for them to let her finish her story the way that she chose.
And you could have made sure of that; you could have pushed them away, but you didn’t.
She had clung to them, because she needed them and, in very different ways, she had cared for them. Now she had to pay that debt along with the rest.
They got up from the table; Andrew helped her on with her coat.
He’s doing this out of love. Because he is happy and he has hope.
Liese slipped her hand into his and chose to be glad at that.
She focused on the goodness that was Andrew and clung to that choice as hard as she could through the whirlwind weeks of preparations that followed.
When nothing about the body appeared in the press beyond the fact of its discovery, she turned the choice into a promise, into a charm. She wrapped herself up in its hope like a cloak and hid behind it. From Michael’s misery at the sparsely attended wedding she had told him not to attend but he couldn’t keep away from. Through the shock of a windblown crossing across a sea far greyer than any lake. Through lonely days in a hostile village where her accent was enough to make backs turn.
Andrew is happy. I choose to be glad at that. Andrew deserves that, so my choice is enough.
A promise, a charm, a spell. After a year in England she had worn the words thin, but she kept on repeating them, praying that, one day, every last bit of them might turn out to be true.
Sixteen
Karen
Aldershot, May 1990
He didn’t look at her. He made a space between them on the bench so they wouldn’t touch. He spoke steadily, with a speed which didn’t offer pauses into which questions could leap. The economy and efficiency of her father’s telling was as marked as Michael’s.
‘The guard came into the dressmaker’s shop where your mother was working. She didn’t know Liese; Liese killed her. It wasn’t planned. Michael and I disposed of the body, but not well enough. It was found and identified. We didn’t think Germany was a safe place for Liese to be after that, so I married her and brought her to England. The burden of it all, in the end, was too much.’