Karen nodded, her mind whirling with thoughts it was impossible to voice.
No one had any more questions after that.
Andrew and Michael, Karen could see, were worn out. Markus was hovering around them, taking elbows when they reached rough ground, whispering words of encouragement when the old men faltered. Ilse led them back out of the camp and onto the lakeshore to where the Russian memorial stood. It was, as she had said, heartbreakingly beautiful. A bone-thin woman stood on a plinth, her head held up towards the heavens, cradling the broken body of a second woman, who was visibly nearer to death, in her arms.
Ilse offered to tell them the statue’s story; no one wanted it – they all had their own version.
As Ilse stepped back, the four of them formed into a line looking out over the lake and its long-buried secrets. No one spoke; there was no longer any need.
One by one, they kissed the two white roses they had each carried from the car. One for Liese; one for Lottie.
One by one, they threw the flowers out over the calm water.
There was no splash. There was no spray.
Each rose landed gently on the surface, as perfect in their beauty as the love that they carried.
Epilogue
Berlin, September 2001
We need places. To find our stories in. To be remembered in.
Karen watched the sun play across the sleek silver walls of Berlin’s newly completed Jewish Museum.
This is one. More are coming.
‘It’s really big. Did you build the whole thing?’
Karen realised Lottie was tugging at her hand and switched her attention off the museum and onto her daughter.
‘No, monkey. I was a small part of a very big team. Come on – let’s go inside. There’s something special Daddy and I want to show you, before the museum opens to everyone else tomorrow and gets really busy.’
She smiled at Markus, who swept the little girl into his arms and followed Karen’s lead through the huge entrance hall and down to the lower floors and the main exhibition galleries.
‘There we are.’
She didn’t need to point it out. Lottie had already wriggled out of her father’s arms and flown straight to the display case whose contents shone like a beacon even though the main lights weren’t yet on. By the time Karen and Markus caught up with her, Lottie’s nose and hands were pressed against the glass.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
Lottie nodded but she didn’t turn round.
The dress that had mesmerised the little girl was cut from gold lamé and flowed like liquid over the mannequin. It had a fluted train and was clasped round the middle by a rhinestone belt with a butterfly-shaped buckle. The most eye-catching part of the design, however, was the sleeves. They were a confection of swirls and pleats, each one wrapped in a wreath of material so intricately twisted it coiled round the fabric like a vine. It was the kind of dress Karen knew visitors would imagine springing into life once their backs were turned.
‘Do you see the card, Lottie? This dress was made by Haus Elfmann, the fashion house Grandma Liese’s parents owned, the one that she grew up in. Remember I told you about that, and how clever your grandma was with a needle? Opa Michael always says sleeves were her speciality. This dress could be one of hers.’
Lottie smiled at the mention of her grandfather. She adored both Opa England and Opa Michael as she called them, and they had shed years, and the last traces of their old resentments, with the little girl’s birth.
‘Why is that in there?’
Lottie pointed to a porcelain doll propped in the corner of the case, dressed in a miniature version of the gold gown.
‘That’s the really special bit. The museum staff let me put it in there. It’s for the other Lottie – the one you were named for.’
Lottie patted the glass as if she was stroking the doll’s blonde hair. ‘Your big sister who went to heaven?’
Karen nodded. ‘The doll and the dress are here because her story, and Grandma’s, is one of the stories that this museum was built to remember.’
Lottie turned to her mother, her eyes bright as diamonds in the dimmed hall. She wrinkled her nose in such a perfect imitation of Liese, Karen’s heart fluttered. Depending on her daughter’s mood, Karen could see traces of all of them in her heart-shaped face: Andrew and Liese; Michael and Markus; herself. More and more, however, as Lottie grew, Karen could see the strongly defined and separate character the seven-year-old was already becoming.
‘Do you think I could be like her?’
Karen frowned.
‘Like Grandma Liese? Do you think I could make dresses as beautiful as that when I’m big?’
Karen reached for her daughter at the same time as Markus’s arms encircled her; she couldn’t trust herself to speak. All the pain that had marked the past had finally been laid to rest; now it was time to look back and find the good, to feel her family stretching forward and stretching back, part of the same whole. To know that her Lottie would have the childhood Liese had dreamed of for both her girls: filled not with secrets and silences, but light and laughter and a safe place in the world. All the things Karen could give her child because – in this newly woven family that united all the strands that had been her mother and father’s lives, and the countries that had shaped them – she had finally found them for herself.
Karen leaned back into Markus’s arms and held her daughter tight, knowing that her mother and her sister were there, inside their embrace. Knowing that the past was finally at one with the present, no longer a burden but a part of them all, to be treasured and carried. Into a future founded on hope.