Windstill E-Book

Eluned Gramich

• Herausgeber: Honno Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Fighting to free herself from a toxic relationship, 21-year-old Lora escapes to her recently widowed grandmother's home in Hamburg. When Daniel, Lora's delusional ex, and a string of estranged relatives turn up, covert agendas emerge and conflicting views on sexual ethics surface, with sudden and surprising consequences.This vividly powerful, 'no-holding-back' début confronts the darker aspects of history, offering a hidden narrative of post-war Germany. Quietly ambitious, funny and sometimes tragic, Windstill reveals the stories we tell to protect the ones we love.

Leseprobe

iii

WINDSTILL

Eluned Gramich

HONNO MODERN FICTION

v

To Oma and Opa vi

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONSUMMER 1945JANUARY 2016MONDAYTUESDAYWEDNESDAYTHURSDAYFRIDAYSATURDAYACKNOWLEDGEMENTSABOUT HONNOABOUT THE AUTHORALSO BY ELUNED GRAMICHCOPYRIGHT

1

SUMMER 1945

A FIELD BETWEEN POLAND AND GERMANY

“Woman, come!”

Two soldiers emerged from the woods, shouldering guns. They followed the dirt path across the field to where a group of women were kneeling among the low bushes. Behind the women was the coal train that had brought them there. It hissed, sending a trail of black smoke into the sky, before falling silent.

Again, the soldiers called: “Come here! Woman, come!”

But the women kept their heads down, continuing to squat in the field, stuffing their mouths with bitter redcurrants, not caring about the leaves or the insects. The soldiers were closing in, their shouts more excitable now. “Hey! Hey!” Better for the women to go back to the coal wagons. But they were hungry; they ignored the danger.

A body lay by the tracks – a man in civilian clothes. The women hadn’t found anything worth taking.

The younger of the two soldiers blew into his gloves, clapping loudly, trying to warm his fingers; an angry, pink mark covered one side of his face. The other soldier, grey-haired with broken teeth, pointed at two girls who had travelled with the women in the wagons. They were chest-deep among the redcurrant bushes, eating, eating. Not more than thirteen years old. Their heads were shorn, their shifts hung loose, their chins stained red.

The man with the birthmark waded into the field and grabbed them, taking a bony arm in each of his gloved hands. One girl cried out; the other stared up at him, her body going limp. The grey-haired soldier looked on, loosening his belt. 2

They were about to lead the girls away to the woods, when one of the older women charged towards them. “Stop! Stop!” An oversized man’s coat flapping around her calves as she ran. Her scalp showed where her dark hair had come out in tufts. She swept through the redcurrant bushes, her belly swollen. The two girls gazed emptily at her, as if trying to remember who she was. The woman spoke rapidly in the soldiers’ language. She wrung her hands, sinking down on her knees. The birthmarked soldier’s lip curled. For a brief moment, she laid her hands on his chest.

From the path, the old soldier gave another nod. Birthmark let go of the children, who ran to the tracks. The big-bellied woman remained, kneeling.

Then the train began coughing and squirming, as if painfully regurgitating its insides. The women clambered back into the coal wagons. So did the young girls. They squatted on the sawdust-covered floor, clinging to each other, while the rest watched the soldiers leave with the woman. The trio were heading in the direction of the forest. The woman in the oversized coat walked calmly between them as if she were on a Sunday promenade, flanked by her brothers, her hands resting on her bulging stomach.

The train advanced three hundred metres before stopping again. It would not move for hours. Later, the girls vomited up the redcurrants, wiping the mess away as best they could with their hands.

3

JANUARY 2016

MONDAY

MOTORWAY LIGHTS

It was fifty pence for the toilets at the bus station. Daniel didn’t have any change on him, just a debit card stuffed in his trouser pocket. He thought about jumping over the turnstile, but thankfully the bus arrived before it came to that. Twenty minutes late, but whatever… He forgot how cold and desperate he was as soon as it pulled into the bay.

The driver opened the door and climbed down. He rubbed his hands in the cold air: “Jesus Christ. It’s fucking freezing.”

Daniel hung back. He didn’t care much if he was the first or last to get a seat. There was a glimmer of light along the roof of the shopping centre, the morning’s darkness paling into dawn.

The driver scanned the barcode on Daniel’s phone.

“Travelling on your own, mate?”

“Yeah.”

“Luggage?”

No. He just had the backpack, not much else. No proper winter coat. No hat or gloves. He’d considered borrowing his dad’s but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble: he’d only tell Dan to buy his own with his student grant.

Daniel found himself a seat near the back. The heater blasted stale, hot air onto his face. He leaned his head against the glass and waited for the bus to start. The driver made his announcements. Behind Daniel, a child was working up to full-on crying. It whined and coughed and whined a bit more. Please don’t, he prayed. I need to sleep. 4

But he couldn’t; that was the problem. He hadn’t slept properly in days. Dozing for three or four hours, then getting up, walking around the house if his dad was out, or scrolling through Insta on his bed if he was in.

The lights flitted by along the motorway.

When he was very young, Daniel used to stay with his mam’s family on the coast and he remembered the car journeys through the narrow, winding roads, in pitch country blackness, and his mother pointing out the bats that came swooping low out of the bushes, flashing across the bonnet like bullets. He remembered the high hedgerows that seemed to come crashing down on them like waves, the threat of monsters or wild animals jumping out of the bushes, caught in the headlamps for a horrifying moment. Travelling in the dark always made him think of Mam and that old life in the countryside. But she didn’t live there anymore; at least, not as far as he knew. He hadn’t seen her for years.

They had to wait for ages at Cardiff. There was a long queue outside, other passengers insisting on arguing about extra pieces of baggage. The sun had risen by then, illuminating the grand, white-stone buildings of the capital. The university was close by, the library and halls where Daniel spent most of his term time, all quiet during the holidays.

As though his thoughts had been overheard, someone from uni got on the bus. A boy Daniel recognised from his politics seminar. One of those clever students who never stopped giving their opinions, and who waited around after class to talk to the lecturer. Daniel put his hood up and sank down in his seat.

“Hey, Danny. Fucking hell!”

Daniel felt a hand grab his shoulder. He wearily drew his hood back.

“All right.” He couldn’t remember the guy’s name. “How’s things?”

“Good, yeah. Really good. You going to London, too?”

Owen? Omar? He sat down next to him. Daniel pressed his fingers gently against his temple. “Yeah.” 5

“Heathrow?”

He nodded. “You too, I guess.”

“Yeah, mate, yeah. Going home for a bit.”

Daniel nodded, hoping they’d be done soon. It was still three hours to the airport. He wasn’t sure he was able to talk for three hours to anyone, not after the couple of weeks he’d had.

“Nairobi. Got to visit my sister, she’s getting married. She’s already over there with my dad, and there’s like this whole thing planned for it. It’s a big deal because she’s the first one, you know.”

Oli, that was his name. “Sure.”

“Spent Christmas and New Year with my mum and the grandparents. It was boring as fuck. I wanted to slit my wrists by the end.”

Daniel got up suddenly, squeezed past Oli, and clambered to the toilet. The place stank of disinfectant and piss. Leaning over the stainless-steel bowl in a boxer’s crouch, he undid his fly, one hand gripping the wall handle to stop himself toppling. As the bus went over a bump in the road, the top of his head brushed against the filthy ceiling.

Oli took out his earphones as soon as Daniel sat down. Fuck’s sake, he thought. Put them back in.

“What about you? How was Christmas?”

“You know, the usual. It’s always the same, right?”

“I know. What’s up with that? Fucking tradition.”

Daniel closed his eyes. Inside him was a knot of shame, growing and unravelling beneath his breastbone. It hadn’t been the usual Christmas at all. He’d come down from university on Christmas Eve, because his dad had this stupid tradition of ordering take-away for the two of them. After that, Daniel had spent the next ten days cooped up in his room, not seeing anyone. His solitary Christmas was a source of humiliation and he nursed a great fear that it would be found out somehow. Over the last seven years, he’d celebrated the holidays with his girlfriend Lora and her family. They’d invited him over when he was sixteen years old – around the time his dad 6met Jill – and he’d never turned down an invitation since. This year, his dad assumed nothing had changed: he hadn’t asked after Lora, hadn’t asked whether Daniel would be spending Christmas with her as usual, and Daniel hadn’t spoken to him about it. And so his dad had gone over to Jill’s at Three Crosses, spent it with her five kids who all, apparently, adored him, and left Daniel alone in the house. When he returned late on Boxing Day, hungover and cheerful, he seemed surprised to find Daniel back already. But his father still hadn’t asked any questions because that was their way.

Those two days Daniel had spent alone in the house had been so terrible and empty, so much worse than he’d imagined, that he tried to convince himself it had never happened. Christmas was still to come, he thought. It was waiting for him across the Channel.

“Where are you going then?” Oli asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Daniel rubbed his eyes, replied slowly, acting more tired than he felt. “Germany.”

“To see Lora, right? Isn’t she German or something?”

He tensed up then, not expecting this guy to know her name. “Yeah. Her grandfather died a few days ago, so…”

“Shit, sorry. You going to the funeral?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Where’s she from again?”

“Her dad’s from Hamburg.”

“Right. I remember her saying.”

Daniel was staring at him, waiting for an explanation. When it didn’t happen, and Oli started to talk about The Beatles or whatever, Daniel interrupted: “Were you in the same class as Lora or what?”

“Same halls,” Oli said. “Room diagonal to mine, remember?”

Daniel nodded. Maybe he did remember. He recalled the communal living space: that large kitchen with two ovens and two hobs, covered in crumbs and melted cheese and empty cans. The redplastic sofas in front of the little television where he’d often find Lora after lectures, sprawled across the seats with a cup of tea balanced on 7her stomach. Eight other students, coming and going, sticking pizzas into the oven, eating toast standing up. “Yeah, I remember.”

“We’d go out sometimes.”

Daniel tensed. “When?”

“I mean, like, as a group. We’d go to Tiger Tiger together.” He grinned, as if there were some secret that Daniel should dig out.

“Oh, yeah. I remember now,” Daniel replied. He heard the defensive note in his voice. A strange kind of panic took hold of him, imagining Lora out with Oli, drinking, dancing together. But Daniel must have been there too; he’d gone with Lora on all her nights out, more or less. Those he’d known about at least.

“It was ages ago now. How are you two? You guys good?”

Daniel cleared his throat. “Smashing, thanks.”

“Cool.” Oli was looking at him, wanting more, but Daniel couldn’t talk about it. He found it difficult to think about what had happened, that messy pre-Christmas argument, let alone put it into words. He turned his head away, holding his backpack like a barrier between them. Oli tried to pick up another thread – coursework, the politics seminar they’d done together – but Daniel didn’t have the energy for it anymore. He’d spoken more in the last half an hour than he’d done in seven days. He felt bad for the guy in a way, but there was nothing he could do.

HAMBURG

Herr Wolters

They arrived at the judicial offices an hour early. The guards at the entrance told Lora’s grandmother to remove her many layers of clothes and open her bags for inspection. Elfriede didn’t understand why her wedding ring kept triggering the alarm. “Is it my fillings?” she asked. When she tried to remove the ring, it got stuck on her swollen knuckle. She tugged at it again and again, because she so wanted to put it in the little tray for them, to pass the test. The guards told her not to worry. 8

They found Room 4.12: a small, brass plate by the door read ‘Herr Jürgen Wolters’. Elfriede took the documents out of the envelope and checked them again. She was in a flutter; her bags askew, headscarf trailing on the floor.

“I’ll tell him I need you there for support. If you can’t come in with me, then I can’t possibly talk to him. I’d faint, collapse…”

“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Lora said.

“But if he does ask, I’ll say I need you there. Like a carer. Do you have your passport? We can prove we’re related.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Do you have it? Better get it out. Shall I take it? Add it to mine?”

Oma always worried about things that were at a remove from the actual problem, Lora thought. She should be worrying about the inheritance: would they give her the money? Would they allow her access to her husband’s account? Without money, how would she pay for her medical treatment, her food, her house? These were the real concerns.

The door to Room 4.12 opened. Elfriede pounced immediately: “She has to come with me! My granddaughter. She has to come because I have dizzy spells. I can’t do without her.”

“Frau Oldenburg. Early, I see,” said a man in an oversized blue shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A smile played on his lips. “You might as well come in now.”

“She’s staying with me. From England.” Then, turning to her granddaughter: “Show him your passport.”

The man Lora presumed was Herr Wolters had already returned to his desk, picking out a pale red folder from a filing cabinet. He gestured at two low chairs. “Take a seat.”

Herr Wolters was a large man, tie-less, his ironed shirt held together by mother-of-pearl buttons. There was something pleasing, amicable even, about his appearance: a pair of round glasses, his cheeks plump, his hair thinning. “The people I see here,” he confided as they sat down, “are sometimes extremely difficult. People sitting where you are now, screaming at each other. 9Illegitimate children, ex-wives, disinherited sons… It can all get very horrible, very quickly.”

“Oh, well we’re not difficult at all,” said Elfriede, eagerly, handing over the forms.

“Do you have the will?”

“Yes. The original and copies.”

He picked up the genealogy Lora’s father had submitted the week before to be typed up and corroborated by the office.

“Ernst Gottfried Oldenburg. Your husband?”

“Yes.”

“You are Elfriede Hanna Oldenburg?”

She nodded.

“Formerly Dünschede?”

“Yes.”

“Your husband died on the sixth of January.”

“Oh, it was sudden! We were out the night before and he was in the best of moods, talking all night, even though he was never much of a talker…”

“Oma,” Lora whispered. She wanted to put her hand on her grandmother’s arm to steady her, but it seemed too intimate for the brightly lit office.

“There was blood in the corner of his mouth. You see he’d had a glass of prosecco before bed. Two hundred millimetres. They said it was his heart but I’m not sure.”

“It was his heart,” Lora said, quickly.

“The coroner’s report is here. Seems to be in order. He has a son. Markus Oldenburg. Resident in Great Britain.” Herr Wolters peered at her over his glasses. “This is the granddaughter?”

“Yes. Hello,” she said.

He smiled curtly before turning his attention back to the documents on his desk: “Siblings?”

“A sister, Gertrud.”

“Living?”

“Lord knows. She’s always at death’s door.” 10

“Any previous marriages?”

“No. Apart from the one, you know, before the war.”

Lora stared at her grandmother. Opa had been married before? Why had no one told her? She leaned forward, craning to see the family tree that lay in front of Herr Wolters, but his desk was so wide and full of papers that she failed to make any sense of it.

“They weren’t married long. She went missing in forty-five. What was she called again?”

“Agnes,” he said gently, glancing down at the tree, as if her ghost might be listening. “She has been declared dead since, I see,” he said, pulling out another certificate and laying it to one side. “No children from the first marriage?”

“None that I know of.”

“Have you tried contacting her family?”

Elfriede shook her head.

“Well, we’ll put a notice out just in case. It’s highly unlikely a relative of hers could make a claim. We would only take into consideration a claim from offspring the deceased had not been aware of previously.”

“There weren’t any children. There wouldn’t have been enough time.”

“I mention it just so you’re informed. Everything seems straightforward. You’re named as the sole inheritor, Frau Oldenburg.”

Herr Wolters explained that he was about to read out the terms and conditions, a statement of understanding, which she would then sign. He spoke slowly and calmly, and as he read, the drab white walls grew more austere and, for a moment, her grandmother was no longer Oma, but a second wife, a stranger whose life was unknown to her. Lora wasn’t upset, not exactly, but she did feel a surprising coolness towards Elfriede for keeping the facts of her grandfather’s life wrapped up in those brown envelopes.

They’d buried his ashes three days ago. The earth was frozen, frost on the short-mown grass. Five of them staring down at the 11silver-coloured urn. Lora and her parents, Markus and Jane, Elfriede and the undertaker.

Her grandfather had been so happy at Christmas, euphoric. It was only after his death that Lora realised how unlike himself he’d been. Generally, Ernst was a rather shy man who quickly tired of conversation, preferring to retreat to his study or to the armchair where he listened to crime novels on his MP3 player. Yet, in the few days leading up to his death, he’d stayed up late, talked about his plans for the garden, watched films while picking at boxes of Lindt pralines, drank sherry or prosecco every Advent night. Lora loved seeing this lighter, less ascetic side to her grandfather, a side she hadn’t seen since she was little when he played with her like an older brother. He took Lora to see the temporary ice-skating rink near the bunker; bought her a mulled wine with an extra shot from the stalls; laughed when they played a dancehall song he recognised from before the war… She’d heard that euphoria happens when your body is preparing for death. Unbeknownst to you, your body releases every sweet chemical it has, all its good spirits. You enjoy life more; you feel things acutely, beautifully; you think you will live forever. It was possible that all her grandfather’s delight and gladness had been to prepare him for the end of delight and gladness.

Lora last saw him on the bathroom floor; the doctor said he must have died instantly. It was the first time she’d lost a loved one, first time she’d seen a dead body. There was blood on his lips, most likely from coughing, the doctor said. Lora called her parents in the nearby hotel they were staying in – so Lora’s mother could have her own space. Elfriede thought he was still alive for the longest time. It only sank in when Dr Ruhe told her there was nothing more he could do, and even that wasn’t final enough. Elfriede had asked why, wanted to understand the reason, kept asking about what he’d eaten, drunk, complained he’d stayed up too late, as though Ernst were still alive to listen. It was half-five in the morning when they carried him away and no one knew what to do, whether to eat something or try to sleep? 12

Lora had cried in the downstairs toilet. Tiredness, shock.

“It all seems in order,” Herr Wolters said again.

They said goodbye to Herr Wolters, crossed the square to the café, the old woman leaning against her, talking, talking. Lora was quiet, still bewildered by the news. She struggled to imagine her grandfather married to anyone else; struggled, in fact, to see Ernst as a young man, as someone who was not her grandfather. He belonged to her this way, as a grandfather. When she was a child, Opa had appeared to her like a magician. A conjurer of castles, laughter and supernatural creatures. They had their own world, peopled by characters no one knew but them. Bears. Crocodiles. Lions. Wolves. Court fools with long noses and Princesses with longer hair. They lived in the puppet theatre, the Kasperltheater, which her Opa made from plywood, painted red and green. The dolls lived in the dollhouse he built when she was ten, furnished with tiny knives and forks and a dressing table in which the cupboard drawers went in and out. He sent special parcels of Märchen books and videos cassettes to Wales, so that she wouldn’t forget the German fairy-tales he told her. Whenever her father and grandmother walked too slowly, they’d both shout: Come on, slow coaches! Or hide around the next corner and jump out to surprise them. When little Lora and her grandfather said goodbye for another year on the steps of the sleeper train from Hamburg to London, they wept together as if they were both children, because when they separated the world they’d made together was lost.

Stop, she thought.

That’s enough.

RUSSIAN PUNCH CAKE

The café was famous, apparently, although this just meant it was expensive. Lora was surprised at how modern it looked: metal lamp fittings and severe-looking furniture. Empty apart from a business meeting conducted in stilted English. Not to her grandmother’s 13usual taste. Still, Elfriede was looking forward to sampling the cake for which the café was known: “You have to arrive early,” she explained. “It sells out before twelve.”

The waitress, stocky, a faint moustache on her upper lip, dipped the knife into a cylinder of water. Elfriede sighed as she cut into the soft sponge. “Ah! Russische Punschtorte.” A chocolate orb filled with vodka cream, decorated with blackberries and a tiny Russian flag.

“The patissière comes from Vienna,” the waitress said, handing Lora their numbered ticket.

“Lora, did you hear? Vienna.”

“Yes, Oma. Shall we grab a table?”

But Lora’s grandmother was not interested in leaving the cakes just yet. She pressed her face close to the glass, pointing at whatever took her fancy. Strawberry slices. Poppy-seed tart. Bee-sting cake. Tiny vanilla biscuits in the shape of moons.

Lora gave up and sat down by herself.

She chose a table by the window, looking out on the square. Lora had rarely visited this upmarket part of Hamburg. Her grandparents lived in the south, in an area called Wilhelmsburg, an island surrounded by docklands and canals. It was very different here: these confident, airy buildings, with their glass walls that offered a view of an affluent city, were alien to her. The Four Seasons was just around the corner, as was the department store Alsterhaus where her grandfather once bought her a skirt-suit in the hope she’d do something sensible with her life. Even the journey here on the S-Bahn had been discomfitting, with police officers leaning against the doors of the train, watchful and tense, handguns in leather holsters at their hips.

“No cream for me! They removed my gallbladder when I was forty,” Lora heard her grandmother saying.

What did the waitress make of her Oma, in this smart Hamburg café where a small cappuccino cost three euros fifty and where trainers were not allowed? No one would guess that Elfriede was a wealthy woman. She was covered in swathes of old clothes, forgiving 14jumpers, a trench-coat the hem of which had dragged along the ground for years. A camel-tan skirt that had been fashionable more than two decades ago, the fabric gentle on her paper-thin skin. She wore two headscarves – one on her head, the other tied around her neck. Tights, of course, which she darned herself, and wide-fit loafers with thick soles “for town”. The only clue to her circumstances was a gold bracelet set off by a tiny diamond, no bigger than a pinprick.

Elfriede was still talking when she finally took her seat. “Thank goodness we had that lovely man. I can’t wait until we tell your father. All over in a minute. Who could have guessed?”

The coffees arrived. Elfriede emptied two sugar packets into her cup.

Lora watched her grandmother carefully, could not stop replaying the moment in Herr Wolter’s office when she had said: “Apart from that one, before the war.” Neither could she help feeling indignant about her own ignorance: why hadn’t she been told? Why did she only know now that he was dead, when she couldn’t ask him herself? The shape of a different life seemed to emerge: a life before the war, when Opa was married to another woman, belonged to a different family in a now foreign country. It was still only a shape, a suggestion, like the impression on a bed when someone has left. Why hadn’t she known? It wasn’t as though Elfriede had tried to keep it secret – otherwise why bring Lora to the appointment with Herr Wolters – yet the name had never been mentioned.

“We could have got one of those real bureaucrats, the ones that put their noses in everything and have forms coming out of their ears. It helped having you in the room. A young girl like yourself.”

Agnes. That was her name.

Elfriede tore open another packet of sugar. “Aren’t you having any cake?”

“We only had breakfast an hour ago. How can you be hungry already?”

Elfriede paused; a spoonful of froth suspended halfway to her 15mouth. “Now, Lora. I have absolutely no idea what you just said. Absolutely no idea. You swallow your words at such a rate no one has any hope of following. In German, you see, you have to sep – ah – rate the words.”

Lora glanced at her phone. No messages.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes, yes.”

The waitress appeared with the Russian punch cake. It smelled strongly of alcohol and chocolate powder, was finished off with a swirl of whipped cream. Oma’s eyes widened: “Here we are at last. I thought I’d faint from hunger.”

She took up the monogrammed fork to tidy the edges of the cake.

“Go on, taste it.”

“You have it, Oma. You need it.”

“I eat and eat. It doesn’t make any difference. Where are the articles about putting on weight I’d like to know?”

It was an art, waiting for Elfriede to finish eating. She ate like a sparrow.

“Your grandfather would have so liked to be here,” Elfriede was saying. “He’d have had a pastry. They have exquisite pastries here. The patissière comes from Vienna.”

Lora bit her lip. Could she broach the topic now? Ask about the wedding certificate stowed in her grandmother’s handbag? “Oma,” she began, but her grandmother talked over her.

“Gerold’s coming to stay.”

Lora stiffened. “Gerold?”

“You remember him. Aunt Trudi’s son? Tall man with a dog. Runs a hotel down south.”

Yes, she remembered, though she hadn’t seen him since she was a child. Mostly she recalled her father’s brusqueness, her mother’s frown, whenever his name was mentioned. Gerold represented some kind of unreliability in the family: a playboy, bad with money, not to be trusted. Lora wasn’t sure about the details. It had never been explained to her. “When?” 16

“Oh, I don’t know,” Elfriede said, pouring another sachet of sugar into her tiny cup. “Tomorrow, Wednesday…”

“Tomorrow?” As if they didn’t have enough to think about.

“Well, why not? I’ve written it down somewhere. Now, enough of that. Tell me, how old are you again?” Elfriede plunged the spoon into the whipped cream, sucked on it.

Lora shifted in her chair, uneasy with the idea of someone else staying at the house, of having to be on “guest” behaviour with a relative she hardly knew. “Twenty-one.”

Elfriede nodded, replacing the spoon on the delicate saucer. “A beautiful age. I was married by then. We had the ceremony in the Harz forest. Nineteen-fifty. No one had any money, but we managed. I’ve shown you the pictures? I was twenty.”

Her grandfather had been older by almost a decade; Lora had never thought about it before, it never struck her as strange. “Twenty seems young.”

“You and Daniel have been together for quite some time, haven’t you? When did you meet? At fourteen, fifteen?”

Lora paused. “Sixteen.”

“Marriage might not be so far away.”

“It is very far away.”

“Ah,” she said, putting down the spoon. “Your Papa told me. Said the boy had broken it off with you and that I shouldn’t mention him at all. But you’re all right, aren’t you? You’re strong. Did he run off with someone else, is that it? Oh, don’t get upset now.”

“I’m not. Not upset.”

“They come back, you know. Men. Ernst left me at least half a dozen times and he always came back. They don’t know what they’re missing until it’s gone. They’re like children that way.”

Elfriede took out a cashmere jumper from her handbag, placed it carefully around her shoulders.

“He was a lovely boy. So intelligent. Ernst liked him and he had high standards, as you know. Wasn’t he a scientist of some kind?”

“No.” 17

“Are you sure? He looked like a scientist. Such a thoughtful boy. What did he study again?”

“Politics and philosophy. “

“Politics! How clever. Did you tell him that your grandfather passed away?”

She shook her head.

“That’s a shame. They got on so well.”

Lora started picking her thumb under the table. “I don’t remember them being particularly close.”

Elfriede looked affronted. “What are you talking about? Ernst adored Daniel. Don’t you remember how they worked together in the garden, getting the stones in the right place, planting the azaleas…”

“All right, they did a bit of gardening together.”

“He even learned German. Don’t you remember? He wasn’t good at it, but some people don’t have the talent for languages. Charming boy.” Lora said nothing, continued to scratch at the rough spot to the left of her thumbnail.

Her grandmother added: “It’s your business, not mine.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But still, what a shame to keep something like that from him and the two of them so close.”

Lora turned away.

Why couldn’t she just leave it?

It was true. True that Daniel had spent several summers with her grandparents in Hamburg. True that he’d learnt a little German; that Opa enjoyed the half-and-half exchanges, playing around with Denglish as they pottered around the garden. It was also true that Daniel had helped in his overeager way: carrying things up from the cellar, pruning the clematis and, once in a while, he was even allowed in the kitchen to be instructed in the art of fried potatoes and bacon. But did that give him the right to know Opa had died? Did that give him the right to know everything that happened in her family from now on? 18

She faced her grandmother, who was looking at her expectantly, a little annoyed by Lora’s silence it seemed. As the silence continued, Lora reluctantly adjusted to the notion that, yes, she would have to do it. She would have to tell him.

HEATHROW, ENGLAND

They gave him a voucher. Ten quid: enough for a sandwich in the departure lounge but not much else. He went to the bar, queued for almost twenty minutes because some burly guys on a stag-do kept stealing his place. He ordered two pints straight off.

The departure screen said “delayed”, but he’d read online that Hamburg airport had shut down temporarily because of the snow. In London, there was only rain. It had been raining all day, dark and cold, the whole way along the grey roads. Daniel wanted to see the snow so badly it made his chest ache: German powder snow. The light blue sky against the startling white. The quietness of it.

He found a spot at the end of a plastic-looking counter. Every surface area seemed to be covered by someone’s laptop or neck-pillow; the tannoys drowned out by the general chatter and clinking glasses. Every flight to north Germany was cancelled or postponed. Even though it was a weeknight, the place was packed. Mostly men. Daniel had started noticing these things now that Lora wasn’t with him – the ratio of men to women, the atmosphere it created or unmade. It made a difference, not being around women. Around her.

The stag-do was engaging in some serious drinking. They’d managed to find a table and now they were all huddling around it, ten or more, in flowing, brown monk costumes with tonsured wigs. He didn’t mind them so much now they weren’t stealing his place in the queue. Pretty funny, really, seeing all the old men dressed up like that. Although it sparked unease, too, since, presumably, he would also have a stag-do at some point. Sooner rather than later, probably, and Daniel didn’t know if he’d have ten mates willing to hit the Hamburg Reeperbahn with him. There was Mark and 19Rhodri from school: they’d come. They’d have to, he’d known them that long, even if they didn’t meet up so often now. Plus a couple of people from uni. Lora’s flatmates were all right, he supposed. The guy from the bus, maybe, if it came to that.

“Five,” he murmured. Six, including himself. “Six is okay.”

He sipped his beer. There was nothing to do. The last essay had been submitted before Christmas and he’d done the reading, more or less. He’d flicked through the books at home, though there wasn’t much point in reading them cover to cover as he’d misunderstand them. At least, that’s what one of the lecturers told him: I think you might have misunderstood, she’d said, after some dull theory seminar on Judith Butler in the first year. That year Daniel worked in a restaurant kitchen, de-bearding mussels and cleaning the dirt from mushrooms. Lora used to pick him up at the end of the shift and they walked back to her parents’ house along the seafront, pushing each other up the near-vertical hill, sweating and laughing.

He started on the second pint, slower this time. Updates on his phone showed the snow was getting worse. They couldn’t clear it off the runway quick enough. One of the monks started singing “Myfanwy” – tried to sing, at least. It came out as more of a chant. It made Daniel think of rugby Rhodri: how he hadn’t heard anything from his mate over Christmas, though he must have been back at his parents’ place. It was because of Lora. The last two years Daniel had stayed with her, that was all, and hadn’t made much of an effort with the boys. Anyway, Rhodri had his rugby lot now, and the fact was Daniel hated going to the pub with them; they had so many in-jokes that he’d ended up grinning inanely for most of the night, not saying a word. Still, he could have gone for a quiet pint with Rhodri, if only he’d had the courage to break the silence. It would have been good to talk the situation through with somebody. Rhodri had girl troubles. Daniel suspected his own would pale in comparison, and he could have left the pub feeling better about himself. Rhodri almost got thrown out of uni in his first year, because of sexual harassment. Something about pinning a girl down 20on a sofa after a night out. In the end, it turned out she’d made it up – revenge, Rhodri said. Dan had been too wrapped up with Lora at the time to remember the details. Only that Rhodri had been humiliated, not because of the charges, but because the girl was unattractive and overweight. “I would never have done it with her,” he’d told Mark and Daniel the summer after it’d been sorted, getting his phone out. “Just fucking look at her.” They looked; agreed he had a point.

Daniel gathered up his jacket and rucksack and went in search of a place to wait. People were lying down, sleeping, watching films. He found a spot between a pharmacy and a cash-machine and sat cross-legged on the dirty floor. Hamburg airport still closed. If it didn’t open by eleven, he’d have to stay at Heathrow. Take the first flight tomorrow.

All the places close to the airport were hotel chains. Fifty quid at least. No way could he fork out fifty quid. He’d have to sleep here, in this corner between the cash-machine and Boots.

He glanced down at a text from his dad: You there yet?

Yeah. All good.

He couldn’t be bothered to explain.

Ok.

Which was all his dad ever said, to be fair. The whole messaging history a series of “oks”.

He looked through Instagram and the rest, checked a few websites. Nothing new – he’d read it all on the way there. Same for his emails. Then something caught his eye in the junk folder: Lora Oldenburg has messaged you on Facebook. Facebook? When had she ever used Facebook to contact him?

He clicked on her profile: a photograph her mum had taken on a trip to mid-Wales. Lora sitting on a giant sculpture of a hand, grinning wildly at the camera. She’d changed it. The picture used to be one he’d taken on Mumbles beach, the sunset, the sand a mellow ochre in the waning light. It was much better than this one; it must be a mark of her anger. 21

Whatever. Just a profile picture. She was back again, messaging him, like she said she would never do.

Hey, just wanted to let you know that Opa died last week. It was really sudden and they said he wasn’t in much pain or anything, which is good I guess. Hope you’re okay.

A smile spread across his face: Hope you’re okay. So she did want him there with her in Hamburg. Any anxiety he had about the journey vanished. Hope you’re okay. She was thinking about him, wondering what he’d been up to over the holidays. He’d known it all along; had felt it, in a way, during the long hours at home. In that horrendous loneliness, he’d felt her presence, a spark of warmth from many miles away.