In Her Shadow (31 page)

She paused before replying. ‘She stayed with her sister for a while and then she went to Germany. The Brecht family gave her a cottage in the grounds of their house. They looked after her in her old age.’

‘Do you mean Schloss Marien? Was that where her cottage was?’

‘That’s it! She liked it there. She used to write to me every Christmas, just a few lines inside the card, and once she sent me a photograph of the Christmas Market; it looked very nice. Your father and I were thinking maybe of going one year and meeting up with her, but we never got round to it.’

‘She
used
to write?’

‘Before her stroke. She lives in a nursing home now.’

‘Do you have the name of the home, Mum? Or the address? I thought I might pop in to see her, seeing as I’m so close.’

Mum wasn’t sure this was a good idea, but I assured her that all I wanted to do was take some flowers to the old lady. I didn’t tell Mum, but I also needed to let Mrs Todd know that I finally understood how brave she had been, how loyal and how helpful. I wanted, in some small way, to atone for not understanding or appreciating Mrs Todd when I was younger.

My mother obligingly went off to find her address book and her reading glasses, and returned a few moments later. She dictated the name and address of the nursing home to me, taking great care of the spelling. I thanked her, promised I’d be in touch when I was back in Bristol, and then I trotted along the hotel corridor to John’s room and knocked.

‘Come in!’ he called.

He was sitting at the desk by the window, drinking coffee
and looking at his emails. He smiled when he saw me and jumped up to move his suit from where it lay over the back of a second chair. I sat down.

‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.

‘Great, thanks. You?’

‘Like a log.’

I felt shy being with John in a hotel room. It seemed intimate. I tried not to look at the unmade bed, the crumpled white sheets, the boxer shorts balled up beside the bedside table.

I cleared my throat. ‘I just wondered if I could borrow your laptop to find out about getting to Magdeburg, like you mentioned yesterday.’

‘Help yourself.’

He passed the computer to me and I Google-mapped firstly Schloss Marien, and then Mrs Todd’s nursing home. Both were outside the city, although the nursing home was closer to Berlin than Magdeburg. While John made more coffee, I researched the options for using public transport, and realized it was not going to be easy.

‘Any luck?’ he asked.

‘It’s going to have to be taxis,’ I said.

John looked over my shoulder. ‘What’s that place?’

‘You remember I was telling you about the housekeeper, Mrs Todd? She’s had a stroke and that’s where she lives now. I’d like to go and visit her. Just to say hello, and take her some flowers.’

‘That’s going to be awkward to get to.’

‘I know. But …’

‘I could take you,’ John said. He smiled and scratched his head. ‘We could hire a car. That’d be the easiest thing to do.’

‘What about the conference?’

‘All that’s on this morning is a workshop on Interactive Interpretive Tourism. I’m not that interested.’

I exhaled. ‘I don’t want to ruin your trip, John.’

‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘If we drive, we can go and see your Mrs Todd, have lunch in Magdeburg, take a look at the Schloss Marien and still be back in time for the evening session.’

‘But why would you want to come with me?’

‘I’ll get to see a bit of the countryside. Let’s face it, once you’ve seen the inside of one conference facility, you’ve seen them all.’

I had a feeling he was being gracious to make it easy for me. Still, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and relief. Whatever happened, I knew I would cope with it better, and in a more reasoned way, if John were with me. I would be able to share some of my history with him. And always, afterwards, this would be something we would have between us.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

CHAPTER FIFTY

THE SHOCK OF
Ellen’s words left me breathless. Ellen did not look up but she must have felt the tension in my hands. I wondered why she hadn’t said anything to me sooner, then I realized that she probably hadn’t confided in anyone. Mrs Todd did Ellen’s laundry, she watched over her, she must have guessed that Ellen was pregnant, and when I thought back, it seemed obvious to me too. Ellen’s pallor, her tiredness, her weight gain, her recent quietness were all signs. I hadn’t been with her much, or I would surely have realized. I forgot entirely about my own good news. It was nothing compared to this.

‘Ellen has been seeing your brother in secret,’ said Mrs Todd in a quiet voice. ‘Clearly they haven’t been very careful.’

I looked up at her. Her face was still in shadow. She was hovering like a spectre.

‘Please can I talk to Ellen on my own, Mrs Todd?’

‘There isn’t much time,’ The woman replied. ‘Pieter might come downstairs any minute. He mustn’t—’

‘He mustn’t know,’ Ellen hissed. ‘He’ll kill Jago if he finds out.’

I thought back to New Year’s Eve and I felt sick.

‘Ellen needs your help,’ said Mrs Todd.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. I could see no way out of this situation, and for a moment I was furious with Ellen for allowing this to happen. Jago too. How could they have been so irresponsible? So stupid! How could they have mired themselves in this mess when everything in my life had been going so well? I’d never have allowed Mr Brecht to see them kissing if I’d known
this
was going to happen!

Mrs Todd sighed. She stepped forward into the room, standing behind Ellen. Her hands were twisting, the fingers working away at themselves. I’d never seen Mrs Todd so unsettled before and it made me uneasy.

‘It’s not too late.’ Mrs Todd hesitated over her choice of words. ‘What I mean to say is, the situation can be sorted out.’

‘The trouble can be got rid of,’ Ellen whispered, keeping her head low but raising her eyes to meet mine. She had the look of a zombie about her, she was so pale and her eyes were so shadowed and tormented.

‘Mr Brecht must not know,’ said Mrs Todd. ‘For your brother’s sake, Hannah, as much as Ellen’s.’ She made a little gagging sound and I remembered that it was Mrs Todd who had found Ellen cowered over Adam Tremlett’s battered body on the wooden floor of the smashed-up front room; Mrs Todd who had pressed clean tea-towels against Mr Tremlett’s wound to stem the bloodflow while she waited for the ambulance; Mrs Todd who, with my mother, had swept up the broken glass and china and tried to scrub the stains from the floorboards. She knew and understood Mr Brecht’s potential for violence. She knew what he was capable of.

A shiver ran across my scalp and down the back of my neck. I looked from Mrs Todd to Ellen. I thought of Jago.

‘Mrs Todd is right,’ Ellen said, almost robotically. ‘We have to get rid of the baby.’

I wished Ellen would not use words like that. I remembered a film we had been shown at school about the consequences of unprotected sex and closed my eyes to get rid of the image.

‘There’s a private place outside Truro where they won’t ask questions,’ said Mrs Todd. ‘I can find the money.’

‘There must be another way,’ I said.

Ellen looked up. She shook her head. ‘There isn’t.’

‘What about Jago? Does he know about the baby?’

‘It’s not a baby yet,’ said Mrs Todd.

‘Yes, he knows,’ said Ellen.

‘That’s all right,’ said Mrs Todd. ‘You can tell him you lost it. Miscarried. It’s not much of a lie.’

‘No, no!’ I felt agitated now, as if Mrs Todd and Ellen were pushing a huge boulder towards me and it was gaining momentum. ‘You can’t do what you’re saying without telling him. You can’t lie to him! You can’t, Ellen – it’s not fair. It’s his baby as much as it is yours!’

‘Shhh!’ Mrs Todd snapped, glancing up towards the ceiling. ‘If
he
hears you …’

‘Why can’t you just go away?’ I asked Ellen.

‘You know I can’t,’ she said. She pulled up the hem of her nightdress. Beneath it, her ankle was horribly swollen, and coloured purple; the skin was spread so thinly over the swelling that it looked as if it might split at any point, like an overripe plum.

‘He did that to you?’ I gasped.

She let the nightdress drop again. There was a tiredness in her eyes, a resignation that I had never seen before.

‘I was standing at the door waving goodbye to Tante Karla,’ she said dully. ‘She was in the taxi and I said something about how much I would miss her, and …’ She exhaled slowly.

‘And what?’

‘He said he was glad she was gone. He said “good riddance”. He called her an interfering old witch. And so I knew.’ She looked up at me and gave a little shrug. ‘I knew he hadn’t changed at all. He just wanted her out of the way. The taxi was at the gates and I thought I could run after it, that I could get in and go with Karla – but he was too quick.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He closed the door on my ankle,’ Ellen said. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. ‘He did this to me and he loves me. Think, Hannah. Think what he’ll do to Jago.’

I scratched the inside of my elbow. ‘Did Tante Karla see what happened?’

Ellen shook her head. ‘Papa was different when she was here. He’s clever at making people believe everything is all right. She doesn’t know anything.’

I didn’t want to believe Ellen. I wanted this to be another one of her stories, an exaggeration of the truth, a melo-dramatization of a mundane sequence of events, but this time Mrs Todd was there, endorsing Ellen’s version. This time, even I could not convince myself that Ellen was lying.

‘I know it’s difficult, Hannah,’ Mrs Todd murmured, ‘but what we’re doing is for the best. It’s the only way.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

WEIS KLOSTER WAS
a nursing home for retired gentlewomen, run by nuns and located in former convent buildings on the outskirts of Magdeburg. The surroundings were beautiful, like the grounds of a country estate – all lawns and lovely, wide-limbed trees – and the sunshine showed the place off to its best advantage.

John and I had stopped on the way to buy a bouquet of blowsy orange-pink roses and baby’s breath for Mrs Todd, and I held the flowers, tastefully wrapped in recycled paper, on my lap.

I knew, as soon as I saw it, that Mrs Todd would approve of the nursing home. The large, arch-shaped front door was open wide, and inside was a sparse but elegant reception area. We rang a little hand-bell and a sweet-faced nun wearing thick-rimmed spectacles materialized behind us. John had telephoned ahead to let the nuns know we were coming to see Mrs Todd, and when we wrote our names in the visitor book, the nun smiled and gestured for us to follow her.

The heels of our shoes tapped on the tiled floors of corridors with arched ceilings. The walls were whitewashed and inset with narrow windows that filled the place with light. At the centre of the Kloster was a large chapel,
coloured light falling through the stained-glass windows and making spangles on the floor, where a nun sat praying beside a veiled woman.

The nun led us into a separate wing. She stopped at one of a number of identical doors and knocked with her knuckles, although she did not wait for a reply but turned the handle to open the door. A tiny old woman was sitting in a chair by the window. It took me a moment to recognize her as Mrs Todd. She was wizened and shrunken, like an apple that’s been left too long in the bowl, her hands flickering in her lap with the tremor of Parkinson’s. Still she wore black, still her white hair was in a bun, still her spectacles hung around her neck although she had no need of them any longer.

The room, clearly a former nun’s cell, was light and airy and clean. Apart from the chair, all it contained was a single bed, high enough to be practical for use by an elderly woman, and a narrow chest of drawers. A framed picture of a dark-haired child wearing a white dress was propped on the chest, together with a few trinkets, and a plain wooden cross had been nailed to the wall.

The chair had been positioned so that Mrs Todd could look out of the window. She was too old and frail now for reading, or knitting, or any of the other pursuits she used to enjoy. All she could do to pass the time was watch the world through the four small square panes of glass in the leaded window. I wondered if that was what became of all of us in the end, if we lived to be old. Watching the world through window glass.

A different nun, the one who had taken the flowers from us, brought them back in a glass vase which she placed on the shelf beside the door, next to the picture of the child, so that Mrs Todd could look at the roses while she was in bed. The nun, who seemed to speak no English, sniffed the roses and smiled broadly.

‘
Schön!
’ she said. ‘
Frau Todd, sind sie nicht wünderschön?
’

‘
Ich brauche keine Blumen
,’ said Mrs Todd. I did not know what she meant, but the nun made a kindly if apologetic face. She mimed that Mrs Todd tired easily, and that we should not stay too long. ‘
Maximal zehn Minuten!
’ she said, holding up the fingers of both hands, before she left the room in a bustle of skirts and soft footsteps.

There was nowhere for John or me to sit, apart from the bed. I sat on the edge of it, close to Mrs Todd. John stood by the door, looking for and failing to find something he could pick up and read.

I shuffled a little closer to the old lady, leaning towards her, resting my elbows on my knees. From there, I too could look out of the window.

‘Mrs Todd,’ I said, ‘I’m Hannah Brown. I used to be friends with Ellen.’

The old lady blinked.

I cleared my throat. ‘I’ve been thinking about Ellen a lot lately,’ I continued. ‘And you. When I think of Ellen, I think of you too.’

‘I should have stood up for her,’ Mrs Todd said. ‘She wanted the flowers but he threw them away.’

‘Who wanted the flowers, Mrs Todd?’

‘Anne.’

I remembered Mr Brecht throwing the flowers down the stairs and Adam Tremlett gathering them in his arms.

‘I promised her mother that I would look after her,’ said Mrs Todd, ‘but I failed her. I let him have his way and it wasn’t what she wanted, not at all.’