Postcards From Berlin (36 page)

I nodded.

“I’ll see you in a month,” he said. “D’you have anything to ask before I go?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “Where does the illness come from?”

He smiled. “That’s a pretty big question.”

“What I was wondering — could it be inherited?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “There does seem to be a genetic link in this group of diseases. Has anyone in your family had a similar
illness?”

“My father,” I said. “D’you think there’s a connection?”

“Very likely,” he said. He made a note in the file.

“That helps somehow,” I said. “It makes it seem less random, I wish I’d known before.…” And then, needing to explain, "I never
knew my father, you see. I only learned this recently.” I feel my skin go hot. “I know that must seem odd, not to have known
him.…”

His eyes were on me; his gaze was warm, accepting.

“Whether or not you knew him,” he said, “he’s part of who you are. And what you pass on to your children.”

He closed the notes; he was about to leave.

And then I remembered what I should be saying.

“I don’t know how to thank you.…”

But he’d already gone.

I went straight to the pharmacy to collect Daisy’s medicine. When I got back to our room, I opened the bottle. The capsules
were an alarming sulphurous yellow. I pulled one apart over the basin, and some of the powder fell and smeared the side of
the basin with a startling yellow stain. I dipped my finger in the powder and stuck it in my mouth. It scarcely tasted of
anything — just a faint, musty bitterness, easily disguised. I glanced across at Daisy, the pools of shadow under her eyes,
her open, strained mouth, and I saw her as she once was, flushed and vivid —as she might be again. Something inside me was
singing.

I lie and stare into the sepia dark. Daisy’s cards are arranged around the room, on every available surface, and here and
there the light through the curtained window falls on them and glimmers. I can make out the shiny clown on Gina and Adrian’s,
and, on the card her class sent, the letters that spell Get Well stuck down in colored foil. And there’s one from Sinead that
she drew herself with gel pen, showing a frog who’s going into hospital. The frog has a suitcase and a bandage and a deliciously
doleful expression. A familiar worry surges through me — worry about Sinead, and how she and Daisy will cope with living apart.
For now, they’re being positive: Sinead is teaching Daisy how to text her, and they’re planning to talk every day on MSN Messenger,
but I don’t know how they’ll react when it happens for real. On top of the television there’s a black-and-white card from
Fergal and Jamie, a photo of a cat looking rapaciously into a goldfish bowl, that made us smile when we opened it. The biggest,
glossiest one of all is from Richard. Richard for now is being guiltily helpful, striving to do all the things that a caring
father should, however semidetached his situation may seem. He hasn’t told Gina and Adrian yet that we’re separating — I think
he dreads that — and I am cooperating by keeping up the pretence that all is well when Gina phones, which in some weird way
brings him and me a little closer, as though we have become co-conspirators. Richard brought us here, though later today,
when we will need a lift home, he has a business conference, so Fergal will collect us. And on the way home, if Daisy is well
enough, we’re stopping at the pet shop so she can choose her kitten.

Fergal’s friend the gallery owner came to see me last week. His phone call panicked me: the house was in a muddle, Sinead
was packing to go to Sara’s, and I was doing the washing ready for coming here. I worried what to wear, and whether he’d think
my coffee cups too garish and my house too full of braid and flowered fabric. I didn’t know how he’d expect me to show my
pictures, so I simply spread them out on the dining-room table: the ones where the children are trapped and imprisoned in
mazes of matted branches, and the latest ones that I’ve done since coming back from Berlin. These are a little different.
These children play, though it’s like the play in nursery rhymes: sometimes grotesque or savage, and full of breakages and
reversals. And there are toys and animals here: masks like the ones on our wall, and a cat playing the violin and a monkey
on the drums, like my mother said she saw in that Berlin toy department. And I’m using color again, acrylic paints with that
sweet, complicated smell that always makes me think of Miss Jenkins’s lessons.

The gallery owner was called Mark Ewing. He had neatly pressed combats and close-cropped hair, I don’t think he noticed my
curtains and he didn’t drink much of his coffee. He spent a long time looking at my drawings and talking to me about what
I liked to draw, and what other art I’d done, and whether I’d had any formal art education. I thought he was just softening
me up, preparing me for the moment when he’d give me a thoughtful look, compassionate but pained, and say, To be honest, this
isn’t the kind of thing I’m interested in — but the best of luck for the future.… But then he started to talk about money,
about the price he would put on my drawings and whether I’d be happy with it. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation.
The sums he talked about amazed me. “I think we need to aim high,” he said. “These are exceptional.” There was a brief moment
of thrill, a rocket-burst of starry glitter that dazzled in my mind. But then the weight of doubt: I wanted to tell him, No,
you’re getting this wrong, these are just doodles I did, jottings from the inside of my head, you’re taking them far too seriously.
Honestly, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing; I just sit down with a pencil and muddle through. No one will part with good
money for my drawings. No one. I wanted to say all this, urgently, compulsively, but I remembered what Fergal keeps on saying,
about how I do myself down, and I smiled and didn’t say anything.

He talked about the catalogue. We could write something together, he said, about where your drawings come from. That all helps,
he said. That would be good publicity. People like to know where you get your inspiration from; people like stories. Tell
me, is there a story to go with these pictures? Yes, I told him. Yes. There is a story.

The heat has made my throat dry: I know I’ll never sleep without a drink. I slip noiselessly out of bed and into the corridor.
In the darkened room next door, the Afghani woman and her son are presumably still asleep. I pass the playroom, where the
staff are sitting and quietly talking together; the ward notes are spread out on the table where, in the daytime, children
play Monopoly. Their voices sound significant in the night, hushed and profound, as though they are sharing a secret. They
look up and smile as I pass, with a kind of intimacy, a recognition that we are the only ones who are awake here.

In the kitchen I don’t need the light to see by: There’s a reflected glow from the London streets in the sky. I get myself
some juice and stand there for a moment, looking out at the apricot dark, thinking of all the people who are up now, like
the nurses down the corridor: working, keeping things going. There’s a thrill to cities at night, the way they never sleep,
and the streets that are never entirely unpeopled, with all their dazzle and neon. Like on one of those postcards my mother
sent from her last surprising home, showing Kurfurstendamm and Unter den Linden at nighttime, with their extravagant lights
and sharp, dark shadows, and a wide bright sunset sky above the Reichstag.

Last week I had another letter from Berlin. But not in my mother’s handwriting, so I knew what was in it before I opened it
up. It was from Karl. She’d been rushed into hospital, he said. She died in her sleep; it was all very sudden. The funeral
was on Thursday. If I wanted to come, he could pick me up at Tegel Airport. P.S. She had told him about Daisy’s illness, and
he hoped she was feeling better, I wrote back straightaway. I said I was sorry that I couldn’t come, but I had to go into
hospital with Daisy; I knew he would understand. I said that as he probably knew, my mother and I hadn’t always had a very
good relationship, but I was glad I’d come to see her and that we had been reconciled. I added that I knew she was happy with
him — that in many ways her life had been hard, but her years with him had been her happiest. Maybe this too, I thought as
I wrote, like so much else in my life and my mother’s, was a lie or an evasion, but on balance I thought there was something
in it, and I wanted to give him comfort.

I go back to our room. Daisy is stirring, saying something incomprehensible, with her eyes still closed. I stroke her back
and she drifts down deeper into unconsciousness.

I get into bed and don’t expect to sleep. I lie there a while, staring at the light reflecting on the ceiling. But the noise
through the window soothes me, like the massive breathing of some great resting animal, and I go to sleep and dream.

This is the dream.

It’s winter, in a wide white empty landscape, like a scene from a Russian epic. There are no people here or roads or houses,
and it’s high and far and bitter in the cold. The shadows lengthen and snow lies over everything, and yet more snow is falling
on the wind. A woman walks alone through the empty land. Her head is bent against the driving sleet. And in the dream I see
this is my mother. She’s wearing a flimsy coat and lots of gilded bracelets, and her gloves are pastel cotton with ruched
wrists, and her boots have high slender heels, so she stumbles in the snowdrifts. I think how typical this is — that she goes
on even this unguessable journey in such unsuitable shoes. Night presses in: The cold light thickens so she can scarcely see.
She moves on through the bitter drizzle of sleet; there’s somewhere she has to get to. The journey is long, but she just keeps
walking, one foot in front of the other.

At last she comes to a house set deep in a shadowed valley. The house is tall, substantial, built of stone, but looking shut-up,
empty; Nails have been driven into the shutters to seal them against the storm. In the dream I seem to feel her dread. It’s
a place to make you afraid, a place of desolation. She puts out a hand and pushes against the door. And it yields to her touch
and she steps inside and it’s not as she expected: She sees what she could not see from the other side of the door. For there
is light and warmth here, the lamps are lit, a stove glows on the hearth, heat wraps itself around her. Someone was here before
her; she is expected, welcome. A pot of food is simmering on the hob: A good smell wafts toward her. The door in the front
of the stove has been pulled open, to let the air flow in. Inside, there’s a red blaze of coals. She takes off her sodden
gloves and flings them to the floor. The snowflakes melt, run off them. She kneels on the floor in front of the stove and
holds out her hands to the blaze.

I would like to thank everyone I have worked with at Little, Brown — in particular, my editor, Judy Gain, for her wisdom and
empathy; Claire Smith, for her warmth and clarity in dealing with all the detail; and Betsy Uhrig, for her marvelously precise
copyediting. I am also deeply grateful to my U.S. agent, Kathleen Anderson; and my U.K. agent, Jonathan Lloyd. Lucy Floyd
has been a constant source of support and guidance, and Mick, Becky, and Isabel sustained me with their love and encouragement
as always.

I am indebted to the National Children’s Bureau, U.K., for permission to quote from
Trust Betrayed
, edited by Jan Horwath and Brian Lawson. Among the other books I read, there were two that I found particularly valuable:
Hurting for hove
, by Herbert A. Schreier and Judith A. Libow, and
The Pindown Experience and the Protection of Children
, the moving and disturbing report of the Staffordshire Child Care Inquiry conducted by Allan Levy, Q.C., and Barbara Kahan.

Margaret Leroy studied music at Oxford and has worked as a music therapist, play leader, and social worker. Her previous books
have been published in nine languages, and she has written widely for newspapers and magazines. She is married with two daughters
and lives in London.

A haunting, page-turning novel about a woman’s life unraveling when the past she is trying to escape comes back to haunt her—and
her love for her daughter is turned against her

It is the first day after Christmas break, and Catriona Lydgate’s daughter, Daisy, has been ill for weeks with a mysterious
flu. Cat takes Daisy through a series of examinations, but the doctors can’t find anything wrong. Perhaps it is something
in her daughter’s head, they suggest. Perhaps Cat is being manipulated?

Cat finally finds a doctor who takes her seriously, and she trusts him with Daisy’s life—until she realizes that he suspects
her
of deliberately making her child ill.

Cat’s life descends into parallel hells: she fears for her daughter’s life, and yet her concern is turned against her as her
doctors and even her husband scrutinize her every act. Cat begins to lie about her past, afraid that events from her childhood
could seal the case against her. For months, she has concealed postcards from Europe that threaten to blow her life wide open.
For it is Cat’s past that has the power to save or destroy her—and there is nothing she won’t do to protect the thing she
loves most.

With almost unbearable suspense,
Postcards front Berlin
takes readers into a nightmare in which love is suspect and concern turns into harm. With dazzling psychological insight,
Margaret Leroy has crafted an unforgettable novel that touches the deepest core of human experience.

Margaret Leroy studied music at Oxford, and has worked as a music therapist, play leader, shop assistant, and social worker.
She lives in London.

“Margaret Leroy writes like a dream.
Postcards from Berlin
is a thriller, a reflection on the nature of parenting, and a love story that is all the more moving because it is about the
love between a mother and her child. Gripping, disturbing, and moving,
Postcards from Berlin
goes straight to the heart.”