The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (33 page)

As much as I wanted Marco to be reconciled with Silke’s memory, I still feared her hold over him and worried that, now he was back in her city, she would reclaim him as hers. I found myself offering her a little prayer. She’d had him for so long. He’d grieved for her for so many years. It was my turn to claim him for love.

Marco texted me as he left Silke’s mother’s house. He asked me to meet him at his hotel and told me to come straight to his suite. When I arrived, he was sitting on his bed with his head in his hands. I immediately thought that his downcast demeanour must be due to the difficult conversations he’d had that afternoon, but he assured me that he was merely tired from all the travelling and the anticipation of what had actually turned out to be a perfectly pleasant meeting.

‘Was Anna there?’ I asked. ‘Does she look like her sister?’

‘In some ways,’ said Marco. ‘They showed me some photographs.’

‘I thought they might.’

‘And even as a child, Silke was different from the rest of them. Her mother told me that it had come as no surprise when Silke decided to dye her hair blue.’

‘Are you glad you went?’

Marco nodded.

‘I think it helped, you know, for them to see that I didn’t just walk away and carry on living my vacuous playboy life.’

I squeezed Marco’s hand. I didn’t like to agree with him but I had a feeling he might be right. If anyone really believed there was blame, here was evidence of punishment.

‘Do you want to eat anything?’ I asked.

‘Silke’s mother insisted I ate some of her cake,’ he said, with a sad smile. ‘All I want to do is lie down and rest.’

We spent our first night together in the Hotel Adlon, in the suite that Marco had booked for his stay. We didn’t make love that night. We simply held each other on the big wide bed. It wasn’t the right time for anything more. We lay down on top of the sheets fully clothed and wrapped our arms around each other’s bodies. We said very little, just listened to the sound of each other breathing. There was something healing in our proximity to each other. Indeed, Marco said as much when he asked me if I was sure I really needed to hear everything about his relationship with Silke and the way the memory of her had dominated his life since.

‘Sarah, know that I am telling you all this because I want to be with you. I am undergoing some kind of transformation, which started the day you arrived at the Palazzo Donato. This is my scar tissue. I need you to see it properly, before you can say with certainty that there is hope it might be successfully cut away. I’m asking you to perform open-heart surgery.’

As I had predicted, it was not long before I stopped seeing Marco’s injuries. When we looked at each other, we were eye to eye.

I felt at home in his arms. I dreamed that we were happy.

The following morning, we had breakfast in bed. I met the room-service waiter at the suite’s main door, so that Marco would not have to deal with any questioning stares. But over breakfast, Marco seemed different. He sat a little straighter against the pillows than he had the night before. He smiled at me over the sumptuous breakfast that could have fed four. That said, neither of us was very hungry. I touched only the orange juice and half a croissant. Marco did not do much better.

‘How are you feeling this morning?’ I asked him, as he toyed with a pain au chocolat as though he’d never seen one before.

‘I think I’m ready,’ he said. ‘We can go there right after breakfast.’

Of course, I knew where he meant by ‘there’. Silke’s grave.

‘Do you need to get her some flowers?’ I asked.

‘She wasn’t that kind of girl,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought her something she would like much better.’

He nodded in the direction of his suitcase.

‘In the outside pocket.’

I went to look. Inside the pocket was a small square package wrapped in tissue paper.

‘Open it.’

Inside was one of the Buddhas from the secret office.

‘She gave this to me the week I met her,’ he said. ‘And now I want to give it back. I have prayed to this little Buddha on so many occasions. I was praying to him the night before you came back into my life.’

I wrapped the little Buddha up again. Marco was standing in front of his wardrobe, choosing a suit for the day. I had already noticed that he had come to Berlin with a suitcase full of brand new clothes. It was hard not to think that he had chosen them for Silke, though I suppose he had not shopped in a decade. He didn’t need any other excuse.

‘What do you think?’ he asked me, pulling out a suit in a dark, sombre blue.

I nodded. The tears were prickling the back of my throat. It was the strangest thing. Here at last was the man I loved and I was helping him dress for another woman. A dead woman, but another woman nonetheless. The effort of sitting on my jealousy made my eyes hot and my head ache. I felt a sense of rising panic, as though if I made Marco look good enough, Silke would reach out from beyond and take him back with her.

Perhaps that was what he wanted. Had Marco really come to Berlin to find closure with the intention of beginning a new life or, like Gerd, was he really just preparing for his own death?

‘You look worried,’ he told me.

‘I’m not,’ I lied. ‘Except, perhaps for you. It’s cold outside. Are you going to be warm enough in that suit?’

Finally, I asked the question that had been on my lips ever since he announced that today was the day he would visit Silke’s grave.

‘Are you sure that you want me to come with you?’

Marco nodded. ‘I don’t think I can do it without you.’

I put my arm through Marco’s and gripped him tightly as we walked from the car to the cemetery. We walked slowly.

In the days before Marco came to Berlin, I had already been to the cemetery and discovered exactly where Silke was buried. I led Marco to within twelve feet of the grave, then let him carry on alone. I sensed that he would need a moment on his own with the woman who had changed his life so dramatically in such a short time.

Her headstone was simple. It put me in mind of Augustine du Vert’s grave in Père Lachaise. There was nothing about it that spoke of the vibrancy of the woman named thereon. Nothing to remind people that here was a girl who dyed her hair all the colours of the rainbow and sang with the voice of a siren.

I watched from a distance as Marco placed the little Buddha on Silke’s headstone. He bowed his head, as though in prayer, but I sensed that he wasn’t talking to God. He was talking to Silke. I also sensed that she was talking back to him. His shoulders, which had been so tight, seemed to loosen. He stood straighter.

Then, at last, he lifted his head and turned to look at me. He held out his hand in my direction. I stepped towards him, as nervous as I might have been at any ordinary party, meeting the legendary ex-girlfriend.

‘Thank you,’ said Marco. ‘For bringing me here. You’ll think I’m mad if I say this, but I feel as though Silke has been talking to me. She’s been telling me that everything’s going to turn out fine in the end. I think she forgives me.’

‘How could she not?’ I asked him. I turned to Silke’s grave and stood listening for a moment. ‘She says you’re a silly fool for ever thinking she could hold a grudge.’

‘See,’ Marco said. ‘That’s girls all over. You’re ganging up on me already.’

Marco put his arm round my shoulder and I put my arm round his waist. I leaned my head on his shoulder. It may not have been the right moment for a kiss, but it was definitely the right moment to remind each other that we were still alive, we were together and there could be decades of happiness ahead of us.

The atmosphere as we got back into the car was much lighter than it had been when we arrived at the graveyard. Marco held my hand in his lap. We drove back to the hotel but we were not there for long. Marco’s plane would be waiting to take him back to Venice at seven o’clock. He had warned me that this trip would be a short one; he had to see his doctor in Venice the following day. I wasn’t going to ask him to miss that appointment. They were going to be talking about the first operation to give Marco more mobility in his damaged hand.

After I had helped Marco to repack his bag, I went with him to Schönefeld airport. We didn’t talk much on the way. I think we were both still trying to absorb the momentousness of what had just happened. Marco had travelled to Berlin and made his peace with Silke. We were free to be together at last. He was going back to Venice to talk about operations. There was forward motion, but I think we were both nervous that saying too much could jinx any future plans.

We got to the terminal and I sat with Marco while his plane was prepared. He had his arm round me. It felt natural already, like we’d always been this close.

‘I can’t stand to leave you here at the airport,’ he said. ‘Come back with me to Venice. Come now. We’ll send the driver to fetch your passport from the Hufelandstrasse.’

‘I can’t,’ I told him. ‘Not yet. You know I have things to do here.’

‘Will I see you again?’ Marco was suddenly anxious.

I nodded. ‘Of course. And once we are together again, I promise I will never leave you alone.’

I wiped a tear from my eye as Marco’s private plane climbed into the clouds. I was silent and subdued as the limo driver took me back to my apartment. The building seemed especially melancholy now that Gerd Schmidt had gone and I knew there would be no music to accompany me as I climbed the stairs. I made a cup of tea and took up my favourite spot on the bedroom windowsill. I wrapped the curtain round me to protect me from the cold. Outside the snow was beginning to fall and settling too, making everything look fresh and new. A clean slate. That was what Marco and I had now. We just had to take things slowly.

Then I received his text message. ‘I love you,’ was all it said. With those three words to hold close to my heart, I knew I’d never feel cold again.

Chapter 43

Christmas, England, last year

A couple of weeks after Marco came to Berlin, I was back in the UK to receive my doctorate and celebrate Christmas with my family. I had other business there too. Just as I had promised Gerd, I had tracked down his brother’s darling Kitty and arranged to visit her to give her those small effects belonging to Otto that Gerd had kept for her over the decades.

I arrived at a beautiful house in the Cotswolds. It was a cold day but it was bright and the countryside was stunning in a glittering cold of frost. A Christmas tree glowed invitingly in a bay window.

A young housekeeper opened the door to the house and showed me in. I found Kitty in a cosy little sitting room. She was sitting in a chair by a bright wood fire, squinting over a crossword. She put it down and smiled at me.

‘Got to keep your mind busy,’ she said. ‘Use it or lose it.’

I agreed with her.

‘I still keep up my diary too. Though these days there’s nothing much to report except the doctor’s visits. I shall have something exciting to write up this evening though. Sarah, I am very glad you’re here.’

She offered me some tea and a slice of home-made cake.

‘I didn’t make it myself,’ she explained, holding up her stiff old hands. ‘Hands are too shaky these days. Oh, what am I talking about! I never made cake in my life. Baking really wasn’t my thing.’

‘I feel exactly the same,’ I said. ‘Life’s too short.’

‘Besides, once you’ve eaten cake in Germany, nothing else seems to match up.’

‘Gerd made great cake,’ I told her.

‘Well, that must have been something he learned after I knew him,’ said Kitty.

‘I’ve got something for you. Shall I hand it over now?’

Kitty nodded.

I brought the shoebox out of my bag and placed it on the table next to her.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Turner and Timpson. I wonder what happened to the shoes that were in there? My mother and I bought them on a shopping trip for my sixteenth birthday. I thought they were terribly grown-up. So what have we here?’

She took off the lid and reached inside. A faraway look came into her eyes as she held the little teddy bear in her hand. And then there were tears.

‘Oh, my darling Otto,’ she sighed.

She pressed the bear to her face and inhaled, as though her beloved’s scent might still linger there.

‘You must excuse me. It’s funny how the most ordinary things can come to mean so much to us,’ she said.

‘I understand,’ I assured her, thinking of the little white rose. I wished I hadn’t thrown that away.

‘Otto gave me this bear for my birthday,’ said Kitty. ‘I called it Little Adolf. It seemed like a good joke at the time. I shall have to call him something else now. Do you think he looks like a Nigel?’

She posed the bear so that he leaned against the cake-stand. She brought out the handkerchief next.

‘I embroidered this at that finishing school. I was never much good at sewing.’

She picked up the diaries. She opened the red one and promptly shut it again.

‘You read all this?’ she asked. I admitted I had. ‘You must think me a terribly naughty girl.’