When they had run out of money, a long way still from their destination, the taxi driver stopped the car and left them with a cheery ‘Zum Wohl’ before driving off and leaving them to carry all their bags in the rain.
‘There’s a shelter,’ Mama confided after she turned around once and then again, trying to navigate the new road layout. Rune watched the traffic light men wearing funny hats change from red to green. Everything was different here.
‘The phone call was to check, to make sure, but now we’re here. Let’s hope we can find it.’
‘What happens if we don’t?’ he asked.
Mama didn’t answer and Rune tried hard not to look at her face.
‘Are we looking for your Anorak?’ Lotte asked, perched on Mama’s back. Rune and Mama took turns carrying the big bag, Lotte holding on like a little monkey.
‘What?’ Mama asked.
‘Anorak?’
‘Annika?’ Mama smiled. But said nothing further.
When they at last arrived at a large house with a blue door, Mama wheezed and put Lotte down. The three of them standing in a row, Mama rang the bell.
He waited as the rain tinkled on empty milk bottles piled on a crate. He waited as the guttering drip-dripped water onto a wooden tricycle with two wheels. He waited as the rain splashed into an empty can on a lawn of cigarette ends.
And still he waited.
Lotte, having not walked the entire time, climbed the black railings that adjoined the steps. Rune watched her climb, holding on, then leaning back, allowing her hair to flow and swish.
He looked at Mama, her face a blurry picture he couldn’t see.
Mama knocked on the door and Lotte hopped down.
The door was blue, but the paint was chipped and peeling away. Under the blue, it had once been white.
‘One, two, three . . .’ Lotte started to count the milk bottles. When she reached ‘eleven, twelve’, Mama rang the bell again.
‘There are fourteen bottles,’ Lotte said, holding his hand. ‘Roo, what’s the song with the milk bottles?’
He shook his head – ‘I don’t know’ – and focused on the peeling door. The rain poured and he was cold, a cold that came from within and crawled around his body like veins.
He looked at Mama. She was transfixed by the door and banged on it with the side of a fisted hand.
‘Yes, you do. It’s where the bottles fall,’ Lotte said.
But he couldn’t understand her because something was happening to Mama. She started to shake while still hammering on the door. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Oh my God, please.’
And then the window to his right lit up and a face peered out from behind lace curtains. He nudged Mama and pointed to the window. A woman smiled and nodded that she was coming to the door.
‘Roo?’ Lotte asked.
‘It’s green bottles, not milk bottles,’ he said absently. ‘Ten green bottles.’
‘Oh.’
He heard the key in the lock and the door opened. The woman standing there was smaller than he was. She had black hair down to her waist and wore a dark housecoat.
‘Hello,’ she said, her accent thick and warm, as she opened the door further. ‘Do please come in, all of you,’ and she smiled as they stepped inside together. She smelled like the garden in summer when the earth gets hot, and the cooking herbs could be tasted on the tongue and . . . stink out the house.
He wanted to prise the words, the voice, the thought from his head. He could hear Papa. His deep monotone voice. They had left, crossed the Wall, and his body felt as if it had walked for an entire day, yet his voice . . . had not left him at all.
He looked down. The woman’s feet were in sandals and she had decorated toenails.
‘Please.’ The woman gestured a little further into the hallway and towards a sea of shoes. ‘Welcome to LightHouse. My name is Nanya.’ She offered a hand. Rune took it, not meeting her eyes. The touch of her hand was light in his.
She shook Lotte’s hand too.
‘Are you my Nonna?’ Lotte asked.
‘No child,’ Nanya said gently, taken aback by Lotte, as most people were when they first met her, ‘but you’ll be safe here,’ and she closed the door.
Rune gripped Lotte’s hand as they stepped further into the hallway, which smelled of milk and damp leather. A huge staircase was ahead of them, with clothes strewn along the banister like bunting. A door stood ajar to the right, clothes slung over it. Coats hung from pegs on the wall, fixed high and low, like at school.
As Mama’s bag landed heavily on the floor, he shrugged his off too. The woman, Nanya, was looking at Mama. Rune followed her gaze to where Mama sat hunched on her knees on the floor, clinging on to the bag.
‘Mama?’ He took a step towards her, but Nanya put out her arm to hold him back.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
Nanya didn’t reply, but bent in front of Mama and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
Then a noise rushed in at him, as though from a strong wind.
It came from Mama.
She howled, placing her hand on her chest, then folded over herself. She stayed there, kneeling on the floor among all the shoes, which wasn’t where she was supposed to be. It took him a while to register what had happened. Was she unwell? Her head rested on her knees as she rocked herself back and forth.
The woman said nothing, her hand on Mama’s back.
The strangeness of it pricked his skin like goose pimples. It swelled his mouth, numbed it, now too thick for words and too dry to swallow them. Mama? The noise wasn’t a cry he recognised, it was something different. There was something very wrong.
Lotte shivered and sobbed next to him. He placed an arm around her and it hung heavily over her shoulders.
‘Mama?’ she cried and shook his arm off, before launching herself at Mama in a mess of noisy tears.
‘I . . .’ Mama said, and uncurled to wrap Lotte in her lap. Mama wiped Lotte’s eyes and then her own on her sleeve. ‘I . . .’ she started to say.
‘You don’t need to say anything. You’re safe here,’ Nanya said.
‘I . . . Oh.’ Mama sounded as though she was hiccupping words. ‘I didn’t, I mean, it was the only way . . .’ – and she rocked Lotte in her arms – ‘We had nowhere else to go.’
‘We could have gone home,’ Lotte said, wiping Mama’s tears with Moo Bunny’s ears.
‘Never,’ she said, and Rune heard it. Loud and clear.
He launched himself into Mama’s lap, squishing Lotte and holding on to Mama tight. Crying with her. They really weren’t going back.
‘Roo, you are big and heavy and squishing me,’ Lotte complained.
He got up, wiping his hands shyly across his wet and snotty face.
‘Mama,’ Lotte said. ‘When is Papa going to get here? Will he bring Home too?’
‘No, Lotte, Papa is not coming.’ Mama stopped, and the sentence hung in the air.
Would he come for them?
‘I want Home,’ Lotte said, clambering to her feet. ‘I want my Papa.’
NOW
TUESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER 1999
SCHICKSALSTAG – DAY OF FATE
LOTTE
Her mind skipped with excitement as she saw a bunch of denim-clad, hoody-wearing students. Their backpacks created a wall of varying colours as they gathered at the end of the hall at the former Stasi headquarters in Zirndorf, Nuremberg. With a bit of help from the taxi driver, Stern, she had found the entrance and managed to join a group tour.