‘Of course.’
‘Night night,’ Lotte said and she left, closing the door to his room. He heard her cross the hall to her room, wishing she wouldn’t leave him on his own. A pathetic thought and juvenile; he never wanted to be alone, yet more often than not over the past few months he was becoming more so.
Reluctantly he switched off the light and slumped onto his bed, exhausted.
Rune waited until he was sure everyone was in bed and asleep before unfolding the letter he’d received earlier that day. He couldn’t read it in the dark, but he unfolded and folded it again, hoping that in the morning it would say something different. He placed it in his pocket, before popping two oxycodone, stolen from Papa’s supply after a back injury months ago.
Time zigzagged both ahead and behind. He was lost and alone.
He pulled his knees to his chest, the blanket pooled at his feet. He closed his eyes and saw black, but when he opened them the dark still poured in. He tried to breathe through the viscous black, like breathing underwater. He cupped his hands over his mouth and tried not to panic. Closing his eyes, he felt his breath stream through his fingers. He focused on the in and out until he could feel warm whispers tickling his skin.
He drifted in and out of sleep, but every time he roused he was greeted with a white light of shame. It ate at him.
He had thought the Berlin Art Institute would be his way out. A scholarship. Fees paid. A bursary and a way to earn some actual money. He’d use it to get an apartment that was his and Lotte’s, to keep her in school until she turned eighteen, to pay for things she would need, like yellow tutus and badges for her backpack and glittery laces for her shoes and anything else she could ever want. He wanted to be there for her. Always.
He felt sick, syrupy gummy sick. A nausea induced by swallowing his own saliva. The Art Institute had declined his application.
Declined.
He tried not to think of the many words that followed this verdict, printed so neatly on his letter; or the clanging, bashing, grinding pulse of a ticking clock only he could hear.
And he knew he had to do something soon – or he’d be forced to become a policeman. What else could he do? And where would that leave Lotte?
He was suspended in the dark, his heart pinched. It may have been the drugs, but Mama’s voice joined his own inside his head. He tried to sleep, to sleep away the longing for her voice, her love. But to sleep was inevitably to wake, and in waking he had to face the double cruelty of her loss. The tiny moment of hope, of her presence . . . and then the truth.
To wake was to lose her all over again.
THEN
FRIDAY 6TH JANUARY 1989
EPIPHANIE – EPIPHANY
He didn’t look up as they shuffled along the landing, Mama carrying Lotte in her arms and Rune following a footstep behind.
As he followed her, he wouldn’t look up.
He wouldn’t look up, because just down the hall . . . Just down the hall, in the darkest black, was the door, and behind that door was Papa. And if he looked up, Papa might be in the shadows if he was—
His legs trembled, his foot slipped; he grasped at the handrail as he made his way down the stairs.
Rune hooked his fingers into the corner of Mama’s jumper, the fabric softened by age. He held tight. Lotte was hanging over Mama’s shoulder; Moo Bunny’s dangling ears bounced, gripped in Lotte’s small hands.
Mama untangled his fingers from her jumper as they reached the hall and he stood beside the coat rack. His hands were empty and his heart was beating fast enough to make everything around him appear cloudy and edgeless.
They were so close to the door.
A coat was passed to him. Rune held it, clawed his nails into the fabric, and pushed his feet into shoes put in front of him. Unlaced.
Hurry, he wanted her to hurry. He couldn’t look away from the top of the stairs, where Papa could appear.
At any second.
It could all change.
Hurry, Mama, he thought. Hurry. Please.
The lock clicked.
He looked back, expecting to see him. But nothing.
The catch on the door released and he heard . . .
Mama stopped.
Nothing.
Lotte curled her head into Mama’s neck. Rune didn’t know what to do. He backed up into the wall. It was cold.
Then.
The fresh air from the open door hit him with such promise.
Mama pushed him through.
He tripped down the steps and found his balance by bashing into the gate. Mama was behind him; she pulled him away, grabbed the gate and swung it open. She pointed right and he ran.
Ran without looking back. Ran with all the energy he had. Rune ran fast. But even with the bag, the coats and Lotte in her arms, Mama was right beside him, keeping pace, setting pace.
He was running so fast the wind rushed through his hair, tearing his eyes.
This is how it felt to fly.
NOW
TUESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER 1999
SCHICKSALSTAG – DAY OF FATE
LOTTE
The house held a warmth-infused sleepiness, as though a spell had been woven into its very foundations; curtains were heavy-eyed, walls dozed upright like sleepy guards on night duty and the sofa rested, open-mouthed, dreaming of stuffing and scatter cushions. Lotte, witnessing the magic of the house in deep slumber, stretched. A shawl of contentment wrapped around her as she softly made her way to the kitchen.
She put the oven on, gathered utensils, a bowl and two tins, and placed them on the kitchen worktop, then picked out her ingredients.
She would make a chocolate cake for Roo. It would be her best one yet and he would eat it and he would be happy, because who could not be happy with chocolate cake?
Nestling the ingredients in the pocket of her apron, she placed them in a line on the worktop. Carefully arranging them in order, she checked through each item and only when she was sure she had remembered everything was she ready to begin.
Measuring the flour in puffs of white mist, then the cocoa, she licked her lips, tasting dry powder. She sieved the white and brown together; they merged in the bowl as a chocolate fog rose.
A chocolate snowy flour mountain built under her sieve; she watched as it grew, thinking about the moat of melted butter that would be poured like golden sunshine all around it. Imagining a pearl-grey sky with dancing snowflakes, both chocolate and white. She fell silently into a snow dance, feeling as light and soft as a feather skimming across a frozen lake. Imagining snowflakes falling on her upturned face.
The post thudded on the mat by the front door. Lotte jumped, and the last chunks of flour and cocoa did too – over the top of the sieve and into the bowl.
‘That was cheeky,’ she said, placing the empty sieve in the sink and wiping her hands before going out into the hall. Silence rippled down the stairs like water as the house yawned, waking.
‘Morning,’ she whispered to the house as she collected the newspaper and a few letters from the mat. The letters had a crinkle-sharp window, which meant they were for Papa. Lotte tucked them to the back; her attention was drawn to a yellow padded envelope. It felt soft and pliable in her hands. Looking at the words stained on the front, she read her name. ‘L’, with a straight long line down and a sharp pointy one across.
‘“L” and “O” and “TT”, then the little “e” that sounds like (uh),’ she said, and looked again.