‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Hannah,’ she says. ‘It must be a very difficult situation for you. I understand that. But I’d like to understand the rest too. I’d really like to know what it’s like at home. I don’t know anyone else who lives in a cabin in the woods.’
I turn the paper around and keep drawing Jonathan’s trousers. They’re his favourite trousers, the blue ones he’s only allowed to wear on Sundays.
‘Hannah?’
I look up.
‘Do you understand me?’
I nod, then go straight back to my picture. I’ve also given Jonathan his favourite red T-shirt. It really glowed when it was still new. I think he’d be pleased if he knew he was wearing his favourite clothes in my picture. To finish, I draw his curly hair. It’s almost black like Papa’s. Then I start drawing my own face right next to Jonathan’s. I’m going to put on my favourite dress too, the white one with the flowers. We’re all going to look very beautiful in my picture.
‘So you can’t open the windows at home, Hannah? That’s why you need the unit?’
‘The recirculation unit,’ I mutter.
‘Doesn’t the cabin have any windows?’
‘Of course it does.’ I need the yellow pencil for my curly hair.
‘But you don’t open the windows? Why not, Hannah?’
‘It’s too dangerous. That’s why they’re boarded up.’ I wonder if it’s a lie if I draw myself with a red hairband. I don’t have a red hairband, only a dark blue one. But a red one would go much better with the flowers on my dress.
‘Did your papa do that, Hannah? You said he’s a good handyman.’
‘Yes.’ My hand moves very carefully to the red pencil and I look Sister Ruth in the eye. There’s no way she can know I don’t have a red hairband, but I’m slightly worried she’ll see from my face that I’m trying to cheat. Worry isn’t proper fear, but it’s not a good feeling either. Worry is more like the feeling of sickness you get when you’ve got a tummy ache and you don’t know if you’re going to have to throw up or not.
Papa was very worried when Mama was away. He told us that he wasn’t certain she’d be coming back to us and then he cried. Papa had never cried before. I put my hand up to his face and felt the sticky tears running down his cheek. He didn’t say it, but I immediately knew that it was partly my fault that Mama went away. It was because of the Sara thing. Jonathan knew too. He just stared at me and wouldn’t talk to me for several days, until I reminded him that he didn’t particularly like Sara either.
‘You know what, Hannah, I was just thinking. You’ve gone to so much trouble drawing your brother that it shows just how fond you are of him. Maybe we should send someone to your house to see how he’s getting on with the carpet? Or to help him?’
I grab the red pencil without taking my eyes off Sister Ruth. But it doesn’t seem to bother her that I’m going to cheat with the colours.
‘Or,’ she continues unfazed, ‘we could bring him here, to be with you. Then you could wait for your mama together. Some things seem only half as bad if you’ve someone important to you close by.’
‘I’m not sure Jonathan would like it here,’ I say. My imaginary red hairband looks really lovely with the flowery dress. ‘I think he’d start trembling if he had to be here.’
‘But you’re brave and you’re not trembling.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ I say. ‘But maybe I’m just more courageous than Jonathan. Because I’m older or a bit smarter or both. He was much more terrified than me by the blood too. And by the noise.’
‘What noise?’
‘Well, where do you think the bad stains on the carpet came from?’
Sister Ruth looks as if she’s thinking, but I now know that she’s not particularly good at this. ‘Like if you drop a watermelon on the floor,’ I say, to spare her more embarrassment. ‘What it sounds like when you bash someone’s head with something. Bam!’ I say in my lion’s voice. Speaking normally again, I add, ‘And afterwards it’s very quiet for a while.’
Matthias
Four thousand nine hundred and ninety-three days.
I have counted and cursed each one of them. My hair has turned greyer, my heartbeat uneven. The first year I drove down her last route every day. I had flyers printed and stuck them on every single lamppost. On my own initiative, I questioned supposed friends and set a few people straight. Several times a day I would call my long-term friend Gerd, Gerd Brühling, who was looking for her in his role as chief inspector and head of the investigation team. I terminated my friendship with Herr Brühling when he failed to find her. When I reached the stage where I began to feel my efforts were pointless, I was determined at the very least that the lies should stop. I gave endless interviews, fifty or more.
Lena has been missing for 4,993 days. And nights. That’s over thirteen years. Thirteen years during which every ring of the telephone might signal the one message, the only message that would change everything. Our daughter had been abducted and they were demanding a ransom. Our daughter had been fished out of the Isar, blue and swollen beyond all recognition. Our daughter had been found, raped, slaughtered and thrown away like rubbish, perhaps abroad, somewhere in eastern Europe.
‘Matthias? Are you still there?’ Gerd’s voice is squawking with excitement.
I don’t answer, I just try to breathe. The receiver is shaking in my sweaty right hand. With my left, I grope for some support on the chest of drawers. This space, the hallway in our house, is losing its solidity; the stairs, the carpet, the wardrobe seem to slosh towards me, as if driven on by waves. The floor beneath my feet is soft. Beside me is Karin who, still half-asleep, hauled herself downstairs when I didn’t return to the bedroom. Nervously fiddling with the tie of her cream-coloured towelling dressing gown, she hisses, ‘What’s up, Matthias? What is it?’
With great difficulty, I swallow the lump in my throat, the news and its significance, the thirteen fucking years. Hundreds of times both Karin and I have imagined Lena dying in the most terrible way possible, torturing ourselves with thousands of possibilities. In our thoughts we’d started to disregard only one of these possibilities: what if the telephone rings and they tell us they’ve found her alive?
‘Lena,’ I gasp.
Karin closes her eyes and takes a few unsteady steps backwards until her back hits the wall and she sinks to the floor. She puts her hands to her face and starts to sob, not loud and histrionically, no, not like that. Too much time has passed, 4,993 days, leaving too little hope. No, the sounds she makes are like sad, feeble hiccoughs.