A Twist of Fate (53 page)

‘We want to know about a baby that Volkmar once came into possession of somehow. In 1971. A baby he gave to a man called Walchez. A baby he probably
sold
.’ Michael let the
word echo through the air like a curse. ‘Were you there?’ he then asked. ‘Do you remember?’

Martina’s shrill voice interrupted again. She talked quickly and urgently to her husband. She was scared, Thea could tell that much. She might have even decided they must be the
police.

Sebastian held up his hand. ‘
Nein
,’ he told her.

It was the first time Thea had heard him speak and his voice was surprisingly strong.

He rolled his hand for Michael to continue talking. Martina stayed frozen in shock.

Michael nodded at Thea. It was her turn to speak.

‘I think I might have been that baby,’ she said, nodding to Michael to translate as she pulled the yellow blanket from her shoulder bag.

Martina gasped. In two steps she crossed the room and snatched the blanket away from Thea, her voice rising as she started gabbling at her husband, inspecting the blanket, turning it over in her
hands. She shouted at Sebastian.

Alarmed, Thea tried to follow what she was saying, but Sebastian’s hands were reaching for Thea. He leant forward in his chair, grabbing her desperately.

‘You . . .’ he whispered, in English. ‘You’re alive . . . You’re here?’

Martina started talking again, but suddenly she was stopped dead in her tracks by Sebastian, whose bony hand stretched out and touched Thea’s cheek.

‘You know me?’ Thea asked.

‘You were going to America, with Walchez. I thought . . . I thought . . .’ Sebastian said. He let out a long sigh and sat back in his chair.

‘Do you know where I came from?’ Thea asked.

Sebastian shook his head, turning it towards her voice. ‘Volkmar.’

Michael spoke to him rapidly – forcefully – again.

Thea listened as the old man began to speak in German once more. This time his eyes welled up with tears. Thea could only follow some of it, but she sensed the emotion he was describing as he
recalled a night in the forest long ago. And the men there. Volkmar. Solya. Udo. Their names clear in his description. And his fear of them.

Michael frowned at Thea.

‘What’s he saying?’ she asked.

‘He’s saying . . . “But what about the other one?” He’s adamant there was another one.’

‘What does he mean? Another what?’ Thea asked, confused.

Michael turned to Thea as Sebastian continued to talk. ‘Another baby,’ Michael said. ‘There was another baby there that night with you. In a green blanket. Your
sister.’

November 2009

A feeling of dread rose up inside Romy Scolari as she gripped the steering wheel of Lars’s camper van and turned north onto the potholed road towards Schwedt.

She remembered her childhood as being cold and grim. But the bright sunlight today made the snow dusting the high pine trees on either side of the road sparkle and glare. Romy snatched her
sunglasses from the dashboard, feeling a fleeting sense of relief and security from the anonymity they gave her as she hurriedly put them on.

A beeping sound jolted her. She delved through the wreckage of fast-food containers and Coke cans on the passenger seat for the little yellow mobile phone that had been her lifeline since
she’d left Amsterdam. But there were no new texts, she saw. Just a message informing her that she’d run out of credit.

It was hardly surprising. She and Lars had talked on it so much since she’d left, even though he’d said it was only for emergencies. But the further she’d driven from him and
the closer she’d got to here, the more her confidence that she’d been doing the right thing had wavered, and the more she’d needed to hear the reassuring sound of his voice.

She hadn’t used her own phone since she’d fled from Villa Gasperi. Or indeed any of her credit cards since she’d withdrawn a large amount of cash before leaving Milan.
She’d been worried – correctly, Lars had confirmed – that through one of them her whereabouts could easily have been traced by the police, or even the media.

And Romy was still determined to control her own destiny for as long as she could. Which meant handing herself in. Here, in Schwedt. As her ‘first declarative statement of innocence’
– a phrase that Tegen Londrom, Lars’s lawyer friend, had used when she’d spoken to Romy and had agreed to take on her case, as well as agreeing to fly to Germany to be with Romy
when she gave herself up.

‘Nearly there,’ Romy said, watching the shadow of the van flickering anarchically over the utilitarian grey buildings that she passed.

It was Lars who’d suggested that she talk out loud to his camper van. He’d said that he’d gone on a road trip when his wife had left him, running off with his best friend.
He’d meandered through Europe as he’d tried to come to terms with it all, talking to himself, first to relieve the boredom and the loneliness he’d felt, but then because
he’d known it was helping him too. He was now convinced that it had been the safe haven of the van that had helped him deal with his despair and his feelings of resentment and rejection.

Romy liked the fact that this crazy vehicle, with its bright-yellow flower in a vase on its dashboard, and its collection of old Eighties record sleeves pinned to its tiny dining area’s
walls, held a special place in Lars’s heart. And that in spite of this – or perhaps even because of it, she hoped – he’d become fond enough of her now to let her use it
too.

She thought back, by no means for the first time, to that kiss they’d shared in his kitchen, before they’d both remembered themselves and had broken apart. She thought,
If this
all ends well—

‘
When
this all ends well,’ she told herself, knowing that she had to truly believe that it would end well, or she might as well turn back now.

Once this had all ended well – what she was doing now, putting her faith in justice and the law, setting out to clear her name of any guilt, once and for all – once that was all done
with, she
would
see Lars again.

She would see him, and the first thing she would do was kiss him. And not just on the cheek as a friend. But on the lips. As more than a friend. As a man she wanted to be with. To be happy with.
One day perhaps even to build a life with. As someone with whom she could move on.

She wished so much that all the difficulties – the police, the lawyers – were already behind her. And that this road trip had a different purpose. She added another flourish to the
fantasy that had developed and sustained her over the last few days. She pictured herself on holiday in the van, with Lars and Gretchen and Alfie. The four of them together, watching the sun rise
over the ocean somewhere. She wondered whether Alfie would fall in love with the van’s furry green seats and 1970s appliances as much as she had. She wondered whether he’d still like
Lars.

She prayed that one day she’d know.

She turned on the radio, fiddling with the dial. She’d listened to a brilliant station all the way to Berlin, singing along to their ‘golden oldies’ hour, amazed that she still
remembered all the words to the Bowie, Queen and Eurythmics songs. But then it had switched into modern dance music and she’d turned it off.

Now, apart from a news channel, there was only static on the radio. She remembered the old guy in the laundry who’d taught her to read. Karl, wasn’t that it? He’d had a small
battery-operated radio, but could never pick up any stations. Romy had thought it had been because Lemcke had somehow blocked the airwaves to stop them from hearing about the outside world, but
perhaps the poor reception had just been a matter of geography after all.

Only another mile to go. Another road sign flashed by.

SCHWEDT.

Even seeing the name instilled fear in her. It made it impossible to pretend, as she’d tried so often, that this place had never really existed, that she’d never really been
here.

She fumbled for a cigarette and lit it, remembering as she did so sitting with Lars on the balcony, but remembering the fire in the orphanage too.

This is your past
. And this is why you’ve come back, she told herself.
To confront it. To admit it. To stop running from it and pretending it never happened. To become yourself.
For the first time in your life.

Such sights as the road sign – the memories they induced – Romy had already begun facing up to them throughout her journey here. Outside Berlin she’d stopped by the high wire
fence surrounding the airport and had leant against the side of the van as she’d looked at the undercarriages of all the aeroplanes, remembering how she’d once been a stowaway taking
off from this very runway.

In the city centre she’d parked the van and had walked through the Brandenburg Gate, remembering Ursula and how they’d used to ride their bikes there on Sunday mornings. She
remembered, too, the clothing factory, and playing poker with the guards, and the bag full of Lemcke’s cash that she’d kept hidden in her mattress.

She now started reclaiming her earliest memories too, letting them live and breathe again inside her mind. She’d shut them away for so long, buried them so deep, but now she pictured
herself playing make-believe games in the yard with Marieke and Tomas, and how little Tara and the other small kids in the dormitory had snuggled up to her at night, pressing their cold feet
against her back and her legs.

As she drove through the swathe of forest on the outskirts of Schwedt, more memories sprang to life. The enormous height and shape of the trees left her feeling dwarfed. And the sky – that
same vast grey expanse that she’d gazed at from the orphanage roof, which had seemed so solid, so much a part of her imprisonment, so ready to fall and crush her if she’d ever tried to
escape – made her feel now as if she’d just travelled back in time. That she was a child again. That she was in danger. Every cell in her body screamed at her to turn back.

She shook her head. She was a grown-up. An adult. A mother. With so much to live for that she would not allow herself to give up.

As she entered the town’s outskirts and the forest diminished to nothing but a blur in the rear-view mirror, she felt the power of the past relinquishing its grip on her. Streets and
houses blurred by.

Schwedt. A town she’d heard plenty of – with its church bells and traffic – but had never actually seen.

Anger rose up inside her as she drove along the main street, past a bakery where two people chatted in the sun. That
this
had always been so close. All these people. Their shops and their
school. Hadn’t they ever wondered about the orphanage and the abandoned children imprisoned there?

Even now, twenty-six years after she’d left, the fact that they hadn’t done anything – had turned a blind eye and carried on their lives as if nothing sinister were happening
on their very doorstep – made her want to spit.

She followed the signs to the municipal car park in the town square. She drove the van into an empty bay and sat for a long time with her forehead on the steering wheel. She waited until she
felt calm enough to get out.

She locked the van and patted its door. She felt suddenly, helplessly, alone. But this was it. This was real. She was no longer in her own private road-trip movie. She was here, and the time had
come to do what she’d come to do. To confess. To present her side of what had really happened. To win back her freedom. To clear her name. And then get her son back.

She walked towards the police station. A granite building, tall and bleak. She imagined the police who’d have staffed it when she’d lived here as a child – those men
who’d hunted her mercilessly through the wood.

She stopped at a phone booth halfway there. She scuffed another cigarette out on the floor as she dialled Lars’s number. In the leafless tree in the middle of the square a robin landed on
a branch. She hoped it was a good omen.

‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please be there.’

And please, God, let him have dug up something. Something to help her win back Alfie. Something they could take to the Italian and American authorities to prove that Brett Maddox had gained
control of Scolari through some illegal means. Something to get Roberto his company back.

But as the phone continued to ring unanswered, Romy dreaded what she might hear. Because, even though Lars had worked through that last night she’d been in his apartment in Amsterdam,
he’d found nothing – not a single example of any irregularities, nothing at all they could use.

A click, then: ‘Yes,’ Lars said.

She felt absurdly relieved just to hear his voice. ‘It’s me.’

‘Oh, Romy. Thank God. Where’ve you been? I’ve been worried sick.’

‘I’m here. In Schwedt. I’m calling from a phone-box,’ she said, feeding more change into the booth’s slot. ‘The phone you gave me, it ran out of
juice.’

‘But you’re OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d still better brace yourself,’ he said.

She felt a flare of hope rise up inside her then. It was impossible to miss the excitement in his voice. ‘What?’

‘I think I’ve finally found something.’

Romy gripped the receiver with both hands. ‘What?’

‘Six weeks ago Maddox Inc.’s new media division bought into CYZ Holdings, a small German media company.’

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Romy said, confused.

‘Me neither. But it’s not the name of the company that’s interesting; it’s where it was originally registered.’

‘Go on . . .’

‘Schwedt.’

As Romy stared out through the grimy phone-box window across the town square towards the brooding police station and the long, thin spire of the church, she felt her heart pounding hard against
her ribs.

Brett Maddox – the man who’d just uncovered all the carefully hidden secrets of her past, all the secrets that had begun right here in this town – he’d recently invested
in a company from this town as well.

‘Who owns CYZ?’ Romy asked, desperate to hear more now, the implications of what Lars had just told her already multiplying exponentially in her head.