One Last Summer (2007) (39 page)

‘As I said, I like to think that, like the hero of his book, he went to sleep and stayed in that other world. And it was real to him, Charlotte. Much more real than the camp. He watched your daughter grow and change day by day, celebrated her birthdays with you, sat up with you the night your son was born …’

She still had one question to ask.

‘You don’t think he was he haunted by the memory of a young pregnant woman standing in the snow-covered yard of Grunwaldsee screaming “Murderer”?’

‘No, Charlotte, I don’t. I know every memory that he carried of you, and that wasn’t one of them.’

Silence fell, and they were both content to simply sit – and remember.

‘We have been here for over an hour, Charlotte.’ Leon rose to his feet. ‘You’d like to stay here a little longer, alone?’

‘Please, Leon.’

He reached out and touched her hand. ‘You’re cold.’

She looked up at him. ‘Leon …’

‘I know.’ He looked down at the grave. ‘There is space to put another name there someday, but I hope it won’t be chiselled there for many years.’

‘Thank you, Leon. There was never a need for many words between us either.’

‘I’ll be back later with Mischa and Laura. You would like Laura to see this?’

‘Yes.’

‘She knows …’

‘Everything, Leon.’

Charlotte heard music drifting down from the small drawing room in the house. Ghostly music played on the piano by her other younger self. The Shostakovich Sascha had loved and written out for her on a piece of feed wrapper.

A shadow blocked the sun from view. Blue eyes looked down into hers, she saw the slow familiar smile she loved, and took the hand that was offered to her.

She is everything to me, this woman I love. The air I breathe, the earth beneath my feet, food, drink – all pale into insignificance when set beside my need for her. She clings to me for a moment, we kiss silently. Everything that needs to be said between us has long been said. Arm in arm, we wander back through the garden into the house. She walks up the stairs. I blow out the lamps in the downstairs rooms, close the doors, then follow her.

The End

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