The Lie (44 page)

Phil appeared behind him. He was shorter than Michael and had to stand on tiptoe. He gave her a wink over Michael's shoulder and made signs - which Nadia might have understood. “Hi, there. What's the matter?”

Michael explained something to him. She couldn't understand a word. He was speaking too fast. Phil nodded and went out again. Pamela
looked down at her, full of sympathy, and also said something. For the sake of simplicity, she just nodded. Pamela then set about taking her wet clothes off, fetched an old bathrobe, helped her put it on, took her into the little bathroom and stayed there with her.

A few tears mingled with the hot water of the shower. Paris! And the first steps of her new life had ended in a puddle. It was a bad omen. Pamela said something. In the shower she could pretend she hadn't heard, but she couldn't stay in the shower for ever.

When, half an hour later, Pamela brought her out of the bathroom, Michael and Phil were sitting in a kitchen-cum-living room with another man. He stood up, then bent down to pick up his bag, clearly a doctor's bag. Saying a few words in French to the two others, he went with her and Pamela to the tiny bedroom. Pamela stayed discreetly outside the door.

She got through the first few minutes with half a dozen “
oui
”s, on the assumption the doctor was asking her about her symptoms. He measured her blood pressure, felt her stomach. Her blood pressure was extremely low. He didn't need to tell her that, she could see it on the gauge. He felt lower down, looked puzzled and asked something.

“
Oui
,” she said.

His fingers continued to squeeze her lower abdomen. Behind him the door opened. Michael came in, with Phil peering over his shoulder, despite the fact that she was lying half-naked on the couch. The doctor covered her up with the bathrobe and said, “
Madame, vous êtes enceinte, vous comprenez?
”

He had long since realized she couldn't understand him.

“What did he say?” Michael asked.

Before she or the doctor could reply, Phil thumped him on the shoulder and let out a whoop of delight that filled the dreary little room. “Congratulations, Dad!”

She understood that, she could even make sense of Michael's “Impossible.” Then he turned to her, to make it absolutely clear to the doctor that he must have made a mistake: “What's the French for ‘sterilized'?”

But the doctor didn't need a translation. He took out his stethoscope, put the two plugs in his ears and pressed the cool disc against her lower abdomen underneath the bathrobe. It didn't take him long to find what
he was listening for. He handed the earplugs to Michael. Michael listened intently.

Her heart was in her mouth. Now he must realize! Because an operation had made a distinction. He looked down at her, his face a battlefield of emotions. In her panic she could almost hear him saying: You aren't Nadia. Instead he asked, “Do you want to hear its heart beating?”

She shook her head. He handed the stethoscope back to the doctor and went out of the room. The doctor packed his bag and followed him. In the kitchen he wrote out a prescription and received his fee - again out of her handbag. Then she heard him leave the flat.

 

Paris! Alone in an old bathrobe on a worn couch under a naked bulb, its light reflected in an uncurtained window. Inside her head she kept hearing Andrea ask, “Are you going to sue Wenning?” Now she knew what she'd meant. The door from her room into the hall was open and from the kitchen she heard the sound of voices and the clatter of plates. She spent about half an hour alone with her panic. Then Pamela appeared in the doorway and asked icily, “Would you like some chicken?”

She just nodded. “Dinner is ready,” Pamela said. It sounded as if she were being invited to a meal of deep-frozen chicken.

The mood in the kitchen was sombre. They all spoke a little more slowly with the result that she could understand some of what was said. There was no problem with names, anyway. They still thought she was Nadia. Michael told them about Hardenberg, Heller, Susanne Lasko, Wolfgang Blasting and Nassau. A house with its own beach, one size up from the villa her father had given her. She could only think on that scale. And it didn't matter how much she had, she always wanted more. Money, money, money, nothing else counted. And she thought a balm of luxury could soothe the pain she caused. A Jaguar for the terrible time after her first disaster. A nice car, true, but he didn't really need it.

Now and then he threw her a hostile glance. Phil and Pamela behaved as if she wasn't there. Perhaps she should have been grateful for that. Michael mentioned the bundle of banknotes in her handbag, commenting sarcastically that it was presumably enough to pay for an abortion in a clinic. When Pamela served the coffee, it occurred to him that it was high time they contacted the hotel. He'd just give them a quick call, he said.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, “I didn't think of booking a room.”

“That doesn't surprise me at all,” he snarled. “Presumably you didn't think you were going to need one.”

Paul asked what was the matter and offered them the guest room again. It was the room in which she'd come round. The couch could be pulled out, Phil explained, making a passable bed, not very wide but - very
gemütlich
. At the German word - and presumably the idea of them spending a cosy night together - he grinned.

“That's OK for me,” Michael said, “but you don't have to put up with it if you don't feel like it. Ring your clinic, I'm sure they'll take you now, even at this hour.”

“I don't think so,” she said. “I booked in for Monday.” His assumption suited her quite well. If she got into a taxi on Monday and he thought she was going to a clinic, it would be longer before he realized she'd gone.

Shortly after midnight he followed her into the little room, closed the door, leaned back against it and asked which clinic she'd booked into for Monday.

“What's it to do with you?” she asked. “You don't need to hold my hand, I can manage perfectly well on my own.”

He nodded. “The police are sure to have a few questions about the Friday evening. I could tell them you'd gone to Kettlerstrasse and I had to wait until twelve for you. And that's what I will tell them, if you keep behaving as if it didn't concern anyone but you. I played a part as well, remember.”

She had no idea where this was leading. It sounded almost as if he wanted to be there when his child was scraped out of her womb. At that moment she was no one but Susanne Lasko. “As far as I care, you can tell them what you like. I know only too well that you don't trust me an inch. And in this particular case you're even right for once. I didn't get pregnant deliberately, but now it's in my belly and it's staying there until I go into labour. Whether you like it or not.”

“You want to keep it?” He was stunned. And she'd believed Nadia when she'd said, “He'll blow his top if he learns he's fathered a brat.”

“Why did you book in for an abortion, then?”

“I didn't,” she said. “It was you who said that, I just didn't contradict you. What would be the point? You don't believe anything I say. And
I don't need you to have my child. You want a divorce. Go ahead. I'll manage on my own.”

With two steps he was there and she was in his arms. From that moment on everything was different, though it was hours later before she understood what she'd done for him. She! Not Nadia! And if one day he came to know who she really was, perhaps he would be able to love her for it. If, at some point or other, he became aware he was living with a copy, perhaps he would already have realized that her idea of love was closer to his than anything Nadia had ever done for him. She'd financed his studies in the USA and bought him a Jaguar, but she'd never been able to give him the kind of life he wanted. And two severed Fallopian tubes had denied his longing for a child.

Since a pregnancy had occurred despite that, they could sue Dr Wenning, who had performed the sterilization. On the other hand, they could simply rejoice at the bungled operation. Michael was overcome with joy, wanted to forget everything and start all over again with her. If only it was that simple.

On Saturday morning he wasted no time telling the others she wanted to keep the baby. There were a few language problems, which were interpreted as the natural agitation of a happy mother-to-be. And after breakfast they solved themselves. Pamela asked if she would speak German with her and correct her mistakes. In contrast to Phil, who assumed his language was universal and thought anything else was a waste of time, Pamela wanted to learn. So they all got on famously, Michael with Phil and she with Pamela.

Shortly before midday Michael finally got round to booking a hotel. Phil drove them there. They just deposited their cases. Saturday was a slight improvement, cold but dry. She still didn't get to see the sights, however. Nadia had been to Paris so often it never occurred to Michael to do a sightseeing tour with his wife. After booking in at the hotel, they went back to Phil and Pamela's.

On Sunday they went for a stroll along the banks of the Seine and had lunch in a little bistro. On Monday Phil was busy at the Sorbonne. Michael had something to he wanted do by himself in the hotel, so took her to Pamela's by taxi. He still didn't seem to trust her entirely.

That would have been the chance to do what she had planned to do in Paris. Instead she went out with Pamela, who took her to some little shops,
not the big stores where Nadia would presumably have gone on a serious shopping spree. She bought some baby things, two more maternity bras, some underwear and a pretty dress she would presumably fit into nicely in three or four months' time. Pamela, like her, was used to comparing prices and had never met Nadia. After two miscarriages when she was younger, she'd had to have an operation. She felt her inability to have children deeply and envied her, but they laughed a lot too, and were laden with bags when they came back to the flat which reminded her so much of Kettlerstrasse.

Michael was astonished at the prices she'd paid. She could laugh and said, “I'm out of work, love, or had you forgotten? And we have to fend for three from now on.”

He laughed too, though he had been anything but economical himself. He'd bought her a ring, the third seal of their union. He laughed at the evening dresses and the dinner jacket that she took, completely crumpled, out of the suitcases on Monday evening. He laughed on Tuesday when she had to borrow a warm pullover from Pamela since she'd spilled coffee over hers - because she'd laughed too much.

There was one more worrying moment in bed on Tuesday night. He looked at her birthmark again. Until then she'd always been careful to cover it up with concealer stick. “Why's that suddenly popped up again?” he wondered.

“It's not that sudden,” she said. “It reappeared a while ago. I just didn't want you to get worked up about it and stop me going on the sunbed. I'm sure it's harmless. Your skin changes during pregnancy, that's all. Everything changes then.”

“Yes, he said with a laugh, “even your immunity to airsickness.”

On Wednesday morning, while Michael was in the bath, she thought about ringing Dieter and asking how things stood. But before she could bring herself to lift the receiver - perhaps to be told it was high time she disappeared - Michael came back into the bedroom.

They went to see Phil and Pamela one more time and had lunch with them. Phil gave her a farewell kiss on the cheek. Pamela hugged her and told her she must ring often and keep her informed about how the baby was doing.

Their plane went in the early afternoon. She might perhaps have had one last chance of disappearing in the airport throng, on the excuse of
going to the toilet. But he would probably have accompanied her there and waited by the door. And she didn't really want to get away any more, not after the last few days.

Again it was a Boeing 737 and again it transformed her into a bundle of misery. With the stimulant the doctor had prescribed, it wasn't as bad as on the outward journey, but it was bad enough. Michael's concern was touching.

Only after they'd landed did he tell her that he'd phoned Wolfgang Blasting that morning, while she was in the shower. They were already in the car park and he was putting the suitcases in the boot as he told her, “Wolfgang wants to talk to you himself, right away. He thinks you were incredibly lucky to get away from those guys in the car with the Frankfurt number.”

Through her information the police had quickly found the owner of the black limousine. In former times Markus Zurkeulen had been a big noise in the Frankfurt underworld. More recently his influence had been seriously reduced by East-European gangs. That was presumably why he'd decided to retire, selling a number of establishments in the red-light district to a Russian - officially for a derisory sum. The actual value, Wolfgang Blasting had told Michael, would be around five-and-a-half million. He now appeared to be assuming they were just dealing with an investor who'd been swindled.

Michael didn't say whether he took the same view, but during the journey home he made it clear that he still had doubts about her version, namely that Susanne Lasko was the culprit. How did she think she could convince him of that when he'd seen her in the bank in Nassau? And how could a sweet-shop assistant have managed to transfer five-and-a-half million to the Bahamas? Wolfgang Blasting had told him that morning that Susanne Lasko had originally worked in banks, but her contacts wouldn't have gone much beyond the next branch of the local savings bank, Michael said. If Susanne Lasko had ever had anything to do with investment advice, then at most she would have recommended a few government bonds. How could such a woman have persuaded a streetwise gangland boss to take up a particular investment and then cleaned him out?