“You are too hard on yourself,” Greetje contradicted me. “I think you did what everybody dreams of doing every now and then. And you took care while you did it. You didn’t run. You…” She searched for an appropriate word. “You performed an emergency exit. Planned, responsible.”
I thought this over. Put that way, I sounded almost sane. Rational.
“I didn’t tell my friends, though,” I observed.
“Hm…” Greetje mused. “Rachel and Dan? Do you think you are accountable to them? Did they deserve to know?”
“Maybe?” I reflected back. “They were my very best friends before it all went wrong. Maybe I ought to have reached out to them. And Steve, especially Steve. But now I can’t,” I pondered. “What if they change their minds? What if they try to get in touch? And I’m not there?”
“Well, they’re going to have to put the effort in and find you, won’t they? Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” she grinned at me, and I grinned back, trying to visualize my three friends on this little island.
“Do you think they will?” Greetje asked hopefully, excited by spinning an intrigue and a continuation of my drama.
“I don’t know, Greetje, I just don’t know,” I sighed.
“I guess we’ll find out, with time,” she suggested.
“I guess we will,” I agreed.
“Now, about this ‘nervous breakdown’ of yours.” Greetje rose from the table and started stacking plates in the dishwasher, all no-nonsense and matter-of-fact.
“Yes?”
“Well, maybe it was one, and maybe it wasn’t. You don’t strike me as the type. You are too practical, too—how do you say?
Pragmatic
. I haven’t seen enough wailing and howling to say that you’ve had a breakdown. I’d say you were fairly exhausted, but now you’re up, and anyway, I need your help, so you have no more time for moping about.”
She shut the dishwasher with panache, clapped her hands to indicate that her job was done, and turned to me expectantly. “Are you ready?”
I giggled. Her brash, confident, assuming manner was irresistible. And anyway, I had nothing much to do. Apart from phoning my parents, of course. And maybe checking in with Rick. But that could wait another couple of hours. I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to walk, laugh, and feel alive.
Greetje had me run errands all over the island for the rest of the day. I delivered a late lunch to her husband down at the little fishing port. From there, I picked up a crate of fresh fish that I could just balance on the back of the bike that Greetje had given me for the purpose, and cycled across to the eastern-most restaurant on the island. Next, it was back to the harbor to collect more fish for Greetje’s own kitchen. And so it went on. I suspected that Greetje normally did these chores herself, although she did make it sound as if she was going to struggle without me there. Still, I didn’t mind. In fact, I was quite enjoying myself, cycling to and fro on the island on this beautiful autumn day.
The sun was shining, and the sea was all around me. At every stop, I was offered a snack and a cup of tea, and there was no hurry, no rush to do anything, anywhere. My first reaction at the harbor had been to dash off as instructed, but the fishermen would have none of it. I got the grand tour of the boats and a little snack of freshly caught, just boiled tiny pink North-Sea shrimp which were sweet and delicious, if extremely fiddly to peel. At the restaurant in the dunes, I had—you guessed it—the grand tour of the premises, the old cow sheds and dairy, and was offered—you guessed again—a cup of tea and a fat slice of cake.
The day passed quickly, the exercise was refreshing, the air invigorating, and the good cheer and calm demeanor of the wonderful island folk was a tonic for the soul. Out here, nothing much mattered apart from taking care of your life and the lives of your family. So what if a trip to the harbor took me two hours instead of the twenty minutes it could have?
At the end of the day, I fell into bed physically exhausted but mentally relaxed, a wonderful, innocent feeling that I had not known since childhood. This island was working its miracle on me with every step and every breath.
Over the first week—the second week of my official holiday from my job at the paper—I explored the island in every nook and cranny. One day, I got a load of sandwiches from Greetje and did the entire island trail, on foot, which took about six hours. I stopped in various places to rest or eat, and I spent at least an hour watching seals play on the beach. Another day, I took a guided tour of the mudflats, marveling at all the squidgy forms of plant and animal life that were found in this brown and slimy environment. My Mum and Dad laughed at me when I tried to explain over the phone that night, chiding me that as a child grown up by the coast, I should really have been prepared for it all. I even tried horse riding, just for the fun of it, and I had a game of mini-golf even though the place was technically closed for the season. Greetje arranged it.
Greetje arranged that, and several other things. On Thursday, over the now customary joint lunch at the tea shop, she asked me slyly if I would consider helping out in the island school. If perhaps I might be able to teach a little bit of basic English to the kids. The school wouldn’t be able to pay much, but there might be a small token salary involved, if I was interested.
Feeling extraordinarily nervous, I went for a mini-interview on Friday and was immediately taken in by this friendly little school. The head teacher wasn’t overly concerned by my lack of teaching experience. I wasn’t to be a teacher but rather a language assistant; “Worth giving a try, not?”
I started working in the school for two hours every morning the following Monday to get myself established before the October week-long holiday. And as Greetje was working hard to integrate me in the very fabric of the island, I found I was also invited to join the choir and the book club. Several times a week, I had dinner with Greetje’s family or some other new friends, working my way through the local delicacies and traditional meals, and occasionally reciprocating by cooking English meals like Toad-in-the-Hole. Greetje took me to her favorite fish restaurant on
Hafenstrasse
and an amazing Italian restaurant near
Hauptstrasse
. I discovered the delights of my nearest baker’s shop and took to cycling there every morning to collect my fix of fresh
Brötchen
and crusty brown bread for the day. All of a sudden, I had a busy and fulfilled, but wholly uncomplicated, social life. My German improved at a dramatic rate and I was almost competent at conducting a conversation. With all the goings on, I struggled to keep up with Mum or Dad or even the column I had committed to writing for Rick.
A month into my stay at Langeoog, I felt like I had lived there forever, and I found it hard to envisage ever leaving. I was still alone, but I was never lonely. I felt happy and content, but I also felt like I was on borrowed time. Sooner or later, I knew, things would have to change, and I would have to go back. I only hoped it would be later rather than sooner, and tried to push those thoughts firmly from my mind.
Live for the here-and-now, and let the rest come to you.
That was what everyone was telling me.
I was working at the primary school on the Monday morning after the October holiday when I got the first inkling that my game would soon be up. All the primary-age children spent the morning sharing their holiday experiences, and little Mattes was very proud to have been to London. He confirmed that the weird language that I had been introducing them to was indeed what was being spoken “over there,” and he said he had even tried the odd phrase and it worked. The children were all delighted by this insight and broke out into excited chatter. The teacher smiled at me, and it was an amazing feeling to realize that I was making a difference to the learning of these gorgeous children.
My little cloud of inner peace and glory wasn’t meant to last for long, however. Mattes had brought with him a selection of newspapers for the other children to look and read, and we were all leafing through them together eagerly when I spotted the photo.
My throat closed up with anxiety and I felt dizzy, a clammy sweat springing up on my forehead. It couldn’t be. And yet—
I took hold of the entire paper and scanned the banner for the date. It was seven weeks old. My heart beat faster as I tried to work out the implications.
“Miss, are you okay, Miss?” one of the children asked me thoughtfully, and I realized that I had sat down on the floor rather abruptly right in the middle of the pile of papers.
“I’m fine,” I tried to smile, “thank you so much for your concern.” The child beamed at being thus praised and happily went back to her newspaper. I scanned the room for Mattes, only to discover he was right by me.
“Mattes,” I started, my voice coming out dry and raspy. “These are a great find. Just where exactly did you get them, did you say?”
Mattes broke into a proud smile. “The hotel where we stayded,” he said in German, and I absent-mindedly noted that he was using an incorrect form of the past tense. “The hotel where we stayded, the lady keeped all the papers in a big box for putting into recycled, and she let us take as much as we wanted. Totally for nothing.”
“That was very kind of her,” I confirmed, mystery of the provenance of this old newspaper solved. However, that still left the mystery of what had happened, and I was desperate to read the article.
“There’s something here that reminds me of home,” I said, addressing Mattes and the teacher at the same time. “Would it be okay if I took a quick photocopy now before it gets inadvertently destroyed?” The teacher nodded her assent, and Mattes nearly burst with pride at having brought in something so valuable to me.
I got to my feet and, on rather unsteady legs, left the assembly hall to use the photocopier. The paper was shaking in my hand as I was trying to make sense of the words.
There was a rather large picture of Dan and Rachel on the front page. Dan was in full profile but Rachel was caught side-on, as though she had turned away, yet there was no mistaking that it was her. Dan looked angry and Rachel looked dismayed. They appeared to be in a pub. I struggled to understand the caption.
Dan Hunter caught in a pub brawl with another man—over this mystery lady?
Man? What other man?
I gave up walking and sat on the nearest chair. I simply had to read the article or I would expire.
Rock Star in Bust Up,
the headline screamed sensationally. I grimaced. Of course it would; this was a tabloid after all.
It was a quiet evening in the Thorny Rose pub in Clapham yesterday night until Dan Hunter, lead singer of legendary rock band Tuscq, provoked a fight with an unknown younger man. The two men were seated at a table with an unknown woman who appeared to be the object of their disagreement. When Mr. Hunter launched into the hands-on fight, plates and cutlery went flying and the young woman fled the scene. Mr. Hunter’s opponent suffered a broken nose but no police was called and the fight ended abruptly. Eye witnesses to this extraordinary incident report that the two men and the woman were later seen eating a meal together as though nothing had occurred. The fight appeared to center around the woman. Mr. Hunter’s agent stated that the event was staged to promote an upcoming video launch. Mr. Hunter himself refused to comment.
My first reaction was one of sheer professional horror at this extremely bad piece of journalism. Badly written, convoluted and uninformative, it was gossip journalism par excellence. No doubt the facts were jumbled, as well, as I could not for the life of me imagine Dan starting a fight, let alone breaking someone’s nose. He was much too controlled and much too aware of his public image to risk something like that. And a publicity stunt? I laughed. Certainly not. That was a red herring.
Nonetheless, there was photographic evidence that a fight had occurred. I looked more closely at the grainy picture, and even though it was a great shock to recognize Steve as the other man, it was all starting to make some weird sense.
Or was it?
I stared out of the window at the breezy sky, knowing in my heart of hearts that this would have marked the beginning of the end of my borrowed time. Evidently, there had been a meeting between Dan, Steve, and Rachel. How they got together, God only knew. Whether Dan and Rachel were still together I didn’t dare to speculate. Presumably, Steve had been angry with the two of them. I doubted very much, however, that he had been
fighting
Dan
over
Rachel; although if he had, I resolved to remain on this island for evermore.
Whatever happened that night between those three people, I was certain of one thing. They would have talked about me. They would have realized I had gone. And, knowing them all too well, they would have resolved to find me.
I had been gone from my London life for two months. The so-called pub-brawl between Dan and Steve had taken place on what would have been my very first Saturday night on the island. That had given them plenty of time to do some searching.
A rash of goosebumps spread over my whole body as I considered the ramifications of it all. Should I move on and run again? Or should I wait and let things come to me?