The House by the Lake (19 page)

Wil opened the gleaming black front door and stood aside to let her through. Black-and-white tiles continued from the verandah into the entrance hall, and a curved staircase rose to the upper floors. It was grand, in a way, but it was also charming. Wil led her into a cozy sitting room that had warm, polished floorboards and Oriental rugs. A grand piano sat against the window, and there were a pair of sofas opposite a fireplace, where a fire was crackling away.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” Wil asked. “Make yourself at home.”

Anna sat down on one of the sofas. She could hear Wil opening cupboards in the kitchen. Judging from the smell, something delicious was cooking in there.

When he came back out with two glasses, Anna said, “This is gorgeous. It’s very you.”

“Interesting—what’s me?” he asked, handing her the glass.

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

But someone was at the front door.

“Excuse me,” he said.

She could hear a speedy conversation in German coming from the entrance hall. Any tension that Anna had felt dissipated when a little girl, probably around six years old, came running into the room. She was wearing her pajamas and she came straight up to Anna and settled down right next to her.

“I am Sasha,” she said in English, raising a pair of chocolate eyes to Anna’s face.

“And I am Anna.” Anna smiled.

The little girl held up a book. “I am allowed to read this, then I have to go to sleep,” she said. “Would you read it to me? My parents talk to me in English and German at home, and they said you would be here and I could practice.”

Anna took the book and started to read. She was soon so enthralled by the story that she hardly noticed Wil and four other people enter the room. When she was done, she looked up. Sasha had nestled herself on Anna’s lap. Wil was looking down at her with a smile on his face. If she had had to describe the expression in his eyes, Anna would have said he looked indulgent—and she reveled in his warm gaze. But he probably didn’t mean anything by it.

“Anna, these are my good friends, Petra and Andreas and Eva and Stephan.”

An hour later, Anna felt as if she had known everyone for years. They had all continued to speak English for her benefit. Petra was dark, attractive, with an avant-garde fashion sense that intrigued Anna. Some women knew how to wear a scarf, and Petra was one of them. Anna would have loved to see where she lived. Her partner, Andreas, one of Wil’s oldest friends, was as fair as Petra was dark and bewitching. They were both so obviously in their element together, making them excellent company for a dinner party. The other couple, Sasha’s parents, were Eva and Stephan. They were warm with their little girl. She spent the drinks part of the evening on her father’s lap before going to bed.

Wil took charge of everyone when it was time for dinner. He was in fine form. The wine flowed, his conversation was easy and amusing, and he had produced a perfect meal of pasta with a succulent ragout, along with a green salad and rustic bread.

“He throws himself into his work,” Eva said when he was in the kitchen with the other two men. “There are plenty of women who would love to go out with him, but his career is the thing. It’s all about that.”

Anna stayed quiet.

Petra chuckled then. “He had an on-and-off relationship with someone a few years back, but they were never committed, and when she moved to Munich for her work, Wil stayed here.”

“I think that was about the convenience more than anything else,” Eva said.

Anna nodded. So what was he protecting himself from then? Was his work an insurance policy against collateral damage? Or had he simply not met the right girl? She was about to say something when Wil appeared at the door.

“Coffee is in the living room, if you’d like to come through,” he said.

“Sure,” Eva replied, standing up.

Anna noticed the glance exchanged between the other two women. Had Wil overheard their conversation? Please, no.

The fire threw flickering patterns across the room, dancing on people’s faces as everyone told stories about their years together at university. Anna found herself curled up in the corner of one of Wil’s huge sofas, cradling her excellent coffee and wishing the evening would never end.

It was good to meet new people with whom she felt utterly at home. As the others got up to leave, Anna realized how long it had been since she had had an evening like this. Somehow, between running her own business and looking after Max, she had forgotten how to enjoy life.

Wil leaned against the doorframe once he had said goodbye to his friends. The evening air that filtered in from the front garden was mild.

“Would you like to take a walk with me, Anna?” he said, all of a sudden.

“A walk?”

“There’s something I’d like you to see.”

Anna was intrigued. The neighborhood was beautiful. It was hard to reconcile this timeless area with Berlin’s fractured, disturbing past. Anna was aware that farther east, there were still rows and rows of stark Communist flats.

“I think it will be good for you to see this,” Wil said as he put her coat over her shoulders.

A few minutes later, Wil stopped outside a set of curling iron gates. A dark garden sat beyond them, but when Anna looked down the long paved driveway, she could see the hint of a prosperous-looking house. Its roof was steeply pitched, with a row of dormer windows tucked into its gables. A Labrador retriever shuffled up to the gate.

Wil stayed quiet.

Anna turned to him.

“I thought you should see it,” he said. “They used to come here regularly. Your great-grandmother gave fabulous parties, apparently.”

Anna took a step closer to the gates and peered past them in an attempt to drink in every last vestige that she could.

“The current owners have four children. They’ve done a good job with it. I could introduce you to them if you like. They would love to meet you. It’s a happy house again.”

“That’s good,” Anna said. She stared at it a little longer. It looked as if it were how it was meant to be.

Wil reached out, then drew his hand back. “It’s getting cold,” he said. “I should get you back to your hotel.”

Anna nodded. She suddenly thought of tomorrow and what the next day would bring. She had to talk to her cousin tomorrow. She had to learn what had happened. Then she would have to work out what she could do to put things right.

As they walked back to Wil’s house, he talked if she wanted to talk, and he stayed quiet when she was quiet. Was it possible that he understood not only that she had to know about her family’s past and whether there was any future for Siegel, but also that until she had done all she could, she couldn’t move on with her own life?

When they arrived back at his house, they both stopped for a moment on the driveway. Anna focused on the surroundings—the garden, the lights on the veranda. Anything but Wil standing there.

After a few seconds she heard the clink of his car keys. She didn’t know whether she was pleased to hear them or not. She followed him to his car and they both climbed in silently, but Anna was aware, so aware again of that something unspoken that was passing between them every time they met. Nerves twinged and flickered inside her, but she wasn’t able to say anything.

She looked out the window of the car at the silhouettes of the old houses that were in shadow now—they weren’t illuminated anymore.

Anna’s thoughts ran to the future while Wil drove. His quiet presence next to her was like a balm and a bonfire at the same time. She knew she hadn’t felt this way about anyone before. She knew she had never found anyone quite so—right. Or was she vulnerable, simply trying to replace Max?

After Wil pulled up outside her hotel, he was out and opening her car door before she had time to gather her thoughts. She climbed out onto the sidewalk, and he didn’t move for a moment from where he held the open car door.

She looked at him and she saw something flicker in his eyes. Something that for some reason gave her more hope than she had felt in ages. She smiled then, felt something whimsical pass across her lips.

He touched her arm.

“I’ll be here at nine,” he said, his voice intimate. “I’ll come into the lobby. Not sure where I’ll manage to park.”

“Thanks,” Anna said. Practicalities, they were good. But she was more caught up in the mood than the facts, and this was odd for her. Because she didn’t want to break it. She didn’t want it to end. If she were honest with herself, she wanted everything to begin.

The next morning, as they drove to Schloss Beringer, it struck Anna that she was becoming familiar not only with the physical landscape around Berlin, but with the way it made her feel. The woods, the soft pastures, the sleepy villages, a mysterious Schloss—all those other stories buried deep in their labyrinthine German past—stirred up a strange yearning, almost a physical ache for something deeper, something she could not quite express.

Anna could see why Ingrid had not wanted to meet them at Siegel—that was clear. But why Schloss Beringer? Was Ingrid demonstrating what should not be done to Siegel by meeting them at Wil’s ancestral home? Or worse, was she about to tell them that she had similar grand plans for Siegel?

They turned into the Schloss’s curved driveway and were now headed to the parking lots, where there was an array of prosperous-looking European cars, their hoods still glimmering with droplets of morning dew.

Did Wil view these hotel guests as intruders at his old family home? And then the thought struck Anna that the past must be dealt with on one’s own terms. Max had pretended that the past didn’t exist until his life was almost at an end. That was how he had done it. She couldn’t help feeling that his reaching out to her in his final weeks was, if not a cry for help, then perhaps an acknowledgment that she had the right to know.

As for Wil—it was clear that he felt deeply about Schloss Beringer and was conflicted about his grandfather’s fruitless efforts. Perhaps the answer was that the past never went away. Old Brandenburg and Prussia would always overshadow Berlin and its surrounds like a ghostly grandparent—hinted at in magnificent baroque buildings; whispering forests; flat lands and their hovering mists; magical, fairy-tale palaces; the people and their stories.

The past and Schloss Siegel were taking Anna on a circuitous journey. It did not conform to the linear, orderly way she had led her life to date. She felt out of her element. It was unnerving, but part of her wanted to grab at it with both hands.

“Tell me something,” she asked as Wil turned off the car engine. Wil stayed looking straight ahead. “How do you deal with the past, Wil?”

She saw a smile form on his lips. “What do you mean?”

“Your family’s legacy, the history, the loss, Germany, the war, all of it?”

Wil was quiet.

“What do you carry with you? What do you leave behind?” Anna asked.

Wil pulled the key out of the ignition and flicked it around in his hand. “Memories on both counts. Then there are stories. But I think it depends on how you choose to look at it. I admit that I’ve tended to focus on the future. My work has been so flat out—and my grandfather’s experiences were hardly encouraging.” He turned to her. “But now that I’ve met you, that’s changed. A lot.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.” Anna’s voice came out soft. There was something in it that she hadn’t heard before.

He didn’t turn his gaze away from her, and it struck Anna not for the first time how steady he seemed—how kind and patient—and yet there was something else, something indefinable there that she could not quite grasp. Was it toughness? No. It was strength.

“Time to go in, you know.” He opened the car door.

“I’m trying to work you out,” Anna said as she undid her seatbelt. She sensed Wil tensing up. “Don’t worry,” she added, as she climbed out of the car. “I’m not getting anywhere,” she lied.

He caught her eye and smiled, then looked down. “Okay,” he said. “Good.”

Anna smiled back. “Come on,” she said. “This is going to be—”

“Enlightening, I hope.” Wil grinned.

“Yes.” Anna turned. There was something satisfying about the crunch of her shoes on the gravel. She had chosen to wear a black suit today. Something told her that she needed to look formidable for her meeting with Ingrid Hermann.

Paris, June 1940

Paris’s inhabitants were attempting to flee. Traffic, buses, and the metro—everything had stopped dead. The city’s commercial centers were shut down. Every news report pointed at the same irrevocable truth.

France was on the verge of collapse.

The army was destroyed. Paris had been bombed.

And yet, still Isabelle did not want to leave her home. What would become of all Marthe’s treasures?

Visions of the recent bombings in Paris played themselves like stubborn repetitions of the same interminable reel of film in Isabelle’s tired head. Ghastly images of tumbledown buildings, fire, sirens, rubble, people running in the streets, and others standing in silent, bewildered shock had caused Isabelle to shrink into the safest place she knew—home. But outside, women and children crouched on street corners, homeless.