“Then send them a message. They’ll see it first thing in the morning.”
He picked up his phone but didn’t pass it to her. Instead, he held it out in front of him with both hands. “Say ‘cheese.’”
Automatically, she raised her wineglass and smiled.
Werner looked at the photo and then handed her his phone. “Now, write something to go with it.”
Underneath a photo in which she looked much happier than she felt, she typed:
Everything OK there? The food here is very interesting: clove-flavored foam with flower petals. Thom would love it, haha
We’re getting up early tomorrow and packing our sandwiches for an exciting day hiking along the cliffs!
Do your best at school and say hi to Grandma and Grandpa for us.
Love, Mom
“What did you write? Can I see?”
“I haven’t sent it—”
Werner snatched the phone out of her hand.
“Yet.”
His expression was slightly anxious at first, but then he began to read, and a smile broke out on his face. “Perfect—that’s great. I’ll send it, OK?” He pressed the button and then tucked the phone away again.
There was something strange about how he was handling that phone—and all their communication with home, for that matter. “Why are you being so—”
“More water?” The waitress appeared at the table with a carafe. She looked at them both in turn, clutching her decanter clumsily.
“No, thanks,” answered Werner, and then looked at Helen. “How about coffee?”
30
A short, balding customs officer stepped away from his colleagues and waved them through with a bored expression.
“That was easy.” Ralf accelerated past the tall fence topped with barbed wire. He smiled but could feel his eye twitching.
Past a curve in the road was another barrier. More men in uniforms—but this group looked a good deal more active. An officer raised his hand and waved them over to the side.
Ralf stopped underneath the canopy. The checkpoint was flooded with bright fluorescent light and felt like a space station.
Ralf opened his window.
“Passports, please.”
The man sounded very English. A little snobby.
“I think this is the British border,” he heard Sara say from the passenger seat. She took her ID out of her bag and handed it to Ralf, who passed it to the man along with his own. “Back there was the French one.”
Another customs officer walked around the car. He looked at Sara, made eye contact with Ralf. Walked to the back of the Polo and peered in through the windows.
Ralf tried to swallow but couldn’t.
“Where are you from?”
“Holland.” Why did the man ask that? Couldn’t he tell from their IDs and license plate? Ralf coughed to cover a nervous shudder.
The officer asked them what they were planning to do in England.
“Romantic weekend,” answered Sara, leaning across Ralf’s lap and smiling as her eyes met the officer’s. She placed her hand on Ralf’s leg.
The customs officer took another look at their IDs and asked them how long they intended to stay.
Ralf opened his mouth, but Sara beat him to it.
“Two nights.”
“And where are you staying?” He looked at Ralf as if he had already decided in advance not to take his answer seriously.
Ralf fought the impulse to react. He didn’t think he would ever be able to get along with anyone in uniform. “What’s the place called again?” he asked Sara in Dutch.
She addressed herself to the man and gave him the name and location of the hotel. Her voice had a proud note, as if to say, You weren’t expecting that, were you? Two teenagers in a fancy place like that. Ralf wondered whether the customs officers knew every hotel in the country, or if they only asked questions like that to see how you reacted. Maybe it was suspicious if you looked like you’d memorized the answers, or if you took slightly too long to think about it.
“My parents are already there,” she continued, before complaining in fluent English about the closure of the Eurotunnel and the ensuing delay. She asked him whether he knew what was going on.
The customs officer told her there was a technical problem. He still had their IDs in his hands and looked like he was mulling something over.
Ralf could feel himself sweating. His T-shirt was clammy and tight. What if the man called the hotel to check Sara’s story?
The second officer had apparently been unable to find anything suspicious. He took another look over his colleague’s shoulder for the sake of form before walking off.
“Have a nice stay.” The man handed the IDs back to Ralf, who gave him a friendly nod and tried to drive off without any screeching tires.
Sara fell back into her seat. “Jeez, what a bunch of paper pushers.”
She had a lot more to say, but he was only half listening. He knew he had just dodged a bullet. If the officer had searched his bag . . .
Don’t think about it.
Was that it? he wondered. Would there be no more checkpoints? Or could they expect to go through the same thing again tomorrow in England?
He didn’t feel confident.
31
Werner lay down next to her in bed. “I thought that was a very enjoyable evening. How about you?”
“It was very interesting.”
“I know, right? Good tip from Serge. The contrast is pretty great too—this historic hotel, and then that restaurant.”
“Yes, very different. Like day and night.”
“Speaking of which . . .” There was a cord hanging over the bed. Werner gave it a tug, and the light went out. “Good night,” he said, and turned his back on her.
32
Ralf and Sara were in agreement: a hotel was a waste of money. And anyway, all the cheap hotels nearby would be full thanks to the disruption in the tunnel. The car had a lock, the seats were fully reclinable, and the entire terminal site was under so much surveillance, it felt like an open-air prison.
And yet Ralf still couldn’t sleep. He stared at the roof of the Polo and listened to the cars and trucks as they trundled in long lines toward the ferries, ready for boarding.
Next to him, Sara was sitting cross-legged and finishing off the last piece of a limp baguette. Her phone buzzed. “My mother.”
Ralf sat up. “What does it say?”
“Read it yourself.”
Ralf read the message. Looked at Sara. She was thinking the same thing.
“Cliffs,” she whispered.
“How far do we have to go from Dover?”
Back in the Netherlands, Sara had mapped out the route to the hotel and saved countless screenshots. She looked them up and swiped through the images. “About an hour and forty-five minutes, I think.”
“What if we don’t make it in time?”
“It might be OK. They’re on vacation, and my father isn’t really a morning person.”
Ralf gnawed on his cheek. “The boat docks in England at seven thirty, but it could easily take us half an hour to disembark. And then we might have to go through customs again.”
“I want to call them, Ralf.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Why? I could just ask for my mom—tell her I miss her and ask if everything is OK. That way at least I’d have spoken to her.”
He looked at the clock on the dashboard. “Would you normally do that after midnight?”
She shook her head.
“Then I definitely wouldn’t do it now.”
Sara stared at the phone for a long time and then pressed it to her breast.
Ralf was worried that she would start crying again, but she didn’t make a sound and remained sitting motionlessly. Like a statue. Her voice sounded small, almost childlike, when she spoke again. “This is a dumb idea, isn’t it? Should we call the police after all?”
“Sara, suppose it’s true. That your mo
ther did kill Brian—”
She fixed him with a troubled expression.
“In that case, they’ll arrest both your parents. Remember?” His face fell. “And me too. Sara? Are you listening to me?”
She nodded. It almost hurt to look at her. “Could it all be a mistake? I really hope so.”
I’ve been hoping so too, ever since I heard the shots. Every single day. “I don’t know,” he answered.
From the way she was sitting there—her phone cradled against her chest like an injured pet, her eyes damp—he had the impression that he was seeing the real Sara for the very first time. The little girl behind the glossy exterior. He began to feel sorry for her.
“We’ll get there in time,” he said.
She looked up. “You think so?”
“Yeah. Absolutely. I promise.”
Monday
1
“Shit,” said Sara.
The car that had driven off the ferry immediately ahead of them was being directed to the side by a pair of customs officers. Another glanced in their direction and raised his hand to indicate that Ralf should wait.
“It looks like there’s something going on,” said Sara. “Like they’re searching for someone or something.”
Ralf glanced nervously at the dog handlers. If those were sniffer dogs they had with them, then he was in trouble. There would inevitably be traces of cocaine or weed on the mats and upholstery in his car. Then the customs officers would search his entire car, and though they wouldn’t find any drugs, there was something else they’d unearth instead.
An officer walked up to the car and asked him to roll down his window.
“Fuck,” muttered Ralf.
“Chill out—it’s not like we’re doing anything wrong.”
Ralf didn’t answer. He did as he was told and took his ID out. When he looked up to hand it over, the officer turned away from him and spoke into his walkie-talkie. His colleague stepped forward and instructed Ralf to keep driving.
“Huh?” said Sara.
Ralf hesitated, lifting his eyebrows inquiringly. The man nodded at him. That’s right, drive on.
He continued anxiously, leaving customs and heading for the open road. Drive on the left. The words rang in his ears like a mantra. Left, left.
“It’s so different here,” he heard Sara say. “Those houses. And the white cliffs.” She smoothed her hair down. It had gone a little frizzy overnight.
“Sara, do you think you could concentrate for a moment? Where do we need to go?”
“Oh yeah.” She reached for her phone and looked up the pictures of the route. “You want the M20, toward London.”
“Are you sure?”
She pointed. “There, on that roundabout. First exit.”
“Third,” he corrected her.
He turned left onto the roundabout, closely following a car with a British license plate. It felt incredibly strange—almost as if he were driving a car for the first time in his life.
As he turned jerkily onto the M20, he realized that getting to the hotel in time was by no means his biggest concern. They’d be lucky if he didn’t crash into a guardrail on the way.
2
Helen spread some of the hotel’s specialty jam on a slice of Brie and took a bite. “That really is incredible. Do you think they sell this stuff for guests to take home with them?”
“It’s never the same at home. Different ambience.”
That felt improbable—the breakfast already tasted better to her than the Michelin-starred menu from the night before, and they had only just sat down to eat. But maybe Werner was right that it was partly due to the atmosphere in the breakfast room: instead of screeching appliances and bright lighting, there were thick carpets, wood paneling, and huge windows offering cinematic views of the estate.
Outside, men in overalls were hard at work, pruning shrubs, raking, and sweeping.
“They’d be welcome to spend a weekend at our place,” she remarked.
Werner cut a piece off his toast. “When I’m back in the Netherlands, I’m going to see about hiring a gardener.”
Helen wanted to say that she’d rather call a real estate agent, but she held her tongue. The mood was good; she didn’t want to ruin it.
3
“How far do we have to go?”
“Forty-five minutes, an hour. Something like that.”
They were halfway there. Ralf hadn’t driven on the wrong side of the road or crashed into the railing. Actually, it was perfectly doable, he thought, driving on the left. He’d really gotten the hang of the roundabouts, and he also had merging on and off the freeway fully under control. Half an hour ago, they had stopped to call Sara’s school. He did a decent impression of Sara’s father. “Well, there is a bug going around at the moment,” they’d replied. “Please give her our best, Mr. Möhring.” It had put a faint smile on Sara’s pallid face.
Ralf began to drive a little faster. He wanted to catch Werner and Helen before they set out on their hike, since it would be impossible to find them otherwise. Besides, he thought it would be more sensible for Sara to confront her father inside the hotel where there were people, phones, cameras. It was safer there. The man was planning to murder his wife, so why not his daughter too? And the friend she’d brought with her?
“Do you know what you’re going to say to him?” he asked.
“No idea. I still can’t believe it.” She looked across at him. “I mean, I know I’m sitting here talking to you, but I sometimes think, Am I dreaming this? It feels like a nightmare. So surreal, you know? The whole thing—including this. I’ve never slept in a car before. And I should be at school right now.” She turned away from him and stared at the landscape as it rushed past.
“You need a plan for what you’re going to say. And what you’re going to do.” He paused for a moment. “Just assume that it is true.”
She turned her face back toward him. “That Brian and my father staged a botched break-in so they could murder my mother? That’s what I should assume is true?”
“Yeah, that.”
4
“Here you are.” The waitress placed their plates on the white tablecloth.
On each plate lay an enormous mushroom, as thick as a finger.
“Nice—portobello,” murmured Werner.
The mushrooms were surrounded by grilled tomatoes, a heap of scrambled egg, fried bacon, a piece of white fish, and two sausages that glistened with fat.
“It’s only eight thirty,” said Helen once the waitress had disappeared. “I already had all that Brie with jam. And we’ll be having lunch soon. Plus dinner tonight!”
“You’re forgetting afternoon tea,” he remarked drily.
“Bizarre. What a country.”
“We’ll walk it all off soon enough,” he said, and began to eat.
Helen’s eyes lingered on him. His elegant hands, the fine hairs on his wrists, and that aristocratic face she knew so well. The gray morning light streamed through the window and cast shadows, deepening his laugh lines and making the grooves on his cheeks look harsher. It was the same Werner as ever, and yet there was something about him. She couldn’t put her finger on it. He talked, listened, ate, smiled, but his actions didn’t quite seem to match up with his mood, somehow.
Tension.
That was it; that was what she felt when she looked at him. Tension. Distance.
5
“I didn’t know your parents were this rich.”
“Me neither.”
Ralf expected somebody to step out of the perfectly maintained shrubbery and escort him off the premises. His sixteen-year-old Polo would almost certainly spoil the view for the chic hotel guests. The place was enormous, and looked distinguished and very old—it was like they had just driven onto a film set.
“They only ever take us camping,” said Sara. “Or to Grandma and Grandpa’s rickety old witch’s house in France.”
He drove slower and slower, unsure where to go. Everything here
was so big.
“There.” Sara pointed to a neatly painted sign standing in a flower bed. Ralf followed the arrow and drove down a wide gravel path onto a parking lot, which was divided into sections by hedges and shrubs. Each section had room for around ten cars. The fine gravel crunched beneath his wheels.
“This is for the guests, right?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Then your father’s car must be here somewhere.”
“If they haven’t left yet,” added Sara softly.
He drove slowly down each of the rows, looking for the gray Mercedes. On another day, he could have easily spent an hour or two here gawking. The parking lot was like the showroom of a luxury car dealership, and the Aston Martins, Range Rovers, and Porsches on display must have been worth a fortune. But they all had British license plates.
Not a single Dutch car.
“We’re too late,” he said.
“Try over there.”
He drove off the path again as a favor to Sara, and then back up to the entrance. She slumped in her seat in disappointment.
Ralf turned off the engine and took his key out of the ignition. “What now?”
“We can go and ask inside. Maybe the staff will know where they went.”
“Sure, like they’d tell us that.”
“They will. I’m their daughter, remember?”
They got out and walked down a perfectly maintained footpath to the main entrance. Ralf was intimidated. His red Adidas hoodie suited him and was nice and warm, but in this setting, it was just as out of place as his car. He glanced at his sneakers as they walked. Colorful, but thankfully clean. Next to him, Sara was frantically tying her unruly hair into a tight bun, making him suspect that she wasn’t entirely confident of being taken seriously either.
They passed under a portico and entered the building. Ralf did his utmost not to be distracted by the lavish décor. The hall was enormous, with chandeliers on which every lamp was lit. Gleaming stone floors, Persian carpets. In one corner stood a grand piano.
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