Inseparable

by Heldt,Dora

  After a year and a half, the first problems began to emerge. At the point when, after the initial excitement of falling in love, a relationship normally develops and most couples begin to make plans for the future, like planning vacations and viewing apartments, they came to a standstill. Christine was surprised at how many of the clichés about lovers turned out to be true, but they did. Lonely weekends, holidays; during all of these Christine was single, while Richard spent them in Berlin. He had tried, hesitantly, to get out of the marriage, but his wife had been rigorously opposed to a divorce. So everything had stayed as it was.

  The ease that had initially existed between Christine and Richard was superseded by discussions about crushed hopes or too high expectations. Each of them felt unfairly treated, misunderstood, and sad. After two years they decided to put their feelings on ice and stopped seeing each other for a while.

  Christine switched from being a rep to working in the publishing house, thereby ending the chance of them seeing each other in the week. It was a very difficult time for her; Richard was still the first and last thing she thought about every day, and she felt unhappier than she had after her divorce. Dorothea got the apartment next to hers and tried to keep her mind off it. Nothing helped. Neither long weekends by the sea, nor trips to the cinema, nor the constant conversations about the futility and torment of having a relationship with a married man. Dorothea cursed Richard. Christine agreed with her each time, but then dreamed about him at night.

  After three months of silence, Richard called. When she heard his voice, everything went right back to the beginning. They met that very evening in a hotel between Hamburg and Bremen, talked the whole night through, and decided to make a real decision. At some point.

  That was six months ago. A great deal had changed since then. Yet, at the same time, nothing had. Richard didn’t go to Berlin every weekend anymore; he told his wife he was working on a university project in Bremen that took up a lot of his time. Christine started going to see Marleen a lot on the weekend again. At least, that was the official story; Marleen was in on it. Christine always called her from the car on the way back. Whenever Dorothea saw her after one of the weekends and asked after Marleen, Christine felt terrible. But she kept on lying for fear of Dorothea’s reaction.

  Once, Christine had run into Luise at a rest stop on her way to see Richard. Luise, noticing that Christine looked as guilty as sin, pressed her so much that in the end she told her she was meeting Richard again, not as often, albeit more casually.

  Luise looked at her skeptically and then waved it away. “It’s nothing to do with me, so I won’t mention it. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

  She hadn’t said a word to anyone.

  Richard had a conference in Westerland this weekend. His colleague was sick, so Richard had gone alone and already had a double room booked. It was down to chance, or good luck, that the conference was right at the start of Christine’s holiday, and that she was on her way to Sylt anyway. Her parents weren’t back from their vacation until Sunday, and no one would notice if she didn’t sleep in her old room for the first couple of nights.

  The train came to a halt in Westerland station. The tail-lights of the cars in front of Christine’s lit up, and the line gradually began to move. The hotel was in Rantum. Just another ten minutes of driving before she got to Richard. Christine put her turn signal on and tried to push her doubts aside.

  Flensburg

  Luise punched the steering wheel angrily with the palm of her hand. “What on earth! For heaven’s sake, are they too stupid to think of putting up detour signs? They’re all idiots; my God, I’d go insane here!”

  She’d been swerving through the area for the last half hour. She had been to visit three bookstores in Flensburg, needed to be in Schleswig in an hour’s time, and couldn’t find her way back to the highway. Sewer construction works. It seemed the town didn’t have enough detour signs: Luise had followed four of them, and after that they had completely stopped. Nothing. There was no highway either. She was clearly in a residential area, there were no signs of any kind, and she had no idea what direction she should be driving in.

  Luise searched the street for pedestrians she could ask for directions. She also needed the bathroom desperately, and was hungry, too. She looked at the time; she still had an hour. Then she saw a small shopping center. A supermarket, a bakery; there had to be a restroom somewhere. She looked for a parking space and pulled up.

  The restrooms were right by the entrance, and Luise dashed right in without stopping to look around. As she came out, her stomach was rumbling. The baker had a meat and cheese counter and was selling sandwiches. Well, she could take one along with her at least. Once it was her turn, she asked for a cheese roll and a can of cola. “To go, please.”

  The saleswoman carefully wrapped up the roll and put it in a paper bag along with a napkin.

  “That’ll be three Euros fifty, junge Frau.”

  Luise laid the money on the table.

  “Thanks. Could you tell me how to get to the highway from here, please?”

  “Sure, you turn right out of here, then straight on until the gas station, then take a left. From there you’ll see the signs. It’s really easy to find.”

  “Great, thank you. Have a nice day.”

  Luise walked quickly back to the car. She only had forty-five minutes now; it would be tight. In the car she laid the bag on the dashboard and turned the key in the ignition. Before putting the car in reverse, she took the roll from the bag. The napkin fell onto the passenger seat. Luise glanced at it momentarily, then stared. Instantly she turned the ignition off again.

  On the napkin was a red company logo. “Number one for years—Meyer Fine Foods, formerly Love Butchers.”

  Luise grabbed her cell to call the bookstore in Schleswig.

  Hamburg

  Ines rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Come on, I think we’ve looked at every scrap of paper and photo there is. I’m exhausted.”

  Gabi laid a pile of tickets and photos back in the box. Dorothea took them straight back out again.

  “Gabi! You can’t put them back in all organized like that; she’ll notice.” She rummaged around to make the pile all messy again, while looking at the things they had left out on the table. “I think we did quite well. We’ve got our first clues about Dani and Lena, and we’ve got this card, too.”

  Gabi reached for the postcard: there was a picture of the Emden bay on the front. On the back was some childlike handwriting:

  Dear Christine,

  It’s pretty dull here, it rains every day and my grandma is in a bad mood. But I did get to practice Rumba with my cousin and I can do it now. See you on Thursday, I can’t wait.

  Lots of love, Marie

  Dorf Strasse 2, 2038 Büchen

  Gabi waved the card around. “And poor Marie was so homesick that she wrote her home address as the sender’s. How sweet.”

  She thought for a moment then tucked the card away in her bag. “I’ll give it to Ruth so she doesn’t feel left out of the search. It was her idea after all.”

  “Fine with me.” Dorothea stood up and stretched. “All right, let’s clear away the evidence of our investigations, I want to head back to my place. I’ll write up the schools Christine went to so we can get a hold of the class lists, and let’s just hope there aren’t loads of Fraukes. Then I’ll give Gabi a call.”

  “Great. Maybe we can meet up for dinner next week, with Ruth and Luise, and see where we’re at.”

  The three of them looked at each other. By now, even Ines had the kind of facial expression you usually only see on investigators in crime movies.

  Sylt

  Christine and Richard sat silently next to each other in the terrace bar at Wenningstedt Cliff, watching the sun go down. Now and then their hands would touch, or he would caress her back or put his hand on her knee. It was the kind of silence that can only happen when you usually talk about everything.

  They h
adn’t seen each other in four weeks. To Christine it had seemed like an eternity, and she’d had to force herself to suppress her longing for him, to distract herself. And she had managed to: her job at the publishing house and writing the new column for Femme took up almost all her time. Thoughts of Richard only came in the evenings, but when they did, they were overwhelming. Every fiber of her being longed for his voice, his hands, his body, his warmth.

  Then she would picture Richard with his wife, and wanted to hate him for his inability to make a decision. But she couldn’t. She felt torn between the fear of losing him and the burning need to free herself from this double life.

  On the way to Sylt, Christine had thought about how it was possible to hear hundreds of stories about the torment of being someone’s secret lover, and yet be no smarter for it. Whether it was Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction or one of the numerous novel heroines, Christine found them all dire and never wanted to be like them. She had tormented herself with these thoughts right up until the moment when she stood in front of Richard’s hotel room door. But once he flung the door open and looked at her, all her thoughts had dissolved.

  “Christine, I’ve been looking forward to seeing you so much.”

  Richard took her in his arms, and they stood there for minutes on end in an embrace. Christine closed her eyes and had the feeling she was in the right place, at the right time, with the right person.

  An hour later they were sitting on the small balcony that led off from his hotel room, smoking and holding hands. Richard leaned over to kiss her again. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and stood up.

  “Come on, let’s go for a walk along the beach. And on the way back we can go to the cliff for some champagne and celebrate.”

  Christine looked up at the sky. Everything felt right again.

  As they walked along the beach, they told each other about the important and not-so-important things that had happened over the last four weeks. Richard had bought a copy of Femme and read Christine’s first column.

  “I’m so proud of you,” he said, stopping for a moment. “Come here and let me kiss you, you star columnist.” He had read the story about mothers so often that he almost knew it by heart. “I thought it was really funny. And it made me think about my own mother. Once, when my sister had to go to London on business for three weeks, my mother house-sat for her. My sister had two cats, so someone needed to be there. She lives in this penthouse apartment in Cologne, with a roof terrace, huge windows, everything furnished in black and white, very minimalist. By the time Beate came back, my mother had sewn and hung curtains and put potted plants in front of every window. My sister almost flipped.” Richard laughed softly and put his hand under Christine’s arm. “So, I’m now a Femme reader. No one would have believed that five years ago.”

  They had arrived at Wenningstedt Cliff, and the beach was bathed in that evening sunlight so typical for Sylt. As Richard and Christine climbed up the steps to the sun terrace, a table right at the front became free. Christine quickened her pace.

  “Come on, that table’s in the sunshine; let’s get it.”

  She reached it seconds before an older couple who were also steering their way toward the table, and sat down quickly. The older woman shot a poisonous look at Christine and pushed her husband in the other direction.

  “Come on, Werner, I didn’t come here to have a race.”

  Christine made an effort to gaze indifferently out to sea and then looked at Richard, who sat down smiling.

  “You really forced that woman aside; that was almost a foul.”

  Christine shrugged her shoulders and tried to look innocent.

  “Old volleyball rules, you just have to cut off the opponent’s route to the goal. And by the way, there was no bodily contact, so I wouldn’t even have gotten a yellow card. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Richard stroked her cheek. “You scare me sometimes. But what a great table.” He reached for the drinks menu. “Champagne?”

  “Of course. It’s the perfect finishing touch.”

  After the waiter had brought their glasses over, they sat in contented silence for a while and just enjoyed each other’s company.

  Richard’s gaze followed two figures who were making their way along the beach in step, but at a distance from one another. The last rays of sunshine illuminated their blond hair. He looked at Christine. She was watching them, too.

  “Lovers?” He spoke softly so as not to spoil the mood.

  Christine shook her head. “Two girls, both very young, so friends perhaps.”

  Richard squinted. Now they had stopped walking and were standing, staring at each other. Christine was right, it was two girls; they were maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. The taller girl said something to the smaller one and stretched out her hand, which the other grabbed. They moved farther away from each other, but still held on tight. Then they started to make peculiar movements. Richard tried to figure out whether they were fighting.

  “What’s going on? Are they arguing?” He looked at Christine questioningly.

  Her gaze was still fixed on the two girls.

  “No,” she said quietly, “they’re not fighting; they’re practicing the jive.”

  Richard was confused. “The jive?”

  The two girls were now moving to the same rhythm. They were the only people on the beach. And they could hear music that no one else could.

  Christine leaned over and kissed Richard on the cheek.

  “Or cha-cha. I can’t make out the steps from here. Didn’t you ever practice before a dance lesson?”

  Richard laughed. “Practice? That’s what I went to the lessons for. I would never have met up with a girl beforehand to practice. That just wouldn’t have been cool.” He looked back over at the two girls. “And if I’d have asked my best friend Christof if he could be the girl, he would probably have beaten me up and declared me mentally ill. Or gay. Our friendship would have come to an end.”

  “And is it still going now?”

  Richard nodded. “Christof lives in Munich, so we only see each other now and then. But we’re still good friends. My God, it’s been almost thirty-five years.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  Richard thought for a moment. “When was it? Wait, it must have been when he got married, seven, no, eight years ago.”

  Christine laughed. “Wow, that really is a true friendship. You sound inseparable.”

  “Why not? You don’t have to see each other all the time. We speak on the phone and write. Friendships are different for men than they are for women.”

  “And how would you know what they’re like for women?”

  Richard pointed at the two girls, who were now lying alongside each other on the sand.

  “Just look at the two of them; it’s so typical. It was the same with my sister and in my circle of friends. Girls walk to school together in the mornings, sit next to one another for six hours in class, stand together at recess, then separate when they go home to eat dinner with their families, only to spend half an hour on the phone arranging to meet up an hour later. That just doesn’t happen with boys.”

  “Girls aren’t all like that. It’s a cliché.”

  Richard took Christine’s hand and kissed her. “I think most of them are. It’s in the genes; you always want to be in close contact. Women go to the bathroom together. They share clothes, go shopping together, tell each other all about their love lives, you know, things like that. Sometimes I even envy them for it. So what was it like for you?”

  “I go to the bathroom by myself.”

  Richard laughed. “Well, you’re different than other girls.”

  He put his hand on her knee, and she put hers on top of it. He turned his hand around and intertwined his fingers with hers.

  “I’m sure I was the same, at some stage at least. You know, as a young girl you’re afraid of the world. Well, I was, anyway. And then another little girl appears, and suddenly ever
ything is easy. I needed friends to be able to start making my way through life.”

  Richard pressed her fingers tenderly. “It’s the same for little boys. You look for fellow sufferers, cowards like yourself, and together you can be strong.”

  “But that’s only the early friendships,” Christine continued. “After that everything changes again. At twelve or thirteen I suddenly started to like girls who were completely different than me. I think we look for opposites to try to figure out who we want to be. But it only works for a while before the differences start to show.”

  Richard looked at Christine attentively. “That’s the same with men, too.”

  “Yes of course, to start with, but men approach friendships differently to women. It’s about the friend, his character, his sense of humor, his spontaneity, I don’t know. But with women, shared life experience is much more important. If you get to know a friend when you’re both single, there are usually problems when she settles down and has less time for you. If two women, neither of whom have children, are friends, and then one becomes a mother, it’s just as difficult. If you can’t stand the other one’s partner, that’s a problem, too. Women are much more dependent on external circumstances than men are. Everything has to stay as it is; otherwise it stops working.”

  Richard looked skeptical. “I think you’re being too pessimistic. I hardly know any women who don’t have a best friend. I mean, you’ve got Dorothea, or Marleen.”