by Joanna Rees
But Thea didn’t feel reassured. She felt sick with nerves. She tried to still her trembling hands before she spilt scalding tea all over her lap. She still couldn’t believe Michael had cajoled her into coming here, although she also had to admit that it had initially felt good to get out of New York. To get away from her house, where she’d been holed up since that awful day she’d announced her resignation just over a month ago.
She wasn’t as raw as she had been, but her fury had distilled into a dull ache of injustice. Brett had humiliated her in front of her staff and colleagues. He’d taken away her power in the most public way.
Scolari – it was as simple as that. The word seemed to be seared into Thea’s brain. Because no matter how much she tried to tell herself that Brett had acted despicably, the truth was that he’d also succeeded where she’d failed. How he’d done it, how he’d managed to persuade the Scolaris to do what they’d always sworn they wouldn’t, Thea guessed she’d never know. But everything she’d been terrified might happen had now happened.
She’d lost.
And Brett had won.
In the devastation that had followed, Michael had been the only person she’d let in. She’d had so little pride left that she’d no longer cared if he saw her at rock bottom. When she hadn’t shown up for dinner on the night she’d confessed everything to him, he’d come to find her, fighting through the press camped out on her stoop. As she’d sobbed, pacing back and forth in her kitchen, impotent with fury that she’d been ousted from her position and from the company, he’d listened.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she’d ended up railing at him, her face raw and puffy from crying. ‘I don’t know what I’m meant to do, or even who I am any more.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘He’s taken everything,’ she’d sobbed.
Michael had been patient, talking her round.
‘You always said you could beat him at his own game,’ he had reminded her.
‘Yeah, well I lost.’
‘Only because he knows more than you. It’s information, Thea, that’s the key.’
‘I have no access to information. They’ve shut me out of Maddox Inc. I’ve been fired. I can’t even access any of my computer files.’
Michael had rubbed his brow, taking a different tack. ‘That letter Brett sent you and what he then told you – about the fact that your parents hadn’t even adopted you – maybe now’s the time to get to the bottom of it . . .’
Thea had stared at him. Did he think a distraction like that mattered. Now? When this had happened?
‘I wouldn’t even know where to start,’ she’d cried.
But Michael had been patient. ‘I’m only bringing it up because I called Mom earlier. Whenever I mention you, she always says that Dr Myerson will come.’
Thea had remembered, then, that she’d heard Michael’s mother saying that exact same thing herself.
‘She says it over and over,’ Michael had continued. ‘I think that’s where we should start. Maybe he knew something about where you really came from.’
‘Even if he did,’ Thea said, ‘he died years ago. It’s hopeless.’
But Michael hadn’t given up. And that was how Thea came to be sitting here in Dr Myerson’s widow’s front room today, with its polished French windows overlooking a perfectly manicured garden and white picket fence.
‘Herbie adored your father, Thea,’ Mrs Myerson said, glancing at the black-and-white photograph of Dr Myerson on the mantelpiece as she poured herself a cup of tea from a blue and white Dalton pot.
Thea remembered the gentle doctor who’d daubed calamine lotion on her and Michael when they’d both got chickenpox as kids. And how he’d always stopped in for tea and cake with Michael’s mother in the kitchen at Little Elms.
‘I’d like to ask you some questions about my parents,’ Thea said. Again she glanced at Michael. His soft eyes beamed encouragement and resolution. And he was right: it was too late to back out now.
‘Ah, yes. Poor Alyssa. She was so fragile,’ Mrs Myerson said, pouring the last cup of tea for herself. The clock on the wall ticked loudly. She shooed her little dog from her armchair and sat down.
‘I know that she . . . well’ – Thea spat the words out – ‘probably wouldn’t have been able to have children of her own. Not after the baby she had in England.’
Adelaide Myerson looked up at Thea, surprised. ‘You do?’ she slowly said, her pale cheeks colouring with a fresh influx of blood.
‘And I know that my father couldn’t have children, either. And we’ve also checked . . . ’ Thea’s voice faltered. She felt suddenly ashamed, as if she’d somehow betrayed Griffin Maddox’s memory by speaking his secret out loud.
‘What Thea’s trying to say,’ Michael said, ‘is that we’ve checked the official adoption records. And as well as knowing that Thea’s parents couldn’t have had children together—’
‘We know that I wasn’t adopted, either,’ Thea said, regaining her voice, determined once more to see this through.
What she’d said was true. She’d checked with the National Adoption Agency. With Michael at her side, prepared to support her, no matter what she’d found. Except that she’d found nothing. There’d been no record of Thea on any of their files. Or any of the international databases that the agency had gone on to cross-reference on her behalf.
Brett had been right. Thea had never been officially adopted by the Maddoxes at all. Which had made for an even grimmer revelation. Because if Thea hadn’t been adopted, then how had she come into their lives? God only knows where they got you from, Thea. Brett’s words echoed in her mind.
Mrs Myerson shook her head and blew a stream of air out through her thin, painted lips. Her hands had clenched into fists. As she looked back at Thea, Thea felt her whole body tense. The old woman’s eyes were heavy with fear and regret.
‘They couldn’t adopt,’ she said. ‘Not legally. Not with Alyssa’s mental-health record. She’d tried to commit suicide, you see.’
Suicide? Alyssa Maddox had tried to kill herself. That wonderful, positive woman who’d been Thea’s mother. Who still felt like her mother, she realized, in spite of all that she’d learnt.
‘She went into a dark depression early on in her marriage. The drugs they had to correct such problems, they were much less effective in those days. And so when she and Griffin discovered they couldn’t conceive together, they were left with no hope,’ Mrs Myerson explained. ‘The adoption authorities wouldn’t even let them register.’
‘So what happened?’ Thea’s voice sounded empty, distant, as if it was playing on a radio in another room.
‘Herbie knew the situation was desperate. He offered to help. And he knew how to. He had a second cousin, Walchez, in East Germany. One who could find abandoned babies. Babies who needed a good home. No questions asked.’
No questions asked. The phrase sounded so casual, so normal – the kind of phrase you’d use about an item of commerce. A nothing. Something that was traded. Thea stared at Mrs Myerson, aghast. Was that what she’d been?
‘Herbie made the arrangements. His cousin’s wife, Rena, turned up here one day with you in a little yellow blanket. You were so tiny. You’d lost weight on the boat on the journey over here. You know . . . I think I’ve still got that blanket somewhere. Herbie insisted in taking you to Alyssa in a clean one, but it felt wrong to throw it away.’
Thea could barely take in what she was saying. ‘But what about my real parents? Do you know who they were?’
My real parents.
In East Germany.
The country I was born in.
A country that no longer exists.
Mrs Myerson smiled desperately at Thea. ‘You have to understand – where you came from . . . you were not wanted. But here . . . never had a baby been wanted so much. Your parents were overjoyed, Thea. You must know that. They wanted you so desperately. They gave you love, Thea. They gave you everything.’
Except
the truth.
There were tears in the old lady’s eyes now, but all Thea felt was anger.
‘Please,’ Mrs Myerson implored, ‘don’t judge me. My husband thought he was doing the right thing – he only wanted to help . . .’
But Thea couldn’t look at her. Not any more. She couldn’t look at this woman who knew what her own husband had done. This woman whose husband had moved babies from the East to the West, from the poor to the rich. This woman whose husband had stolen away Thea’s life.
Thea watched Michael walking down the street towards her. She was waiting for him in the old-fashioned diner on the corner. She’d not been able to stay in Mrs Myerson’s perfect home a second longer. She couldn’t have trusted herself. She’d wanted to smash her china teacup across the pristine primrose wall. She’d wanted to tear that photo of Dr Myerson in two. She’d wanted to destroy everything he’d ever cared for, the way he’d once destroyed her.
Michael slid onto the red leather banquette beside her in the booth. She saw that he had a plastic bag in his hand.
‘Still livid?’ he asked.
She didn’t answer. If she opened her mouth she’d just scream.
‘I don’t think what they did was right, Thea. But I don’t know if that makes them bad.’
‘He was a child-trafficker.’
‘The way she sees it, her husband was doing the right thing by saving an unwanted baby. By giving you a new life.’
‘But what if I wasn’t unwanted? Thea said. That was at the heart of it. Whose word did she have for that? Some cousin of Herbie Myerson? Some East German guy called Walchez? For all she knew, he might have kidnapped her. Her real mother and father might have spent the last thirty-eight years wondering where she was and praying that she’d come back.
Michael stared at her. ‘What are you saying?’
‘No past, no paperwork? There has to be a reason I was smuggled out in such an underhand way.’
‘You heard what she said. It was a “no questions asked” kind of deal.’
There it is again, she thought. That handy, catch-all phrase. That broom with which to sweep dirt nicely out of sight.
‘Yeah, well, now I’m asking the questions,’ Thea said. ‘And I’m going to damn well find out. We can’t give up, Michael, you’ve got to promise me that,’ she said, grabbing onto his hands.
He nodded and stared out of the window, back down the street towards the Myerson house.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’ve been planning on going back to Germany to see some of my colleagues at Landstuhl. I could look up this Walchez guy – see if there are any records on him. I have a few contacts in the military police who might have access to some old East German records. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll try.’
‘I’m never going to give up,’ Thea told him, meaning it with all her heart. ‘Not until I’ve uncovered the truth.’
Michael handed it to her then. The bag he was holding.
‘What is it?’ Thea said.
‘Take a look.’
She opened it up and took out the yellow knitted blanket. She held it in her hands, then buried her face into it, smelling it. It was the only thing that she’d ever truly owned.
A week later Thea was on a plane to Germany to meet Michael. True to his word, he’d called in the favour from his colleague, who had run Walchez’s name through some old databases. On Tuesday Michael had found Rena, Walchez’s wife.
According to Rena, Thea had been delivered to them in the dead of night, by a huge bear of a man called Udo. Udo hadn’t been hard to find, Michael had told Thea on the phone. He’d been a permanent fixture at the small town’s main bar. Part-bouncer, part-furniture. He hadn’t wanted to talk, but money had lubricated his tongue, although the only thing Michael had got out of him was that he remembered a man called Volkmar and his driver, Sebastian Trost.
The records that Michael’s military police contacts had got showed that Volkmar had died in jail years ago. He’d tried to bury his past after the Wall had come down, but his illegitimate business practices had caught up with him. Michael had then turned his research to the driver. When he’d told Thea on the phone how much he’d found out, she’d come over straight away.
Now, as they drove from Berlin airport, where Michael had picked her up, deep into the heart of the former East Germany, Thea stared out of the car window, the windscreen wipers batting away slushy snow. She tied her light-blue cashmere scarf tighter around her neck.
Along the forest road the shadows were lengthening. She’d never seen pine trees so dense. On the right was an old burnt-out building – two ten-foot-high rusting gates propped up askew against its hinges. It was like the set for a ghost movie.
Shouldn’t she feel some sort of affinity for this place? she wondered. This, after all, was where she’d come from.
‘I think we should stop at the next village,’ Michael said. ‘We won’t be able to do anything until the morning. We’ll find somewhere to stay the night.’
‘OK,’ Thea said, straightening up in her seat.
The lights of a lorry on the other side of the road briefly illuminated Michael’s face, and Thea felt a momentary dart of desire – even here, amongst all the apprehension that she otherwise felt – but she pushed it away.
They would stay in separate rooms tonight. She knew that. They were friends, she reminded herself. Just friends. Nothing more. Michael had never indicated that he wanted more. Or was ready for more.
She remembered again how he’d once described himself as damaged goods. But she’d proved herself to be more scarred than he’d ever be. And after the way she’d been these past few weeks, she couldn’t imagine that Michael would ever desire her.
A resigned half-smile crept to her lips. What a mess of a couple they’d make.
But there was no point, either, in denying that all the time he’d been away this time in Germany, she’d missed him like crazy. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how much he’d done for her. Or how dejected she felt without him by her side.
He’d been there for her when she’d most needed him. He’d started this whole search, which had given her something to focus on other than losing control of Maddox Inc. She wondered how she could ever repay him. But even as she thought it, she knew the answer. She had to repay him with the truth. The truth about what Brett had done to her. And about the film of her that Brett had in his possession – the one he’d threatened to use against her. Even if it meant losing Michael for good.
She shivered now as they drove towards the centre of Schwedt, with its ugly, uniform buildings all covered in snow, and the weak yellow light of its intermittently lit street lamps illuminating flashes of grey concrete in their sickly glow. A ‘Vacancies’ sign hung outside a hotel, and Michael pulled up on the potholed road outside.
‘It’s not exactly George Cinq,’ he said, ‘but it might do. We can check in in a little while. I don’t know about you, but I could do with a beer.’
Everyone stopped talking as Thea and Michael entered the local bar. It was probably as much their clothes, she thought, as the fact that they were strangers. Or her clothes, at least. She was wearing a DKNY leather coat with fur trim, while Michael had dressed more appropriately in an old Barbour-style coat and jeans.
She sat down at a small wooden table in the corner of the bar, beneath a pair of antlers on the brick wall, and took a menu out from behind a green bottle encrusted with layers of dried candle wax. That Lady Gaga song, ‘Bad Romance’, was playing and Thea suddenly remembered the compilation tapes Michael had made for her all those years ago. She wondered if he remembered them too.
She looked down the printed list of schnitzels and steaks on offer and thought about her sessions in the gym and the pool in the basement of Maddox Tower, and how religiously she’d used to watch her figure. That Thea – that New York version of herself – seemed so distant now. So unreal and absurd somehow.
A waitress in jeans and a scruffy jumper arrived
with a basket of bread. Michael ordered and started chatting easily to her in German. Thea knew enough to know that he was asking her if she knew of Sebastian Trost.
‘Are you American?’ the waitress asked, suddenly switching to English.
‘Yes,’ Michael said.
‘When I was little the Trosts ran the bakery,’ she said, clearly charmed by him. ‘You could try there.’
Thea smiled, watching her go. She saw the waitress look back over her shoulder at Michael, but she caught Thea’s eye and blushed. Did the waitress find Michael attractive too? What if he got whisked away from her by someone like that? Thea remembered the woman soldier at Landstuhl and how much she’d flirted with Michael. She felt her own inadequacy swamping her.
‘You know, I never knew you had such good German,’ Thea said. ‘You’ll have to teach me.’
‘You end up with a lot of spare time in hospital.’
Thea remembered when she’d first met him at Landstuhl and how she’d been afraid of all the things he’d seen. How she’d been afraid of asking, in case she’d upset him with her questions, and in case he’d upset her with her answers too. But now she found herself longing for him to confide in her. Longing to know everything about him. Longing for him to trust her.
And so – as they ate their food – she did ask him. About his army training and how it had been when he’d first gone out to Iraq. And she listened to what he had to say as he told her everything. About his men and what they’d gone through, and about how scary it had been to be the one making decisions on the front line.
As he opened up more and more, she asked him all the questions she’d never asked – about the car bomb and what had happened. And he told her what he remembered of the explosion. The pain. About his friends who’d been killed. How he’d shut down after that. How he’d wanted to be dead. About how frightened he’d been, but how the doctors and nurses at Landstuhl had somehow given him strength. And how Thea had helped him too. How seeing her had made him realize more than ever that there was still a world out there that he could be a part of. He’d told her all this. He’d held nothing back. And as she’d listened she’d felt humbled by his bravery, by his honesty, and touched that in a small way she’d helped him to recover.