“We just thought…” her mother sounded tired, “that you were making the same mistake as you did with Thomas. Just like it always was. Everything is going well until he proposes, then you’re gone.”
Charly sighed. Her mother had put her finger in the middle of an open wound. Again. “I understand you are worried, Mama, but I’m just not the type of woman with whom you start a family. And I certainly don’t want to be controlled by an idiot like that.”
“Will you be okay?” her mother hesitated, “… should I talk to Andreas? He is getting his hopes up. After yesterday… now I have a bad feeling.”
“Let it be,” Charly said sharply. “I can handle it on my own.”
For a moment they chatted about everyday things, then Charly ended the conversation. Looking at her watch, she was startled. She threw her handbag on the floor in the corridor in frustration and went into the kitchen to have a cup of coffee. She was already late anyway, so a few minutes more or less didn’t matter.
When she arrived at the office, Pia, her colleague, burst in. “Junior has been looking for you everywhere, driving everyone crazy. Now he’s away for an appointment. But he told me to tell you he’ll pick you up tonight. He needs to talk to you urgently.” Pia glanced at her with pity, then disappeared.
After a moment of hesitation, Charly pulled out her smartphone, searched for Andreas in her contacts, then called his number. When he answered encouraged herself in her thoughts. “Look, I don’t want you to come here tonight. At least not to pick me up. I want you to leave me alone, do you understand?”
She cleared her throat. “If you do not comply with my request for distance, I will go to the police.”
“You want to report me?” His voice sounded dangerously low. Then he laughed. “This is crazy, Charlotte. I just want to talk to you. I want to apologize. What do you want the cops to do? Stop me from telling my girlfriend how much I love her?”
“I’m not your girlfriend anymore. Besides, you only love one person with all your heart. And that is yourself,” Charly hissed. “Otherwise you would know how much you hurt me with your behavior. First you control and insult me, threaten me, then you ask for forgiveness. How long do you think I’m going to put up with that?”
“I have never raised my hand against you.” It was a sober statement with no feeling in his voice, not to mention a bad conscience.
“It’s enough that you threatened to do something to me.”
“For that I want to apologize.”
“You cannot undo it.”
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting? We had a fight. You throw things at each other that you later regret.”
“Andreas, please, let it go. I just can’t take it anymore. There is nothing left between us… there is nothing left. At least not from my side. Besides, you make everything even worse when you spend nights on the phone terrorizing me or stalking me. Please, let’s end it now while we can still look each other in the eye.”
She heard Andreas’ breathing in the telephone receiver, expected another of his outbursts of rage at any moment, but he remained silent.
“See you later,” he declared in an icy voice and hung up.
“Shall we go out for some more food?” Pia asked on the way to the exit and grinned. “We have something to celebrate, don’t we?”
Charly smiled tiredly. “The loft has been sold, but I don’t feel like celebrating.” She moved her head towards the glass door behind which Andreas was already waiting for her.
Pia frowned. “Why don’t you just turn him in? Or tell his father this must stop? You’re the best broker in the house, so the old man would never fire you.”
Charly shook her head. “That’s not it at all. I just have the hope that somewhere in his brain there is a functioning synapse that understands he is making everything worse. We’ll have a raincheck on our dinner, I promise. Right now I have to get my life under control and get some rest.”
“Sure,” Pia said. “Shall I walk you to the bus? Or do you want to go with him?” She glared at Andreas, who strolled towards her.
“I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and listen to what he has to say. I’ll take a cab home.”
When she arrived at home three hours later, Charly felt more weak and devitalized than ever before in her life. Andreas had wanted to invite her for dinner, but she had refused. He had followed her to the bus, had insulted her in the worst possible way in front of the waiting crowd, and threatened her with getting her fired. In the end, she had realized that there was no other way. She had thought she could handle it alone, but the longer she was exposed to Andrew’s attacks, the more she had to admit to herself that he scared her. She had gone to the nearest police station and sought advice, wanting to sound out her options for taking action against Andreas. The police officer, a personable-looking woman in her mid-forties, had told her she could get a restraining order against him and that he could not approach her again. She did caution, however, that this could lead to complications, considering that he was one of her superiors. Therefore Charly saw only one possibility to put an end to the whole thing: quitting immediately.
Yet she simply could not afford to throw away her job at Winter Immobilien. She had bills to pay and had to live on something. Sure, she could have asked her parents for help, but depending on others at the age of 32 was just not her thing.
She had thanked the officer and had left without having achieved anything, and without a solution.
A conversation with Andreas’ father remained an option, but who was she to hope that the man would turn against his only son because of her?
Sighing, she slipped out of her clothes to take a hot shower. On the way to the bathroom, her eyes fell on the phone. The signal light of the voicemail was flashing, indicating there was a message. She took her robe off the hook at the bathroom door and wrapped herself in it.
Andreas, she knew.
Had he left savage insults to her on tape? Or did he want to apologize for his latest lapse? Charly tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Why didn’t he understand they were finished? That inside of her there was nothing left for him? She had told him clearly more than once.
She briefly considered pressing the delete key, then decided it couldn’t hurt if she kept it for evidence just in case she dared to talk to his father and he didn’t believe her.
She entered the pin number for the voice mailbox and waited. Instead of Andreas, as she had expected, there was a strange man on tape who introduced himself as Edward Clark and asked for an extremely urgent call to his office in London.
After a moment of thought about whether the name meant anything to her, she dialed the number.
When she realized how late it was already, she sighed. She certainly wouldn’t catch anyone in their office this late. Yet the call had made her curious. It reminded her where she came from and that there had been a life outside of Berlin. She listened to the ring tone, startled when someone answered.
“Edward Clark.”
“They asked for a callback,” Charly quickly explained. “My name is Charlotte Beck. I know it’s late, but…” She fell silent and felt the familiar pulling in her stomach, a kind of dull pressure, a harbinger of something bad that would happen.
“Mrs. Beck, how nice of you to call back,” Edward Clark said happily, but Charly could hear from the sound of his voice that it was a fake cheerfulness.
“What is it?”
The man cleared his throat as if he was preparing to deliver a devastating message. “You must come to my office as soon as possible. It’s about the Imogen Shaw will. It’s important that we talk in person and go over all the details, too sensitive to discuss on the phone. You would also have to identify yourself.”
Charly’s innermost being contracted. She hadn’t heard from Imo for over two years. What the hell did that mean?
“Are you still there?”
“Yes,” Charly said breathlessly. �
�Yes, I’m here.” She hitched a breath. “So this is about my old friend Imogen and some kind of will from her? What’s that all about? And why doesn’t she call me herself if it’s so urgent?”
“Imogen Shaw…” the man made a meaningful pause and said, sounding strangely monotonous, “… is dead.”
Chapter 3
Berlin / London, June 2015
An unbearable cold had taken possession of her. A coldness that came from within, filling her, freezing her thoughts. Charly tried to concentrate on breathing calmly, then felt she was about to lose her nerves.
IMOGEN WAS DEAD.
DEAD.
DEAD.
DEAD.
The attorney had not wanted to tell her any further details over the phone, insisting that she come to his office as soon as possible.
Charly’s eyes filled with tears. She sank to her knees, bent forward, supported herself with her hands on the floor, gasping for air. A sob erupted from her throat. Then came the realization. Imo and she had not seen each other for two years. At their last meeting, occasioned by the baptism of Imo’s daughter Jody, they had fallen out in a fight. Charly pulled her head up. What was the argument about? She didn’t remember.… A trifle, probably. Now it was too late. Charly wished with all her heart to be allowed to talk to her friend again. She wanted to tell Imo how much she liked her and that she was sorry their friendship had broken up.
A thought flashed through Charly’s mind. Imogen could have contacted her. She had not done so. She had ignored Charly as well as the other way around. Why?
Charly racked her brain, but she just didn’t want to think about what had happened between them two years ago.
That must be the shock, Charly thought. The news of her friend’s death had caught her cold, tore the ground from under her feet. Because Imogen had not only been her friend but also an essential part of her past, a piece of home, so to speak.
Charly remembered, as if it was only yesterday, that her father had come out with the news that he had found a job in Berlin. A job with the prospect of a partnership. Of course he had accepted without thinking, had demanded understanding from his family.
On that day Charly’s world had collapsed. The thought of leaving Newhaven, moving from England to Germany, all of it was completely surreal to her.
A life without her friends, without the familiarity of her homeland, represented a breaking point for Charly, from which she had not recovered for a long time. Her good relationship with her father had also suffered considerably from the new situation. Yet the longer Charly lived in Berlin, the more she became alienated from her past. At some point, nothing more of the old Charly had been there, and even her memories of the past faded with time. It was as if her life then and her life now were separated by an impenetrable wall. Now and then the spark of a tiny memory shined through one of the cracks, but that was it. Was that the trigger for her fight with Imogen?
Basically, Charly found it strange that there were a few events in her childhood that she remembered very clearly, while she had completely forgotten the greater part of her past.
And now she was to travel to London, because Imogen had left a decree that somehow had something to do with her.
Charly stood up. She could easily afford financially to take a few days off. Her boss would surely forgive her. Besides, there was Pia, who did just as good a job, who could cover her absence. Without further ado, she picked up the phone and dialed the number of her boss’ private line.
Right before it rang, she disconnected and decided to write an e-mail to her supervisor. At least then he could not dissuade her from her plan.
One thing was certain: she would fly to London first thing tomorrow morning and take the opportunity to make a detour to Newhaven. She had to visit Imogen’s husband, talk to him, offer him her condolences. She had to know what had happened to Imogen. Suddenly Charly longed from the bottom of her heart to spend a few days in her old home country. She was looking forward to the taste of salt on her lips, to the wild beauty of the sea, to the harsh coastal climate.
She choked back tears. In addition, a few days off was just the right thing to find an answer to the question of how to go on professionally, and how she would deal with Andreas in the future. Charly took a deep breath. Then she opened her notebook and wrote a brief e-mail to her manager asking for a few days off because of a death. She then logged on to the Lufthansa homepage and booked a flight for the next morning.
When she was lying in her bed a little later, freshly showered, she felt the stress of the day taking its toll. The tiredness rolled over her like a tsunami wave, sweeping her away despite her inner turmoil.
Fourteen hours later, Charly stood in the city of London, in front of the house where the attorney’s office was located, feeling a little like one of the countless tourists, gazing up in awe at the glass facade of the skyscraper. To Charly’s horror, Edward Clark’s office was located on the twelfth floor, which meant that she either had to overcome her elevator phobia or climb up on foot. After much thought, she decided to take the sweaty walk and was completely out of breath when she arrived at the office door fifteen minutes later. Panting, she pressed the bell button and tried to catch her breath. It took a moment before she heard a sound reminiscent of stilettos on a parquet floor.
A young lady, very attractive and in a sinfully expensive looking outfit, invited her in. “My name is Rhonda. I am Mr. Clark’s assistant.” She escorted Charly into the suite and directed her to a cream suede settee, waiting until she sat down on it. “Mr. Clark is in an important meeting right now, but he should be back in half an hour. May I offer you something to drink? Tea or coffee? A snack?”
“A cup of tea would be great right now. Thank you very much.”
She sat back, staring after Rhonda, wondering how she managed to move on those monstrous heels.
Less than three minutes later, the young woman was back, and placed a silver tray on the table in front of Charly. “I hope you like the tea. I’ve also added some pastries.” She smiled. “I’m going back to work. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me.”
Charly nodded gratefully. When Rhonda stepped away, she put milk and two cubes of sugar into the steaming tea and took a sip. She sighed as the familiar taste of the drink filled her mouth, then took one of the cookies and dunked it into the hot liquid. She had enjoyed doing that as a child.
Her thoughts drifted to her dead friend. She didn’t even notice how much time passed and was startled when a man’s voice spoke.
“You are Ms. Beck, I presume?”
Charly set the cup on the tray. “I am.” Then she stood up in front of the man who introduced himself as Edward Clark.
Charly had to restrain herself from not laughing out loud. This was exactly how she had imagined this man: small and gaunt, wearing glasses on the tip of his nose, with a hairstyle reminiscent of the professor from Back to the Future. He wore a black pinstriped suit and a beige shirt that made him look even paler. The light yellow silk tie was the crowning touch to the whole thing. Edward Clark somehow seemed out of place in the modern environment of his law firm. Didn’t this poor man have anyone at his side to tell him how to dress respectably?
Charly reached out to take his extended hand. “Yes, I am Charlotte Beck. Nice to meet you.”
“Let’s go into my office.” Clark pointed to a room at the other end of the hallway, Charly went ahead, and he gallantly held the door open for her.
When they were seated opposite each other at Edward Clark’s huge desk, Charly swallowed against the anxiety inside. “What happened to Imogen?” she asked. “And what kind of will did she leave behind that concerns me?”
Edward Clark cleared his throat. “In order to be able to give you further details, I must first ask you to confirm your identity.”
Charly dug out her passport from the shallows of her handbag and handed it over the desk.
After he had leafed through it f
or what felt like an eternity and studied it intently, Clark gave it back to Charly. “Imogen Shaw took her own life last month.”
Charly stared at Clark with wide eyes. “Imo? Suicide? That… can’t be. She would never do such a terrible thing to her family.”
Edward Clark’s expression did not change, he stared at Charly from his ice-blue eyes. “She did it. One night she went to the cliffs and threw herself into the depths before Beachy Head. If you can believe the press, she died instantly.”
Charly gasped. “I don’t understand… Why would she do such a thing? She had everything. A man who loved her. Jody, her daughter. That’s… that’s just awful.”
Edward Clark did not comment.
She furtively wiped a tear from her cheek. “What about Adam? How is he dealing with it? Why didn’t he get in touch with me after Imogen… Imo and I, we were friends. We hadn’t seen each other much lately, but…”
Clark stared at Charly in disbelief. “You don’t know about Mr. Shaw? It’s such a tragedy.” He frowned. “Adam Shaw was killed in an accident in April 2014. Or at least, until the police have more information, we have to assume it was an accident.”
Charly jumped up from her seat and paced Clark’s office. “Adam’s been dead for over a year? Why didn’t Imogen tell me about this? I was maid of honor at their wedding, I’d known Adam for years, I just don’t get it.”
“After Adam’s death, Imogen was no longer herself. She mourned for her husband, of course, but it went far beyond that. She suffered from severe depression, delusions and extreme fears, and had to be treated psychotherapeutically. For a while it appeared as if she would have to be involuntarily committed to an institution, but she somehow regained her composure. That was also the time when she came to me for help.”
He leafed through his documents. “Imogen’s mother, Grace White, has been in a nursing home for dementia patients for two years. She suffers from an early form of Alzheimer’s. Imogen’s father Robert died of cancer years ago. You know that, I suppose?”
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