Sisters of Berlin

by Juliet Conlin

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll also be away for the next month.’ He gives her a genuine, wide smile. ‘I’m off on my honeymoon.’

  ‘You got married?’ Nina has to work hard not to frown.

  ‘Actually, it was several weeks ago, but I wasn’t granted any leave. What with the ongoing enquiry and all. In fact,’ he says, ‘you saw me on my wedding day. At Café Bilderbuch.’

  Nina blinks a few times. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Ayla and I – Ayla’s my wife – had just come back from the registry office.’

  ‘Oh my word.’ Nina swallows. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He smiles again, and Nina sees how very happy he is to talk about his new wife. ‘Her family’s from Istanbul. So that’s where we’re headed. I haven’t met her parents yet, so I’m excited and a little bit terrified at the same time.’ He lets out a gentle laugh. ‘I just have to hope they like me.’

  She laughs back, a little wearily. ‘I’m sure they will.’

  He holds out his hand for her to shake.

  ‘I see you’re not wearing a ring,’ she can’t help remarking, desperate to take her focus away from the thought that his might be their last ever meeting.

  ‘I’m allergic to metal on the skin,’ he responds. ‘Except for platinum, and my police salary doesn’t stretch to that.’

  *

  July, 2019

  The flame of the candle was perfectly still. Nina took a sip of wine and glanced out across the street. From here, on the second floor of Marie’s balcony, she could see into the park on Boxhagener Platz. Wisps of smoke from illegal barbeques drifted into the sky. The air was balmy, and the happy drunken laughs and shouts coming from the park fit the mellow summer mood perfectly. She felt more relaxed than she had in ages. In fact, she felt as though she could stay sitting here forever.

  ‘I spoke to Bekka the other day,’ Marie said. ‘She wants to sleep over, while the school holidays are still on.’

  ‘Have you two been making secret plans or something?’ Nina said and boxed her sister playfully on the arm. Despite Sebastian’s misgivings, Nina was pleased that Bekka and Marie got along so well. The relationship brought out the best in both of them, she thought.

  Marie grinned. Her lips were stained bluish from the Beaujolais. ‘Everyone’s entitled to a secret or two.’

  Nina boxed her again. ‘Ha! Not on my watch.’

  Marie opened her eyes wide in mock pain and rubbed her arm. Then she glanced at Nina with a half-smile on her face. ‘No, I guess not,’ she said, and refilled their glasses.

  Nina tipped her head back and closed her eyes. The droning bass from a neighbour’s stereo reverberated in the pit of her stomach. It felt good, soothing. When she opened her eyes again, Marie was looking at her intently.

  ‘What?’ Nina asked with a smile.

  Marie’s eyes flitted to the side and then back, like she was deciding something. Then she said, tentatively, ‘You remember when you and Sebastian were separated?’

  Nina blinked, taken aback by such an unexpected question. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know, years ago. Bekka was still in kindergarten.’

  Nina frowned. ‘We weren’t separated. We were . . . we were taking a break. Things were –’ She gestured in the air with her hands, then stopped and looked at Marie. ‘Why are you bringing this up? Has this got something to do with Robert? Did he –?’

  Marie shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. I was just . . .’ She lifted a shoulder, then took a sip of wine. ‘You never talked about it, that’s all.’

  ‘There was nothing to talk about. We weren’t getting on, we took a break, we got back together. That’s all.’ She was struggling to hide her irritation. Moments earlier, she had felt so relaxed, and now this. Marie often said whatever was on her mind, without reflecting on how it might be received. Usually, Nina found Marie’s candour refreshing and open-hearted, but at times it was too close to the bone. It’s true she’d never talked to Marie about this – one of the few things she had never shared – but it was an episode best left in the past.

  Marie was still looking at her.

  ‘Like I said,’ Nina said dryly, ‘there was nothing to talk about.’

  Marie lit another cigarette, ignoring her sister’s tone. ‘Was he screwing around?’

  ‘What?’ Nina gasped. ‘No! Where’s this coming from? Sebastian’s not the type.’

  ‘They’re all the type.’ Marie let out a little snort. ‘If you ask me.’

  ‘Nobody asked you,’ Nina snapped.

  Marie’s face fell. She stubbed out her cigarette, causing crumbs of burning tobacco to jump out of the ashtray. ‘Oh, Nina, I’m sorry!’ She leaned forward and squeezed her sister’s knee, giving her a lopsided smile. ‘Me and my big mouth, eh?’

  Nina sighed. She wasn’t in the mood to hold on to her anger, and it hadn’t been Marie’s intention to upset her. ‘No worries,’ she said. ‘Sorry I snapped at you.’

  In the distance, church bells struck out eleven.

  Nina straightened up. ‘Shit. I’d better be off.’

  Marie stuck her bottom lip out. ‘It’s not even midnight!’ she needled. ‘Who are you, Cinderella?’

  ‘I wish,’ Nina said. ‘No. Bekka’s got a piano recital tomorrow at nine and I promised I’d drive her.’

  Marie gave her a sloppy kiss on the cheek and breathed in Nina’s scent. ‘What is that, tea tree and argan shampoo? You’re such a yummy mummy, you know that?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Nina replied, smiling. She picked up her handbag.

  ‘I mean it, though,’ Marie said, her voice warm. ‘You’re a great mum, really.’

  ‘And you’re a great sister,’ Nina said, slinging her bag over her shoulder, hoping it wouldn’t take too long to hail a taxi on the street below, ‘but this mum says it’s time for bed. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  34

  Sometimes the horizon frightens her.

  When the weather is nice, when – despite the freezing December air – the sky is clear and full of the white, early winter sun, the beach becomes an outdoor sanatorium: wicker Strandkörbe and striped deckchairs and thick blankets and nylon windbreakers litter the beach, covering the sections of grey sand that haven’t been appropriated by the grassy mounds of washed-up seaweed. Asthmatic children and rheumatic geriatrics and stick-thin teenagers and the occasional, apparently affliction-free middle-aged couple; they all burst forth from the indoor confines of their respective rehabilitation clinics, and the beach becomes a wheezing, scratching, coughing, deep-breathing version of its yelping, frolicking, skinny-dipping summer counterpart. And Nina joins them, more often than not, because the salty, silty air gives her an appetite, and she needs as much of that as she can get.

  But she prefers the beach on days like today, when the clouds are solid and black and menacing, and the pewter sea doesn’t pretend to be your friend, but instead jumps and lunges towards the shore, baring its teeth and showing off its savage potential – don’t mess with me. On days like these, she feels comforted that she is here, not out there. But when she looks far out to the line of darker grey that marks the horizon, where, from a distance, everything seems calm and peaceful although, in reality, it’s just as savage and threatening as the sea close up, she understands that it is just a matter of perspective. And this frightens her.

  Nina is by far the oldest patient at the eating disorder clinic – older, in fact, than many of the nurses – but this doesn’t bother her. Indeed, joint meals and group therapy sessions with some of the girls whose teeth are rotten with hydrochloric acid, girls with jaundiced, translucent skin and unnaturally large eyes, provide her with a sense of unspoken privilege, that she will be well and home a long time before most of them. She will have survived.

  She speaks on the telephone with her mother every day for news of the children. Apparently – and she’s not sure of the details – her mother and Sebastian have reached some kind of agreement, whereby Antonia
picks up the children from school, takes them to her house, feeds them, helps with homework, and then drives them (reluctantly, Nina imagines) to Sebastian for an hour before bedtime. Their conversations are tentative, but tender. Her mother doesn’t ask for any information that Nina doesn’t offer voluntarily, which, however, increases in detail every time they talk.

  Sara emailed: ‘Darling Nina, I’ll cut to the chase – I’m back in Berlin for Christmas and will force-feed you goose and dumplings if that’s what it takes!!! But seriously, I love you dearly and wouldn’t know what to do without you. Talk to you very soon, Sx.’

  Sebastian has been forwarding her mail: every four or five days, Nina receives an envelope containing letters, bills, pictures drawn by Kai, even junk mail – all of which she consumes hungrily. Each time she gets such an envelope, she opens it with a sense of apprehension, anxious that Sebastian might have included a letter of his own. It is not a path she is ready to travel yet. But so far, he hasn’t.

  This morning, she received a letter from Jan Steinmacher; a generous, characteristically enthusiastic letter that made Nina smile, informing her that he was in the process of wrapping up her practice, that thankfully, she would be left debt-free (though with no capital to speak of), and that his sister-in-law, a secretary at the personnel department of the Martin Luther Hospital had told him that a position as deputy head of the ob-gyn department was opening up in a few months. He’s also fairly confident, although Nina treats this with caution, that given her condition, she might be able to file a claim for occupational disability insurance.

  Last week, when she opened her mail she found a postcard from Turkey, picturing a beach that looked a thousand miles away from the one here: white sand, turquoise water, an artificially blue sky with a smear of cloud. On the back, in somewhat untidy handwriting, the words: ‘With my kindest wishes, Alex.’

  The wind darts and dips, tugging at her coat and sending hisses of sea spray in her direction. She’s nervous. She has put on weight – according to the scales, she’s back up to 50.1 kilos. A small, but vociferous part of her is worried by this, but if she makes it to 51 in the next two weeks, they will let her spend Christmas at home.

  She turns and spots them in the distance. Two tall figures, one smaller one, looking around. Then they see her and the smaller figure lifts his hands and waves, arms outstretched, like a semaphore without the flags. Without intending to, wrapped up in her thoughts, Nina has walked several hundred metres away from the arranged meeting point, the car park situated behind two large dunes at the entrance to the beach, close to the narrow wooden pier that stretches out for what seems like miles, making you feel as though you are strolling out to sea when you venture a walk along it.

  She heads in the direction of the figures, stumbling now and again as her feet attempt to get proper purchase on the sand. Kai has started running, too; head down and arms pumping as he sprints towards her, kicking up sprays of sand with every step. Behind him, Rebekka is walking at a more hesitant pace. Nina’s mother remains standing between the dunes. When Kai reaches her, the force of his speed almost knocks her over, but she is strong, she keeps her balance and scoops him up, kissing his cool pink cheeks and sandy hair as though her life depends on it. She looks up and sees her daughter picking up her pace; soon, she is flying directly towards Nina, long blonde hair a wind-blown mess, crying and laughing, running with the unselfconsciousness of a much younger child. Nina lets Kai slide off her hip onto the sand and opens her arms wide for Rebekka.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a novel means spending much of my time inside my own head, experiencing the joy and satisfaction of creation, but also terrible feelings of inadequacy and despair. It can be a very lonely place, so I’d like to thank everyone who has accompanied me along the way, providing generous support and encouragement. I would not be a writer without you. Sisters of Berlin is book number four, and contrary to (my) expectations, it doesn’t get any easier!

  Special thanks go to:

  Super-agent Jenny Brown, to whom this novel is dedicated, for her untiring support, kindness and friendship,

  Gill Tasker, for such useful feedback on a very early draft,

  The entire team at Black & White Publishing, especially Emma Hargrave for her unflinching eye and judicious and insightful editing,

  And to my family: Jake, Fay, Amy, June, and of course Chrissi – much love.

  © Annette Koroll

  Juliet Conlin was born in London and grew up in England and Germany. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Durham. She works as a writer and translator and lives with her husband and four children in Berlin. Her novels include The Fractured Man (Cargo, 2013), The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days (Black & White Publishing, 2017) and The Lives Before Us (2019).