Splinter

44

Many people make the mistake of wanting to repeat everything. Not content with a single memory, they long to experience their life’s most blissful moments once again. They book another flight to the holiday resort they liked so much, watch the same film over and over, or sleep with an ex-partner although they’re happily involved in a new relationship, only to discover that a second bite of the cherry will never, as a rule, taste as good as the first. Feelings of happiness can’t be reproduced to order, can’t be recalled at the touch of a button. Paradoxically, as Marc found out to his cost, this does not apply to pain, suffering and agony of mind. He had inadvertently visited their old home once before, and once before he had been almost overwhelmed with grief.

He got out of the car, leaving Emma behind. She had refused to be taken to A and E although the Martin Luther Hospital lay right on their route. Eardrums usually healed of their own accord, as he himself had found after a middle-ear infection. Besides, the car was hers and he needed it, both as transport and, possibly, as a means of escape. Even if Emma was paranoid and suspected his brother of murder for no good reason, she was the only person who could testify to the crazy situation in which he was embroiled. He couldn’t tell friend from foe in any case, so it was better to keep an eye on his enemies – if indeed she was one of them.

He opened the garden gate. The small two-storeyed terrace house still seemed to be breathing. Unlike all its spick-and-span neighbours, whose well-tended gardens were enclosed by fences proof against wild boar, No. 7 looked rather neglected but, for that very reason, like an animate being – like an untidy nursery whose walls have been scribbled on in crayon but whose owners wouldn’t exchange it at any price for a designer home in The World of Interiors.

Marc took another look at the note he’d found in his wallet.

Meet you at the Villa Grunewald. Come quickly!

LOL – S.

The simple message was unambiguous. It didn’t prove she was still alive, of course. Sandra had often left similar notes on the kitchen table:

Gone to the gym / Don’t eat too much junk food, I’ll cook us something / Last night was great – as usual / Don’t forget to take the bottles back

At some stage, Marc had taken to signing his notes ‘LOL’ in the erroneous belief that it was short for ‘Lots of love’. Sandra had rocked with laughter the first time she read it, because – as she patiently explained – teenagers used that acronym to acknowledge receipt of some amusing email or text message from a friend.

Laughing out loud.

Since then, appending an ‘LOL’ to nearly every message had become one of their private jokes.

That and the unmistakable handwriting were definite indications that Sandra had written the note. Another was the stated rendezvous. Their terrace house in Eichkamp was far from being a ‘villa’ – another of their private jokes.

Marc put the slip of paper away and got out his bunch of keys. The front door jammed, but it had done that months ago.

What greeted him inside was not the stale smell he’d been expecting. It was chilly – the central heating had been left on minimum to prevent the pipes from freezing – but the stuffy smell typical of an empty house was absent. Someone seemed to have aired the place not long ago. They had also taken the opportunity to polish the floor. The sofa’s rubberized legs had left black scuff marks on the parquet, and these had disappeared.

‘Hello?’ he called. His husky voice sent metallic echoes reverberating around the bare walls of the deserted stairwell. He advanced slowly and cautiously, as if the route to the living room were a thin layer of ice. He wasn’t sure which scared him more, being alone in the house or the possibility of coming face to face with his wife.

‘Hello?’ he called again. He would have liked to call Sandra’s name aloud but he didn’t dare.

Built on to the living room was a conservatory whose windows overlooked the neglected garden. He had turned on the exterior lighting, and the little halogen spotlights acted like a soft-focus lens. Everything looked fuzzy – veiled in a golden-yellow aura: the fruit trees, the rotting apples on the lawn, and the fish pond, which was overgrown with reeds and contained more mud than water.

A gust of wind tore some leaves from the silver birch immediately in front of the veranda. Marc was allergic to birches but had never had the heart to fell the proud tree. Now, looking up at it, he saw a crow soar into the sky from its topmost branch.

His tears seemed to be intensifying the soft-focus effect, because the tree had suddenly become much paler in colour. He rubbed his eyes, but the effect persisted.

What the…?

He put his head back and tried to analyse the strange glow, which bathed only a small part of the tree’s foliage. When the wind stirred the higher branches, the truth dawned on him.

The tree was being illuminated not by the lights in the garden but by some other artificial light source. And this was located two or three metres above his head. On the first floor.

Inside the house!

Everything happened very quickly after that. He dashed back to the entrance hall and pelted up the stairs two at a time. Moments later he threw open the bedroom door. It was true. Although he had removed all the plugs and unscrewed every bulb, the room was ablaze with light.

His jaw dropped and more tears welled up in his eyes. He couldn’t believe, couldn’t grasp, what he was seeing as he blundered into the room.

This is impossible! Why, Sandra? Why?

He had got rid of all the furniture after the accident. The double bed, the louvred wardrobe units, the dressing table with the big mirror. A Pole and his son had come for them. They had dismantled them in his presence, carried them downstairs and driven them off in a trailer. And now, three weeks later, everything was the way it had been. The bed, the wardrobes, the dressing table – all were back in their old places. There was even a new addition, something that looked as wrong as the sight of a pregnant woman lighting a cigarette. Pale blue, with a snow-white canopy, and standing roughly in the middle of the room, it was a brand-new, freshly made-up baby’s cradle.

For one frightful moment Marc feared it might rock, propelled by some unseen hand in time to a discordant lullaby. But the cradle didn’t budge a millimetre. It did something far more terrible: it started to speak.