They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

99 October 2017

My little man sat in the Golf beside me, looking very self-important, as ever. He was neatly dressed, in his herringbone tweed overcoat, with not a hair out of place, giving the impression more of someone who had just stepped out of an important board meeting than a nine-year-old boy who’d just finished school for the day.

He gave me a very serious look as I drove then said, ‘England, warum England?’

I tried to speak to him in English as much as possible, in the hope I would bring him up to be bilingual. It was working, if it got a little confusing for both of us, switching between the languages at times.

‘You were born in England, darling, and I’m English. Wouldn’t you like to go and live there? To give it a try?’

‘Warum?’

‘Because...’ I was struggling. ‘Because it’s beautiful. It’s my homeland.’

‘Germany is now our home, Mama. Germany is beautiful. And anyhow, Erik would not be in England, would he?’

‘You could make other friends — new friends.’

‘Erik is my friend, I don’t need other friends. I don’t need new friends. I’m happy with the friend I have.’

That was one of my worries about Bruno. His lack of interest in making friends. At least he had one in Erik — but they were very different personalities. Erik always seemed to be smiling and looking relaxed, whereas Bruno carried a sense of responsibility and sadness.

I drove on in silence as he looked out the window. I was thinking about the results of the DNA paternity test that I’d had through from a firm in Berlin.

So now I know Roy is the father.

What now?

The danger from Albazi felt like it was subsiding a little after all these years but I couldn’t stop myself being wary, on my guard, jumping at my shadow, seeing his double haunting me. I wonder if that will ever stop. Could I find a way to pay him back to clear my debt and we could all move on? That might help. Go ahead and buy the house, lure Roy back and tell him he is Bruno’s father?

Then what?

At another of my appointments with Dr Eberstark he’d asked me two things and I’d misled him about them both. Firstly, did I know who the father of my child was? It had annoyed me, to be honest, all these questions I really didn’t want to answer, so I just said stuff to delay it. I know it’s his job to try to understand, but I am just getting so tired of it all. I told him I thought I was paying him to help me, not interrogate me, and asked that we change the subject!

That’s when he asked me if I had bought the house in Hove. To which I didn’t answer, I couldn’t tell him, he’d think I was truly crazy. I wanted these questions to stop. I just sat and stared, almost through him, in another world. A bit like I feel now.

Suddenly, Bruno asked, ‘Mama, are we having bratwurst for supper?’

I smiled. Sometimes the sheer simplicity of my child’s life brought me back to earth with a pleasantly soft landing. OK, bratwurst really wasn’t the healthiest food to give a growing lad, but it was his once-a-week treat. I subjected him to my on-and-off vegetarian and vegan diet on most of the other days.

‘Ja!’

‘Hast du daran gedacht, Senf zu kaufen?’ He said it as if it was the most important thing in the world. And, casting my mind back to my own childhood, I remembered that such seemingly trivial things as this really were important.

‘I have, darling,’ I replied in English. ‘I bought more mustard when I went shopping this morning.’

As soon as we got home, Bruno headed off to the privacy of his room, and I reminded him to do his homework before playing any more online games with Erik, knowing Erik’s parents, Ingo and Anette, who were much stricter than I was, would have told him the same.

I sat down at my rather grand desk, with a great view of the park and the Isar, and checked my emails, wondering yet again what I should do about responding to the sales memorandum I had been sent.

There was a Google alert and I clicked on it.

And immediately wished I hadn’t.