They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

18 July 2007 — Looking back

Two hours later, I entered the rather sterile first-floor reception area of the West Street offices of solicitors Hobart-Widders. The solicitor had a brief gap in her afternoon appointments, due to a cancellation. In my handbag I had my birth certificate, marriage certificate, passport, driving licence, a week-old electricity bill and our quarterly council tax demand, for belt and braces.

Carolyn Smith was on the phone, I was told by the receptionist. Her assistant would be along in a minute — meanwhile I was directed to take a seat. I perched on a small, semi-circular sofa, with a coffee table with several magazines laid out, as well as today’s Argus. But my head was buzzing too much to look at any of them, too much to focus on anything at this moment but the name, Antje Frieburg.

Who had named me as a beneficiary in her will.

And who made my mother spit blood.

Turns out Antje Frieburg was her paternal aunt — one of her father’s three sisters. It took me a while to get it all out of my mother, because there was clearly a lot of anger and bad blood. She was the one member of her family who had done well — not just well, she was massively wealthy. She had married a German industrialist, a cousin of the Krupps family, and his family had amassed a vast fortune during the Second World War supplying steel to Hitler’s war effort.

It wasn’t this my mother was angry about. It was that after she and my father had married, she had asked her aunt if she could lend them some money to buy a house in England, and her aunt had loftily replied that if she’d wanted to live in style, she should not have married a working-class aircraft fitter.

But I barely heard the reason for my mother’s hatred of her aunt. What I had heard was the word industrialist.

Industrialist!

It was spinning in my mind! Like the wheels on a one-armed bandit.

Kerchingggg!

I did some more googling after ending my call with my mother. I linked the words Frieburg and industrialist, and now I got a hit!

Claus Kauffman-Frieburg, married to Antje. He had died fifteen years ago. His company had factories in Kassell, Frankfurt am Main, Dusseldorf and Cologne, and their head office in Tübingen — close to Reutlingen.

For the first time in a long while I was suddenly feeling optimistic and happy again. As I looked up Claus Kauffman-Frieburg on Wikipedia, he showed as, at the time of his death, the 231st richest man in Germany. I had been joking about a fairy godmother, but now it seemed maybe it wasn’t such a joke after all...

Just how much had this aunt I had never heard of and never met left me? Enough to pay off odious Albazi and to set myself up in a new life somewhere abroad? Hastily, I start to think through all the options in my head. One of which is being able to pay off Albazi and stay with Roy, but I know it has gone too far for that. God, I have been so stupid. If only I’d realized I’d be getting some inheritance, I’d never have needed to get sucked into gambling. But then again, even if I’d not gambled and got into such a financial mess, there was still the mess I’d got into with Cassian. And this pregnancy. I know in my heart that, whatever money this inheritance is, I can’t go back to ‘normal’ with Roy. My life is now somewhere else far away. The prospect of this half terrifies me and half excites me. I try to focus.

How much money did the 231st richest man in Germany leave his wife, Antje? Hundreds of millions? Why had she chosen to leave some of her wealth to me, having rejected my mother’s request for help all those years back? Perhaps she had no children and had simply decided to leave it all to more distant relatives.

How much was coming to me? That was the burning question. Would there need to be protracted correspondence with her lawyers in Germany? Roel Albazi had given me two weeks to repay £150,000 before the interest kicked in again and the debt went up. Could I get Antje Frieburg’s inheritance within that time frame?

And how fast could I find out just how much it was? I didn’t dare to try to guess, although I did wonder, with a tingle of excitement like a caffeine high, if it might be in the millions. I was going to find out soon enough.

I looked up, suddenly, to see a young, smartly if conservatively dressed woman in her mid-twenties, standing in front of me. ‘Mrs Grace?’ she asked. ‘I’m Carolyn Smith’s assistant, Sonia Golding. Carolyn Smith can see you now.’