Chapter 15: Mary & Peter Schormann

Llamroth, morning: Friday, September 19th

‘There has to be something to tell us where she’s gone.’ Mary pulled open the last drawer of Victoria’s desk and emptied it on the bed. ‘Something. A letter, a photo of somewhere, someone. Something….’ She ended on a wail, sweeping the pile of papers, files, drawings onto the floor.

Downstairs, Gelert barked.

‘Mary.’ Peter stopped her, pulled her into his embrace. ‘Look at this room. See what you have done. And yet we have found nothing. Victoria has made sure we do not know where she has gone.’

‘Why? Why?’ She leaned back to gaze into his face, searching for an answer. ‘Have we been such dreadful parents…? So awful she’s had to escape from us?’

‘No, meine Liebe. But she has always been the strongest, the most determined.’

‘Spoiled, you mean.’ Mary flung herself out of his arms and sat on the bed, scattering the remains of the papers.

‘Nein. No. You don’t mean that, Mary.’ Peter sat down alongside her, holding her hand. ‘Victoria has her own mind.’

‘We have to find out… We have to know she is safe.’ Mary’s face was blotched and puffy; she began to shake, the ashy taste of fear in her mouth. ‘We have to find her.’

‘She doesn’t want us to find her, Liebling.’

‘I don’t care,’ Mary said. ‘She’s too young to be out there on her own. Anything could happen to her.’ She pulled away from him, her eyes flitting over the rest of the room, frantic to find something, anything, that would tell her where her daughter had gone. ‘There must be something.’ A thought crossed her mind. She jumped up, excited, pleased that she knew what to do. ‘We can go to her college, find out who she’s friends with there. See if they know anything.’

‘And then what? What can we do?’

‘We can bring her home.’ She didn’t understand his reticence. What was wrong with him?

Peter shook his head. ‘No. She is not a child, Mary.’

‘She is. She’s our child.’

Peter voiced his oldest fear. ‘Perhaps that is the problem, Liebling. Perhaps that has always been the problem.’

So that was it. ‘No, I won’t have you saying that.’ Mary held him to her; she’d always known the fear he held for his children, for her, just because of his nationality. But she couldn’t stand the thought of him mithering. That heart attack two years ago might only have been a slight one, but it was a warning, and she’d tried so hard since then to be the barrier between him and the worries. ‘You have been – you are – a good father.’

‘Still … it has not been easy for them.’

The minutes ticked by in the silence that followed.

In the end Peter sighed. ‘We can only wait, Liebling. Perhaps, soon, she will let us know where she is.’