The explanations were not so easily evaded. Weary days were spent relating my side of the story to the Kriminalpolizei. More weary weeks and months lie ahead while every aspect of the sorry story is investigated and examined. So far as I know, Hanna lied about keeping my notes. Certainly, to date, nobody has confronted me with a single one of them. At the same time, a document was discovered that nobody was expecting, least of all myself: a will written by Hanna leaving everything she owned to me. Under German law it is almost impossible to leave everything away from your family, but Hanna’s parents were both dead and she had no other relatives that have been traced yet. And then there was the envelope with the ten thousand euros in it. I handed it over to the police with every single note intact, but I had to admit that it had arrived anonymously and that there was only the word of a dead girl to say where it had come from. It is possible that a very great deal of money will come to me – and my family – one day, and it is equally possible that none of it will come at all. As long as the bakery stays afloat, and with it my parents’ dreams, I can truthfully say that I do not care which of these two possibilities comes to pass.
Assuming that there are no legal consequences for me – and there are those in the town, such as Frau von Jülich, who would like to see somebody pay – I shall have to leave Bad Münstereifel for the foreseeable future. It is not comfortable to think of running into Kai’s parents or Frau Kessel’s cronies. I am not the only one who feels this way: Max’s uncle has been persuaded to offer him a job in Frankfurt; Izabela has gone to stay with relatives in her mother’s homeland. So I am escaping from Bad Münstereifel, although not in a way or for reasons I would ever have hoped for. If you make a bargain with the Devil you must be very careful what you wish for.
The day my father came home from hospital was cool and overcast, with a hint of the coming autumn in the air. By the time he arrived at the bakery, a small crowd of interested citizens had gathered. My mother had not advertised the fact that he was coming home, and the bakery was still closed, but word had a way of getting around in Bad Münstereifel, as we knew well. I should dearly have loved to run downstairs and greet my father, but seeing the little gathering below I thought better of it and stayed at the upstairs front window instead.
My mother got out of the car first and bustled round to my father’s side to open the door. My father emerged, holding on to the car door, thinner and paler than he had been when he had started his last working day at the bakery, but still recognizably himself. My mother fussed around, fetching his bags for him and trying to take his arm, as though he was too terribly frail to take a single step on his own. He waved her off. Then he drew himself upright, let go of the car door and surveyed the little crowd of his fellow citizens.
‘Guten Morgen zusammen,’ he said.
There was a moment’s pause before someone said, ‘Guten Morgen,’ and then others followed suit.
The crowd parted as my father made his way slowly and carefully but unaided towards the door of the bakery, my mother following with the bags. He had reached the front step and my mother was fumbling for the key when someone stepped forward.
It should have been perfectly plain from the beginning that Udo Meyer would never let a situation like this one pass by without sticking his oar in. ‘Herr Nett,’ he said, in that droning voice that made you want to put your fingers in your ears or else take a swing at him, ‘is the bakery going to close for good?’
My father stopped and turned to face Udo, with his back to the bakery’s open door. He spent perhaps a quarter of a minute looking Udo up and down, as though he were some highly perplexing object, then he said, ‘The bakery will be reopening as soon as possible and remaining open.’
He turned to go inside, but Udo was not finished yet.
‘Herr Nett, what about your daughter?’ he asked.
My father had one foot on the doorstep, but now he paused and looked Udo in the eyes. By neither the slightest change of expression nor an infinitesimal sigh did he betray what everyone knew, which was that Udo – as the self-elected representative of the town – wanted to find out whether my father was going to disown me, as he properly should. The stare my father gave Udo was absolutely level and he held Udo’s gaze so long that the other man began to fidget visibly.
‘Both my daughters are well, thank you,’ said my father at last, very deliberately. Then finally he took my mother’s proffered arm, stepped into the bakery and closed the door.