November 1989, Frankfurt an der Oder, East Germany
Miranda
I stand next to the window in the dingy hotel room. With one hand I touch the subsiding bruise on my temple. There is not much left to show for Quill’s outburst of violence in Berlin. ‘I love you so much,’ he says, reaching out to me. But when I open my mouth to respond, nothing comes out. ‘I feel so empty when you’re not there,’ he says, filling my silence.
Outside the rain falls, making glistening halos round the streetlights. I watch the top of an umbrella float like a black lily down the sluice of pavement below, and hear the muffled sound of the evening traffic, like a river running off the edge.
‘You mean the world to me. You know how good we are together. Don’t let that go, Miranda. We’re special, you and me. The journalism, that’s what’s really important, you know that, don’t you? The other stuff, the stuff you heard me talking about on the phone – it’s just business, an income stream. It doesn’t mean anything. It just lets me focus on what’s really important, without having to worry about money. We can have a good life and still do the things we’re passionate about, Miranda. With the money I make I can set you up with your own studio, buy you all the equipment you need, and it frees me up to write about the things I really care about. My business interests needn’t change anything between us.’
I run my other hand along the windowsill. Dusty – my fingers are caked with the sloughed-off skin cells of the others who’d been in this yellow-wallpapered hotel room. Who? Businessmen? Stasi operatives? Mistresses, informers, prostitutes?
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry about what I did. I was angry, but I promise you – I promise you – that nothing like that will ever happen again. Think about how happy we make each other, how good we are together, Miranda. Our love makes unhappiness seem to have lost our address. Miranda?’
I struggle to comprehend his higgledy-piggledy words. Perhaps the last couple of days of only hearing and speaking German have switched off my facility for understanding English. Or perhaps what he says makes no sense.
I see his hand appear next to mine on the sill. He lays down two passports, their dark blue covers the same colour as the encroaching night outside. I reach out and take them. The one on top is his. I open it. Quill DeVere: dark brows, strong jaw, flash of teeth, in the black-and-white rectangle. The other one is mine. Miranda Wade: cropped silver hair, owlish eyes with long lashes. I find my voice at last: ‘You told me you burnt it,’ I say.
‘Yes, but of course I didn’t. I just hid it. What do you take me for? I’m not some kind of monster. And I needed it for the Stasi, to prove you were who you said.’
‘I smelled burning. I saw ash in the sink.’
‘I burnt the toast, that was all. I was amazed you fell for it to be honest.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘For your own good, Miranda. For us. To keep you close.’ He is standing behind me. If I turn, I will have to face him. I feel him take something else from his jeans. He places it on the windowsill in front of me, next to the passports. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘We did it.’ It is a piece of newsprint: the front page of the Sunday Correspondent. There is my photo, the one I took of the border guard breaking down at the sight of the lifted barrier. My name is written in tiny type at the side of the shot. My name: Miranda Wade – not Reuters, or Associated Press, but my own name. On the front page of a national paper. My photograph has captured the moment when the world woke up to history. ‘Freedom?’ says the headline in bold black type.
‘My piece is on page three,’ he says. ‘They led with your picture. And quite right, too. It’s amazing. You’re such a talented girl. And together, we’re a formidable team, you and me.’ I feel his breath on my neck. ‘You mustn’t leave me again,’ he whispers, his lips against my flesh. I feel something tug and give inside. A sudden exhalation escapes my lips, as if I’ve been holding my breath.
‘I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but now seems like the right time,’ he says, and turns me round, so I can no longer look at the photo. He tugs at the gold signet ring on the baby finger of his left hand and holds it out to me. ‘I want you to have it.’ He puts it in my palm.
I pick it up and hold it between finger and thumb. There is some kind of heraldic bird etched deeply into the gold oval: beak open, screaming. Quill urges me to try it on, but it doesn’t quite fit any of the fingers on my right hand – either too big or too small for all of them.
‘Try the other hand,’ he says. I do, and it fits the ring finger on my left hand. ‘Leave it there. It looks good, don’t you think?’
‘Yes. But on this finger it makes me look like I’m engaged?’ I cannot stop my voice rising to a question mark at the end of the sentence.
‘It does look that way, doesn’t it?’ he says. One of his hands snakes up underneath my jumper. The other hand reaches in front, catches my jaw, and I find I have no choice but to look into his eyes. They are very dark, in the light of the dim hotel bulbs. He ducks his head slightly and a lock of black hair twitches above his brow. ‘I’ll always be here for you. I promise. Don’t you love me, Miranda?’ His lips stay parted as he leaves the question hanging, and I glimpse his white teeth, his wet tongue.
I glance beyond him. Above the double bed is a huge black and white photograph of Marlene Dietrich, looking down on us with a mocking smile. I have that reassuring feeling of wanting to escape. ‘Yes,’ I say, letting myself sway into him.
Then his lips find mine, his hands tug my clothes, and we stumble backwards, together, falling onto the musty-smelling bedsheets, limbs tangling, hands grabbing. His skin is warm against mine and he smells of almonds and smoke and I am wet-tight ready for him as he pins my arms down and plunges into me. ‘Yes,’ I say, feeling the exquisite push of him. ‘Yes. Yes.’ And the strange little room shears and falls away. The rush of it: colours flash, a buzzing in my head, then blackness. I hear my scream as if it is someone else – disembodied, apart.
And when I open my eyes he is on top of me, sweat glueing our bodies together. He is so heavy. I struggle to breathe with the weight of him on my chest. La petite mort – that’s what the French call it: the little death.