The Vanishing of Katharina Linden Read Free

he did thrust his close-cropped head as far around the doorframe as he dared, hoping perhaps for a glimpse of sooty ceiling or blackened tablecloth. My father took the homework papers out of Thilo’s chubby hands, pushed him gently out, and closed the door.
    The following day Daniella Brandt turned up and actually managed to get in. My mother, who answered the door, assumed she was a school friend. I was sitting in the living room, curled up in my father’s favorite armchair with a book I was unable to read owing to the memories that kept running through my head like a short video clip on an endless loop.
    The door opened and my mother appeared. Daniella was behind her, her pointed face a white triangle in the gloom.
    “Look who’s here,” my mother said in a vague-sounding voice. Her gaze seemed to trickle over me, then slide away. She was still numb. My father had been able to cry, but my mother had still not taken in Oma Kristel’s death; for days afterward she wandered around like someone in a dream, carrying the same Christmas ornaments between rooms as though preoccupied. She brushed her hands against her apron and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
    Daniella slipped into the room with the speed of a weasel. Where my mother’s gaze lingered distractedly, Daniella’s seemed to stab the air. Her eyes were everywhere; I could have sworn her long thin nose was twitching too.
    “I’ve brought your homework, Pia,” she told me, but her eyes did not meet mine; she was glancing at every corner of the room with barely concealed curiosity.
    “Thanks,” I said tersely. I did not put the book down; pointedly I waited for her to go.
    There was a long pause.
    “I’m sorry about … you know,” she said eventually.
    “About what?” I said sharply. I turned one of the pages so brusquely that it tore.
    Daniella gave a little laugh, like the short bark of a vixen. “About your grandmother,” she said in her best
what, are-you-stupid?
voice. She drew a line along the floorboards with the toe of her shoe, then shookback her mousy hair from her face. “Everyone’s talking about it,” she informed me. “We just couldn’t believe it, you know?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially, with a glance toward the door in case my mother was within earshot. “Was it here that it happened, in this room?”
    I did not look up. “Go away or I’ll scream,” I said.
    “Don’t be silly,” said Daniella in an offended tone. She breathed a heavy sigh, as though talking to the terminally stupid. In my place she would have been lapping up the attention, that was for sure; it would have been worth losing both grandmothers and perhaps an aunt or two as well, just to be center stage for once. “Come on, Pia …”
    “Go away or I’ll scream,” I repeated.
    She gave that little affected laugh again. “There’s no need to be—” She didn’t get any further because I suddenly put my head back and
did
scream, repeatedly, at the top of my lungs. Before Daniella had time to react, the door crashed back on its hinges as my mother charged into the room like a rhinoceros defending its young. Incongruously, she still had a blue-and-white-checked oven mitt on one hand.
    “My God, Pia! What’s happened?!”
    I shut my mouth abruptly and regarded Daniella balefully. My chest was heaving with exertion. My mother looked from me to Daniella and back to me again. Then, very gently, she took Daniella by the shoulder and started to steer her out of the room.
    “I think you’ll have to go, dear. Pia’s rather upset,” she told the stunned girl as she opened the front door with the gloved hand. “Thank you for bringing the homework,” she added. “It was very kind of you.”
    A moment later she drifted back into the living room; her sudden burst of energy appeared to have dissipated, and she looked distracted again. She came over and knelt down in front of me, as though I were a toddler.
    “Did your friend say something