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she had stopped in the street and asked herself whether the seven years of being Therese Peters had really happened.
    And now they were back, those drab and meaningless years, and she did not even feel surprise.
    The woman claimed she had found the photo in the cottage, in the kitchen drawer, but that could not be right. Why did she say it? How had she really come by the picture? “A journalist,” Hanna had said. Someone like that would go on digging. She would collect a whole suitcase full of verifiable facts, interpret them as she wished, and then talk in that arrogant way about truth. And none of it would be true.
    Therese drank the rest of her sherry in one gulp and poured out some more.
    All these years she had worked hard and, together with her husband Tillmann, built up the Mende Fashion label. It had not always been easy. Tillmann had a creative mind, but his recklessness had often brought them to the brink of ruin. It was not until he handed over the management of the business to her, and her alone, that things had started to go uphill. Today, Mende Fashion was a presence throughout Europe.
    Tillmann’s sudden death three years before had thrown her into a deep depression. Without his recklessness, at a stroke, nothing had any meaning; everything was pointless, empty. But she had not understood that until months later. She had handed the management of the company over to her daughter, Isabel, and retreated here.
    Her husband was the only one who knew about her life as Therese Peters. Isabel had no idea.
    She sat there motionless for a long time, her thoughts wandering aimlessly. The sun migrated inland. On the horizon, the line between sky and water grew indistinct. Soon it would disappear, and only the narrow band of spray where the waves broke would show that there was an above and a below.
    Luisa, her housekeeper, was standing in the entrance to the living room, clearing her throat in that cautious manner of hers. Therese started.
    “Excuse me, but dinner is ready,” said Luisa, vanishing as silently as she had appeared.
    Therese was not hungry, but she went in and made her way to the dining room. Her loose-fitting turquoise silk robe rustled at every step. She took only a few bites. As Luisa cleared the table, she looked at her with concern. “Didn’t you like it? Should I bring you something else?” Therese smiled and patted her hand. “The food is excellent, Luisa, but I’m not hungry today.” The housekeeper’s face relaxed. Deftly, she put the plates and cutlery on a tray and disappeared into the kitchen with it. A short while later, she came back one more time and said, as she did every evening, “I’ll be going then, Frau Mende. Is there anything else you need?” and Therese replied, as she did every evening, “No, thanks, Luisa. Have a good night.”
    Then she was alone. With a woolen blanket around her shoulders and a glass of red wine in her hand, she sat out on the terrace again. The beach had emptied; the only sound was the constant, regular murmur of the sea.
    Fragments of recollection came back to her, unchecked, swirling in her head like the remnants of a time that had collapsed in on itself.
    Her mother kneeling among the pews, swathed in the bitter, musty scent of old incense.
    Leonard, standing in the field of stubble and demanding her promise of eternal friendship, then later, his eyes wide with terror, impermanent as a ghost.
    Yuri, who wanted to believe in God, pressing himself against the plank wall of the barn to stop himself from wavering.
    Her father, with the eyeglasses in which one lens was shattered, wordlessly stroking her cheek with the back of his hand and trying to smile.
    And Wilhelm. Wilhelm, pacing agitatedly up and down in her room and saying, at last, “Marry me.”
    The strangeness of the images soon fell away. The intervening years shrank to minutes.

Chapter 7

    April 21, 1998
    At about ten o’clock, Rita Albers rode her bicycle to Kranenburg. The red-brick