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Karin adores the train. She sits with her face pushed against the glass, chubby little hands smacking it when she sees something particularly exciting. “Mum, mum,” she says, pointing out a train stopped on a sidetrack, or the cows, or a building which particularly appeals to her. At every station, she claps her hands and waves at the people getting off and on. Mostly they ignore her, but some smile, almost as if they’re surprised at their own reaction. Some wave back. Anni is particularly grateful for those people.
Berlin looks different again. The rebuilding is slow-going and there are still visible ruins and scars on the landscape. But the rubble has been cleared, more-or-less, and new buildings are going up. To Anni, the most surprising thing is how familiar much of it is, how much of Berlin still remains, underneath the scars and horror of the war.
Karin says, “Look, the city, the city!” as if she recognises it too. It amazes Anni, sometimes, her brilliant resilient daughter, how few memories she seems to carry of the horrors she was born into. She gives into the impulse to hug her, gratified when Karin squeals happily and hugs back.
Given how little Karin remembers of the war, Anni wonders what she’ll remember of her uncle.
In the end, she finds the apartment easily enough, meaning that they are early. She thinks about walking around for a while and returning closer to the time she’d agreed with Otto. Then she grimaces. “Mummy is being a bit silly, isn’t she?” she asks Karin, and Karin laughs, delighted - silly is one of her favourite words and she repeats it as Anni presses the bell. She is still saying it when Martin opens the door.
They stand there, frozen, and then Karin says “Hello” and immediately turns her face into Anni’s skirt. Martin smiles down at her. He is notably less formally dressed than she had been used to seeing him at Charité, in a knitted cardigan over his shirt, no tie in sight.
“A bit shy?” he asks, still smiling at Karin, and puts a hand out to take the bag Anni is carrying. “Come in.”
Anni picks up Karin and follows him up two flights of stairs. “I thought after living at Charité so long, you might want to avoid stairs,” she says.
“We had limited options,” Martin says, pushing the door to the apartment open. Anni puts down Karin so that she can take her coat off. Karin is still hanging onto Anni’s skirt, peeking out at Martin. He seems mildly bemused, but waves at her.
“I’m Martin,” he says and then adds, “we’ve met before.” Karin looks a little bit longer this time, but still hides her face.
“Sorry, she does this sometimes,” Anni says, not sure why she’s compelled to say it. Martin shrugs.
“There are often good reasons to be wary of people,” is all he says. “I’ll just put this in here.” He opens a door. Past him, Anni can see a small, neat bedroom, cosy and clean looking. It looks unused and Martin puts her bag next to the bed. “There should be room for both of you,” he says, “I am sorry if it’s a bit tight.”
“We’ve slept in more desperate circumstances,” Anni says and Martin looks at her, smiling properly this time. “This looks lovely. And nice to have a spare room.”
“Technically it’s my room,” Martin says, breaking eye contact and closing the door. Anni blinks slowly, not sure what to say to that. There are some thoughts that she doesn’t want to look at too closely. It’s not that she doesn’t know; it’s just -
Martin breaks into her thoughts. “Would you like something to drink? Otto should be home any minute.” He smiles a little. “You know Otto, never knowingly on time.”
She bites down her immediate retort - “better than you do” - and smiles instead. It feels a little strained. “Tea would be lovely,” she says eventually. “And if you have any juice…?”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Martin says. “Kitchen’s just through here.”
It is a small galley kitchen, not actually much bigger than the kitchens they used to have at Charité. It has a big window at the end of it, though, and Karin finally untangles herself to run over to it. “Up, up, please, mummy!” she says, bouncing beneath it.
“I’m sorry,” Anni says again, wincing. Martin flattens himself against the cooker.
“It’s a good view,” he says, gesturing. Anni waits for a moment, considering, and then she moves forward to pick Karin up. It is a nice view, she allows: the kitchen window overlooks the back garden, with its trees and bushes, and beyond that, she can see the spire of a church and the silhouettes of tall elegant buildings. From here, you might never realise there’d been a war at all.
“You can see ruins still from the living room window,” Martin says, as if picking up on her thoughts. “We tend to keep the curtains closed in there.”
“Ah,” she says, for a lack of anything else to say. Karin is heavy in her arms, squirming as she looks out of the window, blissfully unaware of the awkwardness in the room. “When did you move?” she asks.
Martin must know that Otto has already told her this, but he simply says, “Going on a year. It would have been impossible to stay on at the temporary accommodation provided much longer.” It is on the tip of her tongue to ask why, just to see what his answer might be, but the kettle stops her with its loud, piercing whistle. Martin takes it off the boil and pours the water into a brown teapot. Anni takes the opportunity to look around the kitchen. It is old-fashioned and has seen better days, but there’s still something about it: its clutter, the way cups have been left next to the sink, the butter dish and two eggs (rare treasures indeed) on the side, the ceramic jars on the window sill. It is like a real home, not radically different from what she had imagined that she and Artur might have, one day, after the war.
She takes the cup of tea when Martin offers it. He holds out a small glass of watered-down juice for Karin. She looks from it to him and back again before smiling and reaching out a hand.
“What do we say?” Anni asks. Karin looks from her to Martin and back again, and whispers, “thank you,” so quietly Anni can’t imagine Martin actually hears it. She’s about to apologise again, when there’s a key in the door. The door bangs open and there’s a clatter of feet, something being dropped, and then Otto sweeps into the kitchen. He stops short when he sees Anni and Karin.
“I’m late!” he exclaims, making an exaggeratedly apologetic face. “Can you forgive me?”
Anni rolls her eyes. “I was early,” she admits, but she can’t help grinning at him. She has missed him, despite everything.
“Well, I hope you and Martin have enjoyed catching up,” Otto says and hooks an arm casually around Martin, pulling him into a half hug and brushing a kiss against his temple.
“Careful of the tea,” is all that Martin says, but he’s watching Anni carefully, as if he is waiting for her reaction. She looks down at Karin.
“That’s your Uncle Otto,” she says, gently pushing her forward, “remember, we’ve talked about him.”
“Uncle Otto?” Karin says hesitantly, looking up at him. Otto crouches down to her height.
“Hallo little Karin,” he says, his voice soft and Anni thinks of all those days, catching an hour, two hours with her in between shifts and finding food and lying to Artur, coming up to hear Otto speaking to Karin like that, like he could see how precious she was too, that he thought she was just as beautiful as Anni did.
Her eyes fill unexpectedly. Martin is looking at her with a strange expression on his face. She thinks it might be sympathy. Karin reaches out a shy hand to take Otto’s outstretched one. “Nice to meet you again,” Otto says formally. “Now we will be firm friends, yes?” He keeps his voice light and comical and it has the intended effect: Karin laughs at him, stamping her feet in delight.
Martin clears his throat. “Why don’t you take Karin and Anni into the living room? I’ll make dinner.” Otto looks up at him and smiles.
“All right,” he says and looks at Anni and Karin. “Shall we see what we can find in the living room?” He holds his hand out to Karin again, and when she looks up at Anni, Anni nods. She takes Otto’s hand cautiously and then laughs wildly as he sweeps her up in his arms. He throws an arm around Anni’s shoulders as well, gently squeezing as he maneuvers the three of them into the small living room.
The curtains are drawn, as Martin had suggested they would be. The room itself is a hodge-podge of different styles and items, seemingly scavenged; a dark brown sofa, tall sturdy bookcases, two side tables with old-fashioned lamps, and a rickety table with four chairs that Anni is almost certain came from Charité. Otto drops down onto the green and yellow rug on the floor, Karin in his arms. He follows her gaze.
“A gift from Margot - Dr Sauerbruch. They were going to be destroyed otherwise,” he says. “A sort of reminder of it all.” He smiles up at her, but there is something guarded about the smile. He looks away quickly, focusing back on Karin. “Do you think she remembers me at all?” he asks, gurning at her and making her giggle uncontrollably.
“I don’t know,” Anni admits, “sometimes I hope she’s forgotten it all. The hiding, the bombs. How scared we were.” Otto nods gravely.
“Lucky her if she has,” he says. They’re quiet for a moment, Anni looking around the room again, Otto and Karin involved in some sort of staring contest that has Karin bursting into hiccups of laughter intermittently.
On the side, on the overstuffed bookshelves, where Anni recognises some of her own medical textbooks, left behind when she moved to Bethel, there are a series of photo frames. She and Karin are there, and her mother. There’s a rough pencil sketch of Martin there, and a picture of an older woman she doesn’t recognise, standing next to two young boys. And a picture of her and Otto, taken not long before he went to the Front, standing in front of their home in Bayern. She looks stern and serious. Otto is grinning from ear to ear.
“They were the happiest moments of the war, in some ways, for me,” Otto says, breaking into Anni’s reverie. She blinks at him.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m not sure -”
Otto doesn’t take his eyes off Karin, who has started to explore the room, tottering around curiously, but he says, “In that attic. I was with Karin, and you and Martin. And despite everything, at least I knew where you were and when I would see you again.”He pauses. “The nightmares stopped, for a while. I wasn’t dreaming of the Front, or of Martin being arrested.” Karin makes a grab for a pillow and Otto laughs at her. “I dreamt of peace, sometimes. Of after the war.”
Anni lets that sink in. Those months were some of the worst of her life: she remembers being afraid all the time - of Artur, of what might happen if Karin was discovered, if Otto was. And the dawning horror of what she had done, what she had been ignoring. She’d spent so much of that time scared about the days to come as well, what the world would look like after it was all over. If it ever was over.
But then she’d not been to the Front. Artur had never been at risk of being sent there. And she remembers some of those times: the four of them, awkward with each other, but together, caring for Karin.
Still: “Berlin was burning,” she says and her voice comes out hard. Otto doesn’t look at her.
“Everywhere was burning,” he says. “Everywhere had been burning for a while.”
Karin has paused in her exploring, looking from one to the other, her mouth set in a wobbling line. Otto smiles widely at her. “Hey beautiful girl,” he says, holding out his hands. She looks over to Anni, checking. Anni nods and Karin toddles over to him, taking his hand. He pulls her to him, swinging her up and making her laugh again, her fear forgotten.
Otto’s a natural with her. This is how Anni remembers him as a child and as a young man: confident, happy, the boy who used to charm babies and their mums with equal ease. He was everyone’s friend back home, effortlessly remembering names and details that never seemed to stick with Anni, who had a group of close friends, but had always been more academic than social. The women in the street used to tell their mother that Otto would be a heartbreaker when he grew up and then, as he got older, they’d tell her how lucky the girl who finally caught him would be. “But he’ll want to sow his oats,” they’d say and their mother would smile and say, “He’ll wait for the right one.”
“Have you spoken to mum recently?” she asks watching as he swings Karin up again, asking, “Up? Up?” Karin just giggles at him, waving her hands in her face.
“No,” Otto says, poking out his tongue, and then turning to look at Anni. “Not since - I spoke to her after we moved, but -” He looks down, and Karin wiggles. “Up!” she says. He swings her up easily, as if nothing has happened.
“She misses you,” Anni says. “And she worries. You know she does.”
“I don’t like lying,” he says, “it’s not nice, Karin, is it? You wouldn’t want me to lie, would you?” She giggles, shaking her head at him. She is just copying him, but it makes Anni laugh anyway. Otto smiles too, looking calmer. “Anyway, tell me about your work at Bethel. Did you say that you’d started treating brain injuries?”
Anni lets him change the subject.
---
Dinner is simple, but good. Otto keeps the conversation going, telling stories about the patients at Charité, the people she knew there. They are working in temporary settings, while a decision is made about Charite itself, and Professor Sauerbruch is under regular supervision by the authorities, but the world Otto describes is still familiar. It makes her heart ache a little. However, Martin rolls his eyes at Otto and corrects some of his wilder stories, or when he makes it sound just a little too easy. “We’re all still recovering, of course,” Martin says, and Otto looks at him fondly, taking the rebuke for what it is.
Anni tells them about Bethel, how she and Karin have settled in so far. “My neighbour is lovely about taking care of her; she has a two year old, so it’s good for their socialisation as well.” Nina has been a gift, actually, and Erik is a sweet child who doesn’t seem to notice Karin’s awkward movements, the way her speech slurs sometimes. It means a lot, but she can’t seem to say that.
Otto is watching her, smiling. “I’m glad you’re making friends,” he says and Anni rolls her eyes at him.
“I hardly struggle,” she says, although there was a stretch, after she’d met Artur, when it seemed like all of her friends from home melted away - and then once the war started, well, it had quickly become impossible to keep up and keep in touch. Still, Bethel has been a new beginning: new colleagues, new neighbours. Otto’s still watching her. She smiles reassuringly at him, and takes another bite of her food.
“This is delicious,” she says. Martin tilts his glass of water at her, acknowledging the compliment.
“Tell us about the Sanatorium,” he says, “what are your patients like?” And that conversation carries them through the rest of dinner.
--
It is Otto who notices that Karin is drifting off, her head nodding even as she tries to fight the urge to sleep. “Is it bedtime, sweetheart?” he asks, coming around to pick her up and put her on his lap. She looks up at him, shaking her head, but even as she is denying it, her eyes are slipping closed, her thumb in her mouth. Otto looks down at her, an unbearably fond expression on his face. “Shh, little one,” he says and slowly, slowly, her eyes drift completely shut, her head against his chest. “Shall I put her to bed?” he asks, “she must have missed my singing.” Martin snorts and Anni glares at him. She wants to say no, irrationally, for a moment, and take her daughter back.
But Otto is looking at her, his face expectant, and he’s still her little brother. She nods, briefly. “That would be nice.” Otto’s smile is radiant as he gets up. He carries her easily, like he’s been doing it for years, and Anni thinks again about the attic. How much time Otto spent taking care of Karin, raising her.
“Otto should have children,” she says out loud. Martin gives her a long look.
“You’re a doctor,” he says, and she frowns.
“I didn’t mean - I just meant. You’ve seen him with Karin. He’d be a good father.” She’s not sure why she’s pushing it, but it feels important, somehow. This flat, this cosiness, it isn’t the same as a real home and family. Not really.
Martin nods, watching her warily. “He would,” he says slowly. “He’s missed Karin. I think he’d like to see her more often.”
“He could move in with me,” Anni offers, struck by inspiration. “I’m sure Bethel would be happy to have another doctor on staff - and it’s closer to mum too, and -”
“Anni,” Martin says sharply. His face has gone red. “I don’t - Otto isn’t looking to move.” His hand comes up to press at something at his throat. “This isn’t temporary. You know that. Moving him out of Berlin won’t change him.” The expression on his face is familiar, but she can’t place it.
“You don’t know that,” she says, stubbornly. “He’s not - he hasn’t spoken to our mum in a year, did you know that? She thinks he’s angry with her. She’s so worried.”
“I’ve told him to call,” he says. Anni rolls her eyes.
“How can he when he can’t tell her about how he lives?” she asks, thinking about what Otto said earlier. About the spare room which isn’t a spare room. “When he can’t tell anyone? How lonely he must be.” After a moment she adds, “you both must be. Otto has always had so many -”
“Friends? So many who died, who didn’t come back. Who became party members,” Martin bites out. “It’s a new world, Anni. You should know that.”
She starts back. “I’m not - this isn’t because I don’t. Martin, I know - how you feel about him. And I don’t think you’re - ill or wrong or - I think you’re a good person. But he’s my brother. I want him to be happy,” she says, pleading.
Martin takes his glasses off, rubbing his eyes and that’s when Anni realises why she recognises the expression: when Otto was shot, when they were waiting. Martin had looked like this then, too.
“I want him to be happy too,” is all he says. Anni opens her mouth to say something else, but Otto comes back in, all smiles.
“She wanted a story before she would go back to sleep. I’m not sure the Brothers Grimm would recognise what I just told,” he says, and then he seems to sense the tension in the room. He looks from Anni to Martin, and Anni tries to make her face as neutral as possible. After a moment, Otto goes over to Martin, strokes a hand across his shoulders. It’s clearly a familiar, practiced gesture.
Anni looks away. “I think I’ll turn in as well,” she says, getting up. “Thank you for a lovely evening.” She glances at Martin. “The food really was delicious,” she adds. He nods, but doesn’t smile.
Otto hugs her briefly, and lets her go.
---
She can’t sleep. At first it is the sounds of Otto and Martin moving around that catches her attention; she can’t hear what they are saying, but can hear their steps, the sounds of washing up and tidying. It is strange to think of Otto keeping house; he was never tidy as a child. The army had made him neat, though - it had taken months of living in the attic for him to start reverting to type, Karin’s toys, his clothes strewn across the space he’d called home.
And he’d been happy there, she thinks, turning over. She can hear Otto and Martin speaking now, muted voices near the door to her room. And then they fade again. They must have retired as well.
It is strange to be lying here, in this flat, even with Karin’s steady, familiar breathing next to her. In the darkness, guilt starts to creep in. Otto is happy here, in his way. She can see that. And Martin - whatever she might think of how their...relationship started, Martin proved himself again and again, for Otto and for Karin, during those long months waiting for Berlin to fall. She even likes him, despite herself. And Otto - Otto -
She turns quietly, careful not to wake Karin, sprawling next to her, warm and sweet-smelling. Otto is happy with Martin, she admits to herself. They are clearly comfortable with each other, that had been clear throughout dinner - they have shared jokes, a patter they fall into, and a tendency to look at each other fondly when the other is speaking.
She wonders if anyone else gets to see them like that; if this is another thing that Otto has lost. The way he was with Karin crosses her mind again. It is a tragedy, she thinks, that a defect of nature should leave him unable to have children, a family. To live entirely in secret.
But then - she thinks again of their earlier conversation. Otto is used to that. And what happened to her brother, her sunny brother, to make him so serious? To find happiness is such private, small things. The war, of course. And not just the war - the Nazis, the laws, the endless cruelties. The pointless, meaningless losses, even the ones she’d thought were worth it at the time.
They are all of them more serious now, she supposes.
The sun starts to rise and she still hasn’t slept. Karin is stirring next to her, and in a moment or two she will want water, something to eat. Anni pushes herself up even as Karin kicks out her feet and stretches.
“Morning, sweetheart,” she says. Karin smiles at her. “Shall we see what we can find?”
The rising sun illuminates the kitchen as Anni looks for bread and butter for her and Karin. She is trying to be quiet, but can’t have been entirely successful, because just as she is cutting the bread, Karin gulping down water where she is sat on the floor at her feet, Otto appears.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he says to Karin, who waves at him, spilling her water. Otto laughs quietly and grabs a cloth to mop her up. “I’m sure we can find something better than water.” He rummages in the ice box for some leftover apple juice. Karin drinks it eagerly. “You look shattered,” he says to Anni. “Couldn’t sleep?”
His words are careful and Anni frowns as she passes the plate of buttered bread to Karin. “Martin spoke to you,” she says flatly. Otto nods.
“I thought we’d had this conversation,” he says, crossing his arms. “Martin isn’t - I love him. I’m not leaving him. It is not up for discussion.”
Irrationally, she feels tears well up, just as they had the first time he’d told her. “I want you to be happy,” she says around the lump in her throat. “I want you to have - everything you deserve. A family. Someone you can marry.”
Otto doesn’t flinch, just looks at her steadily. “You know what the strange thing is?” Anni shakes her head. “You and Martin. Martin has made the exact same arguments. After I was shot. I think he thought I might take fright once the war was over. Like a passing madness.”
Anni finds that she is mildly offended on Otto’s behalf. It must show on her face, because Otto laughs. “Yes,” he says, “I told him he couldn’t know me that well if he thought that would work.” She smiles at him and he smiles back, then goes serious. “Did you see the drawing in the living room?” he asks. Anni blinks at the non-sequitur, then remembers the pencil sketch she saw yesterday. She nods. “Hans - Herr Dohnayni - drew it while he was at Charite. I found it in his papers after he was taken, when I was destroying them.”
“What?” Anni interrupts. “Why were you -”
Otto shrugs. “To keep his family safe. He was executed, you know. Not long before Hitler killed himself, even as it was all ending.” His voice wobbles slightly as he says it.
“I didn’t,” Anni starts and then stops again. She clears her throat. “I hadn’t realised how - close you’d got. To him.”
Otto shrugs again, looking down at Karin and making a face for her. “I couldn’t tell you,” he says after a moment. “I suppose the war made us all good liars.”
Anni leans down to pick up Karin, ignoring her squirming to hug her close, just for a moment. “Yes,” she says, her mouth against the top of Karin’s head. “I suppose it did.”
“At the time, I thought the best thing was to stop - to try to stop loving Martin, to try to deny myself. To keep us both safe. But when I found the picture, I still took it.” Otto leans back against the kitchen counter, glancing past Anni and Karin, out of the window. “It was a stupid risk for a number of reasons. But it was something Hans said, I think, it reminded me of. He told me once that you have to live believing that your actions have meaning. That when you do good, it creates good, and when you behave as if the world might change, you help make it change. At the time - he’d just been taken, I knew he’d be killed, and I was terrified: that Martin would be next. What might happen to Karin. I thought it was ridiculous, what he’d said.”
“And still you took the drawing,” Anni says quietly.
“Yeah,” Otto says.
“Because by having a memento, you’d know it had been real,” she suggests and Otto looks at her, meeting her eyes, and smiles a little.
“I guess so,” he says. “At the time, I think I was just desperate.And I felt guilty. After Lohmann, Hans being taken, Karin being ill - I thought. I don’t know. I thought maybe I wasn’t meant to be happy. Maybe I didn’t deserve it.”
She thinks about that. How sad he must have been. How terrified and hurting. “I think it must have been worse,” she says, eventually, “knowing they were wrong so early in the war. You must have been -”
“Angry,” he says, “I was angry and sad and I wanted it all to be over.” He bites his lip and Anni thinks, that wasn’t what it was like for me . It hadn’t been, not until that last year. Karin wiggles again, plate clattering to the floor, breaking her stream of thought. “Could we go to the living room?” Anni asks.
They settle together on the sofa, knees knocking as Karin sits on the floor, clutching the teddy bear she’d dropped there last night. She sits with it, babbling away to it, almost too quietly to be heard. She does this sometimes, retreats into her own world. Anni’s heart aches a little, watching her.
Her gaze wanders, catching on the sketch of Martin. “You knew,” she says quietly. “So much earlier than me, you saw it all: what the Nazis were doing, how it would end.”
“Not all of it,” Otto admits. “I don’t think I had the imagination for all of it.” They both glance at the closed curtains. “Do you know, I can’t really remember who I was before the war - or, I don’t know, before I went to the Front, I guess.”
“I remember you,” Anni says, reaching out a hand. “You haven’t - you’re different, but you’re still my Otto, you know. I’m the one who -” a sob catches in her throat and Karin looks over, distressed. Otto smiles reassuringly at her, wrapping his arms around Anni.
“Shh,” he soothes as she cries. It feels sudden, violent, all the tears she hasn’t let herself cry: over Artur. Over Wiesengrund; over De Crinis and all the evil she enabled, all the things she did not see. Over her brave and brilliant baby brother and all he had to go through, and her beautiful daughter, who almost was lost. “Shh,” Otto repeats, “you’re all right, you’re all right.”
“I’m not,” she chokes out. “I - what I did, Otto, how can you stand me,” and it feels like her throat is closing up, she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe. Karin is crying now, and Otto is rubbing circles on her back, leaning her forward.
“Breathe, sweetheart,” he says in the exact same tone he uses with Karin. “Breathe, you’re all right.” And slowly, slowly, she can breathe again, sucking air into her lungs as the wracking sobs subside. Ott’s hand is steady on her back and she’s aware of Karin hugging her leg and saying “Breathe, mummy, breathe,” copying Otto.
“Hey,” Otto says as she sits up. She looks at him ruefully. “Can I get you some water?”
“In a minute,” she says, pulling Karin up to sit on her lap. Karin tucks her face into Anni’s throat. Her face is sticky and wet.
“For what it’s worth,” Otto says in the silence, “I can stand you. You got lost there for a while, but this - this is who you are. The woman who gave up her husband, her prestige, to save her daughter. And Martin.”
Anni tries to smile at him. “I’ll take the water, thank you,” she says. He squeezes her shoulders as he gets up. She holds Karin closer.
When he comes back she says, “Sometimes I think about what they would say at Bethel. If I told them all of it. About Artur and what he did - his vaccine trials. About the work I did, you know, with de Crinis.”
Otto nods slowly, understanding. “Is that why you went there? Penance?”
She shrugs. That makes it sound like it was planned; like it was calculated. “I wanted - I wanted to know how to take care of Karin. And I knew.” She stops, swallows and makes herself finish the sentence. “I knew from Artur and de Crinis, you know - about their resistance. That they were a troubled site. It seemed like the right place for me. I wanted - I wanted somewhere clean.” The words have the air of revelation as she says them. And then she knows what else she needs to say. “I’m sorry.” Otto tilts his head. “I’m sorry about - I think I hate the idea of you having to keep a secret because I hate keeping mine. And I want you with me to keep me - honest. Myself.”
Otto’s mouth opens and closes without words. He puts his arm around her. “You have me, Anni. Where we live doesn’t change that, yes? And you are welcome here anytime. You both are.”
“Even after - what I said?” she asks quietly.
“I’d like it if you apologised to Martin. I think he thinks you hate him,” Otto says. “And Anni, you can’t do this again. You are welcome, but Martin isn’t negotiable or up for discussion.”
Anni nods and leans her head on Otto’s shoulder. “All right,” she says.
They sit there for what seems like ages as Karin dozes in Anni’s lap. Anni feels calmer than she has for months, maybe years sitting there, her brother and baby and her, all together, the way they should be.
There are footsteps in the hallway. Martin peers around the living room door cautiously, as if he’s afraid of what he might see. It strikes Anni as strange that he is cautious in his own house. She smiles at him and gestures. It is an awkward movement, constrained by Karin on one side and Otto on the other, but she hopes it conveys what she wants it to. Martin comes fully into the room.
“I owe you an apology,” she says, her voice still hoarse with tears. “For last night. I was -” she stops, takes a breath and feels Otto next to her. “You make Otto happy. I know that. I forgot for a while, that’s all.”
Martin looks torn, somewhere between wary and embarrassed, but he nods, breaking eye contact. “I - I understand,” he says, going slightly red and raising a hand to adjust his glasses. As he does, the chain at his neck falls forward, and Anni suddenly recognises it: Otto’s necklace, his gift from their mother. She smiles at him again and it feels surer.
“Come here,” Otto says, and Martin makes his way across to them.
“Wait!” Anni says, and Martin stops, face going stormy. “First - open the curtains? Please.” She’s not sure why she asks, and Martin looks confused, but after a moment he does so. Sunlight streams in, illuminating the jagged edges of ruined buildings. Martin comes over, perching on the arm of the sofa next to Otto. When Anni looks over, Otto is leaning on him, Martin’s hand stroking through his hair. He meets her eyes and smiles shyly. Anni smiles back and thinks, Oh, I understand . And she thinks she might a little, after all.
“You should call mum,” she says.
Otto sighs, “Anni, we’ve talked about this -” he says, but Anni interrupts.
“You should call mum and you shouldn’t lie,” she says. Otto and Martin both stare at her. She holds Karin close and says, “What was it you said your friend said? If you behave like the world will change, it might?”
Martin laughs, a genuine happy sound. And then Anni is laughing too, smiling at him and Otto pressed together, her daughter on her lap, and she feels something close to home.