Nicholas Searle - The Good Liar

It was cold, always cold here, and the boredom and the dirt and the despair accumulated in their squalid little room.

Finally, the funny little man with the wing collar was saying

goodbye.

‘I’m sure it will all work out for the best,’ he said, as Anneliese wept. ‘We’ll meet again shortly to consider what we should do

next.’

Her mother had not yet cried; not even in the deep of night when

she could not sleep had Lili seen tears on her mother’s face. Han-

nelore embraced Anneliese as she shook. Charlotte stared on

blankly. Lili felt sad but was not quite sure why. Possibly because of the distress of her sisters and her mother’s clouded face.

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4

She did not see the lawyer with the wing collar again.

If only they had known these days would be so precious. They

had certainly not seemed so at the time. They were confined to

their room apart from their short excursions into the winter cold to walk around the bleak courtyard. She did not know whether they

were kept there or chose to remain. Every so often, a meagre meal

would be delivered, usually cold, by a woman with an unsmiling

face. Each time Lili wanted to use the stinking lavatory facilities along the corridor her mother went with her. The corridors were

deserted, though Lili could hear the distant sounds of children chattering somewhere else in the building. They did not sound happy

but she might have been projecting her own feelings on to them.

She knew something was seriously wrong but could not bring her-

self to believe that her father had done anything sufficiently bad to visit this upon them.

It could only have been a short number of uneventful weeks but

Lili later recalled them more vividly than the following years.

She would wake first and try to gain extra warmth by twisting

the rough blanket around her more closely. She would lie quietly

and watch her mother sleeping on the bed opposite hers. The beds

were close enough together for her to touch her mother but she

never dared do so for fear of waking her. Magda was near to exhaus-

tion anyway. But sometimes Lili would stretch her neck and reach

her face towards her mother’s so that she could feel her breath on

her cheeks and sense the life in her. When it was bitter cold, Magda would invite Lili into her narrow bed, and they would put one blanket on top of the other and Magda would wrap her arms around

her and squeeze her and bury her face in Lili’s dirty hair, and Lili would snuggle back so that every part of the back of her body was

touching her mother’s. But the bed was too small and Lili too rest-

less at night. She insisted unless it was just too unbearable that she was warm enough in her own bed. Because she knew her mother

needed sleep.

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They would all rise together and she would watch as her mother

and sisters summoned the facial expressions that would say to one

another: it’s all right, it could be worse, soon it will be over. None of them believed it but it was a means of navigating the day. One of

the sisters might be able to find a corner of bread and some water

for breakfast and then they would talk, avoiding stories of the life they had once led and instead looking forward to the lives they

would later enjoy. Lili had decided she would become a teacher and

that she would never marry and that she would move to a small vil-

lage in Bavaria where she would live in a cottage.

‘A gingerbread cottage?’ Charlotte had said, laughing.

‘Why, yes,’ Lili had replied. ‘How did you know?’

Every so often the talking would stop, for a reason Lili could not

divine. Anneliese would turn her back on her sisters and whimper.

Hannelore would comfort her. Charlotte would stare into the mid-

dle distance and Magda, grey lines framing her eyes, would sigh.

In the afternoon, perhaps after a bowl of thin soup, they would

be allowed out to walk around the building. They walked in a yard

bordered on one side by a blank windowless wall and on the other

three by uncultivated scrubland. They were somewhere outside the

city, yet it did not seem to Lili as if they were in the country. Tall fences topped by three long coils of barbed wire marked the

boundary.

During the evening they talked again, always in undertones as if

they might disturb someone, or quietly played the childish games

they had made up. They never spoke of Albert Schröder, and some-

thing inside Lili told her not to ask Magda about her father. At a

certain point, never predictable, the light would cut out abruptly

and it was time to try to find sleep.

5

They heard nothing about the proceedings against their father. Their life consisted of waiting, for invisible processes to be completed and decisions to be taken. That much seemed to be tacit between her

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mother and the people who oversaw their detention, ordinary people

for the most part, with haunted and harried looks on their faces. Or possibly this was a complexion Lili later placed on them.

The next phase was managed with characteristic precision by the

authorities, and a little finesse. Magda was called to the facility manager’s office on the floor below to discuss certain legal matters. She followed the burly supervisor obediently, head down; she had

already been conditioned in the way of things.

‘We’ll practise some French when I get back,’ she said. They had

taken to lessons together, with no books and relying on Magda’s and the other girls’ own knowledge. It was a way of passing the time.

A few minutes later the supervisor returned. She said brightly,

‘Showers. They’ve fixed the boiler at last. You girls will be the first to use them. Your mother will have a chance when she gets back.’

She handed over thin, stiff towels, the colour washed out, threads

hanging from them, but laundered at least, leaving one on the bed

for Magda. The girls filed along the long linoleum corridor and into a suite of rooms they had never seen before, better maintained than the rest of the accommodation.

‘New clothes as well,’ said the supervisor. ‘And a medical check-

up. I’ll leave you to get ready for the showers. They’re just through there. Leave your dirty clothes in a pile in the corner.’

They undressed and looked at the new underwear, trousers and

tunics that lay on the benches. Hannelore folded and stacked the

clothes they had taken off and, carrying their towels, they walked

through.

It was a communal shower, with more than enough space for

them all to stand together. Charlotte found the tap and they watched as the powerful flow became warmer. Eventually it was steaming

hot and they walked under the healing waters. Lili realized that no one had spoken since their mother had left their room but now they

were giggling and whispering.

It felt like a rebirth, the warm water cascading down on them.

There was even soap. Grey runnels of grime drained down the

sluices below their feet. Finally, the supervisor called from the adja-cent room, ‘Time’s up.’

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Buoyed, they dried themselves by the benches and pulled on the

clean clothes. Charlotte made a neat pile of the towels.

The supervisor carried a clipboard. ‘Medicals now,’ she said, ‘and

then please, straight back to your room.’ She opened the connect-