The Winter Garden (2014) by Jane Thynne Page B

came from Munich and she was the least likely candidate for an SS Bride School I can imagine. She was a model for Bruno Weiss. My artist
friend. I don’t think you ever met him but he knew Helga Schmidt.’
    Helga Schmidt
. The actress whose death had brought Mary and Clara together. Mary was shaking her head in disbelief.
    ‘Whoever the girl was, this Bride School sounds like a story in itself. I’m sure my editor would adore the idea. I’ll get onto it first thing.’
    Clara stifled a yawn.
    ‘Sorry, it’s been quite an evening.’
    ‘So which room’s mine?’
    Mary gazed innocently at Clara, then burst out laughing.
    ‘Don’t worry. I’m not moving in. It would be far too compromising for you to share an apartment with a journalist. I’ll just need to stay a night until I find somewhere
else. I’ll bunk up on your sofa. You’ll never know I’m here.’
    Clara felt a guilty twinge of relief.
    ‘Of course. Stay as long as you need. Whatever you want.’
    ‘What I really want is a drink. Where shall we go?’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘Why not? Unless Berlin nightlife has changed out of all recognition, things are only just getting started at eleven o’clock.’
    At the prospect of an evening out with Mary Harker, Clara’s fatigue evaporated. Mary’s enthusiasm was like a transfusion of something life-giving. The kind of substance you
couldn’t get in one of Magda Goebbels’ clinics.
    ‘Where would you like to go?’
    ‘Do you know anywhere a couple of women on their own could drink a Martini without being bothered?’
    ‘I think so. Why?’
    ‘That’s exactly the kind of place I want to avoid.’
    Given they had spent such a raucous evening, it was strange that Clara should wake so early. The pearly morning light was beginning to penetrate the curtains’ edge like a
negative developing in its chemical bath, seeping into the room and transforming the solid black shapes of furniture to watery textures of grey. Clara lay for a while in bed in a state of exhausted
clarity. Even though, for the first time in ages, there was another person sleeping in the apartment, she had never felt so alone. Her solitude seemed to envelop her in an invisible cocoon as she
lay listening to Berlin waking up, car horns, the rumbling of trams on Nollendorfplatz and the metallic screech of the S-Bahn trains on the high stilts of their elevated tracks.
    Mary had been full of questions last night.
How long can you stay here? Are you happy? Is there a man on the horizon?
Clara had smiled and shaken her head at that. The truth was that
despite the odd flings of the past few years, she had never met anyone she was deeply attracted to. There had been love in her life once, but since Leo’s departure, no man had managed to
penetrate her defences. She could laugh with them and sleep with them, but she would leave in the morning without a backward glance. Perhaps it was testimony to the strength of the carapace she had
erected around herself, but no one had ever had the effect on Clara that meeting Leo had. The frisson she had felt from the very moment she met him. No one, until perhaps Captain Ralph Sommers.
    What about your private life?
Mary wanted to know. Clara couldn’t tell her that there was no such thing as a private life for someone in her position. Her private life was where
her professional life, her unofficial professional life, took place. At parties and premieres she was always on the alert, always attentive for useful pieces of information. Any snippets of gossip
that the women let drop about the Führer’s thoughts, or the feuds between their husbands, or the grumbles about the Reich’s intensifying military preparations, would be memorized
until she could feed them back to Archie Dyson. Yet although Clara batted away Mary’s questions, it was increasingly difficult to silence the clamour of questions in her own head. Which,
thanks to a succession of gin Martinis in a West End bar, was feeling distinctly