“It’s only eight thirty,” said Helen once the waitress had disappeared. “I already had all that Brie with jam. And we’ll be having lunch soon. Plus dinner tonight!”

“You’re forgetting afternoon tea,” he remarked drily.

“Bizarre. What a country.”

“We’ll walk it all off soon enough,” he said, and began to eat.

Helen’s eyes lingered on him. His elegant hands, the fine hairs on his wrists, and that aristocratic face she knew so well. The gray morning light streamed through the window and cast shadows, deepening his laugh lines and making the grooves on his cheeks look harsher. It was the same Werner as ever, and yet there was something about him. She couldn’t put her finger on it. He talked, listened, ate, smiled, but his actions didn’t quite seem to match up with his mood, somehow.

Tension.

That was it; that was what she felt when she looked at him. Tension. Distance.

5

5

“I didn’t know your parents were this rich.”

“Me neither.”

Ralf expected somebody to step out of the perfectly maintained shrubbery and escort him off the premises. His sixteen-year-old Polo would almost certainly spoil the view for the chic hotel guests. The place was enormous, and looked distinguished and very old—it was like they had just driven onto a film set.

“They only ever take us camping,” said Sara. “Or to Grandma and Grandpa’s rickety old witch’s house in France.”

He drove slower and slower, unsure where to go. Everything here was so big.

“There.” Sara pointed to a neatly painted sign standing in a flower bed. Ralf followed the arrow and drove down a wide gravel path onto a parking lot, which was divided into sections by hedges and shrubs. Each section had room for around ten cars. The fine gravel crunched beneath his wheels.

“This is for the guests, right?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Then your father’s car must be here somewhere.”

“If they haven’t left yet,” added Sara softly.

He drove slowly down each of the rows, looking for the gray Mercedes. On another day, he could have easily spent an hour or two here gawking. The parking lot was like the showroom of a luxury car dealership, and the Aston Martins, Range Rovers, and Porsches on display must have been worth a fortune. But they all had British license plates.

Not a single Dutch car.

“We’re too late,” he said.

“Try over there.”

He drove off the path again as a favor to Sara, and then back up to the entrance. She slumped in her seat in disappointment.

Ralf turned off the engine and took his key out of the ignition. “What now?”

“We can go and ask inside. Maybe the staff will know where they went.”

“Sure, like they’d tell us that.”

“They will. I’m their daughter, remember?”