Müller knew she would have regrets leaving the Republic behind. Having rediscovered her biological family – in the shape of her grandmother, Helga – she wondered if she would ever see her again. The relatives of escapers were often persecuted by the Stasi – it was a well-known fact, presumably to stop more people from trying it. She could only hope that – as a pensioner – Helga would be spared. She hoped the same for her adoptive family – Rosamund, Sara, Roland and their children. And she had never had the chance to say goodbye properly to Jonas Schmidt, who’d been with her for several years through thick and thin. She’d miss him. Even his sausage-breath and overlong explanations. Her rediscovered Father too. An army officer in the Soviet Far East. By doing what she’d done, had she wrecked any chance of ever seeing him again?

But she was thankful the other man who – by and large – had watched her back throughout would still be at her side. She grasped Tilsner’s hand and squeezed it, marvelling at its solidity and power. For a man of over fifty, he was in pretty good shape. To say nothing of his balloon piloting skills.

Looking down at their joined-together hands, her eyes were drawn as always to his expensive western watch. The item that had most epitomised his divided loyalty, and his part-time affiliation to the Stasi. In the Republic, it had always looked slightly ostentatious and out of place. Here – in the BRD – it would be de rigueur.

She laughed to herself.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

She stopped, and turned to face him. She was tempted to caress his face, feel his whiskers. But perhaps he would find that too intimate a gesture. They still hadn’t really spelled out their plans to each other – and whether their future would be together. But Müller was filled with a sudden lightness, and carefree joy. Everything would work itself out, one way or another.

She gave another little laugh.

‘Nothing, Werner,’ she said. ‘Nothing’s wrong at all.’

Epilogue

Epilogue

LOTTI

Sonnenstein, Pirna, East Germany

One month later

The black Volvo pulls up at the roadside just as I’m about to go into HO Gaststätte Glück Auf for the first time since all the nastiness happened. They say that timing is everything. I know who it will be even before the electric window glides down and he puts his head out.

‘Jump in, Lotti, please,’ he says. Ever polite, of course. Framed as a request, even though we both know it’s an order.

My trip to the restaurant was partly a date – and partly a bit of solo celebration. The latest tests have shown the cancer seems to be in remission – or at least the tumours aren’t growing. So perhaps all the sessions of chemotherapy have been worth it, even though I feel worse than death after each bout.